The DR Performance Practice Deck for iOS version 1.1 is now available.
Lots of good things in this update, the biggest news being score tracking is now available.
Please spread the good word!
Thank you for your support.
Technology
Fun with SleepWatcher
I do the majority of my computing work on a MacBook Pro — a laptop computer. The primary reason for a laptop is portability. Sure most of my work gets done at my desk, but sometimes I have to move or want to move. But moving isn’t always so quick and easy because I have lots of things hooked up to the MacBook Pro, like an external FireWire hard drive so I can run Time Machine backups. Trouble is, you can’t just yank out the cable for the disk, you must eject it, then you can remove the cable, else you could risk corruption of the data on the drive. Of course when you’re in a hurry to get out, or just consider we all get absent-minded from time to time gee… this is a pain in the neck and wouldn’t it be nice if we could automate it so we didn’t have to worry about it! Isn’t that what computers are useful for?
As I searched about for a solution, I found a little app called autoEJECT. It’s not bad, but after using it for a few days it just didn’t work like I needed it to. It did unmount things fine, but it failed to mount my FireWire drive. It has an option to “Force Mount”, which I then enabled but when I did so it mounted everything including the secret hidden partitions Apple has for recovery and booting. This is not desired as that 1. clutters things up, 2. exposes volumes that you do NOT want to risk to change. Even then it was a little quirky in how it would remember volumes to mount and unmount and just got in the way more than it was being useful. I figured there had to be a better way.
I found something called SleepWatcher.
SleepWatcher is a system daemon that watches for various events on the system, like sleep and wake, and allows you to execute scripts in response to those events. The app isn’t for novices, and the author actually goes out of his way to make it a bit complicated to use because it’s not a tool for the masses to use. But if you know what you’re doing, it can be useful. So I figured to give it a shot.
Of course, SleepWatcher itself isn’t what does the voodoo. You need scripts.
This website listed a couple scripts.
His sleep script was:
#!/bin/sh osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to eject disks'
and his wake script was:
#!/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/diskutil list | \
awk '/Apple_HFS/ {print $NF}' | \
xargs -I{} /usr/sbin/diskutil mount {}
Those are reasonable starting scripts. I thought about changing the wake script to just look for my one volume, because as it is now is ends up mounting all my partitions. Since they’re already mounted it really makes no difference, but it’d just be more efficient to scan for my lone volume. Still tho, this is useful for being complete.
The sleep script I modified slightly based upon what I found here. The change I made was simple:
#!/bin/sh osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to eject (every disk whose ejectable is true)'
which works a bit better in my situation. Granted, this will kick out optical discs, but as I rarely use them it’s not a big deal to me. The author also notes how this will not work if the Finder isn’t running, but I use the Finder and it should always be running (else there’s a problem).
Along the same lines as these is this hint from Mac OS X Hints, but he takes some vastly different approaches in what is selected for unmounting and what is selected for mounting. Not exactly what I want, but it shows what else you can do.
Anyways, SleepWatcher is pretty nifty and reading the code seems to be pretty well written too. Cheers, Bernhard Baeher!
Announcing kwikkEmail – the kwikkest way to send email
I’m proud to announce kwikkEmail – the kwikkest way to send email!
Read all about it over at Hsoi Enterprises.
(Hsoi Enterprises is my company, as you might guess from the name. Thus…).
Finally made the leap
I finally did it. I upgraded to Lion.
Seems a little late in coming eh?
I’ve been writing software for a long time. I know how the process goes, and well… I have enough of my own bugs in a day to deal with, I don’t need to be hampered by someone else’s. Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6.8) was working fine for me, and out of the gate Lion had lots problems. Things are better in Lion, with Mac OS X 10.7.3, so maybe it’s time to upgrade.
Still, I didn’t. The main reason was stability. When you’re going through a development cycle, you don’t change your tools. You do this so you don’t introduce change and risk that’s outside of your control. Wait until you ship, then you can upgrade everything. Yes it might mean you get held back for a while, but that’s how it goes. But sometimes you can violate this, and I have because daily use of Snow Leopard was getting to be a problem.
See, at my day job I have to work on a MacBook Pro that runs Lion. The requirements of that project required Lion, Xcode 4.3, iOS 5 target, and so on. So I had to be all on the latest. Very cool for what it is, but well… let’s put it this way. When you use that computer all day and are forced to scroll “the other way”, when you switch to your other computer you get all messed up. I got to a point where I stopped knowing how to scroll and which way went which way on which machine, so any scrolling was always a “ok, just flick one way and if it doesn’t work then reverse direction”. Very inefficient and annoying since you become VERY aware of how much you scroll in a day. 🙂
Plus, since I had to work in Lion all day, I got to see that, for the most part, it’s working fine and not getting in my way. So I finally opted to upgrade.
Oye… what a slow, laborious process. Started it last night after supper, still working on it this morning. But now I’m turning on the whole-disk encryption and it’s slowly chugging away at encrypting everything.
The sad part? I think my current MacBook Pro isn’t going to make the upgrade to Mountain Lion. Hopefully that “Apple Event” next week will shed some light on new hardware options. 🙂
Technology failures
Too much computer fail right now.
Time-Warner Cable’s RoadRunner Internet has been horrible for me lately. It’ll be up for a while, then go down for a few minutes, then back up, then back down, and just repeat this for too long. That’s been going on for some weeks but I tried to do my best to ignore it. But then yesterday she gave up the ghost. I’m guessing the modem has failed, or something bigger. It’s not an outage, it’s local. Tech won’t come until Wednesday.
This doesn’t bode well for someone who works from home and relies upon Internet connectivity.
It’s good that my day job has me writing connection manager software, so I have lots of 3G/4G USB dongles around. I set up an old iMac with one of the 4G dongles and turned on Internet Sharing to share the 4G connection through the Ethernet port. Then hooked my router up to that iMac. And viola… the household is back online, every device. It’s a lot slower, but at least we can limp along for now.
And then on my server… one of the hard drives is making a funny noise. It’s failing. The bad part is, as I powered everything off to remove the failing drive, when I tried to power it back up it wouldn’t power up. So is the drive failing or the power supply? And a couple other drives in similar enclosures also made the same noise upon turning them back on, but they aren’t repeatedly making the noise. This doesn’t bode well. I’ll be calling Other World Computing this morning to talk about it and figure out a solution.
What with the flooding in Asia and how it’s affected the hard drive market, I was so hoping to avoid buying a hard drive for the next couple years until things recovered. Alas…
Oh what fun.
Apple iOS 5 Tech Talk – Austin
Yesterday I attended Apple’s iOS 5 Tech Talk here in Austin. I wrote about it at my company blog.
Rather inspired and excited am I about prospects ahead.
That’s very cool, Moneydance
Readers may remember about a year ago I was looking for a new personal finance program and decided upon Moneydance.
Still using Moneydance. Still happy with my purchase. Sure, some of the Java GUI quirks bug me, but the reality is it does all I want and does it pretty well. I’m pleased.
But here’s something really cool they recently did: they revamped their license. They made it a lot simpler. For personal users, it’s one license per household. Doesn’t matter how many people use it, how many computers it’s installed on, how many different OS’s it’s installed under, how many data files, whatever. And “As always, we promise that we’ll never sunset our software, remove functionality from older versions, or force you to upgrade.” Which is pretty nice. Speaking as a software developer, that’s a tough promise to keep, so I applaud their efforts.
What I also dug was their reasoning:
Why are we making this change? First, because we recognize that the world is changing:Â households may now be multi-generational, include blended families or housemates, or have other structures which are more complex than two adults sharing finances. Second, because we wanted to even further simplify our licensing agreement. Finally, we want to make it easier for kids, teens, and students to learn about personal finance, and we believe that Moneydance can be a great tool for the entire family.
Very cool.
Dangers of working from home – and how to fix it
A short and sweet article about the “dangers” of working from home and how to fix them. (h/t to… I forget *blush*)
Speaking as someone that’s worked from home for 11+ years, I’ve gained some perspective into the matter. I’d like to add my own input to the author’s 5 points:
1. You don’t feel you are working
The author’s point here is how work life and personal life can blend. True that. To an extent, this is a good thing. You can have a greater flexibility in life, within the constraints the job allows you. For instance, I spent many years working with folks in California, 2 hours behind me. I’m a morning person. These two things together didn’t always allow our schedules to mesh because as I’m winding up my day they’d just be digging into theirs. But I didn’t let THEIR constraints control my life. Instead, I just had to make some accommodations, such as accepting that sometimes I’ll have a meeting that’s very late in the day for me. I also made a point to check my work email in the evenings.
But that said, you really do have to work at keeping work work and personal personal. You cannot let your life become one giant smear of workandpersonallifetogether. It takes discipline and learning to draw lines AND sticking to them. Plus, you have to ensure people at work come to respect those lines. As well, the folks at home also have to respect those lines.
Which brings us to…
2. Your family members won’t understand that you are working
This is simple (but not easy). Draw lines and enforce them. Make sure the lines and rules are clear to everyone, and stick to them. For example, if my door is shut, you don’t come in. If you need me, you knock. Do not expect an answer if I’m in a meeting or perhaps deeply ensconced in a debug session. You must respect it, unless it’s an emergency. Yes, kids will have to be punished if they violate the rules. Spouses too.
But that said, remember that part of the joy of working at home with the family around is that you can be around them. I’ve found that if I’m not truly deeply into something, just flow with the interruptions sometimes. Sometimes the kiddo just wants to show you what they did. It takes 30 seconds of my time (which I probably would have wasted on Facebook or something else), kiddo is happy, I am happy, it’s a win. Don’t shun your family. Just work to manage things. And yes, it will take time, failure, revision, and experimentation to find what works for you.
3. You are slacking off, because your boss is not watching
It’s very easy to slack because you’ll be surrounded by all your favorite things. You have to develop the self-discipline to keep working, because if you don’t, you’re out of a job. Bosses will eventually detect your level of productivity.
Take a little time to blow off steam, break up the day, all that stuff. But you still have to produce. In fact, it’s generally better to work to produce more, because really… you will have fewer distractions than being in the office. You can focus better. You won’t have everyone dropping by your cube. You don’t have a commute. You can be more productive.
And oh, get dressed every day. Just because no one has to look at your or smell you, you should still carry on as if people did. It will affect your psyche.
4. You alienate yourself from work community
This is true. You must work to overcome it. The author goes into the office now and again, but my office is thousands of miles away, so that’s not possible. You must make the extra effort to communicate with folks. IM is good, or maybe set up an IRC channel. Have ways to chat with people. Do pick up the phone now and again, because to hear voices is very warming and personalizing. If you can video chat, even better. Don’t be afraid to start the day with some quick pings to people to just say “hi”. You do have to have some sort of social setup with everyone, else well… you will be overlooked, you will be forgotten, and folks just won’t know much about you. Not always good for the long haul.
5. You work too much
Yup. This goes back to #1. You just have to draw lines and stick to them. Be flexible, but be firm. Don’t check work email in your non-work times. Don’t check messages. Work is work and should be put into that box and kept there. If you do not, everything will smear and work will take over your life. You can’t let it.
It isn’t easy to start working at home. It requires commitment and self-discipline. But I think the benefits are huge, both to myself and to whomever I’m working for. It’s a situation that’s worked well for over a decade for me, and I really can’t see any other way to work.
Working at home isn’t possible for every job. If your job can be done from home, consider it. But as well, know yourself. You just may need the constraints and environment “going to the office” puts on you. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s better to know yourself, know your limits, and know your capabilities.
And this is why I always get AppleCare
Family iMac has two problems:
1. SuperDrive (DVD drive), you put in a disc, any disc, and it spins up then down, then up then down, lather rinse repeat for a minute, then kicks the disc out. Tried a bunch of low-hanging troubleshooting fruit. Looks like the hardware failed.
2. There’s a spot on the LCD that looks like a wrinkle. It’s certainly not a software issue. When I took it into the Apple Store just now, the guy said he’s seen this before. There’s a power supply right at that point behind the LCD… heat.
The work order? For parts and labor, $615 ($400 of that is the LCD screen).
Cost to me?
$0
But only because I forked over the money for AppleCare when I bought the thing. I don’t recall how much it cost me at the time, but right now AppleCare for an iMac is $169.
I say I came out alright here.
I always get AppleCare. Well, I didn’t used to. Way way way back in the day, Apple’s quality assurance on their hardware was high. If something was going to fail, it’d fail within the base warranty and after that the machine would last until normal moving parts might wear out (e.g. hard drives are always eventually going to fail). But then over the past decade or so, quality has slipped. Many of the Apple hardware products I’ve purchased and worked with have had at least one issue in some regard, and I’ve always been thankful for AppleCare because not only was it covered but the repair was always far more expensive than the AppleCare was.
I generally avoid extended warranties, but never skim on AppleCare. Read into that as you will.
And now… let’s see how well Oldest deals with computer withdrawal while the machine is off being repaired. 🙂
on copyrights, SOPA, and education
Because of SOPA and GoDaddy’s support of it, I’m going to be switching all my domains away from GoDaddy. I’m a little late in joining the throng; been busy, better late than never.
Yeah yeah, GoDaddy claims to have dropped support. I’m not convinced the senior management truly believes SOPA is bad. I can only believe they made the public stance reversal due to all the bad publicity and potential loss of revenue. If they really believed SOPA was bad, why wasn’t that their initial stance? I know people can change their mind and do complete reversals of stance (I’ve been there), but this smells too fishy. Besides, I hate using GoDaddy’s website as they’ve apparently never heard of the KISS principle. I’ve wanted to leave for a while, and SOPA finally broke my inertia.
I’m all for protecting copyright. As someone that’s written software professionally for 15+ years, I understand the importance of copyright, especially in the digital realm. Every time someone steals my software, they’re taking food out of the mouths of my children.
I look at it this way. You want my product/service because it somehow makes your life better. Be it software, be it a movie, be it music, whatever, you like my stuff, consume my stuff, and feel your life is better because of it. Great! That’s why we create these things; trying to make the world a better place, trying to make people’s lives better. Nevertheless, we also need to feed ourselves, put a roof over our heads, put clothing on the backs of our children. With a finite amount of time in a day and energy in my body, I must use those finite resources at my disposal to make money to feed, house, and clothe myself and my children. Given a choice, I’d love to use my time and energy to make the world a better place doing what I do best. If someone can compensate me in exchange, great! If however I cannot make money at it, then I must find something else to do to support my family. If I have to do something else, that means I can no longer create and provide you with that thing that makes your life better. So you see, if you steal from me, eventually I will be forced to do something else. We both lose: I can’t create the thing you like, and you can no longer enjoy the thing I made. If however you compensate me for my work, we both win because I get to create it and you get to consume it. Both our lives are better.
So please, don’t steal. Ultimately your theft hurts both of us — yes, it will come to hurt you too. If instead you make a small sacrifice, maybe don’t buy that Venti White Chocolate Blended Creme Frappuccino today but instead send the $5 my way in exchange for my software you’ve been using well… now both our lives are going to be better in the long run (and you didn’t need those 760 empty calories anyways). You support me, I create for you. It works out for both of us.
I think the solution to this copyright and “digital theft” problem is to eliminate the dinosaurs that want to criminalize their entire potential customer base. I think we need to foster education in consumers about copyright and how things work and need to work so we can labor and they can enjoy the fruits of our labor, both now and for many years to come. Customers need to realize that “free” is not a successful long-term business model, and unless they pay up sooner or later, whatever you like won’t just stop being free… it’ll just stop being. Customers need to realize how supporting those that create the services and goods you enjoy means good things for THEIR lives too (and how not supporting ultimately comes back to hurt them). To pay isn’t trying to rip you off, it’s an understanding that there are costs in the world (gotta host this website somehow, gotta eat), and by helping to do something about those costs we can all benefit. We creators also need to listen to our customers about what they want and strive to strike a balance.
Heavy-handed measures like SOPA may work to address symptoms and make some assholes in Washington feel like they’re “doing something”. But they aren’t striking at the root of the matter, and they’re not really working to solve the problem. In fact, they’re only going to make things worse. I mean, do you really want decisions made by people who think the Internet is a “series of tubes” and take pride in their ignorance of the technology but are getting their pockets lined to shove the legislation through? Does that seem right to you?
Stuff From Hsoi 