Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, August 19, 2002

Screeshot of Matlab 6.5 on Mac OS X -- Comment()
Here is a screenshot of Matlab 6.5 on Mac OS X. You can see the command interface and a plot window under XDarwin/OroborOSX (X11).

Testing Matlab 6.5 on Mac OS X -- Comment()
The ordered copy of Matlab 6.5 for Mac OS X came in one week. Fast action. I'm still waiting for Mathematica which was ordered almost two months ago. (This is typical Mathematica speed.)

Maybe I'll write a quick review of Matlab when I get enough experience. Now I'll just write a bit about the installation.

Installation of Matlab 6.5 for Mac OS X wasn't more difficult than installation on SGI or Sun systems. However, the instructions were a shock. I have grown accustomed to the ease of software installation on Mac OS X, even Unix software using Fink. Matlab installation was a mixture of Unix commands and a (terrible) graphical installer. At one point the software suggested logging in as root to make the necessary steps!

How about using Administrator rights when needed? This is done in other Mac OS X installers, and works flawlessly. I think the MathWorks people should have a real look at Mac OS X and how to do things here. This would help to make installation easier on other platforms also, I believe.

It is easy to see that the people at MathWorks have made little effort in this port. Well, at least Matlab is finally available for Mac OS X.

It has been some time since MathWorks decided to discontinue Matlab on the Macintosh. However, my experience of about 10 years is that Mac has been always a second class platform for Matlab, so nothing has changed.

It is sad to see that this package is still anchored in the previous millenium. The look is Motif/Windows or even uglier than that, the system starts up slowly, and you have to make all kinds of Unix operations to make sure that the license manager is running.

Well, at least the people at MathWorks reminded me that Mac OS X is a Unix operating system. You need XDarwin and OroborOSX to make the system work. I did have those already installed, but making this system work is quite non-trivial if you don't know Unix beforehand.

I hope there will be a free upgrade to a fully Aqua-based version of this software, when (if) it becomes available. This would be fair considering the price of the software.

A hunter-gatherer tribe of bloggers -- Comment()
What kind of economy is formed by the system of bloggers? I think the bloggers are similar to a hunter-gatherer tribe. The bloggers are trading information: original thoughts and information about good digging or hunting grounds.

To survive in this economy, you have to build up referrals. This only happens by getting the tribe to trust you, or by being an exceptionally gifted original thinker. But even then you have to provide food for (the thoughts of) other bloggers. So, you have to be generous to succeed in this endeavor.

Maybe I'm completely wrong about this? Well, at least I have written down the initial impressions. Time will tell.

Wrong expectations -- Comment()
The initial problems with Radio were due to wrong expectations. I was expecting a "normal" application and instead I got a front-end to a web service. Well, this is simplifying a bit, but at least now I know what to expect.

Moved over, my weblog -- Comment()
I moved this weblog to another machine (my iBook), with some difficulties. I finally installed a new copy of Radio and copied the subdirectories from the old installation. This seems to work. Now I can maintain the weblog on my home computer, whenever I want.

There were some tense moments, thought, when I thought I had deleted the contents of the weblog. Fortunately, this system is based on the local copies of the material, so everything was possible to move over just by copying the content files. However, there should be an option for changing the path to the user files in the Radio application.

Apple iBook -- Comment()
Found a current review of iBook. My iBook is soon one year old, not too dated yet, but starting to show some signs of aging (software bloat the principal reason). However, the iBook has been a much better puchase than I thought.

The iBook is the second machine I have bought for home use (the first was Mac Plus in 1987). Otherwise I have managed with second-hand computers, which is certainly cost-effective. However, sometimes it is good to see what you can so with a new computer. iBook fits the bill nicely. If you want to do some work with your computer, that is.

Mac Net Journal -- Comment()
I found one previously familiar weblog at Radio: Mac Net Journal. There are probably more, but I don't have the time to go digging for them.

Perhaps I should also do some customization of the blog layout, to make it more personal and distinct. For the moment, this layout suffices quite nicely, thank you.

What makes us the same? -- Comment()
The world is fragmenting into distinct groups, perhaps with somewhat overlapping memberships. At the same time: globalization marches on. So we are building new villages of similar thinking people, and the world is increasingly similar to all of us. Perhaps only our reactions to the world make us different?

There are quite a few forums on the Internet for discussing matters with similarly-thinking people. The similarity is a matter of attitude to the world. Is Linux or Windows better? It doesn't much matter, the most important thing is to be ready to defend your position and argue about technology with other IT-oriented people.

What about fundamentalistic propaganda of muslims or christians? There the attitude to discussion may be different.

Forums: Usenet news, IRC, web pages, web discussion forums, mailing lists, weblogs, ... What is the next (and perhaps ultimate) format for agreements and arguments?

Perhaps the medium does not matter? The ease of expressing oneself to the right (similar?) kind of people is the important factor.

Writing stories about rebels -- Comment()
Something to read about: the The Last Rebel Coders story.

Item titles, the last complaint goes away? -- Comment()
Item titles seem to be possible with Radio, so let us try this.

-- Comment()
Made a shortcut to Apple to try out. Perhaps this will work out ok. Using shortcuts makes it easier to write all those frequent web addresses, I hope.

I am already thinking about writing this weblog for a longer time than a couple of days. However, I'm not quite sure about that. I don't want to invest a lot of effort to this writing. There is a lot of work to be done, and lots of other kinds of writing (user instructions, columns, textbooks etc.).

Is there a reason a (semi)professional writer would like to keep a blog in addition to all the other writing?

-- Comment()
I just now tried to change the weblog theme, and some nice themes there were. However, some were quite awful (I didn't bother looking at all of them). But probably there are people using those themes regardless of the looks.

Apropos, it is nice that all those Aqua editing shortcuts work in OmniWeb, so I can use my Emacs knowledge while editing the postings. A separate application for postings, like iJournal, would be nice though.

-- Comment()
NetNewsWire Lite is a nifty Mac OS X application for checking out RSS news feeds. Now my own weblog RSS feed is there too, this is nice! (Of course, I had to manually insert the address to NetNewsWire.)

The only complaint just now have about Radio is the slowness of the posting interface (partly due to OmniWeb on an older Power Mac). Also, it would be nice to have headers for postings, or at least a way of writing headers if you want them.

-- Comment()
I tried also LiveJournal, but it seems that a RSS feed is missing, and what about permanent links? Perhaps I'll try Radio Userland some more, although it seems a bit silly to be running a separate server application on the local system for making the posts. But, let us see.

-- Comment()
Learning blogging is a bit like woodwork, for example making a tray. It takes time to make something usable, all kinds of practical things to learn, but finally you have the skills and may want to do something more ambitious.

-- Comment()
I have to see how much HTML I have to write here to make the linking to other web sites work well. Lots of things to learn still. Now I'm writing the HTML links by hand, but I trust there is an easier way to do this. I'll learn little by little. Perhaps I'll switch systems once more, but at least I have now tried two weblog services, Blogger and Radio Userland.

-- Comment()
Perhaps I'm becoming a bit picky about the quality of software. Using OmniWeb is a relief, Mozilla on Mac OS X is still a bit flaky and ugly.

The quality of software on Mac OS X is high, you just need to check out Watson, OmniGraffle, OmniWeb etc. Plus all the Apple-made iApps, which make using computers almost a pleasure.

-- Comment()
This seems both easier and more difficult than I thought. I first tried blogger, run into some difficulties. Now I'm trying Radio UserLand. OmniWeb seems to work ok with the web-based interface.

-- Comment()
Everywhere: talk about blogging. The only way to find out what blogging actually is seems to do it. So here goes. My first post. Using a randomly selected blog service and a randomly named blog.