Monday, May 19, 2003

AppKiDo is a free reference tool for Cocoa Objective-C programmers. The goal of AppKiDo is to help you find what you want in the Cocoa documentation. It does this by parsing the header files and the HTML doc files that were installed with your Developer Tools, and presenting the results in a form that is easy to navigate. This is a fast, easy way to explore Cocoa. [Jon Israelson's Blog] 10:34:23 PM    comment []

The fear war against Linux. Bruce Perens has an article on News.com titled The fear war against Linux that does a good job of examining possible motivations for SCO's recent attacks against Linux and what Microsoft's involvement may be.... [Jeremy Zawodny's blog] Great article that may provide an answer to the question, "What the hell is SCO thinking?" 10:30:37 PM    comment []

Opera Releases Opera 7 For Linux. Opera Software on Monday released its latest Opera 7 OS for the Linux operating system, complete with an email client. [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis] I really like Opera. I'm VERY glad that they've released the latest version for Linux. It's one of the fastest and most convenient browsers you can use. I find myself using Mozilla more often, but I'm not sure why. 10:23:06 PM    comment []

I'd rather use a socket.. SOAP, RMI, CORBA, RPC, Middleware, yadda, yadda, yadda. I'd rather use a socket. (From Robert C. Martin's Weblog) [Robert C. Martin's Weblog] Hehehe. Love it. 10:10:57 PM    comment []

Caring for Your Introvert Glenn Vanderburg forwarded this great article to me. I appreciate the distinction between misanthrope and introvert. I'm an INTJ. 10:01:46 PM    comment []

Making My First Movie with iMovie In addition to getting my iPod this weekend, I also got a Sony TRV22 digital camcorder. This was a key purchase since my wife and I are expecting our first child soon. It is also key that Daddy (me) be proficient with the camera before his daughter arrives. The Sony is a very easy camera to learn and to actually use. The controls are straightforward and easy to reach. The manual is well organized and designed to get you going quickly. (One area that is not covered in any detail is importing movies into your computer via firewire.) The camera (to my eye) performs reasonably well in various lighting conditions, and has a decent microphone. Daddy likes the touch screen, too! I used my new camera to make a walk-through movie of the baby's room. I planned my shot and executed it pretty quickly. I was pretty pleased with the raw results. I then decided it was time to import it into my iMac and make some iMovie magic! I connected the firewire cable that I bought (Sony doesn't supply one!) from my iMac to the camera. I rewound my tape to the appropriate spot, and hit Import on iMovie. BAM! iMovie took control of the camera and imported the video clip. When it hit the end of the video, it automagically stopped the camera. Tre cool. After I had the clip in iMovie, I drug it onto the project area and added a fade in and fade out transition at the beginning and end. Then, I dropped a song from my iTunes library underneath. I adjusted the volume of the song down so that it didn't compete with my wonderful narration. (Oh, it's wonderful! Don't get me started.) I played my project through a couple of times and realized that any more fooling with it would lose the grittiness and make it too comercial. So, I went to print with it. I exported it as a Quicktime and added it to the family web site. Finally, I called the soon-to-be grandparents and let them know they could see their granddaughter's room. They were overjoyed! I was a big hero! All that hard work, all 45 minutes of it, had paid off. Damn, I love my Mac. 9:47:27 PM    comment []

Matrix Reloaded Revisited After talking with some of my work cronies, I feel I was too quick to judge teh Matrix Reloaded. I have realized that there was more to the story than I might have been paying attention to. I'm going to have to watch it again to see if I can pick up on some of the nuances. Also, one of my friends picked up on the SSH hack, too. He pointed me to Insecure.Org where they talk about the hack. However, I still claim that even in version 1 of SSH, root logins would have been disabled by most system administrators. But, it is good to know that among my peer group, I'm not the only geek who caught it. 9:23:56 PM    comment []

The Beginning of My Love Affair with Apple I realized this weekend I'm becoming one of those Apple users that I used to hate. You know the kind: always talking about how well engineered their Mac hardware and software is, always struggling to understand why Intel users don't understand, etc. With the recent purchase of my iMac, my iPod, and my digital camcorder I've become what I used to loathe. I love it. I've been talking about getting an iPod for a while now. I have a birthday this month, and my wife was saying that I should get one for my birthday. However, I couldn't justify spending the money. Last week, I walk into the house talking about how I was on the iPod kick again. Once again my wife is telling me that I should just go buy one. I said, "Maybe I'll just stop by and buy one on my way home one night." She said, "You can't! You can't let anyone surprise you, can you?!?!?" Apparently she had bought me one that day at lunch. I know - she IS an angel. Just unpacking the iPod you get to experience the care and detail behind the product. The packaging is excellent (just like all other Apple products). You can tell they care about protecting their children until they are adopted by a loving parent. The cords are extremely neatly packed with protective covering over each end, the unit itself is buried deep in Styrofoam and static wrap, and the box itself is cleverly crafted. I was really impressed. I immediately connected the cradle to my Mac via the supplied firewire cable. I settled the iPod into the cradle and started reading the book while my music was transferred without any user interaction to my device. It took a little longer than I expected (I have about 4GB of my music on my Mac), but it was amazing none the less. Once I started using the iPod and actually listening to my music, I was floored. This is some kind of fantastic device. (Better be for the price, huh?) The controls are super easy to use. They make it very easy to navigate a large music library. In fact, if you set up playlists, it's even easier. I have nothing but love for my iPod so far. Because of its size and convenience, I found myself wanting to take it everywhere. In fact, my wife did put it in the car as we ran errands and listened to it via one of those cassette tape adapters. We were a little overwhelmed by having a large amount of our music at our disposal, but I think we'll get used to it. If you are considering buying an iPod and you can afford it, just do it. It's definitely a music lover's dream come true. 8:04:53 AM    comment []

Matrix Reloaded I saw Matrix Reloaded yesterday. I was a little disappointed. I thought the story was much more obvious and actually a little weaker than the first one. The special effects were awesome, as I expected. I won't spoil it for anyone, but the first one is still my favorite by far. OK, here's how much of a geek I am. There's a bit of a technical flaw in the movie. I'll give you a hint: it occurs when someone is sitting at a terminal. I appreciate that the film makers went to the trouble of making the interaction with the terminal as true to life as they did. However, they should have done their homework a little more about the way a particular program is normally configured. You know the flaw I refer to? Drop me an email - I'd love to hear if you saw it too. I'll have to wait until it comes out on DVD to really confirm what I saw, though. Still well worth the money and I recommend it. 7:48:55 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Tom Pierce.