2009
With Apple and Google getting less cozy, how long until Safari allows easy switching away from Google for search bar?
What the… Bing is indexing one of my websites which has an explicit robots disallow. C’mon people!
Just got the new retweet features turned on in my account. Looking forward to being able to disable nearly all retweets! :-)
Upgrading my Vista license to Windows 7 is going to cost me $200? What the? Someone at Microsoft needs to look at Mac OS X pricing.
Ugly Bug in Mac OS X Address Book?
I don’t have an official bug report for this but I’m seeing a very ugly bug in Mac OS X Address Book or some part of the applications that work with its data. In short, it seems that in some situations Address Book can duplicate all the images associated with contacts, multiple times.
I keep really important data in my Address Book and as a result I do a weekly manual backup in addition to Time Machine backups. Look at the size of my weekly backups in this screenshot.
In a two-week period the duplication happened multiple times. From
October 24 to October 30 it happened twice increasing the size of all
images from 17 to 34MB and then again from 34 to 64MB. It happened again
doubling from 64M to 120MB! The culprit here are the images associated
with contacts and stored in
~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Images.
This behavior is on my Mac Pro which is synchronized with MobileMe to my
MacBook Pro and iPhone. However, the error isn’t the same on all
synchronized Macs. Looking in the images directory on my Mac Pro there
is 130.5MB of data with 8,782 files.
The same folder on my MacBook Pro is much smaller at 17.9MB with 1,222 items, however even that is too many.
To put this into context my address book has 979 cards in it and I tend to associate an image with most entries. Sadly when I look at the images directory manually even the one on my MacBook Pro has duplicated once.
It is very hard to figure out what is going on that directory since the file names are all just random GUIDs. The best way I’ve found is to sort by file size which usually puts the duplicate files right next to each other. It seems likely that these extra files are just ignored, but they are taking up a lot of space and I worry will lead to eventual corruption.
If you use MobileMe I’ve found a way to fix this. Do a Reset Sync data and choose to replace your content on your computer with the data from MobileMe. After doing that my images directory is healthy at 11.9MB with 757 items in it.
Strange and concerning behavior. Does anyone else see this behavior?
Canon, let me lock my mode!
I’ve been absolutely loving my new Canon 5D Mark II. It’s a serious camera and having a full-frame sensor means I’m shooting a lot with my Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lens. Together though, that combination weighs over 5 pounds and I rarely want to put that around my neck. I tend to sling the camera over my shoulder instead which actually works quiet well, with one really big problem.
The dial pictured above is the mode dial. It is one of the most important controls and pretty much changes everything about the cameras behavior. I tend to shoot mostly in Av mode when I’m out and about. When I sling the camera over my shoulder with the 70-200mm lens I carry it “upside down” so the lens hangs in a natural way. Unfortunately, that means this knob will rest against my side, and as I walk it can move into a different mode!
You then lift the camera and shoot only to realize you are in some crazy mode and the pictures are horrible!
If there was ever a control that could use a small, flip-lock this is it. It needs a safety.
Simply great song from the The Avett Brothers, I and Love and You.
Voted!
Ridiculous Web Surveys
It amazes me when I actually attempt to take a survey on the web how poorly designed they are. Most of the time I disregard them, but sometimes a product that I like runs a survey and I would like to offer my feedback. I got one of those recently and on the third page, which by the way is already two pages too long, they present this screen. The question being asked is, in essence, “what one feature do you most wish the product had?”
To answer this they provide a list that is so long that it expands over the entire browser. In fact, that screen shot only shows about half of the options available. On a 30" monitor I could not get all the options on the screen at one time. Ridiculous. Dumb. Failure.
At that point, I give up on the survey, and decide it is more fun to write this article. Sorry Strategic Vision, no feedback from me.
Adding Symbols to Mind Maps
I’ve been aware of mind mapping software for a while but had never found an application that worked like I wanted it to. I need the software to go away and just work exactly as I expect it to. I don’t want it in a browser, I find that too slow and out-of-the-way. A couple of months ago I found MindNode Pro and I’ve been really happy with it.
What do I use mind mapping for? Brainstorming. Taking notes in meetings. Research. Planning. You name it. MindNode Pro’s simplicity allows me to use it for a lot of different things. Also, MindNode Touch gives me an option to sketch things out on my phone and transfer them to my Mac later.
Simple is good, but there are times when I just want a little bit of metadata attached to a mind map. I may want to put some nodes in order of preference, or mark a node for follow-up, or show a node is done. It hit me the that this is all doable with some of the extended Unicode characters, but, it is really awkward to type those characters.
TextExpander to the rescue!
I’ve used TextExpander for a long time so I created a group of shortcuts
called MySymbols. They are hardly shortcuts since I’m turning something
longer that I can remember, like :star into the
Unicode character ?. Great! Now I can easily make a mind map that has
metadata in it, like this completely fictitious map.
I have ranking of vacation destinations. I’ve been able to add a variety of other information into the nodes that is pretty easy to understand. Very nice!
You could use any macro program to do this, you don’t have to
have TextExpander. In fact, if you figure out the funky keyboard
combinations you could probably do it without another piece of software
but I think it’s just easier to remember things like
:plane, :check and
:seven. If you do use TextExpander you can
download my definition
file
to get started.
Brilliant: “ketchup squirts of maple syrup down the middle” - Garrick Van Buren
Flipping through the new B&H Photo Video catalog. 🙂
Apple Store finally has Magic Mouse in stock. Time to run an errand.
I’m totally digging the Magic Mouse. A+
Apple TV 3.0 release. Looks really nice. Looking forward to upgrading the three Apple TV’s at home.
I finally found a mind mapping tool that works for me. MindNode Pro. Gets out of the way and just works. The iPhone version is also very good and has easy flow between using email.
Ubuntu Karmic Koala? Where do they get these names. :-)
Car got towed!!! $138 lighter but getting Mini Cooper back. Oh, and $42 parking ticket. Thanks to Anna Klombies for rescuing me! 😬
Ugh - everyone is drinking Surly Brewing Darkness except me!
My Twitter account just got lists enabled. This is seriously useful. Now Tweetie needs to get lists integrated too.
Saving at the Dentist
Found out totally by accident yesterday that I save 5% if I pay the dentist on the same day I have the work done. Not happy they don’t make that clear anywhere. Could have been saving 5% for a long time.