SmartyPants 1.2.2

I know I’m half a month late in noting this, but Gruber confesses to why such a quick update to the 1.2.1 release of SmartyPants was necessary:

See, back in 1998 I became the owner of a South American woolly monkey, whom I named Paco, with the intention of training him to assist in my freelance graphic design work. Everyone told me this was a terrible idea, that it would not work, that at the very least I would need a chimpanzee or orangutan, that a mere monkey would never be able to do graphic design.
I was unswayed. Do you know how much food chimpanzees and orangutans eat? And for chrissakes, an orangutan can beat you up–I’ve seen those Clint Eastwood movies, those [BLEEP]ers can pack a punch. I do not need to be coldcocked by my lower-primate assistant. What I wanted was a monkey, a loyal friend who, when otherwise unoccupied, could sit on my shoulder and pick crumbs out of my hair.

Gruber interviews Simmons

John Gruber recently interviewed Brent Simmons, creator of NetNewsWire. “Interview” might be stretching it a tad; it comes off more like the two of them are yakking over a cup of coffee. Great stuff here.

I worked on the Windows version also. I wrote a fair amount of Windows-specific code, even. And I learned that I don’t really like developing for Windows very much.
I suspect that many Mac users are like me, that they’re driven in part by aesthetics. And they want to use software written by people who are driven by aesthetics. Windows is not aesthetic.

Switch of a different sort

So today I completed a switch of my calendar and contact information from Palm Desktop to OS X’s Address Book and iCal. After getting everything kosher in iSync, my Palm m505 is now syncing happily with Address Book and iCal. The only thing I’m still using Palm Desktop for is the Memo Pad feature for my various lists and notes. If anyone knows of a sync-able alternative, I’m all ears.
Why the switch? Well, I just acquired a Newton 2100 (thanks again, Damien!), and there are methods for getting it to sync with that info. I also plan to get a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone in June, when our current contract is up, and would like to be able to sync all of my info with that as well.

Earthquakes rocking France

WBAP is reporting this morning:
Earthquakes are being reported in France in over 10 different major areas. These earthquakes are measuring in at over 10 on the Richter Scale.
The source of the earthquakes is being reported as the 56,681 dead Americans buried in France have rolled over in their graves.

  • 26,255 American soldiers from WWI are buried in 4 different cemeteries in France.
  • 30,426 American soldiers from WWII are buried in 10 different cemeteries in France.
  • Total: 56,681 American soldiers (most were under the age of 21) died while liberating France from their oppressors in two different World Wars.

(Thanks, Brian)
Is it too much to ask, then, that France return the favor in liberating Iraq?

LSU alumni in Afghanistan

Speaking of the Fighting Tigers, several of the 500 members of the Louisiana Army National Guard’s 769th Engineer Battalion are LSU students and alumni. The 769th was deployed to Afghanistan over the summer and fall of 2002.

LSU alumni in Afghanistan

Thanks to the members of the 769th for their service, and Geaux Tigers!

Brent’s Birthday

Jon notes that yesterday was Brent Simmons’ birthday, so I’d like to express my best wishes to him as well. NetNewsWire absolutely rocks, I’m becoming a big fan of TigerLaunch (doesn’t hurt its popularity with me that I went to LSU, either), and look forward to trying out Huevos.

Macworld Expo no more?

Well, there won’t be an expo this summer in New York called “Macworld Expo.” Instead, IDG and Apple today announced CREATE. Not that I’m likely to go, even if I’m still employed with VZ…
(via Ric)

Why you want to buy the extended warranty

Why you want the extended warranty

The Great California Gray-Out underway

Doubtful that it will actually happen, but the California Secretary of State has cleared the way for a recall of Governor Gray Davis. Best of luck to the recall advocates.
(via Molly)

Resuming the Safari

So since the weekend, Safari has been giving me major headaches. It seemed to particularly dislike my using Movable Type, and viewing slide shows on anyone’s .Mac homepage. It would crash violently, occasionally taking into oblivion the post I had just completed typing. Said crashes were all dutifully reported to Apple via the Bug button in Safari’s button bar.
It was getting incredibly annoying yesterday afternoon, however, so I took action. First, I manually killed the entire Safari cache folder; using the Empty Cache command just wasn’t cutting it. Next, it was to the preferences file, which was swiftly introduced to the Trash. And just for good measure, I restarted the TiBook.
I should say that I’m not too surprised that the corrupted preferences was obviously contributing to the problem. Ever since the last public beta version of Safari (v60), I’ve used the leaked 62, 64, and now 67 revs. I’m sure something floopy worked its way in at some point.
At any rate, after thorough usage last night and so far today, things seem to be back to normal. I’ve gone in and killed the metal appearance, so that Safari looks like a normal OS X app, with no apparent side effects yet.