Tool has posted the lyrics to a few of the songs on their new CD, which will be released on May 15th on their Lateralus Preview page. Tool has to be one of my favorite musical artists of all time. When they were touring for their first CD, Opiate, I saw them open up for Henry Rollins two nights in a row at CBGB’s in NYC. I had never heard of them before those shows, but have been hooked ever since.
Using Terminal from MacFixit has some great information for those using Mac OS X who have never been to the command line before.
I’m leaving for a few days at Club Med in the morning. I am so very happy about this that I can’t even begin to explain it.
Startup aims to encrypt all Web traffic. Interesting concept. It’s amazing how insecure all of this stuff really is when you start to look at it from a security perspective. I’d pay an extra $10-15 a month premium to be with an ISP that really had their stuff together on the security front.
Listing of What’s in the Mac OS X 10.0.1 Update. One thing about this system update, it was the first time I can ever remember a system update being released and applied to so many systems without so much as an inkling from the OS vendor as to what got changed. No documentation whatsoever about the update beyond one paragraph on the Apple Mac OS X page. Since you apply it through their software update system panel, you don’t download the update as a separate file. I find it sort of disturbing to not know what got changed, what got improved, and what was new. Here we are four days later, and there still isn’t anything to read except articles on third party sites like the one linked above. Not good.
While the link below will talk you through the building of the most recent Apache and PHP versions on Mac OS X, this page actually has a PHP package that works with the version of Apache that ships with Mac OS X. It also contains a MySQL package and the accompanying script to get MySQL to initialize upon system boot. If you are wanting a Apache/PHP/MySQL combo up and running quickly and easily, this one is the way to go.
Mac OS X Apps is a good place to look for apps for Mac OS X, and also has a decent, but not completely exhaustive list of hardware compatibility.
Brent is doing a great job of keeping up with Mac OS X stuff on the web at machagogo.com.
Matt talks today about the unreasonable Web. I’d take what he says there a step further and express the concern that the unreasonable web people may have ruined several viable business opportunities for everyone who follows them. It’s going to be hard to get funding for ideas like another Kozmo with all of these failures and the bad press that has followed them. Having said that, my experience has been that VC firms as a group aren’t particularly brilliant at distinguishing between a real business opportunity that meets a market need and is staffed with talented people and folks who haven’t got a clue with some lame business plan with no focus.
I also read about half of Cryptography Decrypted. This book is a great, mostly non-technical, introduction to basic encryption, the history of encryption, and the current state of encryption. I’ve been interested in digging deeper into this subject since I read the Cryptonomicon.
I did a bit of reading yesterday, a nice combination of computers, fiction, and fun. I read Lone Wolf and Cub Vol. 1, which is the first of twelve graphic novels about a ronin. If you like Japanese history, particularly samurai stories, this graphic novel is great. Really authentic story lines, and well done illustration.
This box is a Blue and White G3 running Mac OS X, Apache, and MySQL at my house. I’m interested in hearing how speedy it is for people. It’s a beautiful day here, and I’m going outside to play right now.
One thing I find myself wishing, now that I have this home box to play with and work from, is that either Frontier or Radio Userland were available for Mac OS X so I could have them up and running on that box with the fixed IP.
I finally got the static ip for my apartment today, so I’ve spent a lot of time at the old keyboard setting up one of my machines as a Mac OS X based Web server. I’ve got a ways to go before that whole thing is done. I’ll let you know how it turns out. I was going to post about how much I liked the version of Opera that was released for the Mac, but then I discovered that Blogger doesn’t really work when using it.
I’m sitting in perhaps the most boring, pointless meeting of my professional life. It’s really great. It’s a good thing there is a hub in this room, so I’m catching up on my surfing. Happy that Blogger has returned this afternoon, and I ordered a static IP for my apartment.
I’m not feeling that great today. Maybe it’s the ridiculous pollen ccount here in Atlanta. Everything in sight is covered with a thin film of green pine pollen. Of course this isn’t the pollen that is bothering me, which you can’t see at all. Needless to say, I believe that an early exit from my place of employment might be necessary.
What is Personal Software Process (PSP)? Seems like a solution to some problems that Web development shops run into on a regular basis. One problem with self trained coders, in my experience, is that they often times do not understand good methodology.,
I switched the layout to one that resizes itself this morning. If it breaks for you, please email me and let me know.(Thanks Nathan)
Chapter Three of Zeldman’s book has been posted by Webreference: Taking Your Talent to the Web
The gradientors link on threecolor is sure to provide those of you with the bandwidth to deal with a good deal of amusement. Cool stuff.