DrunkenBlog

Readjusting the radar

So, the last month was a bit of a bear. Tons of things had to fall off the radar to make room for others while I did the long grind of the last big post. This was annoying, because:

• Lots of cool things were going on that I just couldn't devote the head space to to really talk about, at least not in a meaningful way. You can have an idea of where the hours went in that last big post, but you can't really see it all. Dead-ends, or connections too tenuous to run with without more time, or even having to sit and pick and choose what to keep in reserve. The phrase 'herding cats' came to mind quite often.

• All the hours went somewhere, but it meant I flaked out on a lot of the things I was working on, or planning to work on. My big thing for this week is to try to catch up a bit and get us back to the regularly scheduled programming, to try and make up for flaking out on a few things, and to sweep up some flakes that did fall by the wayside.

There's one concern percolating in my inbox I'd like to take care of, and that's the idea that I'm 'moving away' from the Mac. The impetus of this seems to be the lack of a lot of Mac-specific content over the last while (ignoring the lack of content at all for awhile), and I guess if you're a new-ish reader you could get the impression that the Mac has dropped off my radar.

While there is probably a larger question of where the site is headed in general (or I am), I can say that the Mac is very much on my radar and it's what I'm typing this on, and that there are rhythms and flows to DrunkenBlog even while it's evolving:

• I like Macs, and use one, so it's going to get talked about and be a focus.

• I like Linux and the BSDs, and use them, so that's probably going to have its focus.

• I like OSS software, and use it, so that's probably going to always have its place.

• I like lots of commercial software, and use it, so that's probably going to have its place.

• I don't really have a problem with Windows, but I rarely really use it, so barring some major gift on my door step it'll keep its minor place.

• It's probably obvious the site is evolving a bit, and there's always been a bit of a random element to DrunkenBlog. So there are probably going to be things I try to put together or take on that don't really fit neatly into any of the above.

The main problem is I often take on things that'll be a challenge, or have a cool factor (which is relative to my version of cool), and sometimes those things can just be time intensive. I'm starting to look into ways where I could possibly spend more time generating content for DrunkenBlog to alleviate that, so we'll see.

So, lets get to a few of things that have been hitting my Inbox that people are curious about...

"Anyways, I know you've been dealing with your legal troubles, but are you really going to let Ars Technica show you up with their Tiger review? :)"

First of all, the Ars Technica review of 10.4 is probably the best one out there by a long shot. In a review of that size, I doubt anyone wouldn't find things they wouldn't align with Mr. Siracusa on (I did), but its hard to feel annoyed at being lapped when you're hanging out and the other guy is running his ass off.

Actually I was going to post the Ars 10.4 review on the site, but then wanted to read it first, and ended up flaking on Mr. Siracusa too. So, where's my 10.4 review? Well, there are some problems there:

• I don't have a developer account with Apple that would have allowed me to play with 10.4 before it was released (when I did have some time), so the zero-day thing was out. I'd have been under NDA, which would have precluded me from writing about 10.4 previously, and maybe have even knocked out stuff like Deconstructing H.264/AVC.

• Don't read too much into this, but I'm just not running 10.4 full time yet. I've played with it other machines, but just haven't thrown it onto my own yet. Again, don't read too much into this -- $130 is just a lot of white russians and I haven't felt that burning, immediate need for most of the features in it that required me to update now, except to dive into it thoroughly, and while I was working on the last big post there was no time for that.

• Right now I just have 'impressions' of 10.4 from playing with it, some very favorable, some highly unfavorable, and because I'm not developing for OS X and don't use Apple's Mail there was more than a little boredom.

  To give you an idea, it would appear most of my fears in Deconstructing H.264 (I posted some about H.264 hardware requirements in the comments of that one), iChat AV Bittage and The High-PPI problem (Redux) have been confirmed, but I don't really know by how much yet or why.

  However, there are plenty of 'initial impression' things around, but many programmers put months and months of their lives putting 10.4 together and it just doesn't really seem fair to start doing a real review just because I'm expected to.

I'd put it on my 'spare' Mac, but unfortunately that has a CD drive and there is no way in hell I'm going through the hassle of buying it, then sending it off to Apple for more cash, just so they can send me CDs.

Obviously I'll move to it eventually -- sooner rather than later -- but the fact that I didn't have a burning need to interrupt my workflow for the features in it probably says something too. Webkit and Safari going bonkers for me with 10.3.9 was all the reminder I needed that it's usually not a good move to change horses midstream.

 Posted by drunkenbatman
    May 17, 2005, at 11:05 PM