Before we really get into this post on NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org, I need to give a little background, because:
- The following email exchange won't make any sense without it.
- There's been rumblings about what's been going on in bits of pieces around, but it's more confusing than clarifying for many.
This is something I've been sitting on, primarily because I wanted to see what was going to happen with it over the last week, and I've been trying to get something else out the door, but then I saw enough weird commentary floating around that it's worth getting out there.
I'm going to be working in reverse, which means we'll start out with the heavy stuff for those who are up to speed on what's going on, then break it down -- to the best of my knowledge -- for those who have just seen bits and pieces...
posted on October 31, 2005 at 11:37 AMWould you kindly tell your international t-shirt orderers to climb the fuck outta my ass right now about getting their goddamn t-shirts? I don't have a teleporter in my apartment, we just got the shirts in less than a week ago, I've been staying up until 1am packing fucking shirts for the past five days, and shipping internationally takes a while.It's like, great, I'm happy you PRE-ORDERED your fucking shirt 23 days ago,
but we just got them 100 hours ago so you're gonna have to sit down and
wait, mother fuckers.This post was brought to you by the letters "F" and "U," and the number
"FUCK."-Jacqui :)
P.S. You don't actually have to tell them this unless you really want to,
but if you do, I recommend re-wording it. :P
For future reference:
- Never, ever count on me to reword something sent to me, especially when there's a chance I'd be more amused passing it on as-is.
- I love you, and I would never talk to you that way. Jacqui has a tendency, under high stress, to revert to the days before she was verbally housebroken. That was an expensive class, but you have to get them early.
If I were to reword this, I might say there most of the shirts are on their way (I know many of you have already gotten them). I appreciate that you pre-ordered, because it helped pay for some stuff around the talk and the site, and it let you get it in the color of your choice. It was important to me that international readers weren't excluded from getting them, because I'm aware of how many of you there are, but international can sometimes just take a little longer to get there. They're coming, and hey, you might be surprised at how cool the bonus decal/weather-proof sticker is.
I know, I know, you're either emailing me about the video, or about the site being quiet as though your stomach for drunkenness is slowly eating itself. Don't, as...
MacZealots posted a podcast-dealy of a bunch of audio interviews they did at Evening at Adler. You should really check it out, as they're interesting, but pretty much ignore mine as wow do I feel like an ass about that one. I was out of it at that point, and while I remembered him grabbing me while I was packing my bag, I couldn't for the life of me remember what he asked or what I answered...
Just a quick note, we're going to be setting up a separate page for the Evening at Adler downloads. If you were there and snapped pictures, if you could, consider sending them to me along with a link to a site/person for credit. Even if they're already up somewhere, it'd just be great to have the hi-res around for posterity. Shots like Jacqui's bode well, especially since for the life of me I don't recall it actually happening, and I already stole the pic for the last post from girlinblack.
So, last night was really cool. It wasn't a lot of things, and it certainly wasn't perfect, but it was a lot of things, and from what I can tell everyone had a lot of fun and everyone was glad they came. At some point I should probably deconstruct Evening at Adler because we learned a lot, but I'm already working on the video which I think you'll really dig.
However, there is something I want to note: Those who were there brought an awesome vibe, from the audience to the participants to (especially) the volunteers. There were a hell of a lot of potential points of failure that were lurking about, some of which we hit (I didn't know the kitchen closed at 11pm -- that almost got ugly), but the vibe kept it all (reasonably) glued together while we made it up as we went along.
Words can't express.
The above might seem pedantic and obligatory, but anyone close to it was aware we were riding a very weird wave right towards the big rocks, and I'm sure those in the audience picked up on some of the stuff going on. You guys ruled, and really made it happen -- thanks for everything.
I need to keep this short, because I'm hosting the Mac social event of the season tomorrow and I still have a bunch to do, but I wanted to:
- Let you know that all the shirts are in -- the full order -- and there's a good chance that if yours isn't already on the way, you should get it early next week.
- Since we have stock, they're available for order again. Only in black now, and its limited to what is there. If you waited, you might kick yourself when you see how cool the chocolate and forest greens turned out.
- You're really going to dig the decals. I still don't know what you'll do with them, but sending them out the door at all is hard on me.
The color is slightly off in some of the close-ups, but I'm guessing you'd rather have the idea now than wait till I had time to correct them. Moo...
One of the problems I have to deal with when it comes to the site is that I can't really talk about a lot of what I pick up or happens to come my way. Talking about them would cause a lot of trouble without much being gained, and you need to be doing things for the right reasons -- not for recognition or page hits or selling swag, rather those things are a means to an end.
Every once in awhile, my head starts blocking, because my head works weird, and some of my days just are weird. As in, those days where its late in the evening after a full day and you're grinding on blog stuff, and a napkin slides your way that Steve Jobs is in Fiji, most probably on vacation. Then someone at a company leaks to someone else at another company, and another napkin slides your way saying AOL is going to lay off 700+ employees in week, or about 10% of their work force.
The AOL thing is an example of something that causes my head to start blocking. It's news, as no one else really knew about it yet, but at the same time, it's people.
Back when Evening at Adler was conceived, the goal was to get a few bright Mac developers into a room -- because they're who I think you should be listening to -- and have a conversation.
No presentations, no booths, just the same vibe you'd get if you were hanging out with them for several hours over drinks. And then make sure everyone can see it...
Earlier today I was dealing with the crucible that is my inbox, and Exposé and I came to ahead again, which we often do, especially when it involves terminal windows. The thing is, I like Exposé, but ergh...
While I think they could have done better than F9, F10 and F11, and I've actually seen users hit a corner and have no clue what just happened to their windows, I also think it's a worthy innovation -- especially for a single-document-interface paradigm like OS X uses. It often helps me get things done faster, but there is one horrifyingly critical usability flaw: It uses a scrubbing interface.
If you're of a mind, we could seriously use three to four volunteers -- aka, drunken deputies -- for during the talk itself:
- Two people to run the studio cameras. This would basically involve showing up fairly early, and I'm told about 10 minutes of training to show you the fluid head tripods' operation and the zoom/focus, etc.
- One to two people willing to pass wireless handheld mics to folks in the audience with questions.
I'll be there early helping to setup (Yes, this is bootstrapped, so I'll be there helping run sound cables and helping breakdown afterwards) and if you're interested in helping with one of the above, shoot me an email.
Additionally, we're looking for a few trustworthy individuals to walk around the after-party for 20 minutes or so each, documenting whatever might be being shown on laptops or other cool things. If you think it'd be fun to help out a bit, just let me know.
If you're coming to the LiveTable, there are a few things you need to know. Some are super-important, and others are just things to keep in mind if you're coming from out of town...
Years ago I watched an old rerun of a television show, where the teenage son runs into the Dad's home office saying, "OMG Dad! If I turn off the TV, and turn it back on, the show has kept going!", to which the father responded "Gilligan's Island is being broadcast to millions, whether you're watching or not. Are you just not realizing the world doesn't revolve around you..?" Ayep, this is going to be rudimentary, but I need something to link to help keep the inbox below 100...
I mentioned we'd locked in the after-talk place, but didn't say where. The Evening at Adler after-talk will take place at Jak's Tap around 9:45pm, and will basically just be a lot of fun.
We'll kick up our feet, drink, greet, and I'm told you might be able to get some sneak peeks at some software on its way.
The address:
Now, some specifics, as Jak's was ideal for many reasons, and we had some help getting this to happen...
I took an email break a few hours ago, and in order to have a usable Dock.app and to free up some screen real estate, did an Apple+H to hide my email client. If you check out the image from the last post and compare it to the one above, you'll see what happened. Nothing would get rid of it short of un-hiding and re-hiding the original app...
Sometimes, there are enough things going on that are outside your control that you end up latching onto the weirdest things in order to let your brain say "Ok, you didn't get xyz done, but you did get p done, so you can sleep." Tonight I went medieval on my inbox. To that end, I'm pleased to announce my inbox is officially under 100 unreads, and I plan to keep it that way, with my next goal set for 50.
We're eight days away from Evening at Adler, and there are a few things I need to lay out, and if you're coming, a few things you need to know...
Just wanted to give a warning so as not to startle loyal readers, but there are going to be a flurry of posts later today about Evening @ Adler, the shirts, all that stuff that I need to catch you up on. Heavy emphasis on the Evening @ Adler stuff, which I've been trying to keep quiet about to lessen the attendance issues. I need you to bear with me during this final leg, as my brain is full. I'm officially overwhelmed.
I've long had warm feelings for IHOP, aka, the International House of Pancakes chain, as they...
I was catching up with David several weeks ago, and he showed me some sketches of what he was working on, and one of them was Harold, who I instantly gravitated towards. David claims I'm technically his grandfather, which makes no real sense but I'll take it.
I pimp David's stuff pretty constantly off the site, but not as much as I should on the site. If you're new, you may not be aware he's responsible for The Cow. Whether you're into icons or Desktops or things to hang on the wall, you should check out his other stuff -- Phosporic Acid cracks me up every time I see it, and only partially because I know I got him hooked on couches. One guy shouldn't have this much weird raw talent.
As a warning, you should beware of Alice. Brilliant picture, but after using it as my Desktop for a day I noticed it was creeping me the hell out. All things considered, that's probably a compliment, but geesh. While you're there, bug him about getting Love Thy Neighbor out as a desktop picture...
This is unbelievable...although I'm sure you know all about it. But now in OSX, when you save a file, you only have the Apple-approved 9 locations. So if you want to save to a folder that's sitting on your desktop...or any other specific location--well, you're SOL!! What an incredible leap backwards in usability!Just to be sure, I called Apple's tech support...the guy I talked to understood, and logged me for a callback. But really now, WTF?!!
<- snipped ->
Jedd
My inbox has been amusing lately. Right now it's full of bugs, but on the rare occasion it's something like the above, which isn't a bug, but still ends up confusing users for some reason. In Jed's case, he's saving a file, and sees something like this...
Canaries have been on my mind over the last day or so. Well, that and why Steve Job's Gulf Stream spent an afternoon in Lake Tahoe on Sept. 19th, but it's Apple Bug Friday, and we're back to the Finder...
So, I missed the last Apple Bug Friday, or maybe I missed the last two, as it's all kind of blurring together at the moment, but I'm reasonably sure I missed the last one. This was kind of disappointing, as earlier in the week I'd done some thinking about the lamest bugs in Mac OS 10.4 Tiger.
For something to be considered The Lamest Tiger Bug™, it isn't enough for it to just be an obvious bug. It has to be a bug that so downright sickly sad that, like a dead canary in a coal mine, its state of being tells us something, somewhere, has gone horribly awry. This won't be exhaustive, but rather just what comes to mind...
So, today was interesting, although I'll have to backtrack a bit to explain why. As you may have heard, NewsGator will be buying the assets of Ranchero, not the least of which is Brent Simmons, but also happens to include NetNewsWire and MarsEdit.
You weren't supposed to hear about it until 9PM EST, with the official announcement occurring at the Web 2.0 conference tomorrow, but Om Malik once again proved he's a scooping bastard (This is a compliment). Apparently someone leaked, Malik sucked, they had to put out the PR release early, and I lost any immediacy I felt about the situation. Kudos to Malik -- there's a certain charm to someone poking a hole in the best laid plans of PR schedules, even if it causes them headaches.
It's hard not to be amused, even when you're on the other end for once, although I'm sure there was some swearing going on at the NewsGator end. Since the immediacy was gone, and you can get the details and specifics elsewhere, I'll flesh out what I've seen going on behind the scenes in a more personal way...
There are days when it doesn't pay to check my inbox before I fall asleep, as while I was nestling into the pillow I kept randomly laughing at the ramifications of the below. My brain wasn't going to drop it until I'd dragged myself to the computer and forwarded it onto a few like souls who'd also appreciate it, and leave myself a note to write a post...
Anyway, I recently filed a bug [radar - #4273090] with Apple about how Preview breaks its bookmarks to files when their file path changes because it doesn't refer to the file via its file system node, and they replied. Quelle surprise! Unfortunately, the reply was less than encouraging.To quote:
"NAME REMOVED: Engineering has determined this issue behaves as intended based on the following information:
"If you move the file, how would Preview know where you’d moved it? This kind of thing only works with applications because of the launch services mechanism and the Finder. Since Preview isn’t running all the time, it can’t receive notifications of when every file on your disk is moved, and you probably wouldn’t want Preview being launched every time you move or rename a file."
Oh my fucking god.
Will R.
That rhythmic thumping you're hearing is the sound of a thousand developers across the world beating their heads on their keyboards. Since everyone hates being excluded from a joke, and you may not be a developer, we'll quickly go through why the title of this post is OMFG...
