I hate to go to sleep, and I hate even more to wake up. I'm totally that guy setting multiple alarms, and then getting up 4 times hitting snooze on all of them. They're not exactly sexy, but half of life is just showing up...
posted on November 30, 2005 at 06:46 PMEvery once in awhile I stumble across a blog post I want for all the world to take as my very own and post it on the site. Photographer Jim Lowney's Party Like It's 1999 is one of those entries, and it's been kicking around my head (and lurking in my Dock) since I read it a few weeks ago.
It's his account of being invited to one of the Web 2.0-ish launchy thingies, and damn is it well done. I highly encourage passing it around, both because I'm glad it came my way and I have a feeling it'll be one of those entries akin to the ones people blew of a bubble ago but in hindsight seemed prescient.
I got turned onto the Snakes and Rubies event the other day, which is at DePaul University in Chicago on December 3rd, 2005.
Looks like a very cool little deal, where they're having the creator of the Ruby on Rails rumble with the creator of the Django framework (Python) in a good-natured debate on the merits of each. It should be very cool, and propeller-head heavy, so be sure to RSVP if you can go.
It really looks nicely organized -- I especially dug how they setup the user-submitted questions for each on the site, which is slick and simple.
The other day, the CEO of BareBones offered an amusing "clarification" of the alert I mentioned in Unintended Interactions. The simple gist is that my unstated bias is leading me to misinterpret the dialogue I referenced in , which is a simple troubleshooting step because they've seen a lot of problems with haxies and their products. We'll take this piece by piece...
I had the inbox down to 98 unreads, but the equilibrium point for it seems to be responding to 10 a day, which means it's backed up while I'm trying to figure out what Steve Jobs is doing in Playa de Oro, and whether it means Mac OS 10.6 will be code named jaguarundi or margay, along with how quickly the obvious more ghey moniker would follow the second.
While it isn't ideal, because there were amusing nuggets in some of those emails, we're going to do the paraphrased-questions thing again, because the inbox must get below 200 before I can try my hand at making sweet potato biscuits tomorrow. This time it's aggregating questions about two previous posts, the video iPod, and DRM...
Hi drunken one,is the DRM software used by Sony/BMG (and provided by SunnComm) on the Mac platform a rootkit, like the Windows counterpart (XPC from First 4 Internet Ltd)?
engrish
No, as:
- You click through a EULA before you install it, in which you sign your computer away, like you do with most EULAs now. I found this out the hard way, and now someone in Pakistan gets my first born.
- You're told stuff is going to be installed, even if you're not told precisely what, and you type your password and stuffins, giving you two shiny kernel extensions.
However...
Over the last few months, I've heard a ton of weird rumbles all pointing to the PowerPC scene being a really interesting place about a year from now -- and things like Genesi releasing the specs and plans to their ODW hardware are a sign of that. Chances are you've never heard of Genesi, but I've followed them for awhile, primarily because there aren't a lot of people making PowerPC hardware you could throw on your desk if you had a mind to...
The other day Jason posted a sample of some of the stuff he's been working on behind the scenes to extend ShapeShifter's reach, or rather what a themer can do via ShapeShifter. There are a few things in the coming tech I really want to see in some themes, because it is becoming harder and harder to use an OS without borders on its windows...
Just change the extension on the file you're offering to .m4b to enable itunes to remember your place, as well as put it in the Audiobooks menu.I was 45 minutes in when I disconnected my ipod to go to lunch, and I ended up with a sore thumb seeking back to my place :)
Awesome awesome discussion. Real meat for any cocoa developer.
-justinb
Sincerely glad you enjoyed it, but the extension isn't going to change, for several reasons...
The Evening at Adler video is available on its own suitably campy separate section as of right now, which is where you should be sending people. This was that little deal where some of the brightest indies in the Mac scene descended upon Chicago for a casual conversation on October 21st, 2005.
The video and the audio rip are available via a torrent and many generous web mirrors, although bittorrent is preferred, as is seeding -- it's not just for downloading Doctor Who anymore. As previously mentioned, it's being released under a Creative Commons license, because I want as many people as possible to be able to get to know these guys, and to be exposed to some of the ideas in it.
Take it, show it, snip it, post it, remix it, or just string together all the drunkenbatman space-cadet moments as a reminder of why sleep is important and its not socially acceptable to drink before noon. Above all, have a good time with it.
With that, I'm going to Disneyland.
After waiting for the video calmly and patiently (I have not written any e-mails of the EAA download FAQ type), I've reached the bursting point. I'm pretty sure my constant reloading of drunkenblog.com just to see if the video is up is using enough bandwidth to noticeably slow down your distribution to the mirrors. Perhaps I would still be calm and patient if I hadn't read the two "almost there" posts this weekend. Doh.Oh yeah, if you don't have DTS audio then I'm not listening because Dolby Digital is so bad it hurts my ears.
Insanely yours,
Steve Hoelzer
*Grins*
It'll be up at 11pm EST this evening -- it was meant to be this morning, but something came up. There'll be over 25 HTTP mirrors, plus a well-seeded torrent thanks to a pal at distributed.net (Moo).
So, as we speak the EAA video and audio file are going out to a whole bunch of mirrors (distribute it, and they will come) and after a nap, my job for the evening is to hook it all up where it's supposed to go. I did want to nail a few things out of the inbox regarding the video so it was below 160 unreads, and because some of them were kinda wigging me out...
Earlier this morning I got time to setup my Mac to encode the video for Evening at Adler, which is going to take awhile, but assuming there are no issues with it we'll be good to go. I've seen it about 3 times all told while editing the cameras, and these guys still crack me up, so you'll hopefully enjoy it. I'm going to be looking at hooking it up to a tracker (thepiratebay would have a certain irony), but bittorrent is still beyond a lot of folks.
To that end, some mirrors for the two files would be really helpful:
- The video - ~700 M
This may not end up being exactly 700 M, and more like 650 or 750, so be aware. I'm going from memory when I crunched it last night, and have slept since then, but I know it'll be around there.
- The audio - ~130 M
This is just the audio track from the movie exported to AIFF and encoded as an AAC m4a file for my small yet loyal blind base.
If you've got the space and bandwidth and are able to help alleviate some of the initial brunt, that'd make my day -- just send me an email with "mirror" in the title and which of the above you'll be able to mirror.
Over at Inessential, Brent of Ranchero noted last night that they're going to be contracting out to Gus for the development of MarsEdit for the next version:
We thought about different people, but one name kept coming up as totally ideal: Gus Mueller of Flying Meat.(Now, before anyone worries that Gus has given up his indie status, he hasn’t: he’s working on MarsEdit as a contractor. He’s still Gus of Flying Meat.)
(And, by the way, Gus does live near me. We just had a meeting at my office, in fact, and now he has the source code and is getting started.)
Brent mentioned at Evening at Adler that development would continue, but wouldn't say who or what company might be taking over development, but just the fact that it wasn't dead alleviated some minds (cough -- I use it) but there's always the worry you're going to end up with something weird.
If you're a MarsEdit user and spend a few minutes with Gus's VoodooPad or his other works, you'll probably notice it'd be difficult to think of another independent dev better suited to taking over dev of MarsEdit from a look and feel POV -- there's an obvious alignment there between Brent and Gus's sensibilities. If I'd have had a say, he's who I'd have wanted but probably wouldn't have followed up with because I'd have assumed he wasn't a realistic option.
Of course sensibilities and actually getting up to speed to make headway on the next release are two different things, but Gus also mentioned last night that he's used to working with other people's code (should have followed up, but I needed to get back on the video) and was finding and fixing some reported issues within a few hours of getting the code. Cool, and good thing I didn't have a say.
Apparently Maui X-Stream is hyping their new product, The Zentu Platform, which is billed as the third generation of their VX30 Codec and a video encoding tool for streaming media. Riiiiight.
They've got a press release and everything.
*bangs head against desk* You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried, and I have a feeling when someone takes the time to deconstruct Ventu they'll find interesting things. For newer readers who don't understand why I'm mixing brandy with the coffee before noon after seeing this, the company behind Ventu has an.. interesting... history when it comes to their video encoders and other products.
The following links should be enough to get you up to speed, especially if you go in reverse chronology.
- MXS and CherryOS archives, where you'll want to start with The Pits in CherryOS.
And then the ones on VX30, which are more directly applicable to Zentu:
- MXS and VX30 archives, where you'll want to start with Deconstructing Maui X-Stream.
The stuff Jim Kartes and Arben Kryeziu pull makes my soul hurt, and it's made worse by the fact that I'm not supposed to talk much about them while some legal things still unravel. Thank god for Yano, who is the only IP lawyer I'm aware of running around in a Cow shirt on weekends.
Ten minutes after backing up and installing 10.4.3, I accidently hit the corner for Exposé, and when I dropped out of it there was a nice obvious graphical error. I was able to repeat the error several times. It stopped once I brought a different app to the foreground. Fun...
