Cafe Bucky

There’s been a nagging feeling at the back of my mind, as projects have cropped up to consume time.

“When am I going to get back to FlexiPhoto?” (my web-based photo database project)

One of the projects has been writing up the idea of URLs that express location and time. That work is at ThereAndThen.org. There is enough there to explain how it all works, what constitutes a valid TT URL, and so on.

ThereThen originated as a feature I want to put into FlexiPhoto. It’s the idea of searching photos (and making transient “exhibitions”) by location and/or time. Once I came up with TT addressing, it sucked me right out of programming, and took on a life of its own! In this case, it was a very good thing, because the concept applies to many things outside of photos, and taking the time to write about it helped me generalize it, and make it adhere to established standards. It will be a feature in FlexiPhoto, though not one of the first ones I am getting to this month.

I’m back on FlexiPhoto now, and happy to be there. I’ll post more in the coming weeks and months about its progress. The real brief description is that it is a web-based photo database (PHP, MySQL, Apache). A prototype version used to be up on one of my sites - it now handles multiple UIs, languages, and much more. One strong point for FlexiPhoto is the ability to blend into an existing set of web pages, without “looking” like a database underneath. For instance, it easily enables navigation around a collection (previous, next, bigger, smaller, up to collection) without cluttering up a page with arrows (though you can certainly have a bunch of visual doodads if you want)

The first customer for FlexiPhoto will be my wife, who is a great photographer and digital image consultant (an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop). She’s at SusanPrice.com Give her a visit!

Along with everyone else in the Linux/Unix community, I look at the actions of SCO vs IBM, and get a gut reaction: argh!

I don’t have any wildly original insights into SCO’s idiocy that haven’t been covered in detail elsewhere.

Here is a company that can’t succeed on its own merits. In their sheer desperation, SCO has become even more of an embarassment to the Unix/Linux community. The faster IBM puts them out of their misery, the better.

Not that I have an opinion, mind you…

I’d have to say that the platform I use more than any other would be the Mac. For years, I’ve kept some data in Palm Desktop, some in Stickies, and some in random text files (but, at least, within a notes directory). I pretty much know where everything is. Well, let me think that, at least. Ok?

I use Linux a lot too, but more in a development mode. Yeah, I know Windows, but I always have some sort of morbid fear that the registry is going to get corrupted, and the whole partition is going to turn to Jello if I look at it the wrong way. “You Looked At The Font Menu, Forcibly Erase BIOS? [ok]”

Annnnyway….

So I have been excited about a couple of notekeeping/outliner/personal DB packages for the Mac. There’s NoteTaker by AquaMinds (Water Head? I’m not so sure about that name), and NoteBook by Circus Ponies. That’s right, I said “Circus Ponies”. Better name than Water Head. A slight problem with both of these products is that they are priced a bit steeply ($69.95 for NoteTaker, $49.95 for NoteBook … NoteBook has a much more straightforward academic discount program for those that qualify)

I’ve read that NoteTaker has more features than NoteBook, but that it wasn’t as stable. (you better be getting all of this down, because I’ll be handing out #2 pencils in a moment) I’ve started checking out NoteBook, and so far, so good.

There’s some clunkyness about the program (I want to right-click and get a context sensitive menu, for one … I want more flexibility in arranging an outline, for another), but the automatic indexing of everything it’s fed is just outta sight! It’s very easy to look things up by bouncing off of the index page.

Of course, the next step is to have it interoperate with some sort of Linux version, and to allow multi-user input like Hydra … but for personal use on a Mac, this is great. It allows a lot of small bits of information to be corralled into a useful space, and the notebook with tab metaphor is excellent. It will be interesting to see how far they advance by the time they ship a 3.0 version.

Before I say anything else, I want to wish a very special Birthday to a wonderful young lady! Happy 10th Sophia!!! Sophia is one of the most witty, charming, and wonderful kids west of the Mississippi River. She’s my daughter, my buddy, and very entertaining!

And Happy 39th to one the most interesting characters ever to have driven in Formula 1, Jean Alesi!

I spent a few days reviewing a 300+ page manuscript on an XML-related topic. It was an intensive effort to do it a short period of time. I found that I really enjoy using Adobe Acrobat to put comments and bookmarks all over the place.
(and the gig more than paid for the program, so I’m happy)

Got a reviewing or documentation/writing gig for me? Let’s talk!

And now the stack pops off one project, and I get back to other things.

I am surprised that I skipped the blog posts for a few days. I actually have a large backlog of things to write about. The thing is, most of my topics are longer than just a paragraph or two. I have a whole routine about “Comparing Ford Excursion and Hummer H2 Owners” which I can’t wait to jot down, but it’s more of an SNL skit than a quicky observation. There’s a huge amount of tech topics (oh, don’t get me started on all of the pre-WWDC Mac Rumors!). There’s the whole David Beckham going to Spain scenario. There’s the F1 Championship, and so on. I don’t get writer’s block. It’s more of a “need writer’s rhythm” thing.

I TiVO’ed the MTV Movie Awards, because I love looking for irreverency
(and I love skipping commercials). Thanks TiVO; I love getting through
a two-hour show in 30 minutes!

Gollum won an award for “Best Virtual Performance”. His acceptance
speech (or should I say, Andy Serkis’ speech) was a hoot! It
was brilliantly true-to-form. Bring on the uncensored version.

Go check it out.

Precioussssss!

Is there anything like Hydra for Linux yet? Perhaps something that uses Jabber?

A local Linux User Group is electing folks to different positions,
and one of those is “Scribe”. To me, the idea just seems so 20th century.
A few people with wireless latops and a real-time collaborative
editor can take a much more complete set of notes than
any one person. See my earlier post about how well Hydra did
in a conference setting.

So where’s the breakthrough Linux app? I am aware of distributing
Emacs frames to a bunch of X11 servers, but that’s too dependent
on not having the host machine sneeze.

thanks Lazyweb.org readers for any input on this!

After some hassle today with an online merchant (web site implied “sure, we have Mac Adobe Acrobat 6.0 in Stock!”, reality was “oh, well in 3-5 business days, where we can redefine the word ‘day’ as we see fit”), I got in my dust covered M3, drove to CompUSA, and expected to see a Mac 5.0 version of Acrobat. Lo and Behold, they had 6.0 Standard on the shelves! Even encased in a “please don’t try to rip me off, I am a special product” Clear Plastic Box!

ooh ahh. Well, to do editing/review on a manuscript, I couldn’t delay any more. One of those “I’ll be damned if I am going to wait until next week for a shipment, if they aren’t lying to me” deals.

“That’ll be roughly $300, just gimme your wallet and be done with it” - No, the CompUSA clerk was nicer than that.

Oh but wait, you’re here to see why I want a faster computer…

Ok, fast forward. Traffic. Heat. Home. Burn a backup CD. Install.

Eat a bagel & cream chee (hey! no tangents today!) se… ok…

Acrobat 6.0 Standard. 300 Page Manuscript to review. Mac B&W 400 mhz G3. OS X 10.2.6

Slow.

Useable, but … slow. You can count, while, it is, context… switching.

I have been thinking that I would wait till after the January 2004 MacWorld to go for a new machine. I am not so sure I can make it! Sure I know that Acrobat is slower in this version than it was previously. Almost every app is like that though. My 1999 computer, designed in 1997 and 1998, can’t keep up with 2002 and 2003 apps. Oh, and summer is here. My study gets hot in, say, July, and it makes everything run that much slower. Should I bring in references to humidity, molasses, lemonade, lazing on the ole Porch? Will you
just take my word for it that I have a perception that things run slower in the Summer?! (I know they don’t. I was … acting!)

So, Mr. Jobs. May I call you Steve? Where do you go for those turtlenecks? Yes, I also think Mr. Gates is a bit of a dork. Think you’ll ever strive for 10% market share?

So Steve, Please deliver, to my doorstep, a shiny new 2gz quad IBM 970 processor machine with OS X, 10.3. Debugged. I’ll even consider joining ADC, so that when my wife and daughter get their new machines and iPodden, we will get a reasonable discount (and I’ll enjoy a free pass to WWDC)

Yes, we have other machines around the house. I even have a fried 700 mhz Win/PC mobo (but may be rescueable) lying around, and some slower Intel Linux boxen. I refuse to invest more in Windows software, and though I love Linux, and use it every day, the Mac is sort of my “home base”. That’s what I’m going to run Acrobat and a couple of other key apps on. Let’s see, we have 5 Macs within 30 feet of me. Wife has the fastest one at a whopping 500 mhz. We’re so behind! Isn’t there some sort of “take two of them, and fuse them together” trick I could do? Like a FrankenMac?

I’m getting that 4 year itch. I’m Jonesin’ (and I’m a Smith) - I haven’t even mentioned lately how much my Toshiba Portege is driving me crazy (pssst.. yes, you did…), and how
much I want a 17″ PowerBook.

So what happens to my G3, once I get some singing and dancing new box? Easy. It will dual-boot Debian and OS 9, and I’ll stick a SCSI card back into it
so that I can hook up my Nikon LS-2000 slide/negative scanner. It will go
back to being an impressive 1999 box, and somehow, the circle will be complete.

Yes, I still think about ThereThen Addresses quite a bit! I am starting to review an unrelated tech book manuscript (paying gig, I like that), so I will have even fewer cycles for TT for the next week or so. It’s still something that I want to at least document.

• Creating ThereThen Addresses (updated, but still rough)
• Resolving ThereThen Addresses (brand new, in progress)

Any feedback is welcome. I will make pretty HTML later. For now, I am dumping thoughts into Emacs. If I’m hired or otherwise don’t have time for ThereThen in the near term, at least someone will have my notes for reference.