Notes

Rui did the .Mac part of Google + Apple. I'll do the XMPP part: Apple is using XMPP in it's iChat client, but still defaults to .Mac accounts based on the AIM network.

If out of this get-together we get iChat using by default Jabber, powered by GTalk servers, and maybe even start using Jingle JEPs for all the cool iChat peer-to-peer multimedia capabilities, then the interoperability with iChat is even more closer.

Also remember that Google and eBay recently signed a deal over Skype, and they mentioned exchanging presence with them via open standards. Care to place your bets on which one?

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

If you asked me what web-based application is the best example of what you can do with HTML and AJAX, I would respond: Dabble.

Check the videos and screencasts, it's truly amazing.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 09:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Not only to answer to Rui, but also so that I don't forget, these are the series I'm keeping track of, mostly via DVD's from Amazon.co.uk:

• House MD;
• Battlestar Gallactica;
• 24;
• The West Wing (waiting for last season, number 7): I'll miss this one;
• CSI (Las Vegas, Miami, and NY);
• Without a Trace;
• Desperate House Wife's;
• Gilmore Girls (Yes, that one);
• (sometimes) Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Ordered in terms of my personal preferences at the moment. I might be missing

Also so that I can keep track, and remember to talk about them later, this are the latest technical books that I bought and I'm in the middle of (ordered in reverse chronological order of purchase):

• DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model;
• CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions;
• Beginning Javascript with DOM Scripting and Ajax: From Novice to Professional;
• MAC OS X Internals;
• Building Scalable Web Sites;
• Scalable Internet Architecture;
• ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide;
• Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties;
• Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming;
• What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (this is not a technical book, but about technical people);
• Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook;
• UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language;
• Perl Best Practices;
• Higher Order Perl;
• Switching to VoIP;
• Advanced Perl Programming;
• Jabber Developers Handbook;
• Agile Web Development with Rails.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Failed hard-disks are Nature way of telling us to live for the future, and forget past stuff.

Recently I've lost a bunch of pictures of my newest child, stored in a external Maxtor disk drive, so I can feel Rui's pain. Fortunately I have a flesh and blood backup, worth for some decades.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Based on what I've been reading about MailTags 2.0, and Apple Mail 3.0 (Leopard version), I would bet that MailTags 2 plus MailActOn and current Mail.app is a lot better than Mail.app 3.0.

MailTags 2.0 is now in public beta, downloading now.

The only think I'm still missing is the ability to apply rules to outgoing messages, and see my decisions about a message (tags, colors, or folder where to archive it) be applied to future messages in the same threads. MailTags 2.0 has some of these it seems.

Will see.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

It's almost 80 days since I bougth my MacBook Pro 17", so I think I'll recap what has been going on.

First, I had problems with the built-in iSight camera. I tried to upgrade all the software I could think of, installing all the firmware upgrades I could find at the Apple website. But it wasn't meant to be. Two days before the 30 day warranty no-questions-asked expired, I cloned my hard-drive and did a full nuke & pave reinstall. It still didn't work, so I went to FNAC to exchange it for a new one.

It was a pretty painless process: open the laptop, explain that the iSight was not working, wait for a new MacBook Pro, and leave with the new laptop. This time it is working and hasn't stopped working.

So in terms of hardware problems, I had my share, but a replacement at the local FNAC store, solved it.

The overall experience is excellent. After the latest firmware upgrades to the fan management system, I never ear them anymore. With my normal everyday use, they just don't start or rotate at a slow speed, silently. Much better than the TiBook, where I could rev up the fans by opening Mail.app.

My everyday use of this laptop hasn't changed much from the previous TiBook. I still live between TextMate and the Terminal, with occasional jumps to Mail.app and Safari. NetNewsWire is still my RSS reader, but I moved more than half of my feeds to a plagger setup (more about this in a future article). Everything glued with some QuickSilver mojo.

I still keep three IM clients open. Psi is my main IM client, and the preferred method of communication. I've been using Kev's nightly builds for Intel Macs, with good results. There is a documented crash scenario but it seems to be a QT bug. I keep iChat open to use the video-conferencing stuff at the office and with selected friends (Bonjour + Video Conferencing is an excellent way to talk to the boss), and I've moved to the latest Skype with video, because it's the only app so far that has decent cross-platform video conferencing.

You can also find all my source control software needs already available. Both Subversion and darcs have Universal binaries available by now. SVK also installs and works correctly.

But the extra processing power allowed me to start using other applications.

The first one was Devon Think Pro. I knew about it for quite some time, but the first time I tried it, I found it slow and painfull. Not anymore. My database is still pretty small with only 200 documents, but already I'm hooked on Cmd-Shift-9.

The second one is Spotlight. I rarely used it with my PowerBook, but with this new box, I always using it, specially inside Mail.app. I'm reorganizing my mail folders, reducing the number I had, because of the ease it is to use Spotlight.

But the third one had an enormous impact in my workflow. Parallels is the application to get, for all of you running MacIntel's. Right now I have about three virtual servers. On each of them, I'm running CentOS or Fedora Core 5. To develop something, I make the Linux server mount via SMB my personal home directory via a private network. This allows me to keep using TextMate for editing, Safari for testing, and all the other tools I use, while placing all the processing on a replica of my production environment. It has been extremely helpful, and clearly the best money I've spent on software in recent past.

All in all, I'm very happy to have plunged into this version of MacBook. He is a big laptop, but I don't feel any lack of portability because my main usage is as a desktop replacement. I do pack him every-night when I go home, and I do travel with him on my backpack, but during the day he mostly sits at my desk.

Recommended.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 05:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Lately, I've been feeling "the pain". It starts after 7 hours at the office, and has become a major nuisance.

I'm only 35 and I wouldn't like to be unable to work by the age of 40 or 45, so I'm taking some steps. After a recommendation from João Bordalo at the local Mac-for-geeks list, I've installed AntiRSI, and so far I've been able to cope with the forced intervals, even when they appear in the middle of a wicked Perl line.

It's too soon to know if this will work or not, and a trip to the doctor (aka, my father) will be required, but for now, it seems to be forcing me to rest more.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 04:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

After reading the technical specification of the Core 2 Duo (Merom) CPUs, and trying to make sense of Chapter 5 (see page 77), and comparing with the technical specification of the Core Duo (Yonah) CPU (see page 81), I got the impression that the Merom, although faster than the Yonah at the same clock/power consumption, was still sending out a lot of heat. So, unless Apple changes a lot of heat dissipation stuff on the Macbook Pro's, you will still be able to toast a piece of bacon on your new laptop.

Apparently, it seems that my impression might be right. This is AppleInsider, a rumour site, so YMMV. If you want to be sure of this, I would wait for someone who, unlike me and AppleInsider, really knows how to read those specs.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 04:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

The author of the excellent Object Oriented Perl is going to be in Lisbon, Portugal this September's 12th and 13th, to give a two-day training on Perl Best Practices.

There are a limited number of places, and the early bird discount ends August 20th, so do it now: harass your boss to send you, because this is an excellent opportunity to learn more about writing good Perl from one of the best practitioners of the craft.

Don't miss it.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 03:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Latest albums bought online:

• Time Without Consequence - Alexi Murdoch
• The Eraser - Thom Yorke
• Black Hole and Revelations - Muse
• Just Like Blood - Tom McRae
• Twin Cinema - The New Pornographers

I'm experimenting.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I like Tim O'Reilly articles for the Radar. One of the last ones compared with Google Trends four major Linux distros. The graphic that accompanied the article was this one:

I found the RedHat line very low, it was not what I was expecting at all. Then it hit me: he didn't include Fedora. It's not even mentioned in the article at all, something that makes me uneasy about his analysis.

So with Fedora we get:

Ah, now it makes sense. Another thing I noticed, is that he searched 'Red Hat', with a space. Without that space you get:

Interesting: the end point is more or less the same, but they where higher two years ago, so even worse.

For the record, I could care less which distro you use, as longs it suits you. Personally I prefer CentOS because I only use Linux on servers, not desktops. If I were using Linux on a Desktop, I would choose Fedora, just because I feel more confortable with RedHat-like environments, after so many years. I would install Ubuntu to see what is the fuss all about, though.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

There are a lot of WWDC 2006 wild guesses online right now. I'm not a Mac developer, just a simple user, with a UNIX background, a UNIX immigrant, like Rui likes to call it.

So I only have one wish.

I wish that Apple launches a product that allows me to look at data, the same way you can see in this amazing presentation.

Update: This set of WWDC 06 predictions, by Daniel Eran, is my favorite so far. Pretty complete.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 08:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)