It seems that the PowerMail problems were a conflict between it and the new Yahoo Messenger. Both use the same PowerPlant functions, and both are (probably) Carbon apps. PowerPlant = bad. C++ = bad. PowerPlant + Carbon = very bad. It's not so much that any of those on their own are bad, it's that nobody seems to care to use them properly. Ug. Not running Messenger and PowerMail at the same time seems to fix my problems. [ 9/07/2002 05:24:34 PM ] [ ]
While I don't think that Millenium Challenge was an accurate simulation of the US vs. Iraq (it never was intended to be), the points made by the Red Team commander were very good. It's unlikely for a variety of reasons that Saddam would use tactics like Van Riper did, but the rules were not "act like dictator X" but "fight to win" - which is exactly what Van Riper did. The UK Guardian newspaper has an interesting [interview with him]..
"You're going to have to use cellphones and satellite phones now, they told me. I said no, no, no - we're going to use motorcycle messengers and make announcements from the mosques," he says. "But they refused to accept that we'd do anything they wouldn't do in the west."
[ 9/07/2002 12:27:01 PM ] [ ]
So I'm finishing up a small Flash XML server that wraps around some of the email client code I have done, following the Flash XML examples from [here] , and returning mail messages to flash formatted as [xmtp]. Not exactly rrocket science, but it should give Chris what he needs to do an email client using Flash. I have some ideas along those lines, maybe I'll do a markup today to show what I'm thinking. Nothing revolutionary I'm afraid, just a demo. I'm kinda waiting for the new PB to install Flash MX again, it seems to need hardware acceleration under MacOS X to be usable. [ 9/07/2002 12:15:05 PM ] [ ]
Friday, September 06, 2002
mmmmm homemade pasta. best there is, made without bowls. bet you didn't know i went to cooking skewl, huh? what is really odd is that that seems to intimidate women. especially women that don't cook. women are on crack. us guys have that extra chromosome for immunity to that I suppose. [ 9/06/2002 10:52:52 PM ] [ ]
Thursday, September 05, 2002
This was the kind of week that made me find my old [suicidal tendancies] cd and run around my place raging and screaming. ALL I WANTED WAS A FUCKING PEPSI! [ 9/05/2002 09:01:31 PM ] [ ]
Well finally I got 10.1.5 back and working on the powerbook, and after much work got most of my old files and settings moved over. Ug! My *new* powerbook hasn't shipped from Apple yet, but hopefully it will tomorrow. [Powermail], my email client for home, has been crashing whenever it gets my main mail account the past few days. Rebuilding it's database, etc. etc. had no effect. And when I got home tonight, ready to back up mail and start over, it randomly started working fine. There's an update to Powermail that *might* fix this, but the installer disk image is always coming out corrupt (which has happened the apst few updates as well with these guys). I had used Eudora for years and years, and I *detest* Outlook. The sad thing is that every email client under the sun these days looks and acts like Outlook and there isn't much that strays from Outlook's crappy-ass 3-paned view of mail. Eudora was getting just.... old. And it was showing. So after playing with Powermail and bunch of other apps, I bought Powermail and migrated a year's worth of Eudora mailboxes into it. That was about six months ago. One of the selling points of PM was that it's search functions are based around V-Twin, Apple's find-by-content engine. Unfortuantely, it doesn't work very well, and that's something you can't find out in the demo version (because you can't import enough mail in the limited demo to see the search stuff work). In all honesty, Eudora's search functionality met my needs better. In most other ways, Powermail is very nice - filtering works very well, the AppleScript support is very good (though it's weak in some areas specific to things I want to do), and it's overall integration with the MacOS is very good. It does look and feel like a well put together Mac application.
BUT for me it's still not good enough. After my initial frustrations with PM a number of months ago, I started working on my own mail client for MacOS X. Most of the code is built in java with [Javamail], though I have looked at using [Pantomime] , a "clone" of javamail written in Objective-C. Objective-C is the language that MacOS X works in, you can use Java instead but you do pay some for using it. While what Pantomime lacks in documentation I'm sure it makes up for in good intentions, it still has no documentation. As far as I'm concerned, that makes it pretty useless - I have no way of knowing how to use it, other than to take apart it's parent project, GNUMail, which also has no documentation. You would think someone but me has heard of things like [headerdoc]. For searching mail, I found that the original architect of Apple's V-Twin wrote a successor to it in Java called [Lucene]. From what I've seen, it kicks ass, and I've done some work with it indexing and searching remote IMAP directories (I may put out something standalone for that shortly after I get the TiBook). The filtering system that this app uses... I'll talk about some other time. As well as some of the things that it can do for eliminating spam. There may be a neat patent opportunity in there anyway. What would be really cool is to have a p2p network for tracking spam mails, but though I'll have a server i can use to centralize that, I think that there won't be nearly enough clients running this app to make it worthwhile (I'm only writing it for myself and my needs for now). And I've promised [Chris] that all the backend stuff will be available to *his* projects as well. That might happen sooner rather than later (like within the next week). [ 9/05/2002 08:51:23 PM ] [ ]
Wednesday, September 04, 2002
The powerbook situation is not getting any better, after wasting far too much time trying to find out what is going on with the 10.2 install I'm trying to install 10.1.2, but it's forgetting those nice to have things like, oh, I dunno, THE KERNEL. So i'm finally getting a G4 Powerbook 667. One of the things that is both good and bad about the G4 powerbook is that it's big. So my existing 2000 Mountainsmith BC Gig bag won't fit it. A few months ago I traded emails with Mountainsmith (did I mention that this is a great company that makes great products? I don't buy anything else and haven't for 10 years), they told me their [Spirit bag] will fit a Titanium powerbook - but the Spirit isn't one of their laptop line, so it doesn't have the protective inner neoprene sleeve that my BC Gig does. Ug. So *if* I get the spirit, I have to get something like the [Madsonline G4 Saver]
That's assuming, of course, that the Spirit has pockets for cables and stuff. If it doesn't.... *sigh* I'll probably get it anyway, since every other laptop bag sucks. [ 9/04/2002 12:38:04 PM ] [ ]
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
Randomly, for no reason wahtsoever, the powerbook decided to be a good boy and boot from the 10.2 install CD. Great, right? Well, after more than an hour of installing from Disk 1, it had to use Disk 2- when it rebooted to do that, all I got was a blank shell prompt.
I am jack's utter lack of surprise.
So now I'm installing yet again. No idea why it's not kernel panicking from the CD like it was. No idea if, by the end of the day, I will have a usable computer again.
Anyway, heading over to Ursula's by 5 to set up her new iBook. Sure, SHE gets a new computer, but not the guy who actually makes money with computers.... *sigh* [ 9/03/2002 02:57:24 PM ] [ ]
Oh, and the fall fog started. It was 100 and sunny in Pasadena, but here it's 50 something and very foggy. Hopefully it'll lift again before winter, though it didn't really last year. [ 9/03/2002 12:03:18 PM ] [ ]
For the first time in a long time, I got up early, and trudged through the first day of school traffic to get into work before 9. What do I get? A drunk driver had hit our power lines, so we couldn't even get into the building. Snow day! So I blew about 1/2 a tank of gas, several hours, and 125 miles on the car for nothing.
But hey, my pigtails came from [hyperlinktech]. [ 9/03/2002 12:02:17 PM ] [ ]
Monday, September 02, 2002
I'm such a great fucking guy, everyone tells me that I'm better off without my girlfriend, the woman I love, because I can do better. Great. Lovely. Just the fucking words of enouragement I want to hear. And I've heard it before, from other people, about other people, so don't think it fucking matters to me. You're not me, and you don't know what's best for me, k?
Don't let a crowbar hit you on the way out, buhbye! [ 9/02/2002 08:52:17 PM ] [ ]
And no, I don't know what to do about the chelle situation. I'm either crazy about her or just crazy, hard to tell at this point. [ 9/02/2002 02:06:18 AM ] [ ]
It's funny, if I played Halo more than once every 6 months I would probably be pretty good. John still kicks my ass most of the time, but by the 3rd round I've gotten used to that damn controller again and it's neck and neck. Bleh. It was like 90something inside John's new place. And when I got home it was hotter in mine. [ 9/02/2002 02:05:25 AM ] [ ]
Sunday, September 01, 2002
After a while you learn the subtle difference Between holding a hand and chaining a soul, And you learn that love doesn't mean security, And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts And presents aren't promises And you begin to accept your defeats With your head up and your eyes open, With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child, And you learn to build all your roads On today because tomorrow's ground Is too uncertain. And futures have A way of falling down in midflight, After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much. So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting For someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure... That you really are strong, And you really do have worth And you learn and learn With every goodbye you learn. -- Veronic Shoffstall, "Comes the Dawn" [ 9/01/2002 07:13:43 PM ] [ ]
Her name was tomorrow, and for all my chasing, I could not catch her. [ 9/01/2002 06:25:02 PM ] [ ]
