NSLog();

This morning I deleted "WebKit" (which I'd renamed "Safari"). I restored a copy of Safari from earlier yesterday morning. I launched it.

Attempts to open a URL from another application or to "Reopen Windows From Last Session" all result in one simple error in the console:

12/20/07 1:09:24 pm Safari[358] *** -[NSCFArray insertObject:atIndex:]: attempt to insert nil

Pfffffft. I'll see what I can do to fix it now…

Update: Clearing the prefs, icon databases, etc. seems to have worked. I kept the bookmarks file.

Since shortly after MarsEdit 2.0's release, I switched to using it as my primary blog editor, occasionally substituting only the web interface on my primarily MarsEdit-powered blogs.

However, I grew increasingly annoyed at several of MarsEdit's "issues" and have been using ecto 3.0 betas rather comfortably for well over a month now.

MarsEdit can't handle things like apostrophes in category names. MarsEdit's preview won't put in line breaks for single-line breaks. Its preview pane almost never remembers its scroll position, making editing images or tables or whatnot in a large post a major hassle. MarsEdit still can't post something to a blog as a draft. I also never got much sense that MarsEdit was in very active development - and that's saying something from someone who's switched back to ecto.

The "post as draft" issue is likely a big deal to anyone who uses a blog with both "authors" and "editors," and in the end, it's the straw that broke the camel's back.

P.S. I like a lot of the things MarsEdit did, and dislike a lot of the things ecto does (including the all-too-tiny "status" buttons for comments, trackbacks, and publishing settings). But I'm also excited about ecto 3's plugin architecture and think that it has a lot going for it.

P.P.S. Most of my earlier observations still stand. All except the "slug" bonus and the "relative date" knock, I think.

I ran SunSpider with Safari 3.0.4 and the latest WebKit nightly. The results in a nutshell? The new JavaScript engine in the WebKit nightly build (Dec.19) is 2.83x as fast as that in Safari 3.0.4.

** TOTAL **:   *2.83x as slow*   3021.6ms +/- 0.7%   8554.6ms +/- 0.2%   significant

I'm considering running the Safari nightly builds as my browser (over Safari). However, the only "pre-built" tool out there fails to do three things that I'd want: 1) Rename "WebKit" to "Safari," 2) Set itself as the default browser, and 3) "Reopen All Windows From Last Session." I could hack this together with a combination of cron jobs and AppleScript, but I'm not sure it's worth it. Perhaps I'll just manually do it now and then.

Today I launched Aperture to do some quick photo picking (you'll notice some new blog header images). The menus were blank. I had an Apple and nothing else. Though I could export (via the keyboard shortcut), none of the popup menus in the export panel even worked.

So I set about figuring out what was going wrong.

First I removed the Aperture items in my Preferences and Application Support folders. That didn't fix anything (so I restored them). Then I moved my Aperture library so it'd create a new one. Same problems.

I checked the console next - it listed "NSCTFontCharacter…" as an error, so I knew it was a font problem.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 521); »

Blu-Ray players dropped recently, like the Sony BDP-S300 down to $299, but comments like this at Amazon will have me holding off a little while longer:

I recently purchased a bdp s300 to go with my new 46 inch sony flat panel tv. Well I found out the hard way that each issue of a blu ray dvd can have a different firmware version. The only way you find this out is if the movie does not run. Then I called Sony and they verified this and blamed hollywood for included new technology and they stated that they had to keep up with the technology at the cost of the consumer. ARROGANT. They also said one could download the new version on line. Please note: ONLY IF YOU HAVE WINDOWS AND A COMPUTER! What about folks that don't have a computer or a Mac. I believe this is the dumbest move sony has ever made. DON'T BUY BLU RAY OF ANY KIND UNTIL THEY HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY UNDER TIGHTER CONFIGURATION.

Still not worth $299. I don't plan to buy any HD movies of any kind until the format "war" is over, and until then I'll be content just to get things off NetFlix in HD-DVD. When Blu-Ray players drop to under $200, I'll take another look.

Since upgrading to Leopard, "Microsoft Sync" ((/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Microsoft Sync Services.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Sync Services)) crashes like crazy. It doesn't happen every time, but it happens a few times per day. Full crash report in the extended entry (the next time it crashes, anyway).

Everything still seems to sync, but the darn thing just won't stop crashing. I'd prefer not to re-install because that would revert my entire copy of Office, and I don't want to have to re-install the 15 patches MS has put out in the past several years since Office: 2004's release.

Here's to hoping Office: 2008 fixes these problems.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 294); »

The gaming blog I've mentioned once or twice already is now ready for public consumption. The site is called "Agnostic Gamers" because we're not tied to any one console or platform. I've got a Nintendo DS Lite (and a DS somewhere) that I haven't played in months, a Wii I still mostly play Wii Sports on (and Guitar Hero III), and an Xbox 360. My partner has all three consoles as well as some handhelds.

I didn't want to clutter the personal blog (this one) with some random gaming posts, and my co-founder "Snap" felt the same, so that's why it exists. Not many people know this, but I was editor-in-chief of a site called SegaWeb, part of the "GamerWeb" network around 1999 or 2000. I attended an E3, got a few minutes of sleep each night, and ran SegaWeb for nearly a year before being fired and replaced with someone who was paid far less than me. The entire network collapsed six or seven months later. For awhile there, though, we were flying pretty high.

Anyway, check out the site: agnosticgamers.com. If you're interested in writing and have a console or handheld or three, get in touch with me.

I too got a few of the Cylon emails Jesper writes about, and I too quickly threw them in the trash.

Cylon is scum.

Nice. GarageBand 4.1.1 includes a "send Ringtone to iTunes" option. So where can someone download some GarageBand-created ringtones? I'd make my own but I'm a musical retard when it comes to using GarageBand for more than editing podcasts.

Because MythBusters was supposed to show the "plane on a conveyor belt" show last night, I stumbled onto the original question at Jason Kottke's blog. The question is as follows:

A plane is standing on a runway that can move (some sort of band conveyer). The plane moves in one direction, while the conveyer moves in the opposite direction. This conveyer has a control system that tracks the plane speed and tunes the speed of the conveyer to be exactly the same (but in the opposite direction). Can the plane take off?

It was interesting reading the comments to see people going back and forth, but the answer is really quite easy and simple: the plane takes off.

The solution and a very quick explanation below, if you want to read it…

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 427); »

Just for personal knowledge.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 48); »

For a few years now, The Sand Trap has used MagpieRSS ((I'm not even going to link to it.)) to handle a few of the RSS feeds on the site. In recent months, it's been acting very flaky.

A few weeks ago, I searched for some PHP XML processors. Most seemed to involve PEAR and libraries and whatnot. Phooey, I said. Today I was pointed at SimplePie, and it works wonderfully. I'm going to give it a week or two to run and, if I don't see any problems, I intend to donate.

Thanks, Jesper.

I'm looking for some fellow gamers who are interested in writing for a blog I've started with a pal. We don't have any massive plans right now - we're just looking for an outlet to write about games without cluttering up our personal blogs. But hey, I've started websites in the past without any real plans, and several of them have pulled in tens of thousands of dollars in advertising and content deals, not to mention goodies. So hey, you never know…

At any rate, this isn't an open call. I'm just putting the word out here in case anyone that I know well or even reasonably well (i.e. regular commenters, acquaintances, etc.) is up for hearing more.

Interested? IM me or something.

You know, I forgot to check, but you'd think the Safari Cookie bug that causes your Cookie file to be cleared would have been fixed by now.

Update (2008-02-13): More information is available here. That site believes it's a date coercion issue in JavaScript.