NSLog();

I'm thinking of starting a small online "middle-man" shop. I would take orders, charge customers, and then buy from a company that doesn't sell to individuals and they'd create and drop-ship the product.

I'm thinking of hosting the site with TextDrive and using Ruby on Rails to power the site. I'd have to learn RoR, of course, but I've already bought Agile Web Development with Rails and will be digging in to that book tomorrow. My Cocoa/C/C++/PHP/JavaScript/BASIC/etc. knowledge should come in handy, of course.

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I have a copy of Final Cut Pro 4 for sale. I'm looking to get at least $225 for it, which, considering the fact that you have until December 31 December 20, 2006 to trade it in for Final Cut Studio 5.1 Universal for $199, is a pretty good deal - I'm effectively selling you Final Cut Pro Studio 5.1 for just over $400.

I used my copy of Soundtrack Pro to upgrade to FCPS 5.1U, so this is completely on the up and up. I'm looking to buy a copy of Aperture with the proceeds.

For $25 less, I'll mail you just the CDs/DVDs and other necessary items to get the upgrade (which, if memory serves, is just that - the CDs and DVDs only). The extra $25 will get you the bulky manuals, the box, etc. - none of which you need and all of which will be replaced by the 5.1 package.

P.S. Final Cut Studio (Final Cut Pro 5, Motion 2, Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro 4, and Compressor) sells for $1,299. So, yeah, this ends up being a pretty good deal. Highest bidder as of… the end of the week gets it or, if you really want it, just submit a decent offer now and I'll close bidding early.

P.P.S. Sold! Shipping an envelope to Canada is extremely expensive. And it would have cost more to go with two-day delivery because I'd have been charged for a full pound!

I returned home this morning after running an errand. I walked upstairs and sat down at my computer desk when I heard a loud "CRACK!" I went downstairs to investigate, thinking perhaps a picture had fallen off the wall, but found no such damage.

It wasn't until I wanted to go to Best Buy (to buy electronics compressed air) that I noticed the spring above my garage door had snapped in two. Prior to this point, I am not even sure I knew garage doors had what I now know are called "torsion springs." Turns out many do (the other kind is the extension spring) and that they last only about 10,000 cycles, or 7 years if you open and close the garage door twice per day.

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I haven't linked to Mark Cuban in awhile, but this post deserves a mention. And it's two weeks old!

At any rate, Mark puts forth the idea that YouTube won't be bought because it's a copyright infringement lawsuit waiting to happen. They haven't been sued yet because they don't have pockets deep enough to make it worth the while of those who would sue them.

Makes sense to me. I'm just still ticked that McClatchy is expected to stay in control of the Pirates. A small part of me still hopes Cuban is able - some day - to buy the Pirates.

Recently, I installed MT-Notifier on this blog because MovableType lacks yet another feature - the ability to notify users when someone replies to a post on which they've commented. MT-Notifier, like what seems to be most every MovableType plugin, plugs this hole and helps bring MT+Plugins to the level of most other blogging packages (sans plugins). 😛

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I'll argue right alongside nearly everyone that .Mac is far from being worth $99 annually.

Except for syncing.

In my opinion, and for me, syncing my bookmarks, my address book, my keychain, etc. is worth $99/year all by itself.

Barely worth it, mind you, but on the proper side of the "renew or not" divide. Still, I would welcome some new features, some improvements, and some perks (though I agree a revamped webmail won't mean squat to anyone). .Mac was ahead of its time when it first came out (or at least even with the times), but Google Mail, free or inexpensive disk space from other competitors, a fairly horrible blogging interface (sure, they look nice, but that's because everything's an image), etc. have all been passed by competitors.

I'll renew again, but c'mon, Apple: $129/year (almost) for the OS, $99/year for .Mac, $99/year for Pages, which I still hate more than AppleWorks. iTunes may not be a subscription, but too many other things from Cupertino are, and currently, many are falling short of expectations.

My PowerMac G5 has almost sold. If anyone is willing to offer $1250 and beat the other buyer in getting the money to me, I might almost consider selling it to them! Todd Dominey is selling a somewhat less-equipped G5 for $1600.

You know, I have enough stories for about ten seasons of "Genius Bar, The TV Show," but they wouldn't be family suitable, if you know what I mean.

I was fairly certain Apple had a trademark or something on "Genius Bar." Perhaps not. Still, this isn't news. It's a sit-com set in a mall. Instead of people working at a record store or whatever, they work in a computer store. Ho hum.

Perhaps the guys that came up with the show are hoping Apple will provide them free kit. 😛

I'm not sure if this "rapid zoom" feature is new or if it snuck into 10.4.8, but I like it! Holding the control key down while using the scroll wheel on my mouse is fun fun fun! It's like playing with a clicky pen in those nervous moments when your hands aren't otherwise occupied doing actual work, a subliminal "fidgeting" thing. Now, I can rapid zoom in and out. Wheeeeee.

Credit to Daniel for pointing me towards rapid zooming though, no, I did not get the rectangle like he did.

P.S. John points out that you can also enable (or disable) it in the Keyboard and Mouse pref pane.

I must admit, the control scheme for Madden 2007 on the Wii sounds incredible.

A few days ago I was mulling over names for my new Mac Pro's hard drives. Most Mac users I know take this job freakishly seriously, and I'm no exception.

I've finally settled on a name, and it's got a "bunny" theme. Why? Well, mainly because I like the bunny icons I originally found at xicons.com.

But the "bunny" theme has other perks, too. It's a bit of a backhanded slap at the famous Apple "flaming bunny" ad. My Mac Pro is powered by Intel chips, after all. Plus, there are enough famous "bunnies" or "rabbits" that I shouldn't run out of possible hard disk names. And it's cute.

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Crash! Boom! Bang! Safe to say, it didn't put a happy fun flavor in my mouth. Why? Because after getting a trial key at this page - the default "download" page - and downloading the software listed, I kernel panicked twice.

After noticing the build number was "1848," I went back and got the "update RC2" by first clicking the red, non-underlined text and then clicking the "Download" button at the bottom of that page.

I suppose the distinction is that "RC2" is just a release candidate, but if previous versions are going to kernel panic my computer, I don't quite consider it so much a "candidate" as "don't download anything but this."

I'll try RC2, now. One more kernel panic, though, and I'm done for the day with Parallels.

So says Daniel Jalkut, and I agree. Absolutely nothing in the development process made me feel as stupid as trying to add AppleScript support. It's ten times harder than figuring out how to write AppleScript… and that's saying something.

Short story: it doesn't work. It's not Intel compatible (I downloaded the version from Mike Bombich).

Can't load '/Library/Perl/5.8.6/darwin-thread-multi-2level/auto/MacOSX/File/Copy/Copy.bundle' for module MacOSX::File::Copy: dlopen(/Library/Perl/5.8.6/darwin-thread-multi-2level/auto/MacOSX/File/Copy/Copy.bundle, 1): no suitable image found. Did find:
       /Library/Perl/5.8.6/darwin-thread-multi-2level/auto/MacOSX/File/Copy/Copy.bundle: mach-o, but wrong architecture at /System/Library/Perl/5.8.6/darwin-thread-multi-2level/DynaLoader.pm line 230.
 at /usr/local/bin/psync line 16
Compilation failed in require at /usr/local/bin/psync line 16.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/local/bin/psync line 16.

I've used psync for four years or so to back up one hard disk to another every night via a root cron job. It's saved me on several occasions when I had to boot to the other hard disk. In every situation case, it's worked beautifully.

Now, what? SuperDuper, I guess???

Simple enough: you can delete the offending files. If they're not truly system critical, you'll at least be able to boot and restore them from a backup.

This problem has caused the downfall (necessitating reformatting - not complete death) my hard drives on a few occasions. Now I know how to fix it.