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What is Freshly Squeezed Software's new favorite application? It's one called "Spin Control!"

Spin Control is an application that helps you identify why an application might display the spinning rainbow wait cursor. It automatically samples any application which appears unresponsive to the Window Server.

Spin Control comes with Xcode 1.2 and will be put to use a great deal over the next few weeks. We're aware of some performance issues in PulpFiction 1.0. It is one of our top priorities for PulpFiction 1.0.1 (and 1.0.2, and so on). We may not fix every speed bump in 1.0.1, but with Spin Control, finding some of the tougher problems will be easier.

PulpFiction 1.0.1, by the way, will fix or add about 60 unique things, 57 of which most people might never see. We're working hard. You'll hear more in early June.

Joshua has accused me of stealing and lying at his blog. The facts of the matter are simple.

1. Joshua emailed me and asked if I had stolen or otherwise used his tab code. I checked my browser history for his site and didn't find it. I replied, basically, "nope - I never visited your site."
2. Joshua asked me to give him credit for the tabs regardless of my previous statement, because in his mind I'd clearly stolen his code. I refused on principle: I had not. I'd looked at five or ten other sites, gotten an idea how to do the tabs, and written them on my own.
3. Joshua re-arranged my CSS to more closely resemble his, then went forth with his blog entry accusing me of stealing his tabs.
4. Joshua went so far as to remove some comments from people who supported my position and asked valid questions (such as one about Joshua's subtle re-arrangement of my code).

I could have avoided the whole thing simply by giving him (false) credit, but I chose not to because, again, I didn't take his code.

That's really all there is to it.

One other simple fact: just because someone accuses you of something doesn't make it true. There are also three sides to every story: person A's, person B's, and the truth, which is often somewhere in between.

Joshua's math is also false. You cannot claim 19 items are in the same order when they're subsets of other things which must be in a certain order. Furthermore, the ordering of the elements (which Joshua re-arranged) is pretty typical of the way CSS is designed, inside-out.

I've written and back-dated this entry years after the incident, but I recall very clearly my reasons for denying that I'd used Joshua's code and his response to it.

More here.

Question: What is your favorite iApp?

My Answer: iTunes, by far. It's the only one in my dock and it's usually the only one that gets any use. I use Lightbox for photos and Final Cut Pro for videos.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: Is ignorance bliss?

My Answer: I think it can be, you bet. I think if you're not aware of something, it doesn't weigh on you. Stress is a bad thing sometimes.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Check this out.

Apple Developer Certificate
These certificates can be used by Apple developers with a future version of the Apple Mac OS to sign software for electronic distribution

Found at thawte.com. Will this be what ties into the Software Update system Apple is rumored to be "opening up"?

Prices are $199 for one year and $399 for two years (which makes me wonder if I could buy two one-year certificates and save a dollar).

Now the external blog editor spec is public. If you write an external blog editor, please let us know so that we may include your application in PulpFiction 1.0.1's list of external editors. We will support this with a list of editors (with a "Choose…") button, as in Safari and Mail.

Does Google have any sort of method to put its Adwords in syndicated feeds? That would be interesting.

Anyone got a Segway they'd sell to me for $500? Now there's a flop of a product, eh? The last time I've even thought about them in the past six months was yesterday when I saw one in a movie.

Question: How well do you think you can get to know a person just by reading his/her blog?

My Answer: This varies depending on whose blog you're reading, but I'd have to put the rating somewhere between "not at all" and "1%." Some bloggers talk only about work, some talk only about their pet cat, and some talk about quite a bit more. I talk a little bit about everything here, yet what ends up "on paper" represents around 1% of my life at most. Blog readers don't know what I'm doing, thinking, or saying 99% of the time.

It's this knowledge of my own blogging habits and life that prevent me from making any judgments about anyone else based on their blog. A person's blog may be a window into their world, but just as you can see very little of your world when you look out your window, you can see very little of a person by reading their blog.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

There exists a very good page that demonstrates a number of security flaws (all relating to the same type of thing) in Mac OS X: http://test.doit.wisc.edu/. Visit it now. How to protect yourself:

1. Get the Help Viewer security update from Apple. This closes the help: protocol only.
2. Disable the auto-opening of safe files in your browser(s). This will solve the .zip (.dmg, .sit, etc.) issue.
3. Disable the disk:, disks:, afp:, and telnet: protocols.
4. Set your ftp: protocol to FTPeel (or disable it).

You can use RCDefaultApp to do the disabling. I recommend reading these three articles as well. Or this one. Jay Allen also wrote one, though I disagree with the step that prompts you to download Paranoid Android.

All of the exploits listed on the test page above worked for me with a standard config. Of course, "worked" == "very bad" in this situation.

Brent talks about something he calls "collegiality" and which I've long called "just being a good person." Collegiality is working together for a common good. It's equal parts "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" and other good bits of motherly wisdom and common sense. It's what one of my sig files implies when it says "My goal is to be the person my dog thinks I am."

In other words, "collegiality" is really nothing more than "the way it should be." It should go without saying. That Brent felt the need to "say" tells us simply that we're not quite there yet as a community, and that there are ways in which we can improve.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 381); »

Like Brent, I've got a news aggregator. Unlike Brent's, mine does not have a built-in blog editor. Brent posted about supporting external editors, and now that I've had a chance to breathe, I've emailed Brent about his standard. We've shared a few emails the protocol and look forward to working with Brent to support it in PulpFiction. We're busy with a lot of things, but we hope to sneak support into our 1.0.1 release.

Yesterday's QotD asked people how they edit their blogs, and the responses that I received both in comments and IMs confirms one thing: that nearly everyone has a different way. Since PulpFiction was nothing more than a rough spec sheet, we'd planned to integrate with external editors.

Brent's plan looks to provide a standard way to do so, and we're happy to support standards. As the author^* of a blog aggregator without a blog editor, I believe strongly in working with other applications to achieve tremendous functionality. Doing so via a common, shared interface is even better. We've expanded PulpFiction's drag and drop, having supported Brent's clipboard format since 1.0, and will continue to integrate with external applications, ideas, and so on as they evolve.

This post was edited to reflect the results of the early conversations I've had with Brent on the topic. Working together is a good thing that benefits everyone, and we're there.

I thought MovableType 3 would let me ban users and mark some users as "approved." This only seems to work for TypeKey users. Even my comments - posted using the same username, email address, and URL each time - are up for moderation each and every time^*

I have a user "lipitor" posting several spammy comments right now, and until MT-Blacklist is "3.0-ized," I'd like to ban this user. I'd also like to approve several of my regular (but non-TypeKey-using) users as well. This doesn't seem possible!? I thought it should be in 3.0?

^* As to why I'm not using TypeKey for myself, well, it's because the stupid thing insists on using my username (iacas) and not my full name (Erik J. Barzeski) as I've specified in its preferences. Grrrr.

P.S. Why does deleting moderated comments take so freakin' long? If I understand it correctly, you delete one row (or 18 rows) from a table. You don't have to delete anything from the individual pages - or rebuild them - because moderated comments haven't been posted to them yet.

Question: How do you blog?

My Answer: I blog by logging in and editing articles right here. Occasionally, for longer entries, I'll edit in BBEdit, but 99% of the time I do it all via my browser. I know a lot of people use ecto, so PulpFiction will work with ecto by version 1.0.2 (our version) now that Adriaan has added some support for external editors (and for receiving information from external apps). I pushed many of my friends towards Kung-Log, now ecto, and would give it a try myself if the demo version actually let me use it instead of insisting that my trial was up.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Matthew Thomas presents an interesting reason not to use Gmail:

From the Intellectual Property Rights section: "…you agree that you will not copy, reproduce, alter, modify, or create derivative works from the Service. You also agree that you will not use any robot, spider, other automated device, or manual process to monitor or copy any content from the Service." For me, being able to check my e-mail is a pretty important part of having an e-mail account. Oh well.

I don't plan to use Gmail at all because I hate having to use a Web browser for those kinds of things. Contextual menus, quick sorting… all sorts of things you get in a desktop app are lacking in Gmail. Plus, usernames have to be six characters long, and, well, "iacas" is only five.