NSLog();

MovableType 2.6 is now available. I've just completed (I think) the upgrade to this site. I had to reset the comment form to include the new style, but otherwise, I just wrote over old files with new files. The upgrade went pretty seamlessly.

I don't plan to use the text formatting features (I do use MTMacros, though). I already have a CC license on the site. I don't figure I'll use 'Add New Category…' or MTLink. I probably will never need to close comments, and RSD support I added to my 2.5.1. So that leaves, uhhh, Sanitize as the only thing I gain by upgrading. Hmm. At least there's now an MTPlugins.org site with some plugins. I'll keep an eye on that. Maybe. If I remember.

Yoy, I'm sleepy. :-zzz

Ben has an entry here about TrackBack and auto-discovery. Overall, auto-discovery works pretty well. I don't concern myself with finding TrackBack URLs unless I notice a site didn't get pinged.

What I dislike, however, is that trackbacks aren't sent within my site. If I link to a previous article, why isn't it sent a TrackBack? Why shouldn't a reader who might stumble on to that earlier article not see that I linked to it in a later article?

(Update: This is now working as Rainer has the answer - comment out the line next if $url =~ /^$archive_url/; in /lib/MT/Entry.pm.

P.S. So I can find this page easier, since I always seem to use the words "Internal TrackBack" to search for it, I'm adding the words "Internal TrackBack" to the entry.

Yay! About two weeks instead of the "2-4" listed. Yay! I think everything I've ever ordered from Apple that's come through Taiwan has been "received after FedEx cutoff time." Hrm. But my last PowerBook actually arrived before it was shipped due to the date line. I paid for 2-day: guess I'll get it Monday?

Arrived at FedEx Ramp/TA YUAN HSIANG TW
02/13/2003 22:14

Left FedEx Origin Location/TAOYUAN CITY TW
02/13/2003 17:23

Pickup status/TAOYUAN CITY TW
02/13/2003 17:08
Package received after FedEx cutoff time

Given that OSNews is now linking to some mini-rants by Vinay, Matt, and myself, I thought I'd pull them all (the ones I find anyway, to this point) into one post. My posts, anyway - hit the trackbacks and links in the articles themselves to find most or all of Matt's and Vinay's.

• "You Can't Escape Ken Burns" and Other Horrid iMovie "Ughs"
• Mac OS X: Where'd Our UI Go?
• More on Apple UI
• More Bad UI

And hey, while you OSNews people are here, take off your coat and stay awhile. Get comfy. I don't plan to read the comments at OSNews, but if you feel inclined to leave some here, I'll at least read them before I delete any stupid ones 🙂

Here's one for the conspiracy folks. A former manager at Microsoft unexpectedly died at a hospital due to multiple organ failure. The conspiracy part? He was out on bail when he died. His alleged crime was stealing 9 * 10 ^ 6 dollars worth of software from Microsoft and reselling it.

Perhaps this is Microsoft's and the BSA's new policy on dealing with software pirates?

I farted, did you? While my sister and I were encouraged to use words like "penis" instead of "binky" as children, because genitals (there's another) were nothing unusual or immature (unlike "peepee"), we were forbidden to use the word "fart." So naturally, even though I don't like the sound of the word, we used it as often as possible when mom wasn't looking. When mom was around, "stinker" did just fine.

Safari was updated today, and while it contains a lot of fixes and features (like being able to drag and drop text, a longer than 30-second timeout [I think]), support for XML and 96 dpi stuff [it seems]), perhaps one of the best features is that it now tiles properly.

New windows are opened in the top left corner of my computer, and subsequent windows tile nicely downward and rightward. The previous Safari was a mess, scattering windows all over my screen almost randomly. Go David and the rest of the Safari team!

Does the button to the right look "enabled" to you? Does it even look like a button? It looks to me to be "greyed" or "dimmed" - states that we've been conditioned to believe are "disabled" on the Mac. Unfortunately, in this case, it's a perfectly active button! I say "bah." I say "fix it." Please, oh makers-of-Mac-OS-X, please for the love of all that is holy fix this stuff!!!

Matt's got more on schizophrenic controls at his blog, and I encourage anyone who's been following this UI blogversation to check it out. (Is "blogversation" a new word?)

From Aaron, a small survey of some popular European languages:

Spanish: Everything you say makes you sound hungry.
Russian: There are 33 different ways to say, "Comrade, pass the Vodka or I shoot you."
French: Every French sentence carries the implicit connotation that you want to have sex with the person you are talking to.
German: The German word for "hello" is "Echsteinlefahrtengruber". The German translation for "Hey Hans, what say tomorrow morning we climb into our tanks and roll over Poland?" is "Hans, Poland, ja?"

Vinay finishes up his big post on Apple's dip in UI quality with this:

apple is still the premiere user interface company. they still pay a lot of attention to the user interface and human computer interaction. they're just losing their touch, and need to pay more attention to what they are doing with all the changes. of course looking at the hig, you think, "wow, apple has really gone through the trouble of thinking about hci and told us about what they think we should do so it will be easier for the user". but if you're going to go through the trouble of writing a nice long document which you are going to call human interface guidelines, and expect other developers to follow them, follow them yourself.

I too want to emphasize that Apple is still very much the leader in UI. However, I wish for that trend to continue, and the only trend I've seen lately is a decline in quality. I don't want a decline. Someone told me I was making a mountain out of a molehill. Rather, I like to think that by making a fuss, I'm doing my part (as Vinay is doing his) to try to prevent a molehill from becoming a mountain. A mountain of steaming, smelly, inconsistent, bad UI. If I wanted to use Windows or Linux, I'd use Windows or Linux. 🙂

&hellip and a fight broke out. Basketball is perhaps the only sport I don't watch on television when I catch it - I'd rather watch curling than basketball - and a bunch of tall skinny people getting into a fight doesn't make it any more interesting. 3 on 3, though, that might be fun to watch.

NetNewsWire (Pro) - $29.95 or $39.95 if you dilly-dally - is now available from http://ranchero.com/. I've been using every beta, and frankly, I would continue using the Lite version if it had the subject/creator/date headers. As it stands, I coughed up my $29.95, not necessarily because I had to or even wanted to (to use NNW), but because, as a fellow Mac/Cocoa developer, I wanted to help another fellow Mac/Cocoa developer out.

Here's to hoping that Brent buys a lot of Coca Cola with my $23 or whatever he gets after Kagi takes their share.

Today I was delivered a piece of paper by the folks that service my student loans (interest is tax deductible, or something like that). It came on a little postcard with a perforated side that I had to open to get at the inside. The inside, like most 1099s or other tax forms, listed my name, some dollar amount, and the key bit of information: my social security number.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 679); »

From the "I'll Do What I Want With My Own Damn Site and If You Don't Like It You Can Leave" file comes this:

First off, every time we post something on OSNews that isn't strictly "OS news" there are always a couple of people who post and complain about it. Note to these people: yes, I know this is off-topic, but since so many people have been interested, we're temporarily changing the name of the site to "OSNews: Exploring the Future of Computing and also 12" Powerbooks." If you don't want to read about Powerbooks, please skip to the next story. And yes, someday when two OSNews people order the same dishwasher, we will probably treat you to dueling dishwasher reviews.

OSNews has done two reviews on the 12" PowerBooks lately. Eugenia nitpicked weird details, missing out on the big obvious "yay" things, and once again bitched about the LCD quality. I've yet to read this review, because I just want my damn PowerBook. Where is it? I wonder when I'll get it…

As I pulled into the Albertson's (grocery chain) at noon last week Tuesday it struck me how full the parking lot was. Ahhh, old people. Boy do I dislike the "winter" season in southern Florida. I must remind myself to stock up on food between the months of April through September this year, because the old people are simply intolerable. I like old people - I really do - but that only includes the old people I'm related to. Man I don't like Florida sometimes.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 289); »