NSLog();

Here's another Safari feature I'd like to see: regard open windows as something more sacred than they're currently regarded. In other words, if I have four browser windows minimized (perhaps sites I forgot about for the past 20 minutes while I worked on something else, or visited other sites), and I hit command-Q, I should be prompted "Are you sure, dummy? You've still got five windows open."

Furthermore, if Safari crashes (and additionally when I quit with open windows), I'd like the option to have those windows automatically restored when I launch Safari next.

None of this would be such a big deal if there weren't sites out there that could flat out cause Safari to crash. And if the DNS resolution worked properly. One time yesterday I had to quit Safari because it couldn't "go" anywhere. Everything else on my computer (ping, traceroute, other browsers, email, AIM) could see and resolve and get to remote hosts of all types, but Safari couldn't. I quit, I relaunched, things "magically" worked. There's a big bug in there somewhere.

Now is your chance to say something about Safari with perhaps the best chance to influence its development, UI, and eventual outcome. David Hyatt is soliciting ideas.

My own list, off the top of my head:

• Better cookie management
• Something "better" than "Tabbed Browsing," but not until the 1.5 or 2.0 release
• No jack of all trades" features
• Integration with syndication aggregators.
• Ability to search other sites or things (like my bookmarks) with the search box
• Persistent spell-checking in all text boxes
• Drag and drop of text
• A timeout longer than 30 seconds
• Great CSS and DOM support - do this first, then build some UI fluff on top of that, but start with the best browser
• Shania Twain
• Better KeyChain integration (more like Safari and Omn's) with some "form filling" features
• Support for "title" attribute with a little floating yellow box
• Display image dimensions when viewing JPEGs, GIFs, PNGs, etc.
• Uhhh… cut me some slack, it's nearly 2am 🙂

Good luck David. This will be interesting to watch, but you asked for it… 😐

P.S. Some items stricken and one quick edit made on June 29, 2004. Safari 1.2 includes the stricken features.

I see this in top when encoding DVDs (specifically: when waiting for the Status to indicate that the Encoder is done creating an MPEG-2 movie):

3282 EncoderSer 101.5%  5:28.78   9   128   222  13.4M+ 7.11M  18.2M+  136M+
3281 TNSPosterS   0.0%  0:00.83   3    52   137   852K  5.82M  2.94M   113M
3280 TNSVideoSe   0.0%  0:00.35   3    48    60   496K  1.65M  1.89M  81.0M
3279 TNSImageSe   0.0%  0:00.40   3    48    62   472K  1.65M  1.88M  81.0M

I'm mostly blogging this so I can remember to look up what "TNS" means tomorrow. "Encoder" makes sense. TNS I don't know…

I just finished burning my first West Wing DVD. It's not a scientific process at all - I have about 12 episodes on my TiVo (and a new one every week) that I'm putting onto DVD, two per disc. I enjoy the show tremendously, but want to regain the use of the space on my TiVo, so for $3 a pop it's worth putting them onto DVDs.

I went all out, too. I took the credits/title screen and stripped out the audio, then compressed it to a nice 30 seconds. I took the 50-second theme song, found a point at which it loops back around at 37 seconds, and sped it up to 30 seconds. Both done, of course, so that I can have a nice 30 second loop, iDVD's limit. The result is a pretty spiffy little title screen if I do say so myself.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 612); »

Honesty is one of those topics people like to think they can be honest about. The truth - honestly - is that nobody is honest more than 80% of the time. Nobody. Honestly.

I long ago accepted that people can't be honest with me. I've even begun to understand the reasons, as well as to trim down my own level of "brutal" honesty. "Yes, your ass looks bigger in that pair of jeans, but that doesn't mean it's not still wonderfully thin, shapely ass!" I say now. 😀 After all, just because I say "bigger" doesn't mean "looks fat."

At any rate, I'll have more to say about this tomorrow, but I've pretty much taken today off from doing any "real" work, including blogging. I'm waiting to hear from both Steff and Danielle, so I hope they call. And now I'm going to go watch some TiVo.

Dell is finally getting rid of the floppy drive on its Dimension computers. I can't remember the last time I saw a floppy disk, let alone used one. I think the last time I used one it was to prop open a door from locking a few years ago in college.

Way to go Dell! And they say Apple isn't leading the charge? They seem to have led the charge to ditch floppies by a good number of years.

The Property List for iMovie3 (com.apple.iMovie3.plist) gives some hints towards escaping the Ken Burns effect:

<key>Option autoApplyPanZoomToImportedStills: %d</key>
<true/>

and

<key>PanZoomEndZoom</key>
<real>1.000000000000000e+00</real>
<key>PanZoomOffsetEndX</key>
<real>0.000000000000000e+00</real>
<key>PanZoomOffsetEndY</key>
<real>-1.907349e-06</real>
<key>PanZoomOffsetStartX</key>
<real>0.000000000000000e+00</real>
<key>PanZoomOffsetStartY</key>
<real>0.000000000000000e+00</real>
<key>PanZoomStartZoom</key>
<real>1.000000000000000e+00</real>

iMovie 3 is pretty awesome. I posted the other day about how it allowed me to capture video from my TiVo flawlessly, not dropping a frame while I checked email, launched applications, and otherwise went about my normal work day. I'm absolutely happy that iMovie 3 is "in a window" instead of "gosh darn it give me that whole screen of yours!" The new effects are awesome, the integration with iTunes and iPhoto are great, and the chapters are a smart addition. That having been said…

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 1186); »

Shortly after my pixellated naked woman entry (see below, or today's archive, or whatever), Nick mocks a silly thing you often see in "crime investigator" shows: the ability to "blow up and enhance" still frames of video. Guess what, folks? The resolution of the film is the resolution you get. It doesn't get any better.

One question that popped into my head last night: why must every CSI and CSI: Miami involve dead people. Am I wrong, or do crime scene investigators apply science to solve bank robberies and other criminal acts (that don't necessarily involve murder)?

Boing Boing pointed at this site which lists 4x5 and 5x7 prints of… big blocky squares of different colors.

Viewed from afar, however, the pictures seem to be of naked women. I've made my own little print here - how this guy thinks he can sell them is beyond me. A little Photoshop work and a good printer and you too can print dirty pictures of large squares! (NB: There's nothing to stop people from creating blocky pictures of the Eiffel Tower or Niagara Falls, either.)

Seems Pragmatic Dave needs to be a bit more diligent in his research. He says that turning on bold fonts in the terminal takes over the CPU and "ls -l /usr/bin hogs the machine for achingly long seconds."

Uhhh,

Vinay points out the silliness of CNN. Apparently our space shuttle is capable of travelling 18 times the speed of light. Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it?

In related news, NASA has gone back in time to make sure the shuttle does not blow up, and to beat Russia into putting a man in space. Oh, and they fixed the NFL postseason so the Steelers win the Super Bowl. Like they should have.

Today's topic: high pressure. For your assignment, visit http://crustacea.nhm.org/~dean2/crab.html.

This is a video taken in 6000 feet of water. An undersea robot is sawing a 1/10" wide slit in a pipeline. The pressure inside the pipeline is 0 psi, while the pressure outside is 2700 psi, or 1.3 tons per square inch. Then a crab comes along…

This reminds me of the quote from Titanic in which the gold digger Bill Paxton says that if the glass went, they'd be dead in about a billionth of a second, crushed by the incoming water. Science is fun. 😛

Today I hooked my TiVo up to my DV camera (a Sony DSR PD-150) with stereo and s-video cables, and from there via Firewire into my Mac. This allowed me to record live TV (or actually, a program I had recorded on my TiVo). I used iMovie 3, and the best darn thing about it being in a window and not full-screen was that I could do other things. I checked my email, I read some PDFs, and in fact I'm typing this while it's finishing up the recording. I even minimized iMovie while it was importing (capturing).

I often use iMovie as a quick "just capture the damn video" app (video is later used in Final Cut Pro). The one button "Import" is awesome. The fact that I can switch apps, hold down menus, move windows, launch apps, etc. without interrupting the capture at all is just one of the many reasons I like Mac OS X more than 9 and now iMovie 3 more than ever.

The only way to grapple with grief is through gratitude.

Thank you Rick Husband, William McCool, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Mike Anderson, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon. Thank you for your will, your courage, your commitment, and your aspirations.