One.

The ambient light sensor on the MacBook is fucking awesome, and I love it, and I especially love the backlit keyboard. But I know those little sensors aren’t expensive, which begs the question of why they didn’t put two or fucking three of them in here to more accurately determine when it’s dark, versus when my fingers are blocking the sensor.

Perhaps I type incorrectly, and my fingers aren’t supposed to arch that much. Perhaps there’s a place I can put my computer in these situations that alleviates the problem. Perhaps I just shouldn’t be lazy and should just turn off the auto adjustment in the Display preferences when I’m in these sorts of situations.

But that’s bullshit. I shouldn’t have to do anything… a second sensor would alleviate these issues by recognizing the difference between actual low light conditions and intermittent blockage of the sensor.

Two.

Why the fuck can’t I make playlists out of Podcasts? What makes them so fundamentally distinct from music tracks that creating a customized list of them that I’d like to play is unsupported? For that matter, why can’t I even re-sort my podcasts by title, or reverse the date order? Again, they don’t seem that different from music tracks to me.

The issue stems from a Japanese education podcast to which I subscribe that produces, simultaneously, podcasts for Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert, supplemental podcasts on special topics, video podcasts that are either isolated or are video reviews of the audio podcast of the same title, etc. etc. But the only way iTunes, or my iPhone, can sort or manage these is in strict chronological order. That sucks. I want to watch only beginner ones now, and will want to do the intermediate ones next. I should be able to filter them, at minimum by creating an appropriate playlist for them.

And since I’m on the topic, why can’t I make smart playlists on my iPod, or at least my iPhone, which has a full goddamn keyboard. This sort of shit should be trivial.

Three.

Where’s my copy/paste functionality on my iPhone. For fucks sake.

Open letter to Apple.

This morning, I was disgusted to find the news riddled with a report that Apple is misogynistic. As a woman, I find it repulsive that you are encouraging a bias against my taloned sisters. For centuries women have been conditioned to embrace the least conducive ways of living as a method to render us useless. The most useless among us win the best mates and the distinction of success.

We are, at our core, property. The more unnatural our bodies, the more assured of our position we become. Nail modification is a realistic place to start. Not only is it affordable but it, with practice, can become one of the first things noticeable about our bodies. Having acrylic so long that one cannot grasp a can of beer without puncturing it creates an aura of helplessness that traps many a hapless male. It is the start of a cycle that renders us the most illustrious of possessions. And as living property, we must be afforded the best of everything.

The iPhone, if I must descend to reveal, is certainly one of the most sought after little pastimes. It is a mark of appeal and of elitism. One must beg the question why it and women aren’t made for each other. For it to make nails a handicap is unforgivable. How dare you try to damage this time honored practice of female inferiority by creating a phone that cannot respond to our acrylic glory.

Fuck you Apple, and your little phone too.

I take back all the nice things I said about the iPhone.

Leopard’s release will be delayed half a year because of it.

However awesome the iPhone may be, its batteries won’t last long enough for it to download your Google Map on lo-speed mobile internet anyway.

Screw it.

As ready as I was to call “gimmick” on the iPhone, as I did (and still do) with iPod Video, I gotta say that this iPhone looks like the real deal — useful as well as stylish. But here is where I’ll observe something unprecedented: Japan’s cell phone industry just got outplayed by an American!!

This is a watershed event and a joyous moment for the mobile consumer: American cell phones have long been laughably primitive compared to Japan’s. I’m now very curious to see what the rest of the American market does to keep up.

Including moderation.

Friends, TSN readers, and really anyone who’s ever chatted with me for longer than 10 minutes knows that I’m a bit of an apple fanatic (It’s even mentioned in the my sidebar description (am I really that bad?!)). So you can all understand my excitement today when I received my shiny new apple 23-inch cinema display and quad core 2.66 GHz Mac Pro.

For those keeping track at home (and those who can’t identify all the hardware by sight alone (what’s wrong with you people?)):

1 x 17-inch 2.16 GHz Dual core Mac Book Pro
1 x 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5
1 x 2.66 GHz quad core Mac Pro
1 x 17 inch crappy IBM monitor
1 x old school apple sticker to cover the ugly IBM logo
1 x 17 inch old school apple CRT display
1 x sexy new 23 inch cinema display
1 x sexy sounding Grado SR125 headphones
1 x Apple Mighty Mouse

So yeah.. I feel like a pretty lucky guy to have scored a very cool job, with very cool people, using very cool apple hardware, to do very cool things (give people seizures with blinking lights).

Anybody read the New York Times article An Apple-Google Friendship, and a Common Enemy? Apparently, Eric Schmidt (chief exec of Google) is now an Apple board member.

Snippets:

But Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Jobs, both 51, share a common outlook: that computing technologies can be remarkably disruptive forces in business and in society at large.

At Apple and at Pixar, the digital movie studio that flourished under him, Mr. Jobs has forced the recording industry and Hollywood to follow his lead in selling products in the digital world. His alliance with the Walt Disney Company — whose board he joined this year after Disney bought Pixar for $7.4 billion — has given him added leverage.

Now, by moving Apple a step closer to Google, with its command over online advertising, Mr. Jobs may be positioning Apple to play an even more influential role in the converging worlds of media and computing.

This arose my curiousity — who else is on the Apple board, I wonder? Why, Former VP Gore is there, along with five other gentlemen of elevated importance, including the Chairman and cheif exec of J.Crew. The Times continues their article by suggesting that Schmidt’s appointment renders heavy interest in Google through advisery positions (eg, Gore) directorships held by now half of Apple’s eight board members.

Mr. Schmidt’s appointment set off chatter about linking the Google search engine to iTunes..

Doing a websearch didn’t illuminate anything more, but the Times is spot on that someone will be taking advantage of the connections in the boardroom.

(Anyone who wants to read the article without setting up a NY Times account, log in as supernicety and use the password “password”.)

If you’ve worked with a source code management system like subersion/cvs in Xcode, you might know that FileMerge.app is no good. It’s shiny with it’s bezier curves, but overall is wholly inadequate. It doesn’t handle line endings correctly. Here’s a way to make xcode use TextWrangler for doing diff’s.

1) Download and install TextWrangler (TW) from BareBones.
2) If you didn’t install the command line tools when you first started TW, install them by going to Preferences->Tools and click on “Install Command Line Tools”
3) Create a script file with this inside:

#!/bin/sh

echo Comparing:
echo $1
echo $2
twdiff “$1″ “$2″

4) Make sure the script is set executable (use “chmod u+x” on the command line)
5) In xcode, go to preferences->SCM select “Other” from the Vie comparisons using drop box and point it to the script.

I’m pretty sure I’m preaching to the choir here at The Supernicety, but in case you are not a regular, or missed r’s post on required OSX apps, Quicksilver is in my opinion, the most useful app you can download for OSX. In this post, I want to focus on using quicksilver key triggers in conjunction with applescript to increase the functionality of your system.

Regardless of your choice of OS, most everyone can agree that the keyboard is always faster than the mouse. With this in mind, I introduce a simple generic applescript that when used in conjunction with Quicksilver, allows the user to open and close nearly any application with a single keystroke.

Installation:

1. Install Quicksilver
2. Enable “Access for assistive devices” under System Preferences -> Universal Access.
3. Install THESE SCRIPTS by unpacking them and copying the ones you want to use to ~/Library/Scripts.
4. In the Quicksilver preferences window, enable triggers for each script.
5. Enjoy!

Looking around my apartment I see rumpled clothes in random piles on the floor, empty boxes stacked in the corner, and chaos everywhere. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Nearly everyone I know is already aware of this, but I have accepted a job in Dallas that I am very excited about. The job involves doing development of lighting control systems with a company called Production Resource Group.

Question: What exactly is a lighting-control system?

Answer: A system that is used to big scale lighting systems that have many lights running at a time. The last time you went to a concert, did you ever take a look at the lights and wonder how they moved in sync with the music? I will soon find out.

Long story short, I am very excited about the new position. I will be developing software in cocoa using xcode on a mac to make things blink and move in time to music. Much more importantly, the new job places me within 8 miles of where B works. I am excited because it combines many things I am passionate about, Computers, Electronics, Music/Movies/Theater, Macintosh, and B.

And that is why my apartment is a total mess. I am beginning to pack and readying my mind and soul for the new journey ahead. In the past, people have told me that I’m lucky. In most cases I deny it, but right now I feel like they are right. Through some luck, a little work (though not too much), and a lot of love and support from the people close to me, I’ve arrived at a place where I am able to get interesting jobs where I want, (more or less) when I want. It’s a good feeling.

r: holy crap this “we are apple” video on tuaw is sooooo bad
k: haven’t watched it — sounds wack
r: mother of god, its unbelievable
r: it reminds me of why i hated the 80s SO very much
r: you really have to watch it — with audio
k: about to

(more…)

apples in glass cubes and tt’s in silver…

(via Tuaw)