Ten Cents on the Dime

Did anyone else catch this odd little rumor? (from macosrumors.com)

Also, the QT codebase will be made even more ‘platform-agnostic’ in preparation for a Linux version of QuickTime.

Preach on, Mr. T. Preach on.

Conroe (Core 2 Duo) ship date: July 23.
Apple Worldwide Developers Conference: August 7-11.

Not that we weren’t all expecting a Mac Pro at WWDC, but this is a nice bit of rumor reinforcement.

Finally pulled into town about 3am, and (of course) immediately hit traffic, backed up about halfway up the bridge…got into the Bronx only to find that my supposedly 24-hour parking garage is (of course) gated and locked. Cruised around looking for parking, and found a spot that I could sit in until 7:00…so now I get to head out around 6:30 and pray the garage is open. As a consequence, I am now sitting on my kitchen floor eating breakfast and blogging. There’s no point in trying to sleep – in the state I’m in, it’d be instant coma, and I’d wake up in the afternoon needing to track down my car, which would certainly have been towed by then, with the luck I’m having tonight. Not happy at all with the way this last trip back to NYC is starting. Thankfully, I can at least unplug the toaster to plug in my laptop.

Exactly why didn’t I stay in Middletown, again?

From the ever-optimistic Tina, in the ever-fabulous Wapsi Square:

“The world’s a scary place if you don’t know how to see it right!”

(Original strip here.)

Today: troubleshooting World of Warcraft connection problems, some packing, maybe dinner out if I’m feeling truly sassy…

While it’s been hard to ignore the iPod ads (or the iPod in general) over the last couple of years, I really hadn’t realized how much my beloved Apple has become a rock star company. That changed in a big (and loud) way tonight. On my way home, I decided to take a pass by the new Apple Store Fifth Avenue, and see this odd little cube everybody’s been talking about. (I’d like to take this moment to apologize for the post title…although really, when else am I going to get to use it?) From a block away, it was already clear this was a bad idea. The line ran down to the corner and wrapped back onto 58th Street…I wouldn’t be surprised if at least a few times during this opening day, it makes it all the way back to Madison. It was an EVENT, with people lined up like they were waiting to see Letterman or buy Stones tickets. There was screaming every time a new group of folks got go in. There were cameras, barricades and security guards. And a big, glass cube with an Apple logo in it. It’s a quite disconcerting experience to realize that you’ve inadvertently become trendy.

Wow, it has been a while!  The blogging pace will improve shortly, I'm sure…but a few quick notes to catch up to the present.
First off, I'm writing this from the latest version of BonEcho (Firefox 2.0a2), and this may actually replace Safari.  Not only is it (again) feeling more stable than any alpha has a right to, it's also the only browser I have that can display all of the little buttons here, including the sorely missed source editor! (Not exactly true, the SVN builds of WebKit/Safari can, but this I don't have to run from the command line…)

On the software front, it's also been an OS-installing week, with both the expected OpenSUSE 10.1 Final and the unexpected Kubuntu Flight-7, which is in theory the last release before the 6.06 RC.  Both have been nicely, happily stable so far, which means it's about time to mess with them.  For Kubuntu, that's going to be hacking on knetworkmanager and trying to figure out why it doesn't like to connect to a WPA network with my bcm43xx-based card (has to be in network-manager somewhere, since I can connect properly by running wpa_supplicant from the command line).  OpenSUSE is also getting bcm43xx-related tweaking, I'm going to try and build a 2.6.17rc4 kernel, and see how the current work on the driver is going.  May also try and get network-manager building from CVS again, and see if that fixes some of the wireless issues.

(Editorial – while looking up a bug in n-m, I discovered that there is a small program to create a password-locked file called Gringotts…*giggles*)

Looking very forward (although it's still another 6-8 months in the future) to moving over to an x86 Mac…while it's not quite that I feel like a second-class citizen on Linux/ppc, there are a lot of things that don't have PowerPC versions/don't work on ppc.  *grumble*Flash*grumble grumble*

Will have Once On This Island related stuff, pics, reviews, etc. up soon, but for the moment, just know that it's up and running and people seem to be liking it so far…but right now, my brain is locked into getting back into the Wayside game.  (Ok, that and the Baby Rap…but that's just 'cause it makes my brain hurt.  Why doesn't GarageBand loop cleanly?  Why?  I don't wanna use Logic for this thing!)  I have missed you guys, and even with all the traveling *grumble grumble* I'm thrilled to be getting back.

To bed now, but I shall leave you with some fun from the delightful A Softer World.

L. Gabrielle Penabaz, via Warren Ellis:

A few weeks ago I went to the Porno Jim Show. My favorite quote of the night was from one of the video clips, where a nubile porn actress confessed behind the scenes: “I’m doing anal today so I can buy a puppy”.

The unthinkable has happened: Lucasfilm is releasing the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD. I do now for you a little dance.

More after I survive opening (less than 24 hours!), and life begins to settle a bit. [Yeah, like that's gonna happen-Ed.]

Sorry for the lack of amusing updates, folks (or any updates at all, for that matter)…rehearsal has been running over me with a truck, it feels like… Watching some Doctor Who in the last couple hours I’ve got before I run for tech, which…well, let’s cross fingers and see…

Spent a little too much yesterday on a new shirt for pit-wear, but as it was American-made and sweatshop free, from American Apparel, and since there’s no tax on clothing in Manhattan, ’twas well worth it.

But for the moment…shower, library, bank, programming, rehearsal…at some future point, maybe even figure out my life…