Archive for February, 2006

More Mac Software

Thursday, February 16th, 2006

In the news (/., MacRumors): yet another attempt at malware for your mac. This one’s being touted as a virus but seems to be just a trojan.

Nevertheless, I briefly considered some advice in the MacRumors comments to stop running as an admin user. (See also the explanation of admin user powers in this informative thread.) But I consider myself geeky enough not to double-click something dangerous, so I’ll wait until a real virus starts circulating before I do anything that inconvenient in the name of security.

On the positive side, today I stumbled across HyperJeff’s catalog of OS X Apps while surfing. It’s a huge, unwieldy list, but handy if you want to look up all the mac sudoku apps.

Camino 1.0 Released

Wednesday, February 15th, 2006

I didn’t get to use that beta long: Camino 1.0 has been released. It’s even a Universal Binary, for that one guy whose new MacBook has been delivered.

True Tales of the T: Get Out and Walk

Monday, February 13th, 2006

Lately I’ve noticed that that old T cliche, “shuttle buses are on the way,” has been replaced by a newer, more honest line: “the best way to get there is to walk.”

Last Wednesday night (during rush hour, of course), a disabled train or electrical problems (I heard rumors of both) brought all Green Line service at Government Center to a screeching halt. Cops were everywhere, police tape roped off the westbound track, and the eastbound track (to Lechmere) was being used to run an extra-long shuttle train between Gov’t Center and Park Street.

Anyone actually headed to Lechmere was, as they say, SOL. So the cops were actually telling people to go back outside, walk to Haymarket, and catch an eastbound train there. The weather wasn’t bad, for February, and riding a shuttle between Gov’t Center and Haymarket would take longer than the walk.

Today, however was different. As usual, I crawled out of bed and got onto the Green Line. We made it about as far as Pleasant St. before the conductor announced there was a disabled train in front of us and we’d be moving again in a few minutes. This was already the kiss of commuter death for me, since any delay on the Green Line means I miss my connection downtown and get to wait an hour and half for the next bus to the ‘burbs.

We stood there for a while, then moved a few stops. We gave up the ghost at BU East, moving only to cross the street to the actual platform (and not all the way onto the platform, so that we could only use the front door of the second car to get out). Eventually, after a total delay of about a half-hour, the conductor said the train was going out of service, and tossed off that wonderful line about the best way to get downtown being to walk to Kenmore and catch something there.

Which, on a nice spring day, it might be. The day after 17 inches of snow fell on the city, walking from BU to Kenmore was more of a slushy, slippery challenge. (Of course it was nothing compared to the ‘burbs, where it snows more and no one bothers to shovel the sidewalks.) You’d think with half an hour to work on it, the MBTA could have produced some shuttle buses, but no. Pedestrian power is the new T motto.

I got downtown three-quarters of an hour late, leaving me only three-quarters of an hour for breakfast before the next ‘burb bus. All in all, it was a pretty average day on the T.

At least I’m not the redshirt…

Thursday, February 9th, 2006

You are Jean-Luc Picard

Jean-Luc Picard
70%
Will Riker
65%
Leonard McCoy (Bones)
60%
Data
59%
An Expendable Character (Redshirt)
55%
Uhura
50%
Chekov
50%
Geordi LaForge
50%
Spock
49%
Beverly Crusher
40%
Deanna Troi
40%
Mr. Scott
35%
James T. Kirk (Captain)
30%
Worf
25%
Mr. Sulu
25%
A lover of Shakespeare and other
fine literature. You have a decisive mind
and a firm hand in dealing with others.


Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Quiz

Via Scotty and Redshirt #12.

Camino is Back!

Tuesday, February 7th, 2006

Camino (the OS X web browser formerly known as Chimera) is back with a beta of the long-awaited version 1.0.

I tend to use Safari for my day-to-day browsing, but for the weird stuff like XML (raw or with xlinking) and sites that need BugMeNot, I use a Mozilla browser. Lately, since Camino seemed mired in version 0.8, I’ve been using Firefox, but no more! It’s back to the good old days for me.