Tim O’Reilly has some interesting comments on the common notion that Apple is an innovator, Microsoft a copier. His position is that Apple doesn’t really innovate that much more than other companies — what they do is to package and market difficult technologies in such a way that people realize they need them the minute they see them in action — AirPort, Rendezvous… all technologies that were sort of inchoate in the industry — Apple polishes things like this to a high gloss and makes them into fetish objects. By the time MS gets around to similar, it’s clip art.

Example: Tim is especially enamored of Rendezvous, which is impressing me more all the time. The zeroconf spec has been floating out there for a while, but Apple implemented it at the OS level and started building it into apps. Now my browser has automatic, real-time bookmarks to every user’s homepage on every Apache-running Mac on my subnet, iTunes can see the collections of every iTunes user on the home network, and so on.

Aside: Customer Reports on customer satisfaction with Macs.

Update: In the comments, Allistair McMillan points out that Rendezvous actually is an Apple technology - I stand corrected (this takes a bit of the wind out of Tim’s sails as well). FireWire removed from the above list - not sure why that was there to begin with, der.

All my curiosity about whether iTunes 4’s streaming capabilities amounted to webcasting or not turns out to have been on target — version 4.01 is out, and Apple has yanked the feature. Turns out that merely marking the feature “for personal use only” was insufficient — people found ways to list streams for public consumption within weeks. Apple says they’re “disappointed” that a few bad eggs ruined it for everyone else, which strikes me as funny — as if Mac users were a bunch of kids that Apple thought had all grown up, only to discover that, nope, we’re not ready to own a Daisy B-B Gun after all since we still leave our bicycle in the driveway*.

One has to wonder whether Apple’s new relationship with the big labels forced their hand here — I had assumed that the five-listener limit was one of the “reasonable compromises” Apple had reached with the labels, and that they fully knew what they were getting into with this limited form of webcasting. In retrospect, it looks as if either Apple or the labels got cold feet after releasing the feature, and backpedaled. Anyway you slice it, this is disappointing step backwards. I was getting a lot of perfectly legal mileage out of it, too.

Great discussion at MacSlash.

*Sorry for the obscure reference — when I was a kid there was often an ad on the back of comics that showed a kid leaving his bike in the driveway in the path of dad’s car, thus demonstrating he wasn’t yet mature enough to own his first gun.

Went to see Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 3 with Mike, Josh, Minette. Not sure it’s worth trying to describe this experience of astounding unreality (watch the 35MB QuickTime trailer for a shadow of its gorgeous impenetrability). Amy and I had seen bits and pieces of other films in the Cremaster series at museums and had found them tedious, but I realize now the key is to be in the theater, immersed, rather than watching excerpts on video with tired feet in the middle of a museum day. Barney’s stuff has an addictive internal logic, even if it doesn’t connect to the world at large in any meaningful way. I’m still wondering what he and Bjork named their baby.

Between the years 12 and 24, more or less, I lived with a Pioneer PL-A35 turntable. All of my formative musical experiences ran through its tonearm. It was part of the landscape of every bedroom I inhabited. Not sure when or why, but it ended up in my mother’s garage, gathering dust for 15 years. When I rescued it a few months ago, the main bearing was frozen solid. The Sound Well in Berkeley said they had a cut-off point beyond which they refused to work on vintage turntables (parts too scarce), and I didn’t make the cut. They suggested a hole in the wall called Handy Electronics. Finally got there today — one of those places with torn apart toasters and VCRs everywhere. Broken English. But 24 hrs later it’s in perfect working order and I’m reunited with the turntable of my teens. Such a physical feeling to slide an LP from the sleeve. Such a short period of time before you have to turn the damn thing over :)

90-minute power outage in North Oakland this afternoon. Of course I’ve been swearing I’d get a UPS installed soon, and of course we had an outage before I got to it. Just the kick in the pants I needed — I’ll be ready for the next one. Sorry about the downtime.

Is it just the SF Bay Area, or this happening everywhere? In the eight months since Miles was born, I haven’t met a single baby named John, Michael, Amy, Cathy, etc. “Normal” names are just plain old out the window. The babies in Amy’s mommies group are named:

Asa
Eliana
Miles
Simone
Ariel
Amelia
Shiva
Liam
Ruby

Is it the same deal in Durham, Fort Lauderdale, Madison, Akron… ?

Unplug the mouse from the right side of your keyboard and into the left (or vice versa). Use it. Not just for 30 seconds but all day long. Shocking how difficult this, like mirror writing. Start by feeling like you’re stumbling across the surface of the moon. Then move on to more subtle annoyances, like wishing scrollbars were on the other side of windows. Overall, it’s a realization of just how lopsided your brain/body patterns have become with time (I’ll wager this experiment is harder the longer you’ve been using computers).

Creeping pain in forearms/elbows has me looking for ways to minimize onset of RSI difficulties.

The finest in cat costumery, these Japanese feline threads are guaranteed to impress the most discriminating haberdashers. Nice Engrish, too!

It is made from the two-tone felt cloth of yellow and orange, and even if it takes, it is finished to the pop impression. Please observe the feather of the chicken currently attached to the both sides of a hat.

—

For the first time since the image went up in 1994, I have been asked how to obtain permission to republish the big boot. Answer: It’s clip-art. Go to town.

Beginning to plan for the move, and decided it was time to do something about all the CDs in this house. If we listened to one CD a day, we wouldn’t repeat a song for about four years. I like having lots of music at my fingertips, but the space sacrifice for all these CDs is silly. Now that Amy is comfortable with the SliMP3, and now that I have the Wiebetech for large-scale backup, and now that iTunes has lifted the 32,000 track limit, decided to get serious about digitizing and selling off discs. The initial goal is to get rid of 1/3 the CDs in the house, which means a miniature emotional battle fought over each one - I’m very good at justifying why any particular disc I haven’t heard for five years is still important. Nevertheless, making good progress. This will get harder after cherry-picking the low-hanging fruit (nicely mangled metaphor). Sticking with 192kbps for almost everything, dipping to 160 for pre-1960s low-fi stuff.

Some initial concern about high-voltage power lines near our new house and associated possible cancer risks from electromagnetic fields. This was a hot topic in the mid 90s, then died down by the late 90s. People probably got tired of results being so inconclusive.

The National Cancer Institute produced its own epidemiological study in 1997 which found no association between childhood leukemia and measured magnetic fields. As a follow-up to this report, The New England Journal of Medicine published the results of this study along with an editorial calling for an end to wasting money on EMF research.

Today our home inspector went back and took some readings:

Magnetic Field readings in milligauss on my TriField Meter - 5/25/03

1 at my desk, 2 feet from computer screen, 4 feet away from 3 florescent bulbs.

10 touching my computer screen.

100 about 6 inches from the center of a florescent bulb.

100 about 3 feet away from the high-voltage power lines on the outside of the power pole.

100 where you turn off from Moeser into the Safeway parking lot.

10-20 on the sidewalk along the side of the house on Richmond

20 driving up Moeser under the high voltage power lines.

Once again, I find myself replying to email with the following boilerplate response:

Hi - To ask for permission to link to a resource on my site or anywhere on the web demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what the web is, how it is built, and what makes it work. I decline permission because it is not mine to give. On the other hand, if you do not ask me, then of course you have permission — that’s the way it’s supposed to work. If people had to ask permission every time they linked to something, the web would never have come to exist, would never operate as an open exchange of ideas and information. Imagine if every synapse in your brain had to ask permission to make a connection with any other synapse. If something is online, you are free to link to it, end of story. Please read this for more information.

philm points out that the BBC has done a piece on misheard lyrics which refers to my own sadly neglected kissthisguy. Weird quotes in there about how sites like mine are technically illegal, which makes no sense since kissthisguy only quotes 3 or 4 lines from songs, not entire lyrics.

Mena Trott sent out info today (no URL) on how development of TypePad is going to affect existing Movable Type users. Roughly, they’re shooting for 100% API compatibility, which means existing posting tools will continue to work, plugins should work with either service, etc. I might have missed it in the past few weeks, but screenshots of the coming service are now up on the TypePad site, and looking dynamite. Integrated photo albums even. Wish I could have covered the service in the MacWorld blogging article I turned in a few weeks ago (look for it in the July issue).

Update: According to a post of Mena’s all TypePad entries will be rendered purely in buttons.

Speaking of MacWorld, recently learned that my article for them on setting up OS X as a PHP/MySQL rig won a regional ASPBE award for Best How-To article. Official announcement June 12.

Had our home inspection this morning. Four hours poring over every little detail with a fine-tooth comb. Like wearing X-ray Specs, seeing the place from an angle you never see at an open house — couldn’t believe how much there is to look for that you don’t know to look for if you never looked for it before. How are these gutters mounted? Where does this mystery pipe lead? How are the steps supported? Any sprinklers clogged? Does the hood over the stove actually blow smoke? And so on… Didn’t know toilet tank lids have dates stamped inside — usually the best way to date a house (one of ours stamped ‘42, the other ‘47 — probably the original owner had to wait for the war to end to install a 2nd bath).

Hands and knees and into the crawlspace to check the foundation, slither on belly, head full of spiderwebs to see foundation etc.

Short story: No showstoppers, but enough projects revealed themselves to last a year of weekend DIY.

J-School conference over. These things are always so exhausting. A week of 14-hour days. We pack so much into such a short period of time — training mid-career journalists in Photoshop, iMovie, Final Cut, Pro Tools, DreamWeaver, and putting it all together, on top of all the live events. Always a grueling process, but always satisfying. We’re rapidly becoming a well-oiled machine. I’ll never again take conferences for granted - SO much goes into them behind the scenes.

Two hours ago we heard a lot of yelling and some glass breaking right outside our house (the one we rent). Ran outside and saw two 20-somethings running away. Our neighbor was running/limping into his house. Knocked on his door and found him bleeding profusely from the nose. He said it was broken. Called 911 and then took him to the ER. He said the two guys attacked without warning, just started wailing on him. He didn’t refuse their robbery, but was attacked anyway.

The last two weeks have seen a huge uptick in the number of drug deals going down half a block up; cars pulling up in the middle of the street and idling for five minutes, kettle drum speakers thudding our windows half a block away. We and several other neighbors have been finding hypodermic needles on the sidewalks. No question in my mind this was an attack for drug money. Told the OPD I’m now afraid to leave my house and afraid for my wife and baby and can we please have extra patrols on this stretch. The dispatcher said she would put the word out.

You’d never guess it during the day. We live on a lovely tree-lined street, most neighbors maintain their yards, people like each other. The neighborhood feels good. But always just under the surface this perpetual crap and ugliness.

As we were driving to the ER, my neighbor said through the bloody rags covering his face, “I try so hard not to have racist thoughts.”

… and … soooo …. Amy and I won the bid (six offers) and bought a house! (the El Cerrito one). We’re homeowners. In debt for life. Legitimate grown-ups. Excited and nervous. Hell of a day. More later.

In the middle of the conference, had the good fortune to be invited out with a video crew to interview professor Charles Benton and his giant kites (I posted about Kite Aeriel Photography a couple weeks ago). Unfortunately almost zero wind today. “The kite always goes up,” Charlie said. And it was true, the kites went up despite seemingly still air. 14′ wingspan on one of them — though it weighed only two pounds — carbon fiber and sheer dakron. But couldn’t get enough lift to get a camera more than 15′ off the ground… just wouldn’t happen, apparently a rarity. Didn’t matter though — he was fascinating to be around — observations on architecture intertwined with his kite love. A man with eyes on stalks. Someday I’m going to hang a camera from a kite with Miles…

We were flying from Memorial Grove, to the side of the Campanile. Charles pointed out this incredible fly-around QuickTime (38MBs) by Paul Debevec. You always see and hear about how the cinematic techniques used in The Matrix changed the face of action flicks; now you can see where those techniques originated. I ride by The Campanile on my to work each morning, will never see it quite the same way.

OS X client doesn’t include useradd or groupadd utils, probably as small encouragement to spring for OS X Server. That means that if you do a colo with OS X client, you’re screwed if you need to add users. OSXUserUtils fixes that (use the -m flag to override a dir creation bug in this version).

You can run repair permissions from the command line, i.e. via cron job.

Show Desktop: The best thing about Windows, now available for the Mac (be sure to enable the menu bar option).

Lars Duening left a very detailed comment on the Drive Dock post, with his observations on the comparative user experience between Aqua and X11/KDE.

In the midst of the season’s 2nd big multimedia training conference for mid-career journalists at the J-School, and once again we’re webcasting the heck out of it. Lots of good stuff on charging for online content, putting multimedia into practice, etc. And another thrilling week of 12-14 hr days for me.

Off to a great start this morning — a fiber cut chopped our connectivity half the weekend and into late today, air conditioning failed (it’s hot!), Final Cut wouldn’t launch on some machines (video driver issues), a guest speaker cancelled at the last minute… but all the major crises now extinguished and we’re rolling. Forgive me if I don’t answer mail for a while….

Back in the house hunt full swing, spending every Sunday traipsing up and down the East Bay, mostly getting dismayed but holding out hope. Today found two places that turned our cranks, though in very different ways.

House A is in Berkeley. We had mostly given up on being able to afford Berkeley, though we put a big premium on living “close in” to shops and good living. Fantastic neighborhood. 10 minutes hanging out with the neighbors and already feel like their friends. House is a little red farmhouse. Inside it’s a blank slate, ready to become whatever we make of it. Strangely configured, but all potential. The downside (there’s always a downside) is that it’s small. Smaller than what we’re renting. That’s a hard pill to swallow. We would have to simplify, get creative.

House B is in El Cerrito. 1950s ranch style. Turnkey, ready to move into. Has a good vibe and is open and spacious. Lots of room to spread out, grow into. Neighborhood feels safe. 5 minutes from Wildcat Canyon for great hiking. Downside: It’s out in June and Ward Cleaver land. The nearest shops are a Jack in the Box, a party supply store, auto row, and a strip mall. Nothing worth walking to. The street it’s on is busier. Biking to work would be harder.

Swallow the red pill, and see how deep the rabbit hole goes…

We love them both, but in very different ways. So we’re going to bid on both — a process that has to be undertaken carefully (there’s always the remote danger one could win both bids). Crossing fingers but not too tightly… but we’re SO ready for this endless process to move on to the next phaser… It’s been 18 months since we started looking, though we skipped the 6 months around Miles’ birth.

<curmudgeon mode>
If the past century has represented an ongoing exchange of quality for convenience (an admittedly pessimistic, but probably supportable view), I can think of no realm where we have exchanged more quality for more convenience than that of the phone call. It seems half the calls I get these days come from cell phone users, and a frustrating proportion of those calls are static-y, have random drop outs, are too quiet, get weird cross-talk, etc. Sometimes we get cut off in the middle and somebody has to call somebody back.

In almost every area of technology, things are immeasurably better than they were 30 years ago. But the worst phone problems we had in 1970 were the occasional “party line” x-over — hearing a bit of your neighbor’s conversation. Three decades later, with the actual phone hardware evolving at an incredible clip, every other phone call has become an exercise in frustration. Why can’t the carriers evolve their networks as quickly as their phones? Are they cutting corners, or are there unsolvable problems to solve?
</curmudgeon mode>

Working bit by bit on a PHP/MySQL customer tracking / service management / invoicing system for birdhouse hosting over the past couple of weeks. An hour here and there in the evenings and it’s coming together, slowly but surely. Between this and a professor / bio / course / description / location / scheduling system just completed for the jschool, and I’m learning a lot about many-to-many table design lately (intermediate reference tables).

It seems like Amy has photographed mostly Miles for the past eight months, but lately she’s been returning to her art more frequently. Now she’s working digitally rather than analog (we converted her darkroom into Miles’ bedroom a year ago). She was shooting this beet last night.

(When I narrated this to her just now she thought I said “She was shooting speed last night.“)

Outside my office door, students walk past, sometimes I can hear their cell phone conversations. Today, a beautiful day. Sun shining, air crisp, pine trees swaying. And I hear a student barking, nearly yelling into a phone:

“Sorry, I’m stuck in traffic. Yeah, it’s bumper to bumper. It’s going to be a while.”