Quicksilver b53 for Leopard - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Quicksilver b53 for Leopard - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): "Fortunately, Blacktree's servers are now back up and beta 53 (build 3814) of Quicksilver is available for download (download link)"

Jeff Vader?

(Via Majordojo.)

load cycle count

I am running Leopard on my macbook pro, and I thought it would be interesting to see what the load cycle count on my box was. Mind you, I'm not too knowledgeable about hard drives. Just to play around, I downloaded the smartmon tools and compiled from source.

Running smartctl -a /dev/disk0 I get:
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 097 097 000 Old_age Always - 66403

According to the original article he was at 56000 load cycles! I'm at 66403! Yikes!
I bought the machine in June of this year!

Upon further reading it looks like this might not be an operating system issue.

The following things might instead cause aggressive power management settings :
your (laptop) harddrive firmware might have aggressive power management defaults (operating system independent)
your (laptop) BIOS might set your harddrive to use aggressive power management (operating system independent)
you might have enabled laptop-mode in /etc/default/acpi-support (disabled by default) which will set your harddrive to use aggressive power management

Anyway, I don't think I'm going to really get worried about this any further.

mysqldb on leopard

To get mysqldb working on leopard I found I had to edit _mysql.c and edit out the lines:
#ifndef uint
#define uint unsigned int
#endif

I also had to edit site.cfg and mark threadsafe to False.

What every programmer should know about memory

• What every programmer should know about memory, Part 1 [LWN.net]


• Memory part 2: CPU caches [LWN.net]


• Memory part 3: Virtual Memory [LWN.net]


• Memory part 4: NUMA support [LWN.net]


• Memory part 5: What programmers can do [LWN.net]

Links for 10/29/07 [my NetNewsWire tabs]

• The Little JavaScripter


• Playing with functional programming — Yoan Blanc’s weblog


• ONLamp.com: Building Decision Trees in Python


• rococo - then rubble


• Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: the Ars Technica review: Page 2


• Semi-automatic offline synchronization of a digital media player - Arve Bersvendsen


• Making a Pylons Blog - Pylons Cookbook - PythonWeb

"Open in TextMate" from Leopard Finder – The Pug Automatic

"Open in TextMate" from Leopard Finder – The Pug Automatic: "Download OpenInTextMate.zip, extract the file somewhere (I keep it in /Applications/Scripts), then drag it onto the Finder toolbar. You'll need to wiggle it a bit for the toolbar to catch on."

(Via Simon Willisons blog.)

Quicksilver

Quicksilver: "While the Blacktree site is down, grab it over at the MajorGeeks mirror"

I haven't been able to get to the quicksilver site either. I downloaded a copy from macupdate. You still won't be able to get the plugins downloaded and installed, but you can do that later, when they hopefully fix the site!

Update: read here.

Leopard

Just finished installing a clean copy of leopard. Finally an updated version of Python!

Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Oct 5 2007, 21:08:09)
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5465)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> ^D

llvm 2.0

via Google Video

Git

via Google Video

More Windows Update problems...

techmeme thread

Inside Vmware Fusion

via Youtube

I wonder why they are disabling embedding of videos!

jeff jarvis @ Dell

Jeff Jarvis—Dell Hell: The End?

The difference a couple of years can make! :)

Google's Marissa Mayer on GigaOM show

via Scobles link blog

The interview starts about 9 min into the show.

Implementing Drupal

via Google Video

Robots

Hmm... I was trying to post Roberts video of the robotic helicopter but the embed code keeps giving another video. Anyways... you can watch the video here.

Bill Scott: Designing the Rich Web Experience

via YUI Theater

APML and OPML

In Nick Bradbury's announcement for APML support he says:

For that reason, I proposed an attention namespace for OPML - basically a way to store attention data within OPML. But that idea also never caught on for various reasons.

I wonder what the reasons are for attention name space for OPML not catching on?

Reading Dave Winer's blog I came across this bit:

As Pete Cashmore on Mashable says, it's because the subscriber numbers don't reflect actual readership. The people who subscribed may not even be aware that they are subscribed. Or put another way, we haven't learned yet how to measure what's valuable, we only have the crudest ways to measure value, so crude as to be meaningless.

Wouldn't attention data help to fine tune 'actual readership', making the data more useful?

Links for 10/15/07 [my NetNewsWire tabs]

• Writing An Hadoop MapReduce Program In Python - Michael G. Noll


• Ajax Session Expired Tests


• Nick Bradbury: FeedDemon, NetNewsWire and NewsGator Inbox to Support APML


• XML.com: jQuery and XML

Collaborative Chandler revealed

via Scoble

Testing Metro Wifi

Apparently the wireless node can survive a .22 caliber rifle fire. I found it amusing the kinds of things a wireless node has to put up in public (about 6 minutes in the video)!


via Youtube

The IT doctor is in

via scoble twitter

Memory part 2: CPU caches

Memory part 2: CPU caches

This is the second installment in Ulrich Drepper's "What every programmer should know about memory" document. Those who have not read the first part will likely want to start there.

Update on the Natural Programming Project

via Google Video

Build a computer 101

via Google Video

vista vs. xp

I've been writing some automation scripts using autoit and the script goes through control panel items switching things on and of. I had the two operating systems running virtualized. It was just interesting seeing how the two systems react. The control panel items in XP are way snappier. The windows/dialogs come up fast and their is hardly any delay. The control panel items in Vista use a more webby type interface (I don't know what to call it). They are slow and seem harder to navigate.

Its a subtle difference. But perhaps shows why people might not be happy with Vista. Its these little things that pile up to create an annoying experience. Why is such a simple thing as drawing a control panel item so slow in Vista?

Links for 10/4/07 [my NetNewsWire tabs]

• Slashdot | Adobe Releases Flex Builder Linux Alpha


• Tagging and foldering « Jon Udell


• How To Create a Web App


• Screenshot Tour: Menu Bar Show and Tell - Lifehacker


• NetworkManager 0.7 feature list « /home/liquidat

The Semantic Desktop

via Google Video

Dinosaurs

Chief executive says free software, downloadable online, is on the horizon for consumers.

I was quite shocked to read the line above. I was going to blog about it, but Dare from Microsoft got their first and does a pretty good job:

Over a year ago, I commented that sometimes it feels like working at Microsoft is like working in Dinosaur Country. Every time, I hear the phrase “software as a service” or it’s cousin “software plus services” it makes me feel this way. Most of the people uttering this crap don’t realize that this makes them sound as dated as the old codgers who kept on talking about “horseless carriages” when everyone else called them automobiles or just plain cars.