27 Nov
   Filed Under: Unfiled   

Thanks a lot, guys!

featureddownload-nov2720072.jpg

31 Oct
   Filed Under: Unfiled   

October 2007 has changed a lot around here; the blog redesign, a whole new series of posts and a very large increase in traffic for the fourth time (in the short while it’s been around). A small roundup of articles of the last month and thoughts on the ‘transition’.

The Delicious Library 2 preview I posted up has been followed up today by new screenshots over at Wired. I can’t say I am too impressed looking at the screenshots, but I guess only actually using an application makes for a good judgement.

My graphical look at Final Cut Server was followed up by quite a few emails concerning Apple’s ‘icon rage’ lately. It seems Leopard’s gotten a lot of love (save perhaps the Expose and Spaces icons) but some applications were left out with pretty bad icon work.

And then there was the Dock frenzy after Leopard hit the stores; in the meantime, we’ve seen large-scale customization and even complete disabling of the newfangled Dock. Some (slightly) acceptable modifications struck my eye on Macthemes’ forum today (click images to go to the release in question);

I still have my fingers crossed for a nice application that lets you customize the Dock easily – perhaps I’ll even start using it again.

With a few other minor posts this month, I’d say it has been a very nice lineup of news, curious little developments and interesting things. Your input on how I have been changing the blog is welcome as always, although I’ll mention in advance that I intend to keep up the posting as you’ve seen lately, with occasional personal bits in between a succession of the things that pique my interest.

comments off
22 Jun
   Filed Under: Unfiled   

Quicksilver’s been one of my most loved and used applications for a long while now, and the single driving force for it’s continuous rule of my desktop is it’s fantastic community development. I can inject a python interpreter into anything, I interface with my entire computer while Quicksilver’s actually smoking, and above all, I can do without thinking. I can ‘instinctively’ tap a few keys and Quicksilver knows what I want.

Ankur Kothari, first responsible for the awesome Fumo interface for Quicksilver that actually smokes, and making an awesome, full-fledged how-to and Xcode project that can help you out if you are interested in making your own Quicksilver interface (which was very handy to me), now has made a plugin that does something that I instantly thought of was kick-ass; it plugs into Quicksilver and lets you set some of it’s animations; including several of Quicksilver’s new, and cool effects. If you run Quicksilver, I suggest checking out this how-to and the plugin itself. It’s made me even more appreciative of Ankur’s great efforts to help all of us Quicksilver-veterans up-to-date with some awesome new features, looks, and ways to operate your computer.

Here’s a little movie. Please, Ankur, continue work on this, if you need some work where graphics are involved, let me know. Give him an email or comment to show your support for his awesome efforts over all this time.

13 Jun
   Filed Under: Unfiled   

I really, really can’t stay behind if even the Finder decides to use Coverflow. So I decided to add a coverflow interface to a project; Randleaf, the OpenGL abstract graphics generator has been command-line for a while, so I am working on getting it a bit fancy enough for public demo’ing. This really clicks into the great announcement I will be making today, so stay tuned.

08 Jun
   Filed Under: Unfiled   

cocoiacomm.png

Well, the news is out; no Praetorian before WWDC. I can’t give out a beta that would really be a close call to be called an ‘alpha’. I’ll keep all testers informed over the next few weeks and what I think is a realistic new date to set for the first beta release.

comments off
06 Jun
   Filed Under: Unfiled   

You know, Iljitsch van Beijnum posted here today, and it reminded me of a funny thing that keeps coming up if I speak to some people that took my how-to on securing your Mac serious. Iljitsch does a lot of articles on IPv6 over at Ars Technica and he’s written up quite a lot on it (in print too). Check out is website and his books.

For the uninitiated; we use IP numbers on a network as an address. The number space of IPv4 has shown to be too limited for our growth (if you want to read more into this, check this out).
IPv6 is, for the semi-geek, an extremely scary concept because it makes them feel like all their knowledge of networking will become obsolete. The ‘long and complex’ number system and all of it’s features (that are really, really much nicer to use than the old decimal ones once you get around it) are subject to much critique in any IPv6-related Slashdot post. Over and over again, it’s supposed ‘pitfalls’ are exposed. I was extremely surprised to find that when I spoke to some people that followed my how-to (which Iljitsch put on Ars Technica appropriately as “Make your Mac more secure (than you can stand)” ), that when I brought up using IPv6 with IPSec-enabled services is quite secure – more so than conventional IPv4, of course, they pointed me to my how-to, that told them to disable IPv6. I really slapped myself to the forehead when I heard that from more than three people who took it to the heart.

What I suggested is that you disable IPv6 if you don’t use it. IPv6 is pretty cool. It’s not a gaping security hole, but I touched on any hypothetical avenue for attack that you can take away from the default configuration. Who knows, there might be a zero-day exploit out there that does do nasty stuff but breaks if you disable IPv6 (which I strongly doubt – but it’s a quantum universe we live in). Please don’t hesitate to adopt IPv6 if you feel like learning about it. It’s knowledge that you will, no doubt, have to use in the future anyway.

So apparently, IPv6 has some identity issues. We really need to get rid of the negative image. KAME has been doing that well, as well as the “ASCII Star Wars in your terminal” server towel.blinkenlights.nl. However, let’s keep showing people that IPv6 isn’t all that scary, but i
t’s a great step into the future of our communication technologies. For that, a little icon.

ipv6.jpg