Clever Name TBD

Over the past month or so, I've been hearing a lot about this app called QuickSilver, and how it's much better than LaunchBar.

For those unfamiliar with the two, LaunchBar is possibly the best $20 I've ever spent on computer stuff. Most of the software I use these days is either built-in to Mac OS X or free, so except for a couple of games and a few must-haves (eg. Quicken, PhotoShop), I don't buy a lot of software. I do, however, buy small utilities that add a lot of value for a good price. NetNewsWire, for example, is a cool app, but it's not $40 cool. At $20, it'd be a no-brainer. At $40, never mind. LaunchBar is beyond no-brainer; I have to have it. At $20, it would be simply criminal for me not to have it.

I should tell you why. It's actually hard to describe, and, in fact, my friend Max tried to sell me on it three times before I reallized how insanely cool it is. The basic idea is that you enter a hot key (default is command-space) to activate it, then you enter a few characters, and a list of files, applications, contacts, bookmarks, etc. on your system with those letter in it shows up. You select the one you want and it launches that app, or create an email to that contact, or opens that document, etc. No hunting around in Finder. Not having to remember where it is. No leaving the keyboard for the mouse. I even use it to switch between open documents; not figuring out where that window went.

Payam offers his own explanation.

Anyway, there's a new kid on the block, QuickSilver, which does a lot of what LaunchBar does, plus a bunch of extras. And so I've been hearing about how everyone is jumping ship from LaunchBar to QuickSilver. I, however, kept the faith, because I'm too hooked on LaunchBar to toss it just like that. And now I've been vindicated.

Launchbar 4 Beta 1 is out, and it's pretty damned sweet. I can search web sites from within the bar. I can run Unix commands and specify arguments from within the bar. The configuration panel is simpler, though you lose the LaunchBar 3 config. QuickSilver has no configuration, which is in some ways a win for simplicity, but it sucks when you want control over what gets indexed. And I want control. LaunchBar rocks.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 02:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (2)

My airplane finally got out of the shop after a year-long excursion into the joys of zealous maintenance, so I basically let a year pass without flying. Since the plane got back into service, I've been working on getting my profiency back up to snuff, which mostly boils down to flying a lot for practice.

This includes specific operations required in order to satisfy regulations that would otherwise prohibit me from certain other operations because I am not longer current (that is, I am out of practice as defined by FAA regulations). For example, I can't carry passengers unless I've landed a plane 3 times in the past 90 days, and can't carry passengers at night unless I've landed at night in the past 90 days. Having done that, I could, for example, fly Payam and Sugam to Columbia for a great night of sightseeing and unexpected starvation.

I'm also in the process of training to take what's called an instrument proficiency check (IPC), which is a test for pilots who are certified for instrument flight (in low or zero visibility weather) but are not current. As a result, I'm studying for the part of the test where my instructor grills me on procedures, regulations, and whatnot.

I have an excellent book which I used when I was training for the IFR ticket (certification) called Instrument Pilot Flight Traning Manual by Ralf Butcher, which I highly recommend. I also have a book from McGraw Hill called Instrument Flying Handbook. This is a thick and intimidating looking book which I haven't yet read much of, but it looks pretty good from a quick scan.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The Democratic National Committee has a new web log. It's called Kicking Ass. Gotta love that.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Another nugget from Mateo's blog: Tickle.com has an IQ test. It's kind of fun, if you like solving problems.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mateo notes that you can watch the 9/11 commission hearings online on C-SPAN. Richard Clarke's testimony is hot stuff.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 04:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've repackaged everything on my iDisk. Instead of providing binary tarballs, I'm now providing native Mac OS X Installer packages wrapped in Internet-enabled disk images (which means Disk Utility will try to replace them with their contents, which would be the installer package, rather than mount them). Thanks to Bill for getting the ball rolling on that.

I now have a script which downloads the sources from the project web sites, builds them, and packages them. Eventually, it'll be a smaller script with a config file for each package, as I clean things up. This is turning into yet another ports system. The difference being that this one uses the native (though less-than-cool) installation system and doesn't require you to buy into a new thing.

I'm now only building released versions of software, except for Apache APR, for which I'm building the version included in the last released Apache HTTPD, because Subversion and HTTPD both require development versions of APR until the APR folks finally release 1.0.

Subversion is updated from 1.0.0 to 1.0.1. As before, you'll need to install several packages to get a working Subversion, as Subversion depends on several libraries and so on.

I'm considering how to add multi-package Installer bundles which include everything, but I'd like to avoid having to copy the individual packages into one big archive, because I'd like to be able to download and install them individually as well, plus my iDisk is filling up…

My iDisk public folder is mountable in Finder as http://idisk.mac.com/wsanchez/Public/. If you want to browse to it with Safari, go to http://www.wsanchez.net/iDisk.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

I was at Max & Angela's house today, and we were watching Bowling for Columbine. This is a movie we've all meant to see forever but for some reason hadn't. It's interesting to consider how much fear is inserted into the collective psyche of America and why, and the film explores thing in a variety of ways.

One of the less dramatic topics Moore brings up in the film is that folks in Canada (Toronto, specifically), don't seem to lock their doors. Angela found that bizarre, and I found it bizarre that she found it bizarre.

I grew up in U.S. Air Force bases for a good portion of my childhood, and for a long time we never locked the door at home, nor did we lock the car at the store. I found it surprising when my Dad first pointed out that I should lock the door; we were no longer living on base, and he started locking up.

When I lived in L.A. (Burbank / Toluca Lake), I often left my door unlocked, and for the several years that I lived in San Jose, I never locked the doors to my house, except the front door. You could go in through the garage by pulling the door open, or through the back door. I never used my keys, and my friends could get it when they beat me home. (In my current house, however, the garage door is electric, and the front door is locked, so there is no convenient way in without a key; though I have scant faith in the ability of a locked door to keep the dishonest out.)

Anyway, this got me thinking about why the different mindsets… My theory is that in a society where one is not expected to be honest, some find unlocked doors to be an opportunity to take advantage of a sucker, whereas when one is expected to be honest, an unlocked door is a normal thing and not a source of temptation.

This isn't to say that dishonest people are going to walk away from an unlocked door in either scenario, but, as I mentioned earlier, I don't think they will walk away from a locked door either. I do think that a borderline honest person (one who "needs to be kept honest") is more likely to behave honestly in a situation when they feel they are trusted. That is, I think the borderline fellow is the one who will find the unexpected unlocked door to be tempting, and the expected unlocked door less so.

There is a fruit stand on Highway 1, out by Santa Cruz, which is open daily. It is not staffed. Instead, there is a sign with the price of the fruit, and a box to drop money into. You take your fruit and drop in some cash. I would bet, and this may be an interesting social experiment, that if they put up a camera, and signs that say "you're under surveillance" and maybe a monitor to show you that the camera is watching you, that if there were a part of the fruit stand not covered by the camera, people would be more prone to stealing from the unprotected section of the stand and the theft rate would be higher overall.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't think it's that Santa Cruz fruit stand shoppers are inherently more honest than most. I think it's about expectations.

Posted by Wilfredo Sánchez at 12:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)