Author: Matt Johnston

Our iMac intel arrived this afternoon and we quickly unpacked it and set it up.

It’s a 1.83 GHz 17″ iMac intel with 512 MB of RAM. Just the stock low-end machine.

Initial boot-up was slow, but every boot-up after the first has been very quick. Using Front Row is actually pleasurable. Garageband runs like stink Doom 3 runs okay. Halo runs great. Photoshop is a little sluggish but performance is not bad – the issue being that the areas where it is sluggish are not expected. Office runs fine on it – which is to be expected.

We have had one hard crash when unmounting AFP shares in the Finder. We’ll have to keep an eye on that. I don’t know what caused it. The server it was attaching to was a laptop on wireless so who knows.

Overall, it’s quite a fun machine. It’s very very light, it’s really quite sexy and in the short time we had it out in the office, it attracted quite a bit of attention.

It does make me want a MacBook Pro even more…oh yes, it will be mine.

I think the hardest thing with business is people.

When you’re by yourself, you really have no idea about the abilities of your staff. Knowing your limits is, at times, admitting defeat before you start. I’m not saying that everyone should have a pie-in-the-sky dream, but there’s too much worry about not being able to do something through fear and through not actually trying. I guess you do know what you can do – but you’ve no idea what you can’t do. I used to be quite intimidated by technology. Ha.

When you start interacting with other people who your company is paying, you see that there are differences between your expectations and the abilities of other people. Convincing two students (both on a vocational IT course) that they REALLY CAN write web-based apps using LAMP if they try is actually quite a bit of work. It takes time to encourage them, it takes time to support them. It takes a good amount of time to deal with their fear of failure.

I’m not even going to go into the trust issues inherent in involving other people in your vision. Part of the solution for this is a contract, but that’s fraught with it’s own difficulties. And even then you still have to trust people to actually DO the work and, in the end, the law is firmly on the side of the employee. Or maybe that’s just my perception because, frankly, I have trust issues. If you’re starting up, don’t use friendship as the glue that binds everything together. Use contracts. Then everyone knows where they stand.

The blogosphere is abuzz with Web 1.0 Venture Capitalists all trying to think how they are going to be relevant in Web 2.0 where a web based business can start up for pennies a month rather than the vastly inflated amounts in Web 1.0. (I finally figured out what the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 is. It’s just time. The number refers to which bubble we’re talking about. The Web 1.0 bubble was all about taking businesses, ignoring business plans and tacking the word “online” as a prefix or a suffix. Web 2.0 is all about content and interaction – create the content, get the eyes and the advertising will pay for everything else). Traditional venture capitalists can be relevant but they’re also less important. It’s ironic that it’s taken the BBC so long to televise the VC process. Anyway – VCs can still get a slice of the action – but it’s a smaller slice and it involves them opening up their address book and their existing portfolio rather than opening up the cheque book. To create value in this new world, the VCs need to make themselves into the glue that binds starting businesses together. It seems obvious but sometimes you can’t make it on your own. What are startups looking for these days? A good lawyer. Someone who can take away the pain of payroll. Someone to handle sales tax/VAT. Someone to chase debtors. Someone to deflect creditors. Someone reliable and cheap to host their fledgling web service? A good VC should have some of these services on tap and can therefore add real value. And their portfolio of client companies may allow them to add value and keep all of the value within their own control! Show me a VC that wouldn’t want a slices of many interacting pies?

And if all of this sounds like a lot of work? Try growing a pineapple in your living room.

P.S. BrokeBack Mountain. Great film. Heath Ledger is great in this character role. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a slightly older version of every other role he’s ever played. The scenery is great but completely overshadowed by the character roles and despite the terse dialog from Ledger, he speaks volumes.

Usage stats: 56.80% Mozilla/5.0

IE trails at 6.7%

Looks like we’re attracting the right crowd 😉

Had a nasty hard coded path problem in the RubyUniversal package I created. Most things will probably have worked for most people, but badly 🙂 It’s fixed now – I blame the fact it was 3:30am when I posted it.

Also, I’ve removed RubyCocoa Universal as the RubyCocoa project has released its own binary. I think they might have been ashamed of mine, because of aforementioned broken link! Can I blame that one on the early morning hours also?

Okay, the biggest issue I have with Microsoft at the moment is probably that their Windows Vista web site doesn’t work well in Safari. I mean – with their lack of adherence to standards in IE, not making something that renders okay in a “supported platform” is just downright obnoxious. But I digress.

Windows Vista contains a lot of new features which we’re meant to get all hot and bothered about.

Ease of Use
In essence, things are pretty much the same as in XP with regards to the Start Menu.

The scroller will make it just as much of a pain in the butt to use and I simply cannot understand why everything has to be based around their start menu paradigm. It’s like they run with it and just don’t know how to stop. They describe the XP menu as “slow performing, cascading, All Programs” view. That wasn’t part of the marketing message back in 2001! (much like “Intel is twice as fast” wasn’t a marketing message of the PowerMac G5 a couple of years ago).

Explorers
I’m a relatively proficient computer user but I find this shot of the “Document Explorer” to be a complete mess. It’s just all buttons and words and there’s no flow or context.

This looks like it was designed by an engineer who liked the way Windows 2000 did things and then he was asked to iterate a version which was “consumer friendly”. Maybe if you ROT13 that message it comes out as “add button clutter”?

Windows Aero
This entry tells you that unless you have a DirectX 9 graphics card, you ain’t going to be seeing the swooshy effects and transparency shown in these screenshots. Thankfully, it’s now a cheap upgrade for your hardware.

Do you notice how the “close” box is now the most prominent of the window management buttons. In XP, it was the colour, now it’s the colour, the shape and the size. They really want you to close down those windows. (Funnily enough I get a warm feeling when closing down Windows too). My little joke. Ahem.

Taskbar thumbnails
Looks like a slightly higher definition version of the Dock and while I like it, I wonder how it will scale. What happens when you have lots of icons in that taskbar?

I don’t think this will degrade half as nicely as some might hope!

Windows Flip and Windows Flip 3D
Sod Windows Flip. It’s the taskbar switcher now applied to open windows rather than open applications. Again that’s going to degrade poorly if you have 20 windows open. On the other hand, Flip 3D looks COOL.

I don’t honestly think it’s a patch on Exposé, but then there are lots of ways I can think of to improve on Exposé. This is a welcome development! It doesn’t suck! Or, maybe it does but til we use it, I’m going to say this is a bonus. Window management on Windows has always been a pain. Maybe now we’ll see some benefits.

I won’t say I’m not excited to see this and I also won’t declare that if they manage to get it running on Mac Intel hardware that I won’t probably have a spare hard disk with a copy of Vista on it.

Guy Kawasaki has a funny blog entry which mentions one case of mistaken identity.

A few years ago, I had organised a user group meeting at a local PC superstore and we’d gotten about 20 people milling around discussing computers. The PC superstore staff were happy because we all seemed to have our own teeth and hold credit cards. The users were happy because they got to hang with geeks on a Saturday afternoon. After a couple of hours, one of the attendees turned to me and said:

“When is this MJ guy going to show up?”

I wouldn’t have minded but I’d been running the UG for three years at that point. Was I a shy and retiring type or did they think that I looked like my picture on the web forum (a rather harried-looking Daffy Duck). It was a bizarre experience anyway. I don’t look like anyone famous except maybe this guy. You don’t think so?

Dumping an Og::Collection using to_yaml or YAML::dump results in a hard to track error: TypeError: can't dump anonymous class Class. This is because Collection has an instance variable which contains a literal Class. This patch fixes the problem, by storing the member_class as a String, and converting as necessary in the code.

--- new_collection.rb      2006-01-30 10:06:47.000000000 +1100
+++ collection.rb       2006-01-30 10:06:53.000000000 +1100
@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@
       remove_proc = nil, find_proc = nil, 
       count_proc = nil, find_options = {})
     @owner = owner
-    @member_class = member_class.to_s
+    @member_class = member_class
     @insert_proc = insert_proc
     @remove_proc = remove_proc
     @find_proc = find_proc
@@ -217,8 +217,7 @@
   # Allows to perform a scoped query.
   
   def find(options = {})
-    klass = const_get(@member_class.to_sym)
-    klass.with_scope(options) do
+    @member_class.with_scope(options) do
       return @owner.send(@find_proc, @find_options)    
     end
   end
@@ -238,8 +237,7 @@
   
   def method_missing(symbol, *args, &block)
     load_members
-    klass = const_get(@member_class.to_sym)
-    if klass.instance_methods.include? symbol.to_s
+    if @member_class.instance_methods.include? symbol.to_s
       @members.inject([]) { |a, x| a << x.send(symbol) }.flatten
     else
       @members.send(symbol, *args, &block)  

The clever and talented PJHolden says Happy Chinese New Year and also links to his Chinese Horoscope. While I’m not sure of the source (US Bridal Guide Dot Com), it’s a fun thing to look up. I’m a Water Rat, Aidan a Fire Dragon.

Rats make good: Writers, Broadcasters, Actors, Advisors, Counselors, Lawyers, Politicians, Designers, Engineers, Managers, Directors, Administrators, Entrepreneurs, Musicians, Stand-up Comedians, Researchers, Historians, Race Car Drivers

Dragons make good: Computer analysts, Inventors, Engineers, Architects, Lawyers, Philosophers, Psychoanalysts, Brokers, Managers, Salespeople, PR People, Advertising agents, Officers in the armed forces, Campaigners, Politicians

It’s all a load of nonsense, but aren’t you just the least bit curious about you and your partner (business or otherwise?). Isn’t it fun to see how compatible you are? Or shake your head sadly knowing how wrong it is (or is it).

I find horoscopes a fun diversion. Makes me think there’d be some fun setting one up for businesses.

“Ahh, your business was set up in the ear of the rooster. It will be a long hard slog and eventually you will be a millionaire”

That’d the kinda horoscope we’d all like to read. Just for fun eh?

Anyway, I celebrated last night with a seafood medley and tonight I’m going to have some sort of sweet’n’sour concoction.

8:15 AM
aidan: hi
mj: hey
aidan: Fintan (my son) managed to pull the left apple key off my keyboard without me realising
aidan: busy trying to get it back in again
mj: ouch
aidan: I’ve forgotten the technique
mj: I just place it in the right place and press firmly
aidan: do you attach the white bit to the computer or the key?
mj: place the wee white splines into the keyboard
aidan: x ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈   m xxxxxxxx Ω≈≈≈≈≈≈xxx
aidan: the keys I pressed as I fixed it

You know, sometimes the user interface is the easy bit. The user interface of when you’re using a piece of software is easy. The user interface of GETTING TO the the bit where you can use it every day is a lot harder. It’s got to be REALLY simple, the instructions (if there are any) have to be incredibly well written and there has to be no room for error.

So it’s got me thinking. It’s the HOW rather than the WHY.

Going to load up Interface Builder and have a wee play.