How loud can a fan be?

Another event in the Hostetler House this week — the MacBook Pro got a new fans put in. Because one of them was badly, badly broken.

It actually started a couple weeks ago when I went into Leah’s account and got Safari to run in Rosetta (Why? Because NickJr.com requires Shockwave. ) After that, when Leah had been playing for a while, the MBP would make this awful noise. But, generally after Leah was done it would stop — maybe not right away, but soon. I figured it was a fan because Safari in Rosetta would tax the CPU, thus make the fan run that much harder.

Well, when I started using Parallels it got worse — much worse. Sometimes it would take 15 minutes after I was done before the fan would quite down. Then we got a game for Leah from some leftover Christmas gift certificates that said they worked in OSX, but didn’t. But there was a Windows version with it, so I installed that in Parallels. That kicked it — the machine was sometimes unusable for two hours after that. Not just because of the noise but because of the MBP was pretty much unusably slow. I just set it in the kitchen and let it go.

Well, we were still on warranty, so it was time to take it to the local Genius Bar to fix it. I was nervous about taking it in — because I was afraid that they would ship it off to fix it, and who knows what would happen to my hard drive then? And since I had just spent a lot of the weekend doing some Django stuff that wasn’t backed up yet, so I was nervous.

When I took it in[1], I was surprised that they could fix it there (yes, they noted there was a problem!! But the Genius said it just made sense to replace both fans and they only had one in. They took my number and said they would call me when it was in. Also Tuesday night they called and said the fan was in.
The plan was that Gina was going to drop it off Weds morning and I would go and pick it up that evening. Gina had an appointment cancel that afternoon, so she wasn’t as rushed as she had planned. When she and Leah got to the local Apple store, the Genius said it would only be twenty minutes or so. Well, two hours later it was finally done. The Genius did not give her any updates during this two-hour wait but just, “It took longer than I thought.” No apologies or anything.

Well, the MacBook Pro is now quiet, but I’m not impressed by the service they gave to my wife and young daughter. If it’s going to take longer, that’s fine — just tell them! Let them do other shopping then just wait or play with your Macs!! I’m also not impressed that this is the second time we’ve had to use our warranty in the past month. Why is the hardware so weak?
[1] Ironcially, I sat next to Matt Payne at the Genius Bar. I always seem to run into him in the oddest places . ..

A Day with TextMate

A few months ago, I tried TextMate just to see what all the fuss was about. I was skeptical with it, and a bit confused — it came from a totally different mindset than Emacs and one that I didn’t necessarily get. I quickly removed it and enjoyed life with Aquamacs.

Fast forward to the present . . . or, at least, a few nights ago. I was doing some work with Django and Aquamacs seemed to make me jump through hoops. Too many files with the same names to keep straight (you know, models.py in different app directories) and I thought There has to be a better way. I thought some more about TextMate and thought that I would give it a more serious try this time.

I really started by looking at different pages. This tutorial was very good as well as the manual. This PDF cheatsheet also helped a lot. I really started the night before with The Python Challenge (which I would recommend, in any of your favorite languages.) Then, today, I needed to jump head-first into Django, and I took TextMate with me. This is what I found:

The Good:

1. Though I didn’t know it very well, and for sure didn’t know many magic commands, it didn’t get in my way. I never did get annoyed with what it did to my work.
2. The way it handles quotes, parentheses, brackets is quite exceptional.
3. Because it’s a Cocoa-app, most Emacs movement keys work well.
4. Once I got my brain around Bundles, I decided they are really cool. And not confusing.
5. The HTML bundle is very nice. ^< starts tags, etc. See the cheatsheet above for info.
6. Python mode is also very, very good. Easy shortcuts to start classes, functions, etc. And Cmd-R runs the file.
7. I put my Django project in a TextMate project and didn’t regret it. I could arrange files the way I wanted to, and (since I used real folders for TextMate groups) moving a file from one folder to another moved the file on the hardrive. And TextMate knew that — so my buffer just kept working!

The Bad:

1. Some of the keyboard shortcuts aren’t intuitive for me and others just are hard (like hiding the drawer in a project mode).
2. It’s not free.

As you can see, the good far outweighs the bad. I will continue to use it (in fact, I’m using it to write this blog via the Blogging Bundle) and will report back. But, really, there is no reason not to use it.

Smart Playlist hacking in iTunes

I really enjoy having my iPod on while I work. I have ecliptic music tastes (my wife says “random” but whatever). I actually don’t mind having songs go from Chris Rice to The Faint and then to Tom T. Hall. No, really, that’s just fine with me.

The problem was getting the right random mix. Not with songs in my iTunes that I don’t like, but I do want to hear songs that I just imported into iTunes. And I want a fresh variety every time I sync my iPod with iTunes. Tall order? Nope, not really — not with a little knowledge about Smart Playlists and a little initial work.

I wish I can say I came up with all this on my own — but I didn’t.  The direct inspiration for this process came from Andy Budd, who has a much longer and more detailed explanation.  I am just giving you my version of his work.
The concept is simple — build a series of utility playlists to “filter” the music into one playlist. Each utiliy playlist has only one operation. This keeps each operation simple, but the end result is quite complex. I named each of my utility Smart Playlists with “zzz” to keep them at the bottom of my list of playlists — that way it’s hard for me to accidently change it or remove it.
The first thing to do is to create a base playlist where all the other playlists will be based off of. I do this because there are files that I don’t want on my iPod unless I specifically say that I want them — like Christmas songs, podcasts, etc. The following screenshot shows my base playlist, called zzzAbase.

The next playlist is an easy one — I want songs that I haven’t listened to in a while. In my example, I said in the last two weeks, but this amount will depend on how much you like something more refreshed, etc. Now that the song has to be in zzzAbase to be included.

The next playlist is pretty simple — it puts in my highest rated songs. This does mean I rate them. I try really hard to rate each song (especially if I really like it or if I really don’t like it) but I don’t always do it when I’m deep into work. That said, I think that this an important list.

The next playlist is someone cryptic in meaning. This just means “pick any ol’ song out of zzzAbase and put in the playlist”. This will make things a little more random (and interesting). I keep the total number of random songs to fifty, which gives it less weight than the rest of the playlists.

The last playlist is the one that I sync to — aptly named sync. I just say “grab songs from any of my other playlists.” Note that zzzAbase is not mentioned. That is the superset of sync but gets “filtered” by the other smart playlists that I have setup.

As you can see, I have other playlists that I sync to.  You can figure out what they do.  I won’t show how I did it here — I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

After that, just play your iTunes in your sync playlist or just sync your iPod to it!  Then you have a nice, ever changing mix of music at your command.

GeoToad

I discovered GeoToad this weekend.  I haven’t messed with too much, but I already like it.

It’s written in Ruby, so it will run everywhere natively (i.e without Cygwin or a Unix environment).  I’ve been having problems with the geo-* tools that I have raved about before.  They assume that you are using GNU tools and the  BSD  utils  that come with OSX behave differently  than their GNU counterparts — different command line options, etc.  So  I needed something else.  GeoToad will fit the  bill.

I don’t use the full-screen interface — that’s for wimps. Instead I’ve been using the command-line interface.  Both of them do the same thing.  One of the great things about GeoToad is that it caches it’s results.  This prevents you from hitting Gecaching.com over and over again.  They get picky about that.  GeoToad also exports GPX files with the the groundspeak namespace.  Doing that with the geo tools took a lot of time, but GoeToad does with by default, and with ease.

I’m looking forward to hooking GeoToad up with GPSBabel and having a good ol’  time with hacking with geocaching data.

Sparky Power Supply

At my parent’s house over the holiday weekend, I was getting ready to show my mom some of the joys and wonders of OSX. When I went to move my MacBook Pro, I noted that the plastic around the magnetic cord was beginning to melt and I saw sparks fly out of that little hole. I quickly unplugged it from the wall, and then unplugged it from the notebook.

Needless, to say, there isn’t an Apple store nor an authorized Apple dealer in Boelus, NE but I do happen to live close to Omaha’s Apple Store. So we waited until the day after Christmas to take it in. Silly me, I didn’t make an appointment at the Genius Bar before showing up, and they couldn’t get me in for an hour. So I left and came back. Then I got good service — Nick the Genius was very busy, but it didn’t get a genius (haha) to figure out my power supply was bad. He got me another one, I signed a form, and was out in ten minutes. The only reason that it took that long was that Nick was trying to recover someone’s hard drive while helping me out. Yeah, he was swamped but he did a good job.

I kinda wish I would have taken a picture, but at least things are working well now. Thanks Apple!