Archive for August, 2005

Watch Out, OmniWeb

Published
by
John Stansbury
on August 25, 2005

There’s a new sheriff in town. Well, soon, anyways.
Comments

As I was going through my 2000000 RSS feeds, I came upon a story from PimpMySafari that shows off the old OmniWeb style windows in Safari. This pleases me.

One of the things that I’m liking about OmniWeb is those windows, but they tend to be a little big. And it’s removed my ability to CMD+up and CMD+down in text boxes. Yes, that’s my biggest gripe with OmniWeb these days.

I’ve followed SafariStand from day one, and I’m constantly amazed at the stupid browser tricks them and the Saft folks are able to create. Safari is far from reaching maturity, and the SIMBL plug-ins are just making it do amazing things.

But what I really wanted to show you about SafariStand was this little Easter Egg. First, you go to this page. Then you scroll all the way to the bottom. You’ll see a line that says “Old Changes,” click that. Then scroll all the way to the bottom.

There’s your Easter Egg.

Categorized:
Free & Updated

9 Things That Will Make Me A Famouser Blogger

Published
by
John Stansbury
on August 24, 2005

9. Be a woman.

8. Use pictures of women.

7. Get a bunch of people in here and make with the group blogging.

6. Insult people, and then get upset when they don’t like me. (okay, I do that already, but it’s yet to actually work. Here’s hoping for miracles!

5. Pander to my audience (see note for #6).

4. More banners and sticker things than you can shake a stick at.*

3. Learn to write insightful commentary, using research, statistics, and persuasive arguments to…nah…maybe more girly pictures…

2. Blackmail. You know who you are. Blackmail.

1. Get a haircut, a job, and leave all this blogging business to the professionals.

*My Stick-Shaking Department has informed me that they have been able to successfully shake a stick at our selection of banners, and suggest rewording my statement, or adding more banners.

Categorized:
9 Things

Google Talk

Published
by
John Stansbury
on August 24, 2005

In an effort to totally assimilate the entire web, Google has announced Google Talk, another in a long line of “this what you guys shoulda done” ideas from the studio that Stanford built.
Google Talks to me

This image was taken from when they sent out a message to all their minions that the link for talk.google.com was working again. And since iChat caught whatever Safari has, I have to use Adium. It’s not bad, but it’s no iChat.

But it got me to thinking, “how can this be? Why would they be being so kind to me?”

Honestly, these people are starting to creep me out. First, they make searching for stuff on the web good. Too good. I mean, how can this work? Huh? It seems to me that something’s up. Something…evil.

Oh, and there’s that Blogger thing they got. Killed my job. Them jerks. At least I make new friends fixing they Blogger templates for them. Gives me something to do.

Yeah, and there’s that Gmail. Like they don’t read your mail. They read it, they do. Trust me, they read it. Don’t fool yourself, they read your mail.

And they’re laughing at you. They are.

Anyways, if you want to try out the revelation that is Google Talk, just put in whatever you think MacStansbury would have at Gmail.com.

UPDATE: Thought I’d just explain just why I’m using some other program besides Google Talk, or whatever it’s called. It’s because you have absolutely no need to use Google Talk for anything other than the voice communication.

When I signed in this morning, I saw my Gmail come up in MSN Messenger mail style, and I felt this bizarre need to watch the mail scroll by. Nice touch, but I don’t use Gmail in Gmail windows, I use Apple Mail to download it, POP style. So far nothing in particular that I need Google Talk for.

I was thinking to myself, “I need to hook up a mic to this thing, and then I….” when I came to my senses. Google Talk is a freakin’ PC-only app. Completely worthless to me. Completely.

Now, they say that it’s an open format, and any of a zillion apps can use it. Newsflash, if you got iChat, you can sign into practically any of the Instant Messaging formats. If you know the way to format the account, you can sign in MSN Messenger in iChat.

Now, I’m not as obsessed with video IM as some people, but I can say it’s much easier than what I do every freaking night. Then again, unlike Jeff Harrell, I don’t feel like explaining the ins and outs of making AOL Instant Messenger work with your Windows XP Service Pack 2 with the USB camera that’s inside a dedicated port that has the right amount of latency so that you don’t have dropped connections, while making sure that your processor is fast enough and your internet connection has big enough pipe.

I’m still jealous, you know.

Google Talkâ„¢, good if you don’t have anything already, completely worthless if you have a Mac.

Categorized:
Free & Updated

So, I was in the Wal-Marts parking lot

Published
by
John Stansbury
on August 12, 2005

If there’s anything that people know about me and women, it’s these three things:

1. I have less of a wandering eye, and more like a nomadic eye.

Mongolian conquerer eye?

2. Hang around me for over two minutes, and you’ll hear “I’d hit that,” roughly 2,337.8 times per hour. Not that I would actually have the courage to “hit” any of the “that,” but I will say that I would.

Hit.

That.

Comedy is my strong suit, not propper grammer.

3. If there’s anything better than one hottie, it’s two. Or 17. I’m such a pig.

So, like I say, I was in the Wal-Marts parking lot, and I saw a trio of returning college students walking in. As is my custom, I went through my usual, “I’d hit that, I’d hit that, aaaaaand I’d hit that.”

It was in that Wal-Mart parking lot when I came up with something that I thought I’ll take with me for the rest of my male chauvinist pig life:

That was the ‘I’d Hit That-trickâ„¢

Like in hockey. Never mind.

Categorized:
Overthinking

I Hate iDisk

Published
by
John Stansbury
on August 8, 2005

For those of you who pay attention to where the MacStansbury Podcast originates, you’ll see that it’s served from the .Mac server that I’m paying for. It helps alleviate what could be a rather large bill every month for all the people that download my podcast.

Why are you laughing? People listen to it. Really. Stop snickering.

The worst part is that to get it up there, I have to use something called iDisk, the worst piece of crap that Apple’s ever shoved down the innocent throats of its users. I swear, it’s buggy, slow, unresponsive, and an embarrassment to all internet service providers. Didn’t expect that from me, did ya?

Look, I love Apple as much as the next guy, but their use of WebDAV is just horrible. I just spent 2 hours trying to upload a 7 Megabyte file. This wouldn’t be surprising if I was on dial-up, but I’ve got a cable modem, and I wasn’t doing anything but uploading.

You would think that after 6 years, they would have the iDisk problems worked out. But….no. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve already paid for the privilege of using their bandwidth, I would never use it. I hate iDisk.

Categorized:
MacStuff

OmniWeb and “not-all-thatness”

Published
by
John Stansbury
on August 8, 2005

No, faithful RSS Types, you’re not seeing triple, Textpatten + OmniWeb = messing up stuff. It triple posted the story, and gave me three identical titles. So I’ll take this chance to update you on something that I love talking about…writers who don’t suck.

Speaking of writers who don’t suck, I read this article from Dan Pourhadi about this very OmniWeb what I was using to write that last rant about Arizona justice. Turns out, OmniWeb is not, as Dan points out, “all that.”

See? I can be hip as the youths are these days! I got the parachute pants and the one glove and the rock and roll music with the loud bass drums and the expletives and such.

Anyways, I used OmniWeb about 15 minutes after I started using Mac OS X, just to see what it would look like to use a Cocoa browser. The beauty of the interface was amazing - you just can’t imagine how beautiful pages look when all you have is Firefox or IE. Sorry, that’s just how it is.

About 16 minutes after I started using OmniWeb, I found out what OmniCrashCatcher was. It’s this ingenious program that will figure out that your program has crashed, and offer to send a report to the Omni Group so they can fix whatever cause the browser to crash. And crash it did. A lot.

Now, we’re talking about the dark says of Mac OS X 10.0.0 here, so crashing programs was hardly unexpected. However, OmniWeb was developed for NeXTStep, the precursor to Mac OS X. It was basically re-written for OS X, so it should’ve been one of the best programs ever written for OS X.

Now, don’t get me wrong, OmniWeb is practically the best browser ever made, even with the $30 price tag. The distance between it and Safari is closing up, though. If I had my druthers, I’d always use Safari, since it does almost all the same things, and doesn’t guess forms like OmniWeb does (all you Firefox users are tracking with me right now).

Go read Dan, and tell him what a lying liar his lying liar self is. The liar.

Categorized:
Reviews

Dear The Internets,

Published
by
John Stansbury
on August 4, 2005

I guess there’s no other way to say this, so I’ll just come out and say it.

It’s hard for me though. The saying it, I mean. It’s hard to say it.

Okay, here goes.

We…need some time apart. No, no, it’s not you, it’s me. I’ve been thinking about things…we need to think about stuff.

Look, I know it’s tough, but we’ve really come to the point where I know that I’m either going to give everything away for you, or we’re just gonna call it quits. Honestly, this is a little heavy for me.

No, no, stop it. Don’t start throwing around those accusations that you know nothing about! I am in complete control of my Madden habits. I can quit anytime I want.

And no, you have not been listening to anything I have been saying! It’s because I love you so much that I had been staying away to keep us from getting old.

Look, it’s not like this is the end! This isn’t a period, it’s like one of them things with all the dots…I forget what they’re called…the little dot-things…

But that’s not important. What’s important is that we need some time to chill. Possibly use other electronic devices with hard drives capable of playing games. Like, Madden 2006, for example. Not that I have that, or was even thinking about that, but I was just using that as an example.

So, I hope you get this letter and you don’t freak out or nothing.

Yours Faithfully,

MacStansbury

Categorized:
Overthinking

Apple’s Mighty Mouse

Published
by
John Stansbury
on August 2, 2005

When I woke up this morning, I thought that something was different. I could feel a change in the Force. The world was different now.
Gallery

There you got it folks: a multi-button mouse from Apple. There. Now shaddup. Seriously.

I was around in the 90s when all the lies were thrown around about what was wrong about the Mac OS, and how Windows was the great savior. Among those targets that anti-Apple people used, the processor and hardware were the two biggest, annoyingist, things that they would bring up.

What they could never explain was how those innovations (three button mice, Intel processors, etc.) would actually help me work. In fact, those gripes never made it past the first minute with me. First, I would point at their mouse and say, “when did you buy that? And where’s the mouse that came with the computer?” I would then ask, “what’s the GPU throughput for virtual memory?”

Yes, I know that GPU isn’t the CPU, but they didn’t. In fact, I often made stuff up to help their argument, only to embarrass them by telling them the advantage they thought they had was something I just made up. I spent the better part of the 90s correcting the gross inaccuracies from people who didn’t know what they were talking about.

The mouse thing has always annoyed me. I’ve used an Apple supplied mouse for about a month, total. Then again, when a new mouse technology comes out, I get it, and that wouldn’t change if Apple came out with a mouse that wasn’t as good as the one I have.
360 Degree Scrolling

Right now my mouse has 16 buttons on it, and it’s from Logitech. I’ve gotten a lot of Logitech mouses over the years. Microsoft mouses, and Kensington, too. I got the first scroll wheel mouse, and then the laser mice. I’m just following the innovation.

Now, Apple’s got a trackball on the mouse. Full 360° movement. An innovation. I will probably get one.

Earlier this year Apple announced that they are moving to Intel processors. Now they’ve got a multi-button mouse. We’ll have a new Mac OS X by the time that Windows Vista comes out. Apple is innovating.

Well, more accurately, they are copying. They are looking at what other people are doing, and then doing it their way, and making it look fabulous. They took RSS in the browser like FireFox, and made it look perfect. They took podcatching and made it brain-dead simple. Now they’re making the hardware that people have been using for years work with the Mac OS.

I woke up this morning, and the world changed. And I think that it was a good thing.

Categorized:
Overthinking

A true story

Published
by
John Stansbury
on August 1, 2005

Me: Daddy, what does “@#$%” mean?
Dad: Son, go to your room. You aren’t allowed to use that word. Just, go to your room.

Hey, I’ve looked it up everywhere…I still have no idea what @#$% means. Is it some kind of quadratic equation? I asked my algebra teacher and got detention!

Categorized:
Overthinking