Plans2Reality

Software Update....

...to an old classic:

 

Open-Source Airways

Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when they come to the airport.  They all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece by piece, arguing non-stop about what kind of plane they are supposed to be building.


Mac Airlines

All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look and act exactly the same.  Everything just.... works. Meals & drinks can be ordered from the iFood online store, but are only digestible on that airplane.

Windows XP Air

The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off.  After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.

Windows Vista Air

Just like Windows Air, but costs more, uses much bigger planes, and takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius when it explodes.

Linux Air

Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline.  They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves.  They charge a small fee tocover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself.  When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the seat-HOWTO.html.

 

Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful.  You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do *what* with the seat?"

The Wonders of Time Machine

I've been using Apple's Time Machne for many months now. It is indeed invisible in normal operation. I finally got a chance to test in. I had a corrupted file, so, off to Time Machine!

Couldn't be easier. Flip back thru time 'til you get to a date & time you want, then grab the files.

The more I know, the more I love my Mac.

At Long Last, a Mail Upgrade

Over the weekend, I upgraded my mail and web server from an ancient (by computer standards) G3 tower running OS X 10.2 Server to an Intel Mac Mini running 10.5 (for mail) and a G4 Mini running 10.4 Server (for DNS, Web, and File Sharing).

My, the new CommuniGate mail system is nice. There are a few installation tricks, but I managed to get it all sorted out and running in a few hours. I do wish there was a proper, searchable (or indexed) reference manual. CommuniGate offers on-line (web) help screens, but there are dozens, and it's tricky to be able to look at the help screen and the UI at the same time. But overall it is a powerful and stable package. My last version ran trouble free for seven-plus years.

The new one intergrates VoIP and other unified messaging. Can't wait to try that out. It's fully compatible with all that Microsoft Exchange stuff, too.

Eli's Almost Here

The Kingdom of Simplicity, a new novel by Holly Payne, is set for release on June 6th. Her third; it is an excellent book, and IMHO her best yet. I've had the privilege of proof-reading the galleys, and I love the story.

Eli Yoder is an Amish boy trying to come to terms with tragedy and forgiveness. The story is, in once sense, fiction, but it is true in another - it's based on true events, both in the Amish community and in the author's own life.

Find out more at: Kingdom of Simplicity. And soon on Eli's own blog. Stay tuned....

Eli's Coming......

Yes, Eli is coming. Stay tuned for details.

Screen Cleaning with Swiffer Dusters

Swiffer makes an odd-looking duster thingie. There's a handle, and replaceable pads. The pads are a strange bundle of fiber and cloth, and boy are they a nice way to dust your monitor cloth!

Dry paper towels and tissues don't work well, and wet ones can be messy, though they work. The Swiffer is good for several screens before it's too loaded up to use any more.

Try them! It's an official Hot Tip (tm).  ;-)

Leopard works wonderfully!

I have upgraded to Leopard, and experienced no problems. As always, I did an archive-and-install. (Apple really should make this the default option.) It went smoothly, and didn't take too long. I didn't time it but it was well under an hour.

I followed the usual precautions:

- backed up the files I care about.
- ran disk utility and fixed permissions.

As soon as the install finished, I ran Software Update to get to 10.5.1. It has been smooth sailing.

The only glitch I've seen so far is that I needed to re-install FRank Vercreusse's ASM. This restores the old application menu, OS-9 style. It's handy, and can be found here: http://www.vercruesse.de/software

Email has been a longer tale - but that's another post.

Vista under Parallels

I took the most recent upgrade for Parallels, and decided to test one of Parallels' more interesting features - its ability to use a Boot Camp image as a virtual machine. I have Vista Ultimate running on the Boot Camp partition.

Short answer: works just fine.

Longer answer: Re-activation was necessary. All the automatic activation steps failed; Vista reported that my registration number was already on file. After a phone call to the automatic-activation number (and a failed activation) the system transferred me to a human. I read off a string of digits to him; he read a string back to me, and all was well.

When Parallels creates a VM, it asks if you want to tip performance in favor of the VM or of OS X. Knowing that Vista was a performance hog, I chose to favor the VM. (This is Parallals' default recommendation.) Vista under Parallels is reasonably fast - it gives a performance rating of 4.5; quite good, but suspiciously identical to what Vista under Boot Camp reports. I have Vista's fancy-graphics enabled, too.

However, OS X is s-s-s-slow when Parallels Vista is running. Not unusably slow, but enough to be annoying. Further research is called for. I'm going to tweak the perform-o-meter to less Vista, and turn off Vista's tranparent graphics. Stay tuned.

Preview GPS Units

Louise and I recently completed a 2500+ mile car trip, with not one, not two, but three GPS units. (Four, if you count the Microsoft Streets and Trips program, but we didn't use that one much.)

We'll be posting more about our experiences in future posts. The short version is: none of the GPS units we used was perfect, either in basic directions or in user interface. On the other hand, it's quite amusing to have all three units yelling directions at you. They are in general, but by no means universal, agreement.

For me, one of the most interesting points about them is how not-friendly they are for a lone driver. With a passenger to work the unit, things went well enough. I'm not sure they would be as big a help to lone drivers.

More to come.

An Annoying Feature in Parallels

I just took the recent upgrade to Parallels, and discovered a "feature" I don't much like. Build 4560 tries to integrated more nicely with OS X. How? Well.....

Under OS X, and without Parallels even running, I double-clicked on a Word document to open it. It began launching my Windows version of Word. So, Parallels launched, then XP had to boot, then it had to launch Word for Windows under XP. This was not quick, to put it mildly.

Further investigation showed that the assigned file type for all my .doc files under OS X had been magically changed to Word for Windows. Evidently Parallels did this.

It does not seem to have done this sort of thing to all file types - for example, my Excel files still think they belong to Excel for Macintosh. But I wonder what else Parallels is messing with?

I've got to get VMware and XP up and running. I've like Parallels up 'til now, but they've damaged the trust relationship a bit with this move. Grrrrr.