My good friend André from The RAC submitted his remix to Radiohead’s “Nude” single remix contest! As always, he’s done a GREAT job! I encourage you to listen and… can you be helpful and vote for his remix there?? And then head on to his website (that I have the pleasure to host ;)) and listen to more of his *awesome* remixes??
Thanks everyone! 
I know, I know… I had plans to blog more, had ideas on what to blog, had the right tools for the task, etc… The only thing I was and currently am missing is: TIME! ;(
I’ve been meaning to write about a lot of stuff that happened during this last month. Among other things, I got my shiny new Macbook Pro. The whole order/shipping process deserves a blog post of its own so I’ll keep you curious. Since I got it, my workflow is starting to “feel” better. There’s one huge downside though: having a laptop, gives me the ability to easily waste time anywhere I am! I’ve been finding myself playing games or reading feeds/news at even later hours… On the other hand, having the ability to run VMware Fusion presented me with a whole new world of possibilities like running linux testing servers on my machine, windows (Vista runs more smoothly than XP on VMware IMHO), etc… And I can even run MyEclipse on top of all this without even “feeling it” (4GB RAM surely help :p). Ok, enough of that…
In the mean time, Wordpress 2.5 came out and I upgraded! Didn’t think it’d go all that smoothly (especially after reading this post a while back - which I commented there as well!).
OK, bottom line: I will blog about the laptop like I promised; I will blog about my impressions on VMware Fusion and even WP2.5 (not so sure about this… nothing new to add to what others have said already!). I feel bad that it’s been over a month since I blogged and I *need* blogging… It helps with my… errr… “well-being”!
In other news, I started running/jogging! =) yay And no, I do not like running all that much! And no, I’m not running with anyone else! So why am I running you ask… Well… I need the physical activity, and I want to become healthier! (not that I’ve been having problems on that particular, thank God!). Got some Nike Shox Arraw, even bought the Nike+iPod kit… even though I don’t have an iPod nano! I’m hoping Apple releases the software needed for it for the iPhone in June… pleeaasseeee!! I just don’t feel like spending $ on a nano when I already have an iPod Video 80Gb and an iPhone! I’m willing to buy a 1st gen White Nano though… If anyone wants to get rid of it at a decent price, I’m willing to help you with that! :p
For frequent news on what’s going on with me, Twitter is the way to go! haha I’m finishing this post while waiting to board from Detroit to Newark after my original flight got delayed+cancelled 5 hours ago, and I’ve been twittering like a maniac about all of this! For those who thought of it as spam, I’m sorry. I bet you can find some interesting stuff just by listening to me yapper a whole lot! :p
Well, that’s enough for now. I have a few more thought out posts to make in the near future. Maybe all this time in airports is helpful to make you do stuff that you postpone all the time… More on that later! 
I spent the last few minutes optimizing my blog’s code! Should be a *lot* faster now! When I updated to WP 2.3.3 a few weeks ago, I took the chance to remove some plugins that weren’t relevant and optimize my code a little to integrate better with WP’s “new” code.
Yesterday I dumped Google Analytics, switching (at last) to Mint! I ran them both during the day today, finally removing GA tonight! I can already tell you that Mint is substantially faster, not to mention that it gives the ability to view my stats, LIVE, on my iPhone anytime! (major advantage point from Google’s solution which resorts to Flash a lot). Thanks Shaun!
On a side note, I’ve been working on a design update… But I think I’ll make the mockups I created into a WP theme and freely distribute it instead! I’ve struck by some awesome, clean designs lately and have been gathering some inspiration for my next design. On the other hand, the current design is growing on me… :/ lol
Anyway, thought I’d share so you can give some thoughts on your user experience on this blog! Thanks in advance.
Today has been pretty hectic… My back has been killing me all day and Apple released the iPhone SDK which caused a huge stir around the web!
As to my back, I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know I’ve a small cyst right next to my spine, mid-back, for a while. Never felt it… until the last few days! And I can’t even blame the pain on the AWESOME chair I have at work… I’ll probably go to the chiropractor soon, but I’ll need to see a doctor eventually.
On to the news of the day: Apple (finally) released the SDK for the iPhone! It was a very exciting keynote, with Steve Jobs only introducing other people and not taking much part on it until the press Q&A at the end (could this be the start of a slow “backing off” by Jobs preparing his succession?). Among the great news and technical details about the SDK and upcoming apps for the iPhone, we were introduced to Apple’s “AppStore“. Basically this is no more than a mix between the iTunes Store but for applications with the current Installer.app for jailbroken phones. One of the things that got me excited were the apparent 3D capabilities of the iPhone, showcased with a few games (including a demo of the upcoming Spore) and the information that EA is already working on developing games for the iPhone (FIFA 08 with multi-touch+accelerometer ?? wow). And no, no jailbreaking/unlocking apps… or porn!
Then came the part most techies & developers have been speculating lately: the distribution model and its price. I think Apple is keen on creating the best development platform in the world. OSX has been proven to be just that and a lot of developers have invested time and resources into developing excellent apps for that platform. Apple is trying to do the same with iPhone and the latest rumours before today already pointed towards that, which got confirmed today during the SDK presentation when Scott Forstall, Apple’s VP for iPhone Software talked about how “Apple is a platform company” (something some of us already thought of but was never mentioned this clearly).
Considering this, developers wanting to sell/distribute their apps through AppStore (the only possible way anyway) will have to enter the iPhone Developer Program and paying for that $99. This price covers everything. I think the price is appropriate considering Apple is not charging hosting, distribution, etc… They only charge 30% of whatever you charge your customers. If you choose to freely distribute your app, Apple gets… yes, $0! Considering this, I think $99 is a fair fee to have access to Apple and having them check your app, host it, publicize it, etc…
But now comes something I only discovered in the midst of a Twitter discussion with Luis Rei and David Rodrigues. While I don’t agree with calling the $99 an “Apple Tax” I agree with the fact that it’s pretty bad that Apple doesn’t allow you to install your own personal, experimental apps on your OWN iPhone! While I understand the reason to do it (as it would open the way to code being shared and compiled with the freely available SDK, which would bypass Apple’s check and system!), I don’t like it! I was getting really motivated to learn Cocoa and Objective-C and start messing around with small apps and utilities but not having a way to test them on my own phone is sad.
But all said and done, the customer won’t mind any of this! As (free) apps will be available even through wi-fi and even EDGE, as a customer, I couldn’t be more delighted… Well, maybe I could… June??? Can I haz it now??? =)
I was very curious about the last Nine Inch Nails (NIN) album! I was reading about all the hype on the way they used to distribute it. I was also aware of people having major problems getting to the download (just like it happened with Radiohead’s In Rainbows). And so I waited…
Yesterday, being tired of waiting I headed on to the official website. Surprisingly it opened on the first try and everything looked rather snappy and fast. I read about the download speed issues and realized we could download the 9 free tracks off of Bit-Torrent, tracked at The Pirate Bay, and uploaded by NIN themselves. I went on to get the free tracks over at TPB.
After listening to them 2 times I was already in love!!! I was even more in love knowing that they provided lossless download options, like FLAC and Apple Lossless. But I was even more impressed with the fact that they give you immediate access to those same downloads when you buy the physical version (that ships in April)!!! So I ordered the $10 (+ $6.99 shipping) physical edition of it!
Since September and my move to the US I haven’t bought a single physical CD. Prior to coming, and just during the first half of 2007, I bought around 40 physical CDs! With the move o the US I came to realize that those physical CDs can be a real logistical PITA: broken cases from the travelling, lots of extra weight that is expensive when flying, etc… Since I got here, I already bought over 20 CDs through the iTunes Store and boy, am I loving it! The fact that I can buy any album on my iPhone, through wireless and get Instant Satisfaction™ is delightful!! Don’t get me wrong, I still love owning the physical CDs and ripping them to MP3s (used to rip them to OGG, but my iPod/iPhone changed my mind) or even AAC+ (which I have been learning to like in terms of quality/size vs the MP3s). But even with all of this, I decided to order the physical edition. What “tipped me” over was the fact that I still had access to Instant Satisfaction™: they give you the same download options when you buy the physical edition.
From my experience with my other CDs, I don’t mess around them much after buying them! I get them, rip them, put them on my iTunes/iPod/iPhone and only resort to the physical discs if something goes wrong or I’m about to travel! I do like the feeling of owning the physical disc, but I’m quickly replacing that with the knowledge that from a mobility standpoint, digital has taken over. In terms of listening, it has taken over a long time ago… at least for me!
I’m also the kind of person who downloads music albums… a LOT! I’m glad I do, because on some cases it saved me money! And saving me money allowed me to buy albums that are REALLY worth it! As an example, I bought Coldplay’s “X&Y” shortly after it came out, but had already listened to it MANY times to the point that when I bought it I didn’t listen to it for a while! Why did I buy it then, you may ask… Because I *loved* (still do!) the album and think it was worth buying! Yes, that’s how I view music purchases: I pay when I feel it’s worth the price! If prices went down, I’d buy more, but I still buy quite a bit of music!!
Having said that, I encourage you to get this NIN album! If for nothing else, do it because they released it under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license, allowing you to do “whatever” you want with the music without having to pay royalties of any sort! That’s a MAJOR step forward and takes some gut feeling to do it! HUGE kudos to NIN for taking that step forward in music. I think this one is even more revolutionary than Radiohead’s album for many reasons like immediate download when you buy the physical discs, lossless formats, Creative Commons license, etc…
Bottom line: I’m *very happy* about this and can’t wait to see more artists doing the same! ^^,
So my Twitter friends followed the whole adventure pretty closely but I need to share it with all of you! I know I haven’t been updating my blog as frequently as I’d want to but the current stress/workload as kept me from sitting down to actually right something. But this is too good to not stop for a few minutes and share!
As you probably all know by now, Apple updated their laptop line(s): new Macbook and Macbook Pro. Many of you know that I have been waiting for this update since last November and had the needed funds ready since January (around the Macworld). I was getting really frustrated but finally, on February 26th (yes, the best month of the year - not because of Apple, don’t worry :p) I ordered my own Macbook Pro. I uploaded the order details to my Flickr but here it is:
(click for full size)
It’s coming!! =) Expected shipment is between the 6th and 11th of this month (March). It’ll arrive 4-5 days later!!!
In other news, my 2×2GB Kingston (from newegg.com) will arrive later today, and the rest of that order (VMware, the backpack and .Mac) have all arrived 2 days after the order (the backpack got here the next day actually).
I’m REALLY looking forward to it! I’m currently working on a PowerMac G4 867Mhz Dual with 1GB of RAM! No matter how good these machines perform considering they are 6-7 years old, they don’t have enough “juice” for all the work I need to get out of them! Adobe CS3 apps are heavy and I’m a “multitasker”, which requires me to have several apps open at the same time! Now if you consider web development only, I need Firefox+Safari and Textmate, CSSedit (at times), Transmit and Fireworks! Just the browsers take quite a bit, and if you add all the “normal” applications (Adium, iChat, Transmission, iCal, Mail, Things, iTunes, iPhoto, Linkinus, Twitterific, Pownce, Terminal, etc…) you understand why I’m *suffering* at this time and in desperate need of a new machine! And I’m not even going to mention not being able to run VMware/Parallels/Bootcamp with Win/Linux or playing games or… argh (mental note: “relax… it’s almost over!”)
It’s coming but… WHY IS IT NOT HERE YET???
Back in September, I wrote a big post about how the folks down at Record (web version of one of the three major sports print publications — newspapers — in Portugal) had no idea of correct web development. And I said that, and now repeat, not because of the fact that it really doesn’t work at all in Safari, but because of the reason behind why that happens.
Through the largest Apple mailing list in Portugal, I was challenged to try to find some possible solutions for the problem. I invested a few minutes of my time thinking that by doing so, I’d be helping a whole community of users and helping the newspaper company itself. I proceeded to study what was wrong and trying to fix it. Making sure all the code was valid was something I completely set aside so big was the number of errors. I tried focusing on what kind of problems would be causing the disaster that it was viewing the site in Safari.
After a few minutes (not that many), I was surprised to see that it wasn’t that hard to locate the main problems. Basically, the use of height=”100%” on tables rows/columns is a basic “HTML 101″ no-no and it causes Safari to completely loose sense of what the tables (designing with tables is bad enough!) are supposed to look like… Removing the height property for the tables fixed the problem and kept the site viewable on other browsers, just like it was before. There were a few minor issues with some other wrong code, but those were (even more) easily discoverable!
I went on to fixing the .html, emailing the new file to Record and offering myself to help implement in case they needed (which by the look of things in the first place, they probably did/do). This was all done through Pedro Aniceto, after he was asked to challenge some Mac web designers - like this was a Mac issue - into providing possible solutions for the problem (apparently they don’t own Macs at that web design company…).
Today is February 19th. Almost 5 months have gone by. You’d think that such an easy fix would have been implemented. It hasn’t. I have lost complete hope of seeing it implemented. Maybe when they redesign… It’s sad, but unfortunately, not surprising.
As if all of this wasn’t enough, http://record.pt doesn’t even forward to http://www.record.pt… And they aren’t alone on this. A quick try over at many other major websites in Portugal, revealed the same problem. Don’t know the sysadmin of those servers/DNS, but they surely need to learn some more… I guess college classes don’t teach you that… *sigh*
How can this multi-million euro industry hire and maintain such incompetent people? Frustrating… :/
So I haven’t posted about this, but after reading Rui Moura’s post on this (I got the bundle on a “Pay 2, Get 3″ sale along with Rui and José Carlos) and looking online for some info about it, I had too say something! This was BY FAR the best deal I’ve ever had on software. This is one of the few bundles released once in a while of independent OSX apps, and it only comes to show the true power os OSX: even these small, independent apps look amazing, integrate well with the rest of the OS, etc… This is only possible because of the amazing platform OSX is and the tools Apple provides developers with!
Following a post I read on Prt.Sc about open source and its “freedom” and a discussion on the mailing list, I want to reaffirm my opinion on Open-Source Software (OSS) vs Commercial Software. I look at OSS as both “free speech” and “free beer”. Most of the times I recommend OSS (OpenOffice comes to mind quite often here) is to people using Windows or OSX and in need of a FREE (as in “beer”) alternative. I don’t even need/want to mention that “You can actually get to the source code and make it do*exactly* what you want it to do!”… Why?? Because it makes no difference for 99% of the people out there. Have you heard the business motto of “If somebody else has developed a solution, go ahead and buy it… Don’t waste time reinventing the wheel!”??? Well, I tend to agree… but not completely. I like following the developmental process of a solution that is supposed to fit my needs, but in some cases, it’s a LOT easier to adapt my needs to a commercial solution. The best reason why is CONFORMITY! (the word that scares all open source puritans) Conformity is a nice thing in a networked world. But it doesn’t mean I’ll opt for a worst/bad solution just for the sake of conformity. No, instead I’ll search for the best solution available, even if it’s not the most widespread. Of course, this is not always possible/desirable and thus exceptions are normal) (proving the rule).
These were just random thoughts… Probably not a very good line of thought there, but I felt I had to say this after talking about a great value bundle of COMMERCIAL software. I actually feel good about supporting these developers and helping some non-profit organizations on the way!
Just as a side note, I have spent more money on software since I’ve moved to OSX than ever before. And this does not include any major apps… just small, simple utilities than integrate with my daily work and enhance my user experience on the computer (isn’t this the objective of ANY app?).
I have spoken.
Ok, so Simon Owens started the call, Mashable publicized it, Ariel linked… and I’m here to say I’ll join the “fight”!
Even though I’ve kept my profile up, I’ve completely changed it’s look to make it NOT look like your regular My$pace profile. But its dumb politics of replacing my external URLs with “msplinks” crap bugged me sooo much… And then the notification emails… Yes, the ones that contain no information at all trying to make you login!! I give major kudos to Facebook for sending me a complete email for any wall post or message I get! I don’t need to login and can even reply to sender through my email! In a world of “hits war”, My$pace is ahead but Facebook is sticking to its principles!
And the whole CIA/FB controversy is simply hilarious: don’t you think that if the CIA really wanted to check your info they’d get that info ANYWHERE and ANYWAY?? Why would they need to “partner” with FB or any other social network??? (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, ignore it… Those who do know hear me out!)
But controversy aside, I’m in love with Facebook for it has allowed me to get in touch with some old friends and help establish new friendships from real life by allowing a means of communicating more often!
So, back to the topic, JOIN THE FIGHT! On January, 30th 2008, delete your My$pace account…
… think of the kittens!
PS: Now that Pownce is open to the public (since 0:00 today), does anybody else around have an account there? I’d be interested in getting more contacts there! Add me!
Hey! I‘m Levi Figueira, an ‘82 portuguese tech enthusiast a.k.a geek! My interests range from design, photography, multimedia, production and music to linux, networking and development! *Personal tastes are subject to change without prior notice* :p Enjoy! =)
Qwilm! Theme by oriol, css design by Lokesh Dhakar and *heavily* hacked by me.
(c) 2007-08 Levi Figueira
