Desktop Experience

This one goes to MobileMe, simply because Mail.app works better with real IMAP email than Gmail. Gmail has conversations, but Mail.app also has that, albeit in rudimentary form – and I expect it to get better.

Mobile Experience

Again, this goes to MobileMe. See above for Mail. Google Sync for Contacts works okay, but so far Calendar.app only wants to show my main calendar, which is unacceptable. I could always just disable over-the-air sync… QED.

Web Experience

Google Apps, no contest. It’s kind of their specialty. But then again, with great desktop and mobile experiences, how often will you need this?

The trouble with MobileMe

So, overall, MobileMe wins this pretty handily. But, there’s still a lot of little things it does wrong. For example: Mac Mail.app conversations kinda suck. MobileMe doesn’t sync subscribed calendars. iCal doesn’t support natural language event creation. Overall, little issues, but they get to be annoying.

What about Bookmarks and Gallery?

MobileMe Gallery simply cannot be compared to the web experience of Flickr, Vimeo, or YouTube. Plus, with iPhoto and iMovie supporting direct upload to Flickr and YouTube respectively, and YouTube even working on iPhone OS, the integration is just as good. I don’t see using MobileMe gallery for much anytime soon.

As for Bookmarks, I mostly use Delicious. DeliciousSafari and the various iPhone Delicious clients provide a good experience – but you can never replace Safari’s in-built bookmarking functions with them. Bookmarklets and quick-hit sites just work better that way. I see these two as being complementary, not competitive.

What we really need is a new text editor. It should have:

• Leopard-style UI. ‘nuff said.
• light-but-solid core, with most functionality implemented as plugins.
• project-centric windows. projects get wrapped around version control.
• plugins that talk to and extend each other. my Web Preview plugin should work with your Django plugin and Jim-Bob’s Rails plugin.
• oh, and a nice price point. somewhere between TextMate’s $52 and Coda’s $99.

Note that when I say plugins, I mean real freaking plugins. Bundles are okay, but very limited. I want awesome Cocoa-based plugins that show me my Django app’s database schema in a HUD window, or a live preview of my page in IE, Firefox, or Safari – inside a tab or split. You know, awesome stuff like that.

thoughts? comments? you know how to get in touch.

Speaking of the weather, local meteorologist Dick Fletcher, WTSP’s chief meteorologist since 1980, passed away this morning, eight days after suffering a massive stroke. The normally fierce local news competition paused today as Paul Dellegatto from WTVT and Steve Jerve from WFLA appeared on WTSP’s newscast to remember the long-time community member.

This morning, it hit me: why not record streams using VLC? After a little fiddling (and a lot of searching, I finally figured out how to do it:

1. Open up VLC, then select File->Open Network Stream (or just press Ctrl+N).
2. Enter the address of your stream in the box at the bottom.
3. Check the “Stream/Save” box, then click the Settings button.
4. The “Stream Output” dialog will open. Under the Outputs group, select the “Play locally” and “File” boxes. Click the “Browse” button and select the file to save to.
5. Under the “Encapsulation” group, select the “Raw” option.
6. Under the “Transcoding options” group, check the “Audio codec” box, and select “mp3″ from the drop-down box. The default options should be fine.
7. Click “OK” in the Stream Output and Open dialogs. Your stream will start playing. VLC will convert it to MP3 format and save it to the file you selected in the background.
8. If you’d like, you can mute VLC and go get coffee or something. Unless your stream gets disconnected, it’ll keep recording.
9. To stop recording, click VLC’s stop button.
10. Your MP3 is ready to use!

You can create a batch file or script to do this automatically. I haven’t quite figured out how to do it, but I do know VLC’s command-line mode makes it possible. You can then set up a scheduled task (on Windows) or cron job (on *nix) to automate the process of recording. More on that when I figure that part out.

Alrighty, so DWM isn’t bad. In fact, I wish they’d retrofit Windows XP to support DWM. Live window previews on taskbar hover and Alt-Tab are awesome. TaskSwitchXP can be made to have sorta-kinda almost real time window preview, but it’s not really real time.

Another feature of Windows Vista that isn’t horrible is the new smart file renaming. When you rename a file, it automatically selects just the file name, not the file name with extension as on WinXP. Of course, somebody had the audacity to write an AutoHotkey script that provides the same functionality on XP, and perhaps earlier versions of Windows as well.

Really, I could care less about the other features. Security? Bah. I keep my ports closed and only download from trustworthy websites. I even clear my browser cache and cookies regularly and use the Adblock Plus Firefox Extension to prevent browser-based badness.

Improved applications? I’ve tried both IE7 and WMP11, and they don’t beat Firefox, foobar2000, and VLC media player one bit. Windows Mail is just another lame-o desktop email client, and desktop email clients are mostly pointless. I’ll give a reprieve to those of you on dial-up or using Exchange Server. Windows Photo Gallery? If I wanted a desktop image organizer, I could get it’s Windows Live cousin, which isn’t half-bad. But I don’t.

I never use Media Center on XP. Any convergence there might be is offset by the painfulness of trying to navigate that UI. It could perhaps be useful in a living room situation – but I seriously doubt that I’d even want that sort of functionality anytime soon. So, Media Center is not a good reason.

To cut to the chase, there isn’t any compelling reason for me, or most other end-users, to upgrade to Windows XP at this point. Maybe in 2009, when Vista is old news and most software that will be ported has been; perhaps then it will be. But today, 13 February 2008, there is no good reason for most people to switch. Sorry, Microsoft, you fail.

Priceless.

1. use angel hair pasta, not spaghetti. it’s thinner and cooks faster.
2. bring the water to a rolling boil. the pasta loses it’s flavour if it has to boil more than a few minutes.
3. strain the pasta, but let it sit a couple minutes. then, add some extra virgin olive oil and mix it up.
4. in one swift motion, put the pot back on the stove, add your tomato sauce, and put the pasta back in. the quicker this is done, the better.
5. over medium heat, stir the pasta and sauce until the sauce completely coats the spaghetti.
6. allow the pasta-’n'-sauce to continue simmering for a few minutes, say, ten or fifteen. this would be a good time to put your breadsticks in the oven.
7. put some water on to boil. go ahead and put in some tea bags.
8. rinse some lettuce, chop some vegetables, and make a salad.
9. your tea should be boiling. don’t let it boil over. mix in the sugar (or honey, if that’s your thing).
10. take out the breadsticks – they should be done by now.
11. pour the tea into a pitcher, and add cold water.
12. butter and spice the breadsticks. I prefer a simple blend of salt, pepper, and oregano.
13. get out some plates and serve your guests, you lazy pig.

The trick with the spaghetti is to let the sauce cook into the pasta… this can make up for a lousy store-bought sauce on a night you’re short on time. or when you or your family are cheap. It really brings out the best in both pasta and sauce.

next installment: how to cook great pizza

Assorted commentary on the episode:

• I wonder if the issue with LB5 Carl mentioned has been resolved. I sure hope so…
• VB.NET is as bad as they say it is, and whoever is responsible for realBASIC should be tried for crimes against humanity.
• There should have been more warning before the guy started talking about advanced OOP stuff there at the end. That freaked me out.

You’ll hear here when the second episode is posted.

Note that you’ll probably need internet access, and will definitely need a modern browser that supports JavaScript and cookies (such as Mozilla Firefox). Also, I’m using Xubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”. Different versions and distros may have slightly (or radically) different instructions. Your mileage may vary.

Part 1 – Wine
Before you start, make sure Wine is set up on your computer. If it is, you can skip to Part 2.

Okay, let’s install Wine. These instructions are not exhaustive, and if you run into issues, you’ll need to use your distro’s support channels (whether it’s IRC, a mailing list, or whatever).

Try your distro’s package manager, then apt-get (see below), then the Wine website. To install Wine using apt-get, run the following command in a terminal window:

sudo apt-get install wine

Enter your password at the prompt, and WINE will be automatically downloaded and installed.

Part 2 – Install Run BASIC
Once you have Wine installed, download the Run BASIC installer and save it to your desktop. Now, open up a terminal window, navigate to your Desktop folder, and type:

sudo wine rbp1setup.exe

Enter your password at the prompt. Once the Run BASIC installer opens, click the start button, making sure not to change the destination path. Once it is done installing, click the “OK” button. Run BASIC is now installed.
Part 3 – Running the RBP Console
Next, you’ll want to create a script to open up the RBP Console window. Don’t try to use the icons in the Application menu – they won’t work properly.

Open up your favorite text editor, and type (or copy-and-paste) the following code, and save it to your desktop as “runbasic.sh”:

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/rbp
wine rbp.exe rb.im

Next, try to run it by double-clicking on it. If it opens up in a text editor application, you’ll have to configure your system to run shell scripts in Terminal by default. In Xubuntu, this is as simple as right-clicking the script, selecting “Open With Other Application”, expanding the “Use a custom command” area, typing “bash” in the box, and clicking the “OK” button.

Part 4 – Using Run BASIC
Open up your browser and point it to http://localhost:8008/seaside/go/runbasicpersonal. Type in your username and password (since you’ve just installed, they’ll be “username” and “password”, respectively). Congratulations! You’ve just installed Run BASIC Personal on Linux.

Appendix 1 – Notes
Your mileage may vary. I’m running the latest version of Wine, Xubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”, and Run BASIC Personal RC1. I don’t imagine anything will be horribly different on most other distributions.

Everything should work just like on Windows, but with one caveat: to serve on port 80, you’ll need to run it as root. You’ll probably also want to install it as root, too.