geoff.mollyandgeoff.com

And I think it’s spot on.

Most "mad scientists" are actually just mad engineers.

Andy Lee’s AppKiDo is free, source is available, and it’s drastically better than XCode’s doc viewer. And this is the third or fourth time I’ve discovered it only to later forget all about it. Maybe writing this note about it will help me remember. It’s worth the download just for its consolidated method lists (one of my biggest gripes with Apple’s AppKit documentation). Get it here. I wish Apple would adopt this and ship it with XCode.

Just some links so I don’t lose them over the next few months:

• Ritual Lifesaver
• Barismo’s blends
• Weaver’s Coffee Espresso
• Black Cat blends
• Vivace blends
• Metropolis Redline Espresso
• Terroir

I just got my latest Boca shipment yesterday. This time around, I stuck with the espresso and the peaberry. I opened the espresso this morning for a couple of shots, and the change seems to go beyond the packaging. I’m not sure if they’ve changed the blend, roasted darker, or what, but so far the difference is not good. The only flavors I’m getting this morning are charcoal and tires. There’s no way this can be the whole story. I’ll have to update after playing with the grind and temperature a bit.

Update: No amount of fiddling got this batch to not taste like tires. Blech.

But when you know you’re just not going to have a very good run, for whatever reason, she’s excellent company for a jog. I don’t know anyone who gets more outwardly happy about running than she does. Today we “ran” 5k. Our first 3k were done in about 15 minutes. Our last 2k were another 20. This made sense, as I’m trying to ease my knee back into real runs, and she just loved it. Hopefully it’ll pay dividends in the form of a tired hound, too.

Today I drank entirely too much espresso because I was having fun watching the shots. I also learned how to get Molly’s camera to take video and how to get that from camera->YouTube.

It appears that Arlington is phasing out normal parking meters and moving to a system where you buy a ticket from a box somewhere on the street. I object to this new system. The old way, you parked in front of a meter, put coins in, and came back before your time ran out. If the meter worked, it was nearly foolproof. If the meter didn’t work, lucky you. You got a pass up to the posted time limit.

With the new system, they’ve raised the prices to pay for the fancy new machines. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; if parking is a little more expensive, people will walk more. Unfortunately, the meters only accept $0.25 and $1.00 coins (and credit), not paper currency. The credit portion wasn’t working today. So my pocket full of change and singles that I brought to the coffee shop was useless in the face of these new machines. They’ve also eliminated the old M-F meters because all the new machines are M-S. Lame. Worst of all, instead of parking in front of the evidence that you’ve paid, you have to stick paper in your car where it can be seen. This is a real problem, because my car does not close securely. My general and very effective solution to this is to leave nothing of value there. Nothing like a small, easy to steal piece of paper with immediate value, for example. I expect I’ll be ticketed more than once as a result of this new system. At least I’ll have a receipt to keep for the appeal once I can use my credit card.

Developers often have a love/hate relationship with wxWidgets, especially on the Mac. The common complaint, which I can’t dispute, is that wx applications don’t look and feel particularly well-integrated on the Mac. If you devote some effort to polishing the look and feel, this doesn’t have to be the case. It can be a lot of effort though, to build something that really feels native. That said, sometimes I’m just amazed at what you get for free. Here’s one of the test applications for PKIF, with no tweaks other than some mild build system manipulation, running on the Mac (not an officially supported platform). Screenshot after the jump.

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Mac|Life has a nice list of the 5 best and 5 worst Apple laptops of all time. The list is mostly good, but I have to quibble, naturally. Anyone who puts the Duo on the list of the best seems unlikely to have used one. They were a neat idea, and ahead of their time, but they really sucked both as laptops and as desktops. They certainly weren’t among the worst, either, but clearing them off the list would make room for the 12″ aluminum G4 PowerBook.

As for the worst, most of the stinkers they name deserve to be there; not the “toilet seat” tangerine and blueberry iBooks, though. Those were great, solid machines and among the first inexpensive machines with available built-in WiFi. But even if you think they’re bad, the hideous ball of suck that was the PowerBook 1400 has to overshadow them. And every machine Apple’s produced since, to be honest.