Chuqui 3.0

Okay, so I installed Leopard, and so far...

I'm up and running on Leopard. I'd say I'm 95-98% absolutely thrilled with it.

Did my three backups (two bootable), thought I'd do the archive and install. And then...

Some Leopard early adopters bitten by installation bugs:

Unfortunately, there's more. Some users have reported that they are unable to select a drive at the onset of the installation process. At the screen where they would normally be able to select a drive to install, users are instead faced with... nothing. One solution that has proven to work has been to head into Disk Utility and simply wait for the partition to appear. Once that happens, you can proceed with the installation.

The installer wouldn't recognize the laptop drive. I finally booted off of one of the bootable spare drives and brought up the disk utility; the partition wasn't unmountable because a file was reported as open and busy. I finally fixed it by throwing everything in the trash and seeing what wouldn't delete. It was late, and I forgot to write it down, but it was a file in the System folder, nested somewhere down in the bowels of the system. rebooting after that fixed things, and I erased the disk and then booted back to the installer and everything went fine.

Nice to know it's not just me. No idea why it happened, though. Other than that? it all went well.

Except, well, Aperture lost its serial number. Of all the freaking applications that should know better.... Hey, Photoshop didn't...

I had one system freeze immediately after the install when I tried to change the airport setting, but I haven't seen it again afetr a reboot. and tonight coming home, I plugged it into external monitor, and when it woke up, it looks like it got confused about which monitor to use (lid was down), and I ended up with all of the files on the desktop visible but not touchable. that required a restart, it didn't fix itself after a sleep. And I've seen one instance of a cursor getting into a funny state -- but purely cosmetic.

Other than that? I mostly like almost everything. Except the damn menu bar. Whoever thought making it translucent needs to be shot. Fortunately, someone else is pissed, and so..

Leopard Fix: Solidify your translucent menubar at LifeClever ;-) Tips for Design and Life:

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m finding Leopard’s new menubar more irritating than Fox News after a natural disaster. The mix of translucent bar with solid text and icons makes it an illigible mess.

Fortunately, there’s OpaqueMenuBar. Just launch the app and your menubar returns to its full solid glory.

Frankly? I don't mind the Dock at all, unlike some, but we'll give that some time to get used to see how it goes.

Everything seems faster. I'm not seeing any real problems. Aperture at first glance seems MUCH faster. Ad here's an intersting thing. I just fired it up, selected all of my photos, and deleted the previews (will explain later), and quit the program, and while it's updating the database, the icon in the finder view is flashing for the Aperture Library. As if they've animated that the item is being updated for you.

cute.

ASll in all, very good. Couple of glitches, the disk issue is worrisome because it's not something easily worked around by non-geeks. But beyond that? so far, soo good, and Time Machine is doing the backup right now...

HOLY FREAKING EARTHQUAKE

yeah, we just had an earthquake. Rolling enough to make walking a bit chancy, definitel got stuff jiggling, and I was just about to head under the desk when it started backing off.

Early result is 5.6, centered somewhere between San Jose and Fremont, which likely puts it on the Hayward fault, which is due to go PING. this isn't PING, this is, well, ping.

Needless, we're okay, no damage, nothing off shelves, didn't lose power, didn't lose network, but -- gah.

Blue in the Face

Daring Fireball: Blue in the Face:

It’s hard to see what more Apple could do to discourage the installation of software in /System/. Unsanity and Logitech are responsible for these APE installations that render Leopard upgrades unbootable, but it’s Apple that’s getting the bad press and the “I’m stuck at a blue screen” support calls.

Exposure: Flickr Desktop for Leopard

Connected Flow Blog » Blog Archive » Exposure: Flickr Desktop for Leopard:

You can think of Exposure as a desktop client for Flickr, or as a kind of iPhoto application, except that the photos are stored on Flickr, rather than your hard drive.

Interesting concept; worth pursuing, but...

What I really want is full sync capability from my master photo library (currently Aperture, but let's say Aperture/iPhoto) to Flickr and other photo services. Not just exporting to them, but full sync capability.

Why? Right now, once I upload something to Flickr, it basically disconnects from Aperture. If I make changes in Aperture, then in SOME cases FlickrExport will upload the changes for me and handle the connection, but I have a lot of photos n Flickr not connected -- and no way to rebuild those connections -- and changes made on the Flickr side are lost. So if I decide to update a caption or headline on Flickr (which can happen when I'm on the road or at work and realize something needs to be fixed or updated), or if someone else adds a tag, unless I remember to manually do them again in the library. And sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't.

I also want some way to manage the set/collection/group aspects of Flickr from within Aperture, so I know what photos are in what set or group, and I can do them via the Aperture interface. Yes, some of that is possible within FlickrExport, but it's not available from the Aperture UI or visible as I'm working on photos.

There are just too many disconnects. And since I also plan on starting to use SmugMug for a subset of my best photos (why? really good store, the ability to watermark on the fly (Flickr REALLY NEEDS THIS), so I can upload high-res images and limit access to them, and generally, a better site for semi-pro print or image sales).

I've also started experimenting with the Controlled Vocabulary (http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/) for keywording, adding in extensions for areas where I need more detail like site location and bird ID and the like, and I know that once I go in and re-keyword and re-caption my library, I'm going to be tempted to just zero out flickr and start over, and that's insane, but at that point, the sync disconnects are going to be close to fatal... But at some point, that pain has to be taken somewhere.

I've considered trying to build something to at least get this syncing started and reconnect photos -- but it's a bit low on my priority list right now. Oh well.

And amusingly enough, I just found out that one of my bird IDs from my trip today is wrong, and so I'm not going to all of the places where I documented it and have to fix it... (again).

Birding trip: Merced National Wildlife Refuge

With the rains holding off for now, Laurie and I headed out to Merced National Wildlife Refuge in search of geese and Sandhill Cranes, and whatever else we could find.

The Merced NWR is a smallish area that is maintained as an artificial wetlands and grasslands area -- to simulate the kind of environment that existed before the central valley was heavily modified for agriculture. It is a key wintering location and migration stop for birds along the pacific flyway, hosting shorebirds, ducks, geese and sandhill cranes.

With the migration going, they've started pumping water into the refuge to flood the fields. Today, the area near the entrance was still bone dry, but the back areas were partially flooded, and the first Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese have arrived.

There are some riparian trails near the entrance through the trees, good for sparrows and warblers and sometimes woodpeckers. The main attraction is a 6km auto trail around the perimeter which allows you good views and access of the birds and wildlife within.

(photos from today, plus photos from previous trips to Merced NWR, are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chuqui/sets/72157600017275967/)

On Sandy Mush driving in, we saw an American Kestrel, red-winged blackbirds (duh), our first of many red-tailed hawks, Northern Mockingbird and Scrub Jay.

As we arrived, the first thing we saw was the rare and secretive Bob Power of Santa Clara Valley Audubon, herding a birding class around the refuge. That brought reports of Lincoln's Sparrow and Hermit Thrush near the bathroom.

There were very few birds in the air -- when we arrived, a few small flocks of Sandhill Cranes, plus a number of turkey vultures and Red-tails. We spent a couple of hours traversing the auto trail. the Sandhill Cranes were only close in in one location (a small group near the rear observation platform), and the Snow Geese insisted on staying in the center far from any reasonable viewing, but you could see the large mass of white bodies...

Highlight birds for the day:

Sandhill Crane

Snow Goose

(white-faced?) Ibis

Near the start of the auto-tour, we had a flock of roughly 20-25 ibis fly in and fly back out again. I didn't get a great look at them (and no photos), but they were likely white-faced.

Along the south side of the auto-trail, we stopped to check out sparrows -- only White-crowned and some gold-crowned, but while we were there, we had a bird up on the power wires -- a first year Swainson's Thrush an American Pipit:

There was also a flock of roughly 100 Sandhill Cranes hanging out on the opposite side of the road across the field near the irrigation channel.

On the way towards the observation tower we had a western meadowlark at the side of the road yelling.

From the observation tower in the back we had a large number of ducks and shorebirds, including Mallard, lots (and lots) of American Coots and Northern Shovelers, a few cinnamon teals, a number of Northern Pintails, Yellowlegs of some sort, a grey shorebird that I'll call a Willet (well, lots of them), and the small party of Sandhill Cranes. In the trees at the tower we found two Yellow-Rumped warblers.

Past that point, it was still non-flooded and there wasn't a lot of activity, other than a Peregrine Falcon that sat for a few photos.

Species list for today: (30 species, plus 2 reported we didn't see)

Lincoln's Sparrow (reported, we didn't see)
Song Sparrow (2-4)
White-Crowned Sparrow
Gold-Crowned Sparrow

Hermit thrush (reported, we didn't see)
Swainson's Thrush (first year)American Pipit
Black Phoebe (almost as many as mosquitos)

Red-tailed Hawk (at least 15)
Peregrine Falcon
Turkey Vulture (6-8; on the way back on the 152 near the 5, we also saw a flock of ~20 soaring together)

Scrub Jay
Northern Mockingbird
Marsh Wren

(white-faced?) Ibis (20-25)
Snow Geese (300-500)
Sandhill Crane (500+)
Greater White-Fronted Goose (25-50)

Snowy Egret
Great Egret

Black-necked stilt
American Avocet
(?) Yellowlegs
Willet (and possibly some dunlin)

Western Gull

Mallard
Northern Pintail
Nothern Shoveler
American Coot
Cinnamon Teal

Yellow-Rumped Warbler
Western Meadowlark
Double-crested cormorant

Swainson's Thrush American Pipit is is not a lifer for me. We'll likely go back in about 6 weeks, and again in mid-january and mid-late February; peak period for Merced NWR is generally end of October into March.

Which Apple sites I read....

Pulling this up from a comment:

Chuqui 3.0: The despicable MacFixIt:

So come on already, Chuq; give [wry grin]. What is your current list of Mac-focused sites that deserve your attention?

Okay, fair cop. Here are the sites I read these days (in no particular order):

• Aperture Users Professional Network
• Apple Hot News
• Appleinsider
• Ars Techinca
• Connected Flow Blog
• Crazy Apple Rumors
• Daring Fireball
• Inside Aperture
• MacTech News
• Macworld
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog

the Leopard watch: upgrade problem?

Chuqui 3.0: the Leopard watch...:

I dunno... there seems to be a HUGE issue with upgrade-installs, as in "your logins won't actually login after upgrade"

Pulling this comment out from a comment posted. First I've heard of this problem, while I've seen a good number of bloggers say they've upgraded with no problems found. No idea how widespread this is, but I wanted to make sure people saw it.

(update: a little birdie noted that this is the problem today's software update was published to fix. They also note that if you can't log in, software update can be problematic, but perhaps one answer is to boot from another drive and download and install the update manually?

more here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306840. Also, the update is available for download here: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/loginkeychainupdate10.html)

Update 2: more thoughts: (untested by me) create a new user, or use the install DVD to enable root to get in and do the update. Also be aware that unsanitie's APE is causing significant problems and needs to be at the most recent version before upgrading, or else.....

the Leopard watch...

I bought Leopard from Amazon, but it's not here yet. By design, I'm letting everyone else pile on over the weekend and blaze the trail. but not for long -- I'm really looking forward to it.

The first software update has arrived, and it looks like it's a rather minor one. That's rather encouraging, actually, and I was waiting to see what Apple needed to be patched early; answer -- not much.

From what I can tell, given the time Apple spent getting Leopard ready, 10.5.0 looks to be about equivalent to 10.4.2. That's great, and congrats to everyone on the teams who made it happen.

The despicable MacFixIt

MacJournals News : The despicable MacFixIt:

Ever since founding editor Ted Landau sold MacFixIt years ago, the site has been on an increasingly shrill trajectory of fomenting fear and uncertainty about installing any software, largely in an attempt to instill in its readers an unnecessary dependency on the site's blessing before proceeding with, well, anything. The "be very afraid" subtext has always been clear in the current MacFixIt's installation "advice," but it's refreshing that the site has finally come out and said so, to remove any doubts.

I've always felt that MacFixit strongly overplays both the seriousness of problems, and just how widespread they are. they're also very quick to blame Apple, and very slow to correct that impression (just like so many publications, the headline is on page 1 in 60 point type, the correction off with the obituaries...)

When I worked at Apple, I read a lot of the mac-oriented sites and blogs. In the last year, I've been paring them down based on which ones are well-written, balanced, and how good they are at creating original content (as opposed to "discovering" things posted on other blogs, or sometimes even linking to them and giving them credit. The number's a much smaller number than it used to be. For instance, I only read one "rumor" site now, because, frankly, if it's on one of the sites, it's on all of them almost immediately -- so why bother?

Macfixit was one of the first I deleted when I left Apple, and this piece explains it perfectly.

Update: the list of Apple sites I follow these days is here:

http://chuqui.typepad.com/chuqui_30/2007/10/chuqui-30-the-d.html

The User-Generated Content Myth

The User-Generated Content Myth - Publishing 2.0:

A whole mythology is emerging around the idea of “users” — consumers, fans, regular average folk — creating content that media companies and brands can leverage. It’s a compelling idea — but it’s a myth.

The reality is that “average people” don’t create a lot of content — at least not the commercially viable kind. Most people are too busy. Those that do “create content” — and who do it well — are those who are predisposed to being content creators. The have some relevant skills, training, raw talent, motivation, something.

It's not just busy. it's probably not MOSTLY being too busy.

it's that most people don't create. Or don't see themselves as creative. Or don't see what they create as interesting. Or don't see what they create as being AS INTERESTING as stuff other people are creating.

This shouldn't be surprising to people, because if you've run communities for any length of time, you'll run into the 1% rule: in any community of size, the vast majority of your content is created by about 1% of the membership.

It think it would be useful if we get out of the thinking that we're getting everyone involved in content creation. what we're doing is lowering the barrier of entry (cost, complexity, availability) to make it easier for more people to get involved.

I think it's also useful to separate content creation from creating an online identity. What goes on on facebook isn't necessarily content creation. Setting up a profile isn't really getting involved in content creation...