Weblog of a “Switcher”

Wow, what an amazing turn of events:

Today, we announced a non-exclusive advertising agreement that will provide Yahoo! with access to our AdSense for search and AdSense for content advertising programs on their U.S. and Canadian web properties. In addition, we will work to enable interoperability between our respective instant messaging services allowing users better, broader communication online.

[From Official Google Blog: Our agreement to provide ad technology to Yahoo!]

Two competitors working together! I wonder if this is to help Yahoo! fight off Microsoft from taking over.

Still, It's a very impressive move by Google. If there are no ulterior motives, this would probably be the biggest PR move any company has ever done before. It's going to make Google look like saints!

Anyone have any thoughts on why this is happening? It sure looks like a good will gesture to me.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo

This doesn't have anything to do with the Macintosh or even computers...

I was watching television yesterday and an ad for our local waste removal service came up. They were talking about wasted energy in our homes due to all the electronics we have in our house. Even when those electronics are turned off.

They claimed that a Television that is turned off uses more energy than when it is on! On the surface, that just sounds absolutely insane.

They were referring to the fact that most electronic devices these days have "standby" modes. So even if something is off, it's drawing energy. OK, this is true. You should see all the LED glowing away in our house at night. Their solution suggests to plug all your electronics into power strips and simply switch the power strip off when you are done using them.

I still think that the statement is absurd, so I decided to look up some data. The manual for my Sharp Aquos 42" LCD HD television states that when it is on, it draws 247 Watts. OK, just under the amount that a 3-way lightbulb uses on it's highest setting. Not really all that much power.

The manual didn't have anything to say about when it was in standby mode and a quick search in Google took me to a site that showed me how much it uses. A whopping 3 Watts.

Now, I'm no electrician, so my math here may be wrong, but 3 Watts seems a bit smaller than 247 Watts. It's over 80 times less in fact. So doesn't that mean that I would have to leave my Television off for over 80 hours to draw as much power as when it is on for 1 hour?

If I am correct here, then the ad is full of male cow droppings!

I am certainly not going to suggest to anyone to use a power strip to turn off their electronics when they are not using them. They would have to reset clocks and other settings over and over again each time they want to use them and that is just not acceptable. Not in this day and age.

Back when all televisions had was a power switch, channel knob and volume knob, then I would say OK. The only problem with that is that those units didn't have a standby mode since they obviously didn't need one. No user settings or clock times were being saved.

I just felt I had to get that off my chest.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Clocks, Cow, Drawing, Electrician, Electronic Devices, Google, Hd Television, Lightbulb, Macintosh, Macintosh Computers, Math, Modes, Power Strip, Power Strips, Power Switch, Search Google, Sharp Aquos, Standby Mode, Televisions, Volume Knob, Watching Television, Watts

Secrets is a Leopard Preference Pane that allows it's users to modify settings in Leopard that before were only accessible from Terminal.app. This allows the "less savvy" population of computer users to customize their Leopard installations as a pro might.

It all starts with downloading and installing the Preference Pane from http://secrets.textdriven.com/. Just unzip the downloaded file and double click on the "Secrets.prefPane" file. Leopard knows that this is a Preference Pane and will copy it to the correct location. OS X is just awesome that way.

It will then open the Preference Pane which looks like this:

As you can see from the screenshot, there are quite a few "Secrets" to choose from. The light blue (iTunes like pane) on the left side of the window shows all the programs that have "Secrets" to choose from. There are also two special items. "Top Secrets" shows the most popular secrets and "All Secrets" which will show all the secrets that can be chosen.

When you find an item you which to change, clicking on it will reveal a bit more information about the secret:

You can then click on the User Interface control that changes the secret. In the above example, that would be the checkbox. Depending on what the secret changes, you might be prompted to quit the application that will be effected. This appears at the bottom of the Preference Pane next to the "Revert" button.

A really nice touch to this Preference Pane is the "Update Secrets" button. Clicking this button will tell Secrets to go out to the server that holds the database of all the secrets and see if there is a need to update the database stored on your computer. It also checks to see if the Preference Pane needs to be updated as well. The "?" (Question Mark) button takes you to the Google Code page where the Secrets Project is being maintained. The "Revert" button will restore the secret setting back to it's default value and the "More Info ->" button takes you to the database entry were the selected secret is stored on the server's database.

I personally am not all afraid of using Terminal.app to make these kinds of changes. This can be a problem since I don't always remember that I have made them and then don't know how to set them back to their default value. The Secrets Preference Pane makes this a no-brainer.

If you like the idea of personalizing your installation of Leopard, hope over to their website and give it a try. Best of all, it's free.

Update (5/8/08): It looks like development on the Secrets Preference Pane has either stopped or really slowed down. I talk about it here along with a really good replacement program and a possible reason for the lack of development here: MacPilot: New Version Kills Secrets Preference Pane Utility

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Checkbox, Computer Checks, Computer Users, Correct Location, Customize, Database, Database Entry, Double Click, Downloaded File, Google, Info Button, Interface Control, iTunes, Leopard, Os X, Population, Preference, Preference Pane, Question Mark Button, Screenshot, Secrets, Top Secrets, Unzip File, User Interface

Welcome to the new home of
Weblog of a "Switcher"!

If you don't understand why you are being welcomed, then pop over to the WordPress.com home and read the moving notice post.

As time goes on here, there will probably be new features added to the site as I find plug-ins and other features that will hopefully make the site a pleasure to go to and read.

Since I have no control over search engines like Google and Yahoo!, there will still be folks starting over at the WordPress.com site. Hopefully they will see the sidebar notice that the site has moved and head over hear looking for the post that they want to comment on. I don't plan on closing comments out on the WordPress.com site, so conversations will continue there until they run dry. I suspect new conversations will start up here, at least I hope they will.

I have set the WordPress.com site to not let search engines crawl the site, so I suspect in time, the search engines will loose references to the WordPress.com site.

For those of you that have made the necessary adjustments to keep following me here, thank you very much. I hope I can keep posting interesting enough articles to keep you checking out the site from time to time.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Closing Comments, Control, Conversations, Google, Google Yahoo, Moving Notice, Necessary Adjustments, New Features, Pleasure, Plug Ins, Pop, Search Engines, Search Google, Search Yahoo, Weblog, Yahoo

Launchd: One Program to Rule them All
Apple's Dave Zarzycki talks to Google about Launchd.

This is a pretty technical talk about how Apple's launchd works and how to use it as a developer. Most folks won't really care about this, but it's actually quite interesting and shows a lot about how OS X works.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple Works, Google, Os X, Zarzycki

One of OS X's newest features was one of the biggest reasons I switched to Mac. That feature (as you probably gathered via the title of the post) is Spotlight!

Today I had a rather frustrating time at work in Windows trying to locate a single file in millions. Every time I attempted to launch WinCVS, it would either lock up or tell me that there was a deadlock with a TCL84.DLL file.

Reading the error message that displayed, it implied that it was possibly using an incorrect version of the DLL stored somewhere else. From the name of the file, I figured that it was something to do with TCL/TK. This is odd since I didn't install the Python/TCL options it wants. I didn't have them installed before and had no problems.

Anyway, I wanted to see where there were other copies of the file. So I asked XP to do a file search (the one in Explorer) for me. After 30 minutes of my system running at a snail’s pace looking through all the files on my HD for that file, I gave up.

"Why didn't I use Google Desktop Search or Microsoft Desktop Search?" you ask? Well, I'll tell you. I don't use those tools because they cause my computer to run at a snail’s pace when I don't want it to. Even though those programs claim to not run if the computer isn't idle, they still seem to. Also, I have had Google Desktop Search cause some rather strange problems to show up. Like getting errors during project builds because it's indexing a file that was just touched by the build and since the file is in use, the build errors out.

I have tried both of the search engines above. Microsoft's search at least allows you to put it to sleep for 1 hour, 8 hours, etc... What they need is a scheduler that I can say exactly when the indexing should take place. That way I can specify the hours I am not in the office.

Enter Spotlight on the Mac. I have used this many times since I got my MacBook. I constantly forget where I store files. All I have to do to find the file is type part of its name and before I finish typing that name, it appears in the list. I'm sure OS X is indexing the computer, yet I never notice it.

Why is this such a difficult task for Microsoft or Windows to do? For file name searching, I have created a batch file at work that does a "DIR /S" and pipes the output to a file. I do this for all the volumes on my computer and I schedule it to run overnight. In the morning I can simply search the text file created to find a file. It's not real-time, but at least it's something.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: 30 Minutes, Deadlock, Desktop Search, Error Message, File Search, Google, Hd, Macbook, Microsoft Desktop, Office Mac, Os X, Pace, Python, Scheduler, Search Engines, Single File, Sleep, Spotlight, Strange Problems, Tk

So, thanks to Microsoft Windows, I was finally able to convince my parents to switch to a Mac as well.

Why? Well, my Dad mistakenly used Internet Explorer to go someplace on the web. Apparently, that place wasn't very nice, and the next thing he knew, windows were popping up left and right. Later, when my mother tried to use the computer, Internet Explorer windows started popping up all over the place for her too. There were two processes running that were suspicious looking. "isamini" and "isamonitor". Looking these up on Google, I find that one is a trojan and the other was just malware in general. Aparently both do bad things to the system.

So this weekend, I spent 6 hours backing up their data, wiping out their HD and re-installing Windows. The backup/re-install/restore didn't take that terribly long. It was the freaking UPDATES that took forever. First, there was the fact that Windows Update thought we were not using a Genuine copy of Windows. That was utterly ridiculous. I used the "Re-install" disk that came with the freaking computer. I had to go through some bizarre set of webpages that identified the little certificate on the side of the computer. Once I did that, I was allowed to start the update process.

There were 10 updates in the first set. That took about a half an hour, then came SP2, that took about 45 minutes, then after SP2, there were 49, count them, 49 more updates that needed to be done. I stopped at this point. Enough is enough.

So to try to combat future problems, I set up both my parents accounts as "limited users". This works great. Now, they are not allowed to change the Power Saving features in the Display options. I also forgot to install some printer drivers they need for the printer they have. So back to their house I went tonight to make those adjustments.

Tomorrow afternoon, on my way home from work, I'm buying a MacMini for them. I'll get it setup and bring it over to them when I finish. If they don't want the Windows box, I'll probably bring it home and install a Linux distro on it.

There was a time when I really though that Winows was not all that bad. Between Vista being as useless as Windows XP when it comes to security, (I'll explain) and XP being useless, it wasn't really all that hard to convince the matriarch of the family that the switch was necessary.

I make the claims about XP and Vista that I am making due to the fact that Vista seems to have a similar security model to XP. A "Standard user" can't do much (apparently they can change the power saving features unlike XP). I suppose this is a good thing. However, in order to do anything with the system, you have to log into an administrator account. XP is the same way with it's "Limited user" accounts. I take part of the above statements back... I tried to change a setting somewhere else, and it asked to put in the password of the admin account. So they did make some improvements. Maybe the other places it doesn't ask will get fixed before it's released.

I am writing this post under Vista as a "Standard user". Basically, I want to see how Vista fairs compared to OS X and the way it handles changes to the system by non-admin accounts. Windows XP just doesn't deal with Limited users at all. From what I can see with Vista, at least it has the ability to make some changes as a Standard user. My opinion, it doesn't stack up at all. Apple got it right with OS X and the way it deals with standard users vrs admin users.

Thank God I was able to convince my parents to switch. :whew:

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Computer Internet, Dad, Genuine Copy, Google, Half An Hour, Hd, Installing Windows, Internet Explorer Windows, Isamini, Isamonitor, Macmini, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Parents, Printer Drivers, Sp2, Tomorrow Afternoon, Trojan, Windows Box, Windows Update

On to the OS now. My experience with OS X up until now was not very good. I started with the beta of 10.0 and before I got rid of my G4, I had installed a copy of the final version of 10.0. It was pretty buggy and it was still trying to support OS 9.

OS X Tiger (10.4.x) is a much better beast. When I first fired up the MacBook, my first task was to connect to my wireless network. It didn't accomplish this automatically, and I had to scratch my head for a couple of minutes before I was able to figure it out. After that connecting "things" to my MacBook has been extremely easy. The commercials PR speak that say "It just works" is pretty much dead on target.

One of "Tiger's" biggest features is Spotlight. When I first heard about it, i was pretty skeptical. I mean how fancy can a search utility be? After using Google Desktop Search and more recently Microsoft's Desktop Search, I can say without reservation that Apple got it right the first time! Microsoft Desktop Search (Vista's new search system) is amazingly annoying. Users are supposed to be able to configure it to not "index" the system while you are using it. However, I have seen it scanning many times while I was in the middle of something and didn't want the load that the indexer puts on the CPU. If there is an indexer in OS X for Spotlight, I haven't seen any slowdowns due to it running.

Installing programs is another Windows nightmare. There is typically always an install program that installs the executable and support files not only in the "destination" folder, but many times they install files (DLL's and such) in the Windows directory tree. When you uninstall the program for what ever reason, those DLL's are typically left behind. This causes all kinds of system bloat that really isn't necessary. This hasn't been so bad with Windows XP, but Pre-XP was awful!

OS X installs are truly the simplest thing I have ever seen. You simply copy the executable to your hard drive, typically the Applications folder. Done. No extra files that get installed behind the scenes, no DLL being installed in the OS
How is this possible? Well, that executable file is really a folder, and that folder contains all the necessary files needed to run the application. It's that simple. It's really quite elegant. As proof, launch the Terminal program, change the current directory to the Application folder. Then do a "DU" in that folder. You will see a boatload of text scroll down, but if you look back at the list of folders it's scanning, you will see an application name with a bunch of text behind it. Something like "Applications/AppZapper.app/resources/folder/folder". I can't remember about the ".app" in the name and I'm not currently near my MacBook to double check, but if my memory serves it's at least something like that. The OS see's the ".app" and treats the folder as an application that can be run.

Another feature that Windows and Linux has been attempting to copy is Expose. For those who don't know what Expose is, it's a great feature that lets you move all your open windows around so that you can see them all without them overlapping by simply pressing F9. Then, when you find the one you want, you click it and all the windows move back to their original positions with the one you selected on top. You can also push all the open windows out of the way so you can get access to the desktop by pressing F11 and if you have several windows open for a single application, F10 will do with the application windows what F9 did to the entire desktop. Sure, switching apps can be accomplished by pressing command-tab like Windows, or clicking on the icon of the app you want to switch to in the dock. However, Expose is much easier to use and really fun.

The final thing I want to talk about when it comes to my first impression of OS X is the Software Update System Preferences pane and system. I've never really understood Microsoft's use of a web browser to update their OS When Windows 95 first started doing this, there were all kinds of problems. I remember having to re-install IE a couple of times to get it just right for Windows Update to work correctly. It looks like Microsoft Vista has a better container for Windows Update. However, it looks like it still uses a browser page to do the update. It's inside an Explorer window, but it looks and sounds web like.

With OS X, there is a "program" that performs the task of updating the OS and many of the programs that come installed with the OS You are allowed to choose what you want to install very easily via a list of items that need updating with checkboxes in front of each one. Also, most updates don't require a reboot, however sometimes it's still necessary. Like updating OS X specifically like I had to do just recently.

So, it's been two weeks since I bought the MacBook and I'm lovin' every minute of it!

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Annoying Users, Couple Of Minutes, Desktop Search, Destination Folder, Directory Tree, First Impressions, G4, Google, Google Search, Indexer, Microsoft Desktop, Os 9, Os X, Os X Tiger, Search System, Search Utility, Simplest Thing, System Bloat, Target, Time Microsoft, Windows Directory