Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Word count: 200
Weird science of the day: an ancient frog - thanks to Seema for the link

With my new mac, I can take full advantage of all the iTerm tricks out there. iTerm itself is easy enough to download, but after that, things get hairy. Here’s a report on my struggle.

I’d already installed iTerm on the new mac, so I went straight to the iTerm tab customization instructions. From there I downloaded the file custom_iterm.dmg.tgz. None of the other links on this page are important, and the instructions themselves leave much to be desired.

I needed to download pos to the new mac. There was a version of it in the file above, but I wanted the fink version. Unfortunately, there are three files with the same name on that page, and no instructions anywhere on installing an unsupported fink package. I downloaded all three and diffed them to see which had the bug fixes - it seemed to be the one labelled “version 3″ so I went with that.

I’ve installed unsupported fink packages before, so I knew to sudo mv ~/Desktop/pos.info /sw/fink/dists/local/main/finkinfo/utils/ from the command line in iTerm. (I added the utils directory myself - it’s not necessary.)

For some reason I don’t quite understand, the traditional fink install pos still didn’t work - it kept telling me Failed: no package found for specification ‘pos’! Eventually I tried fink selfupdate, and after that fink install pos worked. The basics of pos, the little program that passes the directory name between the Finder and a terminal like iTerm, are explained on the Terminal-Finder Interaction page also maintained by wgscott.

So next up was installing that lovely Finder icon. I went to the fink-dependent folder in the disk image I downloaded earlier. Besides the link to fink.info, it contained an application and an applescript. Needless to say, there were no instructions. I copied the app, simple_iterm_cdf_fink, to my /Applications/Utilities folder and renamed it iTermer for brevity. Then I dragged it up into my finder toolbar, right next to the View options. It worked!

Next up was the Holy Grail of my iTerm efforts, the promised iterm tab customization. I was pleased to see that this step, at least, was well documented. I use tcsh, so I took the iterminal_custom.tcsh file from the Tab_title_customization folder in the disk image and put it, as advised, in ~/Library/Scripts/. Well, actually, there was no Scripts folder so I made one first. I put the .sh file in there, too, just in case I have a shell change-of-heart in the future. I added the line source ~/Library/Scripts/iterminal_custom.tcsh to my ~/.tcshrc file. Note that it should be all on one line.

I didn’t even quit iTerm - I just opened a new tab (command-t, if you haven’t figured it out) and voila! My tab had the directory name on it. It certainly beats a row of tabs all saying “Default session,” but with a little more documentation it would have been a lot less work.

There was one last issue - my prompt had been changed to the rather pedestrian test>. I opened ~/Library/Scripts/iterminal_custom.tcsh and the instructions for fixing that were right inside. I commented out the line with the boring prompt in it, and all was well with iTerm.

Word count: 100

New on the Mac: I installed wget from fink and Adobe Reader 6 (formerly known as Acrobat Reader). I also set up my webserver with a copy of my website so I can read and play with it locally.

I’m posting this with the latest NetNewsWire beta.

Writing link of the day: What is Narrative, Anyway?

PantyCat was getting old, so I decided to get addicted to Go. It started with a slashdot article about man vs. machine games, which led to an old article about computer Go. I downloaded Goban for the Mac, read a pamphlet for beginners, found the controls for board size and handicap in the info drawer, and now I Go. Especially helpful is the wiki-based Sensei Library.

Thanks to Veronica’s cable modem, I’ve installed the last few oversized programs on my new mac. Today’s bunch: the MacOS 10.2.8 update (not Panther), the Java update, the iCal and iSync updates, the Apple X11 beta, and i-Installer (for TeX and Ghostscript 8). At the moment I’m downloading the NetNewsWire 1.0.6b1 beta because it fixes a problem I’ve seen on and off.

Panther (MacOS 10.3) has been announced for October 24th. It’s not clear whether recent Mac buyers like yours truly will get the upgrade cheap ($20) or at the usual price ($130). Rumors are flying at macrumors.com.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been experiencing heavy fan activity on the new Mac. I was expecting the 12″ model to run hot like the previous version did, but it’s not hot - it’s just fanning itself a lot. After a disappointing experiment with the flat-surface solution (putting the laptop on a flat table instead of my lap), I consulted Google, Font of All Knowledge.

Konfabulator turned out to be part of the problem, according to this helpful blog entry from Mac-Mike. Apparently it’s a CPU hog. Though it pained me greatly, I closed Konfabulator down. Fannage dropped immediately from the high-speed fan setting to the low-speed setting.

My next project will be dropping down from low-speed fan to no fan, without resorting to external fin solutions like the LapTopCooler.

[Update] That didn’t take long. The Apple Knowledge Base recommends sleeping the hard drive and reducing processor performance. My hard drive was already set to sleep, but setting processor performance to “reduced” nipped that fan in the bud.

I spoke too soon - it just powered up again.

I’m still busy geeking. I’ve moved on from updating the Konfabulator kitchenTimer widget for the latest Konfabulator edition to editing the game ChainShot (by MscapeSoftware) so that the scoring is more like that of the Yahoo!Game JT’s Blocks - or as Veronica calls it, PantyCat. (Don’t ask.)

Another important piece of housekeeping was retrieving my .emacs file from the old mac and getting fresh copies of my favorite Emacs modes, folding mode and html helper mode. The latter is what produces the timestamp at the bottom of the Repository page.

The new mac is still adorably cute. Though the screen is smaller than my previous 15″ PowerBook, the resolution is the same, so it feels sharper rather than more cramped. The fan has been on longer in the past few days than my old fan ran in the entirety of its four years of active duty. Maybe it needs some stylish radiator fins like a spaceship’s. (In the vacuum of space, the problem is getting rid of excess heat, not keeping it in.)

The WotF people were kind enough to email me upon my manuscript’s arrival:

This is to inform you that your manuscript has been received and entered in L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of The Future Contest, quarter-ending September 30th. Please allow up to 8-10 weeks after the quarter deadline for judging to finalize.  Best wishes, Contest Administrator

Pardon the lack of content - I’ve been busy learning to script Konfabulator. I also downloaded the Apple developers tools, installed the PHP Apache module, and built Emacs for MacOS X.

Mac rumor of the day: Panther goes gold master

I’m sure you’re dying to know what on my new dock. At the moment, the collection is: the Finder, Mail, iTerm, iChat, Safari, NetNewsWire (no longer lite), Address Book, iCal, and iTunes. I also have System Preferences and Preview open at the moment, (Programs without links were included with the OS.)

I just downloaded Konfabulator. Stuffit Expander 8 is supposed to have some problems, but I upgraded yesterday and haven’t encountered them yet.

This entry was posted with NetNewsWire.

Source: Endymion, Keats

In a surprise move, the Mac (a new 12″ Powerbook) appeared on my doorstep this morning at 9:30 a.m. I’ve been playing with it ever since. So far I’ve changed my desktop, set up iChat with some icons (it uses the Address book icons instead of AIM ones) and gotten Safari tabbing. I’m also calibrating my battery. Next, I plan to play with the DVD drive.

Wired has a nice article about Virginia Tech’s G5 supercomputer, which was also slashdotted earlier this week. The original images were mirrored after the slashdotting, but seem to be back up now.

Those 1,100 dual 2GHz G5 towers sure look cute together. I’m guessing that’s 1064 PowerMacs for computing and 36 spares for playing iTunes. (That’s the only explanation for ordering the macs from the iTunes store.)

I should have bought my PowerBook there - my estimated ship date has been postponed from today to 10/3/2003. Virginia Tech gets 1,100 G5’s, and I get Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf:

I’m not sure what the refund is for, since they haven’t charged my credit card yet. And I thought I was the Apple Computer consumer. Alas, not yet.