It’s nice to settle for Safari

I’m looking at a draft post that I never did finish. It’s about how I was getting frustrated with switching to a certain browser for specific tasks. Call me old-fashioned, but I want it my way and that way (in my perfect world) is that one browser should be able to do all of my basic InterNetTubes things I do: 

1. Quick browsing
2. Really good display of pages
3. Ability to enter text into a html text field (or something like it).

Specifically, WordPress and Moodle text fields.And up to this point, Safari always met the first two requirements but always failed on the third one.Bummer.And so, here’s what I was typing 4 months back as I was working through my browser-angst:

I’m writing this entry in Safari to see if I can do the “Code” work around to get the post to look how it ought to.See, for any of my usual browsing, feed-reading, emailing, Safari is great. I have an older machine with limited resources available, and I would rather use the Cocoa app that is known as Safari.But, for the times when I want to do any text-editing windows, Safari simply will not render the correct editing toolbar. Thus, I have to switch over to Camino (which is also lightweight and snappy) to do editing on two of my major sites: vergil66.com (a Moodle-based site) and vergilscoffee.com (a WordPress.com site).Here’s what I mean:Moodle-editing (vergil66.com)This is my main classroom site throughout the school year and I am constantly updating information, communicating with students and posting assignments. The typical set-up in creating an assignment or any text-based item has a html-edit area as follows:(Dang, I just saved my WordPress post for this piece and now all the formating is gone:          

BTW, that’s exactly how the editing came out: one big long text block. But not anymore with the recent update to Safari. In their blog post, the developer folk over at WebKit mention the improvements and my particular priority (#3) was addressed as their #1.

1. Enhanced Rich Text Editing As you browse the web with a WebKit 3 based browser, you will get a complete and functional rich text editing experience on the new read-write web. Here’s a sweet demo of our improved editing support, just click the text and editing controls appear.Specifically, we have worked together with developers of RTE libraries and applications to improve compatibility. WebKit 3 fixes many bugs, and supports additional text editing features like links and lists. We now have support from web applications like WordPress, Google Docs, GMail, Blogger, and many more. We’ve also improved editing to support libraries like TinyMCE and FCKeditor. We expect even more web apps and toolkits to add support over time.       

My Moodle editing issue hasn’t changed, but that doesn’t affect me as much anymore: most of my editing for that site is done from another computer.Thanks WebKit bugwatching-developer folk; thanks for listening and improving a really good browser.  

Update: my post, as you can see, was a bit premature: WordPress editing looks good when you’re editing, but gets lumped together (esp. paragraphing). I don’t know, when I use Camino and other browsers, if I hit Return in the editing field and it will show up as a new paragraph…not so with Safari (BTW, I’m using the most recent build of WebKit). So, I suppose I will continue to switch back and forth between Safari for #1 and #2, Camino for #3.  (and the only way to get this last paragraph to paragraph was to enter in the <p> tags manually) <sigh>.

Necessary cleaning

I’m used to the idea that not having a place for more stuff means more stuff needs to go in the trash or to Goodwill. I am comfortable with knowing that even though I’m not always looking forward to going through each room once or twice a year to declutter, the process has becoming increasingly easier.

So, when the hard drive of my eMac is reaching that less than 5 GB, I refrain from getting more places to put the “stuff” and try and trash lots or give it away.

The process is getting harder because the stuff on the hard drive is actually good stuff. So, I pulled out JDiskReport to help me pinpoint who is the space hog and where I can get back above the 5 GB threshold.

Here’s the overall:

And I don’t find it unusual that most of the 40 GB HD is taken up with Users stuff (as I have been fairly careful about how many versions of office suites or browsers or photo editing apps I really need–though I still can’t decide between Safari and Camino…but that’s another post).

I’m not messing with the sw directory because most of that is Unix stuff that I still mess with…I did notice that there is 1.2 GB of Documentation for the Developer directory (and all of that is available on the web).

I’m up to 3.3 GB now.

I’ve used the Monolingual app that removes the language files that you won’t use…that got me almost a Gig of space when I ran it. Also, I have already cleaned out the browser cache. It’s now onto what is in that Users directory.

And there’s not a lot to trash here as this is paid for content (on the music side) that I’d rather not hunt down the original CD for (wherever it is in the basement). We’re podcast people, so that directory gets a cleaning often, but I think Kristen Tippet (“Speaking of Faith“) must have big files, so I’ll delete the older ones there. I guess I am also guilty of owning most of Bruce Hornsby’s stuff. I’m good with that as the Compilations category hides my bent toward all things Soundtrack and Musical.

The TV Shows category got really big for awhile, but recently we’ve been able to find most things via NetFlix (that, and anything I’ve bought via iTunes, I’ve archived on storage media==>more stuff <g>).

I didn’t put the graph up on this–because, well, pie charts can only be so pleasing to look at– but I found in my Pictures directory (12% overall) that iPod Photo Cache takes up 2.3 GB of HD space. Humm, should I delete it? Not sure, but I’ll read up on that one before I do it.

As I clean out my hard drive again, I realize that it is difficult using a 5-year-old machine with a limited amount of space anyway (40 GB). We do more digital stuff and that really cool digital stuff eats a lot of available space. I’m okay with that and I have found myself doing less graphic-heavy projects and more “plain text” items. I am reminded of the “cycle” statement some one told me over 12 years ago: Instead of the hardware driving software development, it seems that software pushes hardware requirements. Translation: “System Requirements” on that program or game that you want to install on your 2-year-old CPU.

Perhaps, then, this opens up more opportunity for the Web 2.0 culture. Perhaps, lower resource-intense OSs (*nix) and Open Source programs will allow us to use machines to do stuff that needs to be done as opposed to merely being the newest new.

Now, time to reclaim some hard drive space and think of a plan to get a new computer.

Update: I regained 3.7 GB of hard drive space by tossing the iPod Photo Cache and ADC Ref Lib (~67k files total). I am now at a comfortable 5.8 GB. I’ll be doing this again in a month.

But, an iPod will teach them good

From Engaget:

Facing a $1 billion budget deficit, Michigan state House Democrats have proposed the natural addition to such a weighted spending plan: free iPods for every kid. Ostensibly for educational purposes, the $38 million plan would provide iPods or MP3 players to every student in Michigan to use as a learning tool. We’ve seen laptops — which Michigan (and Virginia) handed out to its students a few year back — and even PSPs be put to such educational use

So long, .Mac: I’ve enjoyed my name@mac.com since the beginning

I was supposed to do a long run (2 hours) this morning, but about 3 miles into it (listening to a really good “Wait, wait…don’t tell me“) my mind said: “Hey, we’re tired and it’s dark and we voted and we wish we all stayed in bed this morning”).

So, no long-long run, but everything (physically) seemed to be working. (Note: we signed up for Columbus last night…14 days!)

And now on to the sad news: Goodbye to my @mac.com email address that I’ve had since the beginning days of .Mac. Makes me really said because now I have to tell everyone my new @gmail.com address. In fact, my address before that was in the early days of the @bigfoot.com “email for life” (until they started trying to make money and changed the limits on how many emails could be forwarded to another account).

So, goodbye to some convenience (iPhoto and iMovie to .Mac was really nice). But, seeing that’s there’s enough stuff out there that does the same things for free, I can use the $99 for more important things (perhaps upgrading to Pro accounts on stuff I really use).

43folders had a piece on the stagnation of .Mac and I find that I concur with most of the post (I know I should say what I really don’t see eye-to-eye on, but I’m a bit tired from drinking coffee today). Until then, perhaps I share what I am using instead of Apple’s connection with the digital life.

Oh, I’ve been playing with MySpace and my stay has been interesting. If anything, it has been more of a 1st hand look at what the kids are doing these days.

Goodbye .Mac; thanks for the convenience attached with my Mac experience. I think you know that many of us were rooting for you, but not a lot was happening (remember all the downloads we .Mac members got?). Until the reunion, good luck and hopefully you don’t bump into your cousin: eWorld.

Playing your Video iPod stuff on the tv

In case you didn’t find it elsewhere (and you have a video iPod), you can play video content (and your pictures) on your television with a regular video camera single jack to television cord. The key is in the color match up: Red goes to the video input on your television and the other two RCA jacks plug in audio in. I found this out tonight on Mac Development section of the OReilly sites. (Thanks to Erica Sadun for writing a step-by-step user guide for this).

Should I dump .Mac for other services that I can get for free?

I just got my email from Apple saying that in 30 days my account will automatically renew. This has been a year of Mac diehards getting a bit testy (and perhaps that number was small, but quite digged). So, should I pay the $99 for the email address (I do really like it: cjudson), the homepage feature (which I use flickr now anyway) and the iDisk space?

I’m having a hard time justifying the money for services that are available for free (or, for a nominal cost for more features).

BTW, the bandwagon to dump all things Apple is not where I am headed; it seems that I use different platforms for different purposes. At home, I will continue to use my Mac (and when the ol’ eMac gives way, we’ll get another); at school, I will continue to endure the silly Dells and their Win XP OS (which works fine for my purposes); I will continue to play with Linux (and the Darwin core in OS X) because I can.

Using Pine to read .Mac mail

I’m posting this here because I couldn’t find it else where and it would have been really nice to have the answer pop up in a google search.

So here it is:

When using the text mail program Pine and you have a @mac account, you will not just be able to put in your usual info for set up:

mail server: mail.mac.com

smtp server: smtp.mac.com

(BTW, I got hooked on Pine after reading Dave Taylor’s Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger…a very cool book if you want to dabble under the hood of OS X).

Anyway, if you actually follow Pine’s suggestions, you’ll get it right…I didn’t read very well, so for a long time I wasn’t able to send mail.

So here’s how your settings should look like under Config in Pine

smtp-server: smtp.mac.com/user-yourusername/novalidate-cert

inbox-path: {mail.mac.com/user-yourusername/novalidate-cert}Inbox

NOTE: yourusername is your username…the stuff to the left of your @mac.com address. Also, you don’t enter the Inbox stuff as Pine will ask you what the name of your Inbox is after enter the “novalidate-cert” stuff.

And now, you should be able to send (and receive) your .mac mail with Pine. (Note: I’m using Pine 4.64).

technorati tags:pine, osx

The school of Apple

It bums me out that Apple lost a lot of the educational market during the 90s. I’m not one to call Bill Gates a really bad guy or envy the man for having lots of pocket change; he’s good at what he does. (Though I always had the sneaking suspicion that something was fishy with Windows–like stealing your identity).

Friday Questions

Forget the VCR; Friday’s a good day for questions:

If chess is so good for the mind, why don’t more schools incorporate the mental challenge into their day?

Why do I get the feeling that Apple is rolling out more system products…with a price tag?

What would it be like to live on the Island of Sodor?