Halo

6 comments (closed), posted on march 30, 2004, tags: gaming

Dan Benjamin always makes sure people are good and dead. Even if that means shooting at corpses.

xPad Status

19 comments (closed), posted on march 30, 2004, tags: xpad

It's been a long time since I've posted an update to the xPad timeline, and since people are starting to get antsy and angry about it, I figured I would take a few minutes to clarify what's going on with development.

I'm behind. That's pretty much what it comes down to. Version 2.0 has been planned but not really developed. Version 1.1 and 1.2 are coming, but aren't done yet. To be honest, I haven't been doing much xPad development the last few months. This is mostly due to the fact that the release of 1.0 was 9 months of solid work that burned me out.

It's extremely fun to do, but application development is not my day job. xPad does not make nearly enough money for me to live off of (not even for more than two months) and I'm not entirely thrilled about the idea of spending another 5 months killing myself to put out a 2.0 that will only make a small amount of money. Don't get me wrong—I did enjoy doing it. But it was all I did, all the time, and it was tiring. I have rent to pay and a life to live. For a long time, xPad was my life. Katia didn't really like that, and I didn't either.

The break from xPad has been nice, and I'm not thrilled by the idea of going back to it. So I'm taking it really slow. I know that probably angers some of you. Most of you, even. But that's life. I would feel much worse if xPad 1.0 was bug-ridden and didn't work and was useless and you had bought it in advance thinking eventually it would be usable. But that's not the case. xPad is a functional, useable, almost bug-free application that is worth $10. Even if I never released another version, I would feel confident in the fact that I had given people their money's worth. I can only hope people who bought the application feel the same.

I'm not saying there won't be another version of xPad. No matter what happens, there will definitely at least be a 1.1 to fix a few things that bother me (the most notable being that Command+left/right arrows switches documents and therefore disables basic Cocoa text-editing shortcuts). But 2.0 is not coming in the near future.

My position on this might change. I can't say with certainty how I'll feel about xPad in a few weeks or even tomorrow. I go through development phases and this is one of them. It would be different if I was surviving off the application, but it's still just a hobby.

Feel free to comment with your thoughts. I'm open to hearing how you feel about all of this.

Google Ads and Failure

9 comments (closed), posted on march 30, 2004, tags: site

Note: Since people seem to think this entry is meant to guilt them into clicking ads, I've edited it to be more clear. This entry is about how my Google Adsense experiment on the site is failing. That is all. See this entry for details.

I've been running Google's Adsense ads on this site for just over 30 days. The ads appear on the archive, plugin, xPad and a few other miscellaneous pages at the bottom of the sidebar. You might not have even noticed them.

The experiment has not been successful. The goal was for the site to pay for its own hosting for one year. I've made a total of $22.05 in 33 days. The unfortunate thing is, if I stop using the ads now, I'll never see the money I've made so far (that is, not until the end of the year). Google only pays out when you reach $100.

I'm going to leave the ads up until they make enough money for a payout. It will probably take a while, so I might end up removing them before that. Since the ads are relatively invisible, this shouldn't be a problem for people visiting the site. It depends on how long I can stand seeing them.

More Passport Trouble

3 comments (closed), posted on march 28, 2004, tags: new york

I received a letter on Thursday from the United Department of State requesting further proof of identification in order to process my request for a passport. They said they needed—in addition to my original birth certificate (which they have, physically, in their office), social security card, and signed affidavit from Katia—a photocopy of at least three (3) additional proofs of identification that were at least five years old.

First of all—five years ago I was 18. I don't really have anything older than five years (at least that was on their list), let alone three items. Apparently that wasn't a big deal, however, because when I called the passport agency the man on the phone didn't even let me finish describing my situation before cutting me off with, "Don't worry about it. Just send what you have. Doesn't matter how old it is." If it doesn't matter, pal, why do you specify an age?

I sent copies of my college ID, my high school ID, my expired New Jersey driver's license, New York State ID, social security card, employee ID, pay stub, bank statement, and a hand-written note about my phone call to the agency. At this point there's really not much else I can do to prove I'm me, so they had better give me a passport.

Someone Explain All of This

6 comments (closed), posted on march 25, 2004, tags: gaming

Yesterday I picked up Halo for the Mac. I own the PC version, but I got tired of plugging the Cinema Display into the converter just to play a game. It's especially annoying because you can't swap the display out while the Mac is on (since it gets power from the Mac), so you have to shut down, then unplug. It's time consuming—even if my Mac only takes 32 seconds to start back up—and I don't like having to get under my desk multiple times just to play a game then go back to normal computing. Anyway. Halo for the Mac.

I installed the game and launched it, and was shocked to find when attempting to change bindings that I couldn't assign actions to any of the action keys on the keyboard (Shift, Control, etcetera). Since I've been a PC gamer for many, many years now, I have developed a very good system for myself of using the keyboard and mouse, and that includes a very specific binding system. I use the same keys in almost all shooters because almost all have very similar command sets. In the PC version of Halo I was able to go about my business as usual, but in the Mac version I got no response when trying to assign reload to the right shift key. I tried assigning crouch to the right control key... no dice.

Now I'm confused. The Unreal Tournament 2004 beta allowed me to bind commands to these keys, so it's not an OS X thing. It seems to just be a Halo thing. Why would Macsoft do this? It doesn't make sense. Perhaps Mac FPS players are just used to the fact that walk forward is W, etcetera, etcetera, and they don't mind. I, however, do. I should be able to bind any command to any key on the keyboard.

It's also worth noting that Halo does not take over the system when it's running, which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's great, because Halo runs exactly like another application and can be hidden, switched out of, and such, allowing you to play Halo and still receive IMs if you wish or anything of the like. OS X is so well done that I can actually use Expose and show the desktop while Halo is playing to check the time and then bring the app back into focus without a performance hit. At the same time, though, this means that when assigning keys on the keyboard that are assigned to other global system functions I get a conflict. For instance: by default, Halo binds the F1 key to show scores, but I have that assigned to an Expose function. So when Halo is running and I push F1, instead of Halo capturing the key press and just showing me scores, it shows scores and Expose also fires. This is very annoying.

Maybe the conflict problem is an OS X thing, but I don't think it is. I think an application can trap key presses and deal with them without having to send them to the system. Maybe I'm wrong. It should be noted that Windows has this problem too, but only with the Windows key on the keyboard. Then again, that's really the only global key in Windows (other than Alt+Tab, which works as well). I thought it was just Expose at first (maybe it was running in a layer above the application), but I found that using a Synergy function key also had this effect. Consider this my open letter to MacSoft. I might be the only bastard with this problem, but that's not going to keep me from complaining.

I also noticed rather cruddy visual performance from time to time, but apparently that's just because I was playing Halo in letterbox format (which matches the shape of the Cinema Display) and I needed to be playing in a 4:3 ratio (with black bands on the sides). This is something that definitely needs to be fixed. What's the point of having a widescreen display if you can't use a quarter of it? I'm willing to look past this, however, if I can actually the play the game—but the binding issues stated above are making that very difficult.

On the Subject of RSS

12 comments (closed), posted on march 22, 2004, tags: web

I'm still feverishly working on the new back-end of this site (on a development server). It's been about 50 hours so far, but I'm getting there. On the way, I've finally switched over to XHTML Strict after being so close yet so far away for a very long time. I've also consolidated the "normal" styles with the "IE junk" styles using selectors and hacks and even though it was a pain it is nice to have everything in one (albeit larger) place. There's also quite a bit of small clean-ups all over the place. I'll be done soon. You won't really notice, but I will.

One of the features of my new system is the ability to have any page turn into RSS (and now Atom) automatically. This idea was completely stolen from waferbaby, and was completely worth stealing. What does this mean for you? It means you'll be able to subscribe (using a newsreader) to any page on the site. Subscribe to the comments of a post and you'll see when new comments are posted. Subscribe to the photos page and see when new photos are added. You get the idea.

The whole idea is making everything on the site reusable. Since the content all gets dumped into XML, it can easily be restyled and/or reused. Not to mention it means I won't have to deal with data management again for a very long time—redesigning will entail simply changing the XSL stylesheet.

So anyway, RSS and Atom everywhere. Great. I should also note that all of my RSS and Atom feeds will always be full-text. That means you'll see full entries and all the content in each feed. I bring this up because I'm noticing a trend lately with people limiting their RSS feeds to only a single sentence in order to get people to visit their sites.

While I understand the point of getting people to visit your actual website, I'm getting frustrated by the number of people who are only giving me a single sentence each time they update and thereby forcing me to visit their site in a browser. Sure, you have Google ads, I get it. But still, what's the point of a news reader if you only deliver one summary sentence? Shouldn't we call them headline readers or summary readers or "tells you when sites are updated" applications in this case?

I blame two people for making me think about this tonight: Mark Pilgrim (Dive Into Mark) and John Gruber (Daring Fireball). I blame Pilgrim because he's the RSS guy. He's the Atom guy. He writes feed validators and specs and comes up with APIs and all that stuff and yet what do I see from his latest RSS update?

Most valuable asset

Daily writing is not our most valuable asset. (773 words)

Oh, that's brilliant. An absolutely useless sentence and a count of how many words I don't see. Great. That $40 I spent on NNW feels more and more worth it every minute, Mark. No offense, but what the hell is this all about? Someone tell me, because I don't understand how someone so invested in RSS and Atom can have such a useless feed.

I blame John Gruber because he's a smart guy who writes a lot of great entries and tonight when I refreshed my subscriptions the NNW "Highlight Differences" feature showed that every headline in his feed had been modified. Now they're all one sentence each. I can't remember if he's always had a once-sentence feed (he might have and I've just forgotten now), but either way I don't like it. His current top entry says:

Dive Into Markdown

Why Markdown?

Why Markdown? I don't know, because you didn't tell me. You're asking that I visit the site to find out. While I like your site, John, I don't see the point in having these headlines. I know how to work Safari. I know how to visit your site if I want to. I do, at least once a day, but sometimes I want to read all my weblogs in one place at one time. You're not letting me do that, John. You're a smart guy—what's up with this? And yes, I realize the irony in the fact that your headline is called 'Dive Into Mark'down.

I'm asking you, weblog readers and writers, to decide right now—if RSS feeds are simply for update notification, let's quit the bullshit and get rid of everything else. Just headlines. Just notification. If they're for actual content distribution, then get on the ball and start including some actual content.

xPad Hint

posted on march 22, 2004, tags: xpad

I was wondering why so many people were referring through from VersionTracker today until Daniel pointed out an article on Mac OS X Hints about xPad, Change the location of saved xPad documents.

Never thought I would be the subject of a Mac OS X hint.

Annoying Mail Bug

14 comments (closed), posted on march 19, 2004, tags: software

Update: This bug is fixed as of May 26, 2004, with the release of OS X version 10.3.4.

I reported this Mail bug to apple about five days after installing Panther. It's subsequently been marked as a duplicate and seemingly on track to get fixed, but in the mean time it's been 5 months and this bug drives me crazy on a daily basis. Since the last bug I reported with an Apple product managed to get some attention, I figured I might as well post about this one too—maybe it will help it get fixed faster.

It's really a little thing. The bug is as follows: Mail creates a blank menu item in the drawer contextual menu each time a new viewer window is created. Let me demonstrate:

That's what the Mail contextual menu looks like normally. This is what it looks like the first time you control- or right-click in the drawer after Mail has launched. Great. Now let's say you close the window (not the app) or create a new viewer window (Option+Command+N) and then you bring up the contextual menu again:

Oh, great—Mail has added an empty item to the top of the menu. It doesn't do anything, but it's there. Not such a big deal, though, since it's only moved the real items down a notch.

Well, that's the problem. It's not only going to happen once. I leave Mail open 24 hours a day. When I get new mail, I click on Mail and read it, then I close the window and leave the app running the background. I would assume everyone else in the free world does this as well.

That means that every time we check our mail, close the window, and open it again later, we're creating another blank item. Eventually, using the contextual menu is very difficult. Here's what it looks like after eight or so of these events:

Now to use the menu you have to control- or right-click and then find the menu items at the bottom. This isn't even the worst—a few times I've had so many blanks that the menu became truncated and I had to scroll past the blanks just to get to the read items.

Understandably, this contextual menu is not used very frequently. It contains items that most people wouldn't use on a day-to-day basis. But that makes it all the more frustrating because when you actually do have to use it, it's usually already full of blank items and has rendered itself a pain in the ass.

I was hoping this would be fixed in 10.3.2, but it wasn't. When I saw Mail was affected by the changes in 10.3.3, I thought that would certainly include fixing this bug. But it didn't. Will I have to wait until 10.4 or Mail 3.0 to see a fix?

New Things

6 comments (closed), posted on march 19, 2004, tags: photos

Katia's iPod mini arrived yesterday. It was shipped in Shanghai, China on Wednesday and arrived at my office in New York, USA at 10:30AM on Thursday. That's the fastest shipment I have ever received in my life. Granted, time-zone differences were on its side (China's 13 hours ahead), but it still got here much faster than I expected.

Because a few people asked me to take a picture of the new iPod mini, I figured I should also take some pictures of two other new things that I've not mentioned—a 15-inch PowerBook and our gigantic sectional couch.

The search for the couch was long and difficult. I really wanted an L because it would fit better in the living-room and open it up more than a standard couch, since the room is a bit longer than it is wide and I didn't want it to feel as though the room faced one way. The L does exactly what its meant to in this case, and makes the room feel much more full. Also worth mentioning is that it's a ton of sitting space. Both Katia and I can lie down on the couch and there's still room for at least one person to sit comfortably. Now if we only had people over more often.

And the PowerBook... well, first of all: yes, this means I've purchased four Apple computers in the span of just over a year. I'm aware of how ridiculous that is. For those who don't remember, it started with an iBook, then a 12-inch PowerBook (both of which I sold), and ended with my Dual G5 and Cinema Display. Well, ended until a few weeks ago at least, when I bought the new PowerBook.

For the past few months Katia had been using my G5 because she needed the screen space to do some freelance work and she couldn't use the small 12-inch screen of her VAIO sub-notebook. After a while, though, it got so that I would never be able to use my computer because she was always using it, so I told her we either needed to get a bigger laptop or she would have to start sharing. Luckily for me, she went with the former and I promptly bought a 15-inch PowerBook.

I should also mention, related to the couch search, was the search for a rug for the living-room. Let me just say that people who manufacture rugs are making a shit-load of cash. I have never in my life paid so much money for something so simple and, really, useless. Yuck.

Passport, Birthday, Party, Note

2 comments (closed), posted on march 14, 2004, tags: new york

My passport should be on its way. Katia came down to the post office with me on her day off and solemnly swore she knew me and that I was who I said I was. We had to have it expedited, because we're leaving in about 6 weeks, and I don't want to take my chances with the US Government and the US Post Office. They're both bad enough on their own, but together—good lord.

Today is Katia's 23rd birthday. Last night we had a party at a bar near our apartment which we called a week ago to ask whether or not there were any parties planned for the 13th. We were told there was nothing going on, but when we walked into the bar, 3/4 of it was sectioned off for someone else's birthday party. Meanwhile, we had invited 40 people. I complained that we were screwed and we got happy-hour prices for the rest of the night, which somewhat made up for the fact that we all had to cram into one corner of the place.

We had a really nice time and got home some time around 3AM, which is the latest we've been out in a very long time. Both of us had drunk an insane amount of Vodka, and neither of us were at all intoxicated, which was nice. In fact, the only drawback to the night was waking up this morning—hangover free—with a liquidly feeling about my body. It's probably from the four glasses of water I drank before bed.

For her birthday, I got Katia a pink iPod mini. Unfortunately, it won't arrive until sometime around March 24. I waited too long to order it—only because I wanted to see it in person before purchasing it. It's currently being engraved and packaged and hopefully she'll get it soon.

On a site-related note: The reason for the lack of content lately is that I've been completely recoding the back-end of the site. I'm leaving Movable Type after a great two years, and I'm going back to creating my own system. I'm also switching to a new data model based on XML and XSL, which has been a lot of fun to play with. There's a ton of work to be done yet, so it might be slow around here in the interim.

What it Takes to Get a Passport

10 comments (closed), posted on march 11, 2004, tags: new york

I stood in line for an hour and a half to get my picture taken and then, after waiting an additional half-hour, I paid $9.50 and received a piece of paper. The lady told me I would receive my New York State ID card in two to three weeks. Confused as to why I didn't get it right away, since they took my picture, had all my information, just had to fucking print it, I was told they handled all processing in Albany. Fine.

Two weeks later I received my ID. I'm not sure where they got the photo they printed on the card, because I don't remember having a black eye and doing what appears to be at least 20 lines of cocaine. None the less, I had a valid photo ID with my signature, and that was the last piece I needed to apply for a passport. I took my birth certificate, social security card, photo ID and self to the US Post Office on Canal Street in Manhattan.

I stood in line for 25 minutes. I was then told by the woman in booth 6 to go to booth 20. I stood in line for 5 minutes. I was told by the man in booth 20 to go to booth 16. I waited for 5 minutes. Finally, the booth opened and the postal clerk asked me for all of my information. He looked at the form and then asked me for my birth certificate and driver's license. I told him I didn't have one, I only had a photo ID, and please ignore the fact that I appear as a zombie in the photo. He told me he couldn't accept it.

Apparently, in the United States, one cannot get a passport without a valid driver's license. If you do not have said license, you have to bring someone with you who will sign, in the presence of a postal clerk, an affidavit stating they have known you for two years. That person must have a valid driver's license and be a citizen.

Confused as to why my photo ID—which has my vital information, photo and signature—was less valid than a driver's license—whose only addition would be the fact that I could parallel park a car on cue and pass a written test—I asked the clerk why there was a difference. He said, "You see, in America, if you have a driver's license, you can drive in every state." I agreed—it's true—but asked what that had to do with anything. "But a New York State photo ID," he continued, "is only valid in New York." I was going to disagree, since I can use my New York ID to buy alcohol in New Jersey, but before I had a chance the clerk said, "With the New York ID you're only a citizen of New York, with a driver's license you're a citizen of the whole United States. Even Alaska."

I was baffled. I countered with an onslaught of short, angry sentences like, "You're telling me I'm a citizen if I have a driver's license?" and "What does Alaska have to do with me getting my damned passport?" The clerk was upset that I was upset, and he told me it was not a big deal—I could bring someone with me who had the proper identification and they could sign for me. I said something about how ridiculous it was that I, a natural born United States citizen, who had never lived outside the country, who had his birth certificate, social security card and photo ID, couldn't get a passport because I wasn't licensed to drive and yet any idiot who could pass a driver's test and forge a birth certificate could. The clerk was noticeably upset and kept saying, "I don't make the rules, it's not me."

So I didn't get my passport. Tomorrow Katia and I have to go to a post office together and she has to sign an affidavit so that I, a natural born citizen of the US, can get a passport. She being a Russian-born woman who is now a naturalized US citizen and has lived in two other countries, who got her US passport years ago by providing her proof-of-citizenship, even though she didn't have a driver's license.

I don't have proof of citizenship. I was born here and I have always been a citizen. There's no proof of that. But apparently the closest thing is being able to steer a Buick.

The Vending Machines

2 comments (closed), posted on march 3, 2004, tags: work

There's this strange reaction I get every time I use the vending machines in the central office of my company. There are two machines; one serves canned Pepsi products, the other miscellaneous snack foods. They live in the copier room of said office, among a collection of giant copy machines, printers, fax machines and recycling bins.

I work on the other side of our floor, in the smallest of two smaller offices. Occasionally, rather than waiting for the elevators and going all the way downstairs and back up, I'll stop by the vending machines to get a ginger ale and something small to snack on. (Today I had Oreo cookies for the first time in years. They were great, but that's not why I'm mentioning this.) Usually, the copier room is void of people and I'm alone when I purchase my goods. Everyone now and then, however, someone will be in the room or will walk in as I am making my purchase, and that's when the reaction occurs.

It's usually just a look. A long, staring, confused look, as if to say, "Why are you buying from those machines?" I glance back, casually, as if to reply, "Why for because they sell items. Why do you question me so?" Their stare continues unfazed, then they go back to their own business.

It would be one thing if I were the only person patronizing these machines, but I'm clearly not. The snack machine is constantly restocked, and frequently low on items. If it were just me slowly eating my way through the whole machine, the stares would be warranted. But other people are buying too.

Perhaps one day I'll bump into another vending machine user. Until then, I guess I'll continue to suffer the curious stares of the confused, non-vending-machine-using bastards. They're just fruit snacks! You've seen them before!

Lully Lull Lull

2 comments (closed), posted on march 2, 2004, tags: me

Such a lull right now. In between things, working on xPad, this and that. It's all very, well, end of wintery. I feel as though everything is going in slow motion and will be until April. March is the slowest month in the year, usually.

I'm slowly working my way through getting my teeth fixed. Last Thursday I had three fixed, but one isn't quite right. Anything cold comes near it and my eyes pop out of my head and I piss my pants. So I guess I had two and half fixed. 13 and a half to go. I don't actually piss my pants.

My teeth will be fixed (hopefully) just in time for the vacation we finally planned last night. Tickets and hotels have been booked for the first week of May. We'll be traveling to London and Dublin, places I've never been before (since I've never been outside of North America), and I can't wait. This will be the first time I've gone on vacation in at least 10 years. Seems crazy that it could be that long, but it has.

In the mean time, I'm finally patching up my "license validity issue," that's been outstanding for several years. New Jersey will soon receive $300+ of my money, and I'll eventually be able to get my license back. Yippee.