And from left to right, those icons are:

Tweetie, for all my Twittering needs.
Typinator, which is a typing auto-corrector. Makes it hard to type the word “Teh”.
Dropbox, which is an excellent network file-sync utility (with a good web interface).
Google Quick Search Box. I used to use Quicksilver. Alcor (the author of Quicksilver) started working at Google, and this is his project. It’s not a full replacement for Quicksilver yet, but it does the job for what I need.
Coversutra, which I use for controlling iTunes. It also does neat screen-pops when the song changes.
NetworkLocation automatically changes things like my screen brightness, default printer, proxy and security settings, screensaver, and background (among many others), whenever I connect to specific networks.
SlimBatteryMonitor, which I discovered through a MacWorld article. It’s just a battery charge meter, but it’s smaller than the Apple stock one.
Ejector, which lets me eject any mounted filesystem (network shares, CDs, flash drives, etc).
SynergyKM, which is a gui front-end for Synergy, a keyboard & mouse-sharing program.  Lets me control my linux workstation with the keyboard and mouse connected to my laptop.
Apple’s Bluetooth widget
Apple’s processor widget; it lets me disable one of my two processor cores, for better battery life.
Apple’s Monitor widget, for fast resolution changes.
SoundSource, a freebie from Rogue Amoeba. Lets me pick which input/output devices to use for the bleep-bloops.
Time Machine
Apple Airport status
I stopped using MenuCalendarClock; this is the built-in menubar clock from OS 10.5
Spotlight

Some day I may also do a similar inventory of the applications that live on the Dock. But I’d have to be even more bored than I am now, so don’t hold your breath!

Version 0.1 is in SVN now.  A README file is pending (I can’t work on this project while at work, so when I get home, I’ll be writing some documentation, including necessary modules, etc).

For the un-enlightened, this project is a PHP-based CBR and CBZ viewer, for reading “comic book archives” in a web browser, instead of in a standalone client.

When you steal acquire comic books off of the Internet, they generally come in one of two convenient formats (or in a very inconvenient format that I don’t care about): CBR and CBZ.  CBR files are RAR files that have been renamed, and CBZ files are ZIP files that have been similarly renamed.  Both archives contain multiple individual image files, which are the pages of the acquired comic.  Traditionally, there are two potential ways to deal with these files.  You can rename them back to .rar or .zip, extract them, and use an image viewer to look at the individual pages, or you can use a specialized program that’s designed to view “comic archives”, which extracts the images to a temporary location and displays them for you.  The latter method is simply several fewer steps than the former.  The “inconvenient” format that I mentioned is “a bunch of images”.  This seems to me like a much more difficult way to manage your collection, increases the possibility that you’ll end up with 22 complete pages out of a 23-page book, and generally makes your life more complicated.  If you’re the kind of person who likes this method of comic organization, more power to you.  But I like the archive method; it fits my needs much more completely.

I was talking to my friend Paul about this a week or two ago, and he mentioned that he’d seen someone with a web-based viewer for comic archives.  Naturally, I spent a bit of time looking for it, because I’m lazy. If I can just load a web page to read comics, I’m 100 times more likely to use it than I am to download & install a comic viewer on each computer I use (please note, I actually have done this; I’m speaking of a theoretical rather than an actual).  I was unable to find such a program, in any language.  So I decided to write one myself.  It’s still in a very alpha state, but here are a couple of screenshots of the devlogic.org cbviewer 0.2alpha.  It uses a couple of what seem like non-stock PHP libraries (for the RAR and ZIP support), but the bonus of this is that it doesn’t use any external programs to achieve its magic; it’s 100% PHP.

I recommend clicking the thumbnails to enlarge, because the tiny squares that wordpress auto-generated really don’t do the program justice.  Naturally, I’m still working on the “make it pretty” aspect of designing a web program (aesthetics aren’t my strong suit), but at the very least I’ve managed to get everything working without having to resort to any hacks.  In this version, at least.  In version 0.1a, I was forced to use embedded base64-encoded images to display files that were inside .cbz files, because I hadn’t yet figured out how to extract the image to a temporary (and arbitrary) location without being forced to also include whatever sub-directories were included in the archive.  This had the wonderful side-effect of crashing Safari and WebKit.  0.2a eliminates that problem, as well as significantly tightening up the code, reducing the necessary number of source files from 7 down to 4 (by extending some of my previous logic and discoveries, I was able to make the archive-handling and page generation more generic).

And I think I’m done geeking out for a while, at least on this project.  I’ll probably tweak the CSS some more, in an attempt to make the site more aesthetically pleasing, but by and large I’ve got all but one of the features I want.

I created a new blog for Heather this morning; check it out if you feel so inclined. Only one post so far, but there’s only so much that happens in one day, you know?

So. Theme updates; I moved from K2 (which I still really like) to Tarski. It’s one of the 9 themes on wordpress.org, so I’ll definitely need to change things like the header image, and possibly some of the font settings; I don’t want this site to look like hundreds of other new wordpress blogs that have just moved away from Kubrick.

I also created a bare-minimum plugin for this site which adds OpenID headers to the front page. I figured that manually editing header.php for every theme would rapidly get quite boring. It’s actually amazingly easy to write simple plugins like this. I doubt I’ll ever release the plugin for general usage; in its current state it’s very bare-bones and requires not only multiple manual edits to the plugin file to get it working correctly, but also requires a working installation of phpMyID.

And with that, I’ll be signing off.

The trouble is, there’s a lot of files that I think I need access to in both accounts. And sorting through everything is kind of a pain in the neck.

It’s only been a day or so (and I’ve got a cold, so I’m actually moving more slowly than usual), but I think that by and large I’ve got most of it sorted out. I still have to wade through the “Documents” folder, as well as my local source code repository (I should really set up a SVN repository for that).

I found out how to share an iTunes library between both accounts (because I do listen to music at work, and don’t want to limit myself to only what fits on my new iPod touch). I took those directions one step further, though, and chgrp’d the whole directory to “staff” (since both accounts are administrator accounts, that should work), and chmod’d the whole mess g+w as well, so that I can update tags and add new stuff from both accounts.

All of the old iPhoto library moved across to the new username, and I copied all of the ssh settings, because I don’t want to keep track of two separate private keys. My old terminal custom settings decided not to agree with what I wanted, but I decided that the “Pro” profile looked better anyway, so that was a pretty easy adaptation to make.

Ecto moved entirely over to the “home” account, since I shouldn’t be blogging while I’m at work anyway, and since NetNewsWire syncs with NewsGator online, it was really easy to get that working on both accounts as well.

Adium was a bit of a decision to make, because having it in two places means I’ll have two different accounts to sort through if I ever want to search through my message logs. I went ahead & copied everything I had as of Friday into both the “home” and “work” accounts, and I think I’ll just deal with the disparity. That, and the fact that I don’t really chat that much when I’m at home (at least, I haven’t for a good long while). I did delete my work-related IM accounts from the “home” Adium’s settings, though; no sense in tempting myself.

I’m not, however, looking forward to getting my calendar working properly. I think I’ll start by looking for a caldav solution; that way I can just sync both accounts (and the multiple calendars on each) via the calendar server, so updates from either end should show up on both calendars.

Hopefully, when I finally have enough to buy a new MacBook, I’ll have gotten used to this, and will be able to transition well enough without too much hassle. So far, I’m really liking it. I don’t use my bluetooth devices at home (they’re locked in my desk at work when I’m not there), and SynergyKM, while cool, isn’t much use when I don’t actually sit at my workstation. That, and switching between its profiles was tedious, because I’d frequently forget and then start wondering why it wasn’t working.

In other news, I have a beard again. It’s not out of some desire to have one, just more that I’ve been too lazy (or otherwise occupied) to shave. I’m trying to decide if I want to keep it around. I’m pretty sure Heather doesn’t like it, but I remember liking the way the beard made my face look back before I shaved it off a few years ago. Plus there’s the fact that I’m (still) overweight, and the beard draws attention away from my developing double-chin. Oh, well.

I made Pad Thai on Thursday evening. It turned out very good, although the soup that I made to go with it ended up nigh-inedible. Saltier than those liquorices that are on my desk at the office, and not really what I was going for at all. I’ll have to keep looking, because I know I can find a good recipe for a coconut curry soup that doesn’t taste like ass. Anyway, the Pad Thai was very good, although I think next time I’ll just take a few extra minutes to make each portion separately, rather than both at once. It took a little too long to make two servings at once, and the noodles turned out mushier than I like. They were also clumping together pretty badly. But with some (i.e., a lot) extra paprika, it was pretty close to some of the restaurant pad thais that I’ve had in the past. Definitely more flavorful than what I get at Java Noodles, but a lot of work. I think the more often I make it, the more seasoned my wok will get, though, so that’s a big argument in its favor. But fish sauce is both expensive and pretty horrid-smelling, so I may try to find another ingredient to take its place. I’ve got enough tamarind paste to last me until next year, though; one block of tamarind pulp makes a LOT of paste; I filled up a full quart mason jar, and that’s after I pulled half of a cup out to make the pad thai sauce. No pictures of anything, unfortunately. But that’s a good thing; I neglected to clean the kitchen before I started cooking, so it looked like a restaurant supply store had collided with a compost heap by the time I was done. It took 2 loads in the dishwasher plus about an hour of hand-washing before things looked reasonable again.

In any case, once you get avahi-daemon installed, you need to configure the service file for your printer. I’m a littler perturbed that there wasn’t even a simple example of a printer mDNS config file; that was the hardest part of all this. The avahi.service(5) man page is very descriptive, and I suppose that if I’d hammered my way through it (or even read anything besides the opening paragraph) this would’ve been easier for me. But I didn’t, so I had to hack things up a bit (using Bonjour Browser and enabling Print Sharing on my iBook to see how the mDNS advertisement should look). In any case, here’s the ipp.service file that I’m currently using (it goes in /etc/avahi/services/). Note that this config file will only work as-is for a Lexmark Optra E312 printer installed as “Printer” in CUPS, but with a bit of modification it should work for any properly-installed printer.

Modifications that definitely need to be made:

rp= should be the path to your printer via CUPS (leaving off the hostname and port portion)
ty= should reflect your printer type
product= should also reflect your printer.
printer-type= is a mystery to me; I'd recommend Google as a good place to start.

After installing the ipp.service file (appropriately modified for your hardware), restart the avahi daemon (/etc/init.d/avahi-daemon restart), and you should see the printer advertised via Rendezvous (Bonjour?).

If you have trouble with this, please don’t contact me; I’d recommend either the cups or avahi sites as good starting places to begin troubleshooting any issues.

Needless to say, I am not pleased with this situation.

Luckily, WD has already approved my RMA, and is shipping me an advance replacement. New drive should be here in a week or so (I estimate), and I’ll buy a UPS Ground label (about 6 bucks) and ship the bad drive back to them. I’ll be doing a full random-wipe before I ship it, of course.

There are two irritating parts about all of this.

First (and, I think, the more time-consuming of the two), I need to do a full backup of the old drive, and restore onto the new one. Hopefully this won’t be too bad; I should be able to do it all without too much heartache. The bad part is just waiting for the stupid backup to finish; last time I tried, it ran for about 5 hours before I killed it (and came to work). I think I’ll start the new backup when I get home in this morning, and then do a “catch-up” run when the new drive arrives. Of course, the alternative is to just wait until the drive arrives, then hook it up in the USB enclosure and do the backup straight to that drive instead of using an interim device. Yeah, that’s a great idea. I’ll obviously still be doing a full backup anyway onto the other 120 that I’ve got in the enclosure right now, but I like this other idea; it’ll save me boatloads of headache.

Oh, yeah: second – I have to open my laptop again. And since I don’t have a MacBook, it means about 40 bazillion tiny screws and other pieces instead of just 4 screws and a small memory shield. But this is relatively inexpensive (I just have to pay for return shipping), so I’m willing to accept the hassle. Besides, it’s not like I haven’t done it several times before:

1. I installed the new hard drive
2. When installing the new HD, I forgot to reconnect the mouse. Took laptop apart again to fix that.
3. I installed the new bluetooth module
4. I installed the new SuperDrive
5. When installing the new SuperDrive, I again forgot to reconnect the mouse cable. Grr.

So this will only make the sixth time I’ve had to open it up, and this time I actually have a “black stick” (it arrived the day after the SuperDrive did).

Steve Jobs started off with the usual crap about Apple sales and revenue; that doesn’t really mean anything to me.  I guess it’s nice that Apple is making money, but it’s not all so exciting to someone who isn’t a stockholder.

And then the new product announcements (AKA the stuff I actually wanted to hear about):
iPhoto 6:  OK, so it’s iPhoto, but they added “photo casting”.  Way to take a meme and expand it, Apple.  So this is really just a way to subscribe to an iPhoto collection that’s been shared.  It’s nice that it’s not permanently linked to .mac, but I’m not sure how useful it’ll be, until 3rd-party applications (like, for example, the popular “Gallery” PHP photo-gallery) reverse-engineer the protocol to add support, so that you can view these “photo casts” online before you subscribe to ‘em.  And apparently there’s new photo-editing features, like a full-screen mode and “instant edits” (or whatever terminology Apple uses).  Nifty.  But I’ve got Photoshop.  And Adobe’s new Lightroom (the free public beta is only for the Mac right now) seems to be a replacement for both iPhoto and Aperture, so iPhoto may take a back seat once Adobe pushes Lightroom out of beta.  Pass.
GarageBand 3: Hm.  Let’s see:  all that really changed in GarageBand this time was the addition of the podcast creator.  Granted, it’s way easier to use than Mega Seg or CastBlaster.  But I don’t make podcasts (yet); what’s the point for me?  Pass, until I decide to start writing music or recording a podcast.
iWeb:  This is apparently the “new thing” from Apple’s software division.  OK, it’s a nice web page editor.  The templates are kinda neat, but I’m limited to only using the templates; there’s not an easy way (that I’ve seen so far) of creating my own templates (or, for that matter, starting with a blank page).  Yeah, I can take X random template and modify it to fit my needs, but that’s not really the same thing, ya know?  Maybe Apple will sell “iWeb Theme Packs” just like they sell “Jam Packs” for GarageBand.  Ooh, they could call them “Memory Packs” or something saccharine like that.  The integration with the rest of the iLife suite is nice, but I’m not a big fan of the giant .mac advertisement every time I open iWeb.  And where’s SFTP (or even FTP) publishing to an arbitrary server?  If I have to publish to a folder every time I make a change, and re-upload the entire thing to my hosting provider, it’s probably not something I’m gonna plan on using all the time, you know?  Especially if I create a media-rich site like Apple wants me to, full of pictures and movies.  And if my “podcast” page gets to be more than one or two episodes long, it’d take hours to re-upload the site.  Pass (for now).
iMovie HD 6:  Hm.  I haven’t used iMovie that much, since most of the movies I acquire are already perfectly edited.  But I guess it’s nice that I can now open multiple projects at the same time; the lack of an MDI in previous versions of iMovie was something about which I read a lot of unfavorable reviews on teh Intarwebs. Pass, until I start editing the raw files from my ReplayTV on my laptop.
iDVD 6:  Yeah.  I’ve got DVD Studio Pro.  I didn’t even bother installing iDVD.  Pass.
iTunes 6.0.2: Hm.  I was irritated by the “mini store” when I launched the newest version of iTunes yesterday, especially given the measly 768 vertical pixels on my laptop’s display.  But it was easy enough for me to click the “hide” button and go on with life.  And to all of the privacy nuts out there who are freaking out because Apple is being sent information about what tracks they’ve got selected in iTunes:  I’m concerned about privacy myself, but come on; it’s easy enough to turn off and ignore.  Go after someone who actually means to do evil with your data for a change.  Or stop using the product altogether; sometimes the self-proclaimed “protectors of privacy” on the internet are worse than Jesus’ fan club.  No, I don’t want to be “saved” on this particular issue.  Yes, I’m OK with that.

And that’s iLife ’06. Now, for…
iWork ’06:  Hm.  Let’s see.  I’ve already got Microsoft Office, I don’t produce a newsletter (which is pretty much all Pages seems to do), and I don’t make presentations (which really is all Keynote does).  Pass.

Pro Application “Crossgrades”:  Sweet.  Apple gets an extra $49 from their customers, so that they can run (what appears to be) the exact same software on the new Intel-based Macs.  Hm.  I think that if I were a “Pro”, I’d wait for the next version of these big titles, just so I’d get more for my money than a version of the software title that didn’t require the emulation layer to run.  Pass.

And, the new systems:

iMac:  Hm.  Who would’a guessed that the imac would be the first intel mac?  Let’s see:  lower-end system (although not as low-end as the mini), great for people who don’t care about expansion (and, conveniently, perfect hardware control for Apple).  I like that the systems are supposed to be twice as fast (although of course, having two processor cores probably helps that a bit).  Of course, they used a benchmark program that was optimized for the Intel processor (you know, the opposite of what they did when they spec’d the G5 against Intel chips a few years ago?).  Keeping the price points the same was a nice touch, though.

MacBook:  No, it’s not a piece of bookkeeping software, no matter what the product name might indicate.  It’s a shame the first new Intel-based Mac laptops are “pro” edition laptops rather than iBook reworks; I think I’d have much rather preferred that a lower-cost version was coming out first, like the mini or iBook instead of this new “macbook” product.  It’s nice to see that Apple didn’t strip out the Firewire ports like had been rumored, although I’m a bit saddened to see that they went to a Firewire 400 port instead of the Firewire 800 port that was previously on the PowerBook G4; I guess those pros don’t really need the high-speed Firewire to pull data off of their HD cameras, eh?  Well, OK.  2005 was the year of HD; since it’s 2006 now, I guess we can stop worrying about actually using those nifty new HD products that we bought last year.  The new power cord is a nifty idea, I’ll admit.  I know I’ve come close to knocking my system off of a table (or bed, or desk, or chair, etc) when the cord got tangled on my shoe.  I’ll also mirror the thoughts of a few other Internet people in saying “um, why do I need a remote control for my portable computer?” and “how many professionals need a built-in webcam on their laptop?”

The new Apple/Intel ad was a nice finish.  Shame Intel’s backpedaling now, saying that PCs aren’t boring.

Update:
OK, I really don’t like iPhoto at all, any more; this miraculous new “photocasting” that Apple loves so much is only available for the suckers who shell out for a .mac account.  I guess the $79 I paid for iLife ’06 was a complete waste.  They should mention that on the box: “iLife ’06 is $79, but in order to actually use the niftiest features, it’s actually $178.”