MidKnight Gallery

I normally don’t pay much attention to what John Dvorak has to say, but in this case I think he’s right.  He’s taken a look at the further implications of the Windows Activation outage and applied it to all web services by asking the question – is it any safer to depend on online access to your data?

Me, I take it with a grain of salt. I use online backups as a slower, redundant system in case a fire or something takes out the much faster backup system at the office. I use Flickr, and this blog as a way to communicate with other people. Both of these are things that I cannot do without the web.  There’s a bit of a gray line when it comes to services like Google Calendar – which I  sync or subscribe to via iCal so if I don’t have online access  I still have a copy of my data from the last time I got online, and a backup if they ever cancel that service. I go to the trouble because it allows my wife and I to keep a common calendar where I can refer to it when I’m off at work.

The only place I use an online document system is Googles notebook -  and that is also used strictly for communicating with the people I work with.

Anything else I do – image manipulation, document creation, general writing, I have my own tools on my own computers that will work whether or not the internet is available, and can always be attached as files and sent to people. Not wanting to depend on the availability of servers is one reason why I work this way. It just hadn’t occured to me to think in terms of “What if you have internet access but the service gets shut down.” After all, who’d have thought Google would shut a service down, especially after people paid for it?

Despite my long standing love-hate relationship with Windows (hey, it made me a living, and there are some things it does well) and even my agreement with many in the Windows community about how “good” windows Vista is, there is the occasional piece of software that only runs in Windows.

I’ve finally found one that I’m frustrated doesn’t have an equivalent to use on my Macs: the photo screensaver that comes with the Google Pack. It peruses an online folder or a folder in Picasa and scatters them like polaroid shots across your desktop. So while I’ve got screensavers that will show pictures from iPhoto and Flickr, there are none that show them the way that I see them on my Windows machine.

The articles posted as “What I use” are now consolidated into one page. Any further updates will go there.

DWBlog, from the maker of NewsFire (the first RSS reader to hook me before I outgrew its feature set at the time) has an entry on a subject that I’ve often felt conflicted about: product activation. In many ways, I agree with his points, even this one:

What activation allows is for reasonable limits to be placed on licenses. One has to realize that people will try to pirate software, and that in cases of rampant abuse it must be possible to stop the bleeding. The use of activation means that while honest users are given very liberal boundaries, rampant and excessive abuse can and will be stopped. 99.99% of users will never have an issue. In the few cases where the liberal boundaries are broken, there’s probably something suspicious happening.

First of all – I absolutely loathe “copy protection.” In software this is the practice of deliberately manufacturing a CD or other disk so that it violates the spec but is still readable – on the majority of readers – but the “bad” sectors can’t be copied. Time after time this has resulted in disks that are bought and paid for that don’t work on some fairly small subset of perfectly functional CD-ROM drives. Given software return policies at most stores this is usually money down the drain. In the music industry this has resulted in everything from CD’s that won’t play in the fancy DVD/CD player you now use for your home system or in your car stereo, to CD’s that run software to prevent your computer from reading the audio tracks. Some of the latter, such as the Sony rootkit, have gone as far as completely hijacking your computer.

To add insult to injury, if anything happens to the original media – it gets scratched or your 4-year old decides it makes a shiney frisbee – you are stuck, with no recourse, because you cannot back it up.

That said, I think every software distributor deserves to be paid for his work if you use his product. That leaves us with the question of what is fair value and how to best enforce the programmers/distributors end of the bargain.

He’s right. programmers need a way to tie “you paid for this” to “you can use this,” and serial numbers are so easily distributed and cracked that it’s practically worthless. My point of disagreement with his article is the following – many people pushing activation and digital rights management are very restrictive in their activation licenses, and the boundaries are not liberal and are very easy to slam into. There are also other issues relating to activation vs. serial numbers that can make it a pain to use and need to be addressed.

Let me get one triviality out of the way. There are a few other methods of piracy prevention. One that is common with higher-end and specialty software (Lightwave, Nobeltec) is to use a “dongle.” The huge disadvantage with this methodology is the same as copy protected media – if the key is lost or damaged then poof, no software. That said, it allows you to install a copy on several machines that you may sit at use the software at whichever one simply by bringing the key along.

Another method is to not even bother. Apple takes this approach with a good percentage of their software, though not Aperture and their “pro” apps. The sci-fi publisher Baen Books, one of the few to make significant money off of ebooks not only doesn’t lock theirs down at all, but gives away an entire “free library,” the better to hook you with. All of the books are available in numerous, standard, easy-to-transfer formats. If you want to know why they did this:

If I can’t make a living as a writer by the quality of my writing outweighing any losses I might suffer from theft — without trampling all over blind and crippled people in order to stop the theft — I’ve got no damn business being a writer in the first place. I’ve still got my tool box, and I haven’t forgotten how to be a machinist.

Eric Flint

Entire pages of this material on copyright and why they did the ebooks the way they did are available at the old Library still available at: http://www.baen.com/library/ under “Prime Palaver.”

Back to our topic. Our remaining issues are these: What constitutes fair use and what problems does “activation” bring to the table for users?

With serial numbers/etc. if you lose the number, well, you’re toast. That said, it’s easy if you’re reasonably careful to keep duplicate copies of your serial numbers and disks so that if anything happens, you can still install and use the program.

What happens if the company providing the software or service goes away or is bankrupted, and the computer you originally installed the program on had to be replaced or reinstalled? Suddenly, even though you have a product bought and paid for that you can reinstall off of your backup discs, you can no longer use the program because there is no activation/authentication database to activate it against.

This to me is the biggest achilles heel of any centralized activation system, and one reason why despite the weaknesses of serial numbers, etc., I avoid “activation”-based schemes where possible.

Lest you think I’m merely fearmongering, even worse is already happening. Google just shut down their pay-for-download video service. Everyone who bought a movie through the service will no longer be able to play those videos because Google will not even continue to run the authentication servers for the rights management embedded in the movies. Since they can’t verify the copies are authentic and on the approved computer – they will not play. Google may decide to do something different, but right now they are only giving partial credits towards new purchases that expire after 60 days. At least with iTunes you can backup your music store purchases to a real CD that can get re-ripped, in the event the iTMS gets shut down – and your music will also still keep playing on any authorized computers.

So what is fair use? Obviously, that depends on what the software maker decides, to some extent. The blogger that inspired this article obviously “gets it.” Some of his products feature “family pack” pricing that allow several users in a household to use the program without buying entire separate copies. Apple does the same with OSX. For $200 you can buy a family pack for up to five users instead of the usual, one-user standalone copy that goes for $130. Contrast this with the price of Windows, which “mere mortals” like us can only get one very expensive copy at a time. While required to have some sort of DRM for the iTunes Music Store, Apple made the policies very liberal by any other retailers standards: You can burn a song to CD any number of times, just not the same playlist more than 7 times. A song you buy on iTMS can be copied to, authenticated, and used on up to 5 computers. Songs can be shared via streaming to however many computers are practical that are also running iTunes.

This concept is just perfect for a typical household. it is becoming more and more common to have multiple computers in a house. I personally have two: a workstation at home and the laptop I use on-site. Ponying up for two copies of everything just so I can use it as the sole user where and when I need it at the best computer for the job is ridiculous. So is having to pony up for separate full-price copies of an office suite just so the kids don’t have to take over my workstation to work on a school project – one more reason I’ll be getting the newest version of iWork. I’d gladly pay extra for Windows if it gave me the right to run several copies concurrently in virtualization or on several computers in my household. As it is – I don’t buy the extra copies (still running a w98 and a w2k machine) – and MS will get an even smaller cut via Dell or a similar vendor when I finally do replace my computer.

Piracy is an issue that needs to be addressed. The problem is that many of the cures are either only marginally effective, or worse, actively interfere with your ability to use a product you paid for. A lot of software vendors could look to Apple and Baen for ways to effectively deal with piracy without ruining their own image – by providing a better value for the reality of how people wish to use the software they paid for, and being very careful not to step on the toes of those self-same customers.

…you deliberately make your terminal interface look like the old-fashioned monochrome amber or green screens from the 80′s.

S is for… (continued)

SilverKeeper: This backup uitlity is far from perfect, especially since it does not preserve my metadata and tags as well as I’d like. What it DOES do though, is back up my files from my internal hard drive to a windows-style share on my linux box, only copying updated or new files and deleting removed files, without any hiccups. This, combined with a rotating snapshot script, allows me to keep a copy of my disk as it was last night, the night before, last week, last month, etc. You may also want to look at iBackup.

Spanning Sync: A background program you control through your system preferences. This allows you to synchronize your Google calendars with your iCal calendars in a way that is effectively transparent. I’m not sure you can give much better praise than that.

Stellarium: A software toy that allows you to look at the night sky at any given hour, at any given place in the world, at any given time rate, and point out the moon, constellations, planets, and major objects visible to the naked eye and binoculars. Slick, simple, and plain pretty to look at.

Synk: I use this to perform two-way backups with metadata between my laptop and a share on my main desktop. This allows me to dump any data I need to keep backed up into a “transfer” folder on my laptop and know it will get backed up.

T is for…

TextMate: This is a program for people like me who feel like we spend far more of their time in front of a computer looking at and working with code than most anything else. Text editing isn’t sexy. It’s not “cool”. Having an editor that fits like a glove and can be customized to work the way you want to work is absolutely essential. I gladly bought and paid for this editor after learning how to use it (30-day trial). It’s sole weakness for me is the printing output, which is nowhere near as flexible or configurable as it should be compared to the free TextWrangler. That said, there are other options that people swear by, including TextWrangler (a tool I’ve used for years), BBEdit, and SubEthaEdit.

TextWrangler: This free little brother to BBEdit replaced BBEdit Lite, and is so powerful that it’s almost hard to justify paying for a full-blown editor until you are heavily involved in coding on a regular basis and really need some of the power-user features like code block folding. I keep it around these days because it’s printing is still prettier and more flexible than TextEdit‘s.

TinkerTool: A small program that gives you access to a number of the Macs  hidden features that are otherwise only available using the command line in the terminal, including letting you easily see hidden files.

Transmit: My overall favorite FTP program, used to upload web pages to websites and do large file transfers across the internet. Cyberduck is also worth a look (and free), and Interarchy is also really a good program – though I was forced to stop using it due to unresolved issues (at the time) when accessing windows-based WebDAV servers. Since I’d already happily used transmit for many years before that,and it currently fit my needs, I haven’t looked back.

Twitterific: Twitter is one of those services I’m not sure if I love or hate. I find I don’t update as often as many other people, I can’t stand being constantly interrupted by the public stream, but few things, even facebook, really give you a general feel for how a friends life is going anywhere near as well as Twitter. Twitterific is a mac-based program from the Icon Factory (makers of wonderful icon packs and the incredible Pixadex software for organizing them, among other tools), that floats on your desktop mostly out of the way, and allows you to get, send, and reply to “tweets” in a convenient manner.

U is for…

Unplugged: A battery management aid, this is another love-or-hate item. It may seem redundant, but I’ve been bitten enough by the “my laptop is still plugged in but someone turned out the power to the wall outlet while it was asleep” issue that having a reminder pop-up to tell you that it’s no longer geting power/plugged in is something I find really, really useful.

V is for…

Vienna: RSS readers have effectively replaced usenet readers as a way for geeks, and now non-geeks, to keep up with the headlines from a number of papers, blogs, and other information sources. Vienna for the Mac is as intuitive as any of the others I’ve used (NetNewsWire, Pulp Fiction) More reliable than most (Pulp Fiction – I’m looking at you), and best of all, free.

VMWare Fusion: A virtual machine allows you to run a completely different operating system (windows, linux, etc.) inside of a window or full-screen without having to reboot your computer. As a result of this I no longer have to turn to another machine to test my web-design work in a Windows environment. VMWare is the big player in virtual machines on the Windows side, and though they got into the Mac market late, they have a solid product. The choice between Fusion and the Parallels Desktop is mostly one of style. The configuration for Fusion feels more intuitive for me, and their slow-but steady approach to adding features is one I appreciate. That said, Parallels headlong plunge into the market and into adding useful features for the consumer has kept VMware on its toes as well as ensured reasonable prices for Fusion, despite a few bugs cropping up along the way. Check them both out.

W is for…

Weird Worlds: An oddball little game of space exploration that has you search planets for artifacts and meet alien races. Sometimes you kill them.

X is for…

Xyle Scope: If you are a web designer, this program is invaluable. It allows you to quickly and easily determine exactly what style and other rules are making your page look the way they do. It even allows you to make temporary changes to the stylesheet rules on the fly so you can observe their effects.

Z is for…

Zterm: Only the geekiest of admins will need this, but you know who you are. Yes, you, the guy who has a USB – serial adapter and needs to console into a cisco router before it’s ever been put on the network.

Honorable mentions:

Yep!: I personally haven’t paid for this yet, but I still may. It skims your drive for all available PDF files, tags them by folder and file name (and allows you to add other tags) and makes it ridiculously easy to find a PDF file almost anywhere on your computer and take quick sneak peeks without opening up and transitioning between programs. Given that nearly every page you see can be saved to a PDF to easily keep electronic copies, this should be a no-brainer, but barely misses out for two reasons. First, OSX 10.5 will have similar quick-peek functionality. Second, this is limited to PDF’s only. Word documents, JPEG’s and TIFF’s need not apply.

Freeverse, and Ambrosia Software: Ambrosia got its start doing clones of popular arcade games such as asteroids and centipede before branching out to titles such as Escape Velocity. Freeverse made its name with a hysterical version of solitaire and a very solid Tetris clone. Both have catalogs of very fun software that you should check out. Freeverse, in particular, has a loony sense of humor.

There are plenty of articles out there about “must-have apps” and others that evaluate “here are all the programs that do this.” This is not one of them. Instead, this is a tour of the tools I currently use that didn’t come with my Mac, and why. I’m ignoring the built-in apps like the Terminal for command-line access or Disk Utility because if I don’t mention a third-party alternative, I’m currently using it, and you can check it out for yourself. Along the way I’ll mention a few good alternatives that didn’t quite fit my needs.

A is for…

Adium: I don’t use it often, because I like the look of iChat, and most of my clients and contacts use the AIM network anyways. For those occasions I need a control check, or to use my Yahoo or MSN accounts, it’s invaluable. It is also very powerful, and very flexible. It also supports Growl notifications. Honestly, if I spent more time in “chat” mode, I’d probably use it more.

Adobe: Acrobat reader 8 – finally an adobe client that is almost as fast as preview, but has more features! I used to loathe it as a nescessary evil (and none more evil than reader 7), but with version 8 I use this for about 50% of my PDF viewing – whenever I have to do more in-depth searching. The plugin for the web browser allows me to save conveniently with a click and works smoothly with even the Safari 3 beta.

Adobe: Designer Suite – The entire designer suite gets lumped in here too. If you are NOT a graphics professional you might want to look at the current version of Photoshop LE. Even as rarely as I need to do photo editing or illustration these days – and iPhoto and several other packages can do whole-image color correction quite nicely if not with the same degree of control – having these features available is a godsend. For creating vector artwork, laying out newsletters without the headaches involved in using Word, color-correcting just PARTS of an image, repairing old family photographs, or for image compositing, nothing beats these. Of course, the learning curve for all of this power is ridiculously steep.

B is for…

Blender: I have yet to explore even most things this program can do. Nevertheless it has much of the power I played with in Lightwave 7 (I stopped staying current after I got 8), and it’s free.

C is for…

Chax: This is actually an extension for iChat, and one of the biggest reasons I don’t use Adium. This gives you a lot more control over how iChat behaves, including setting the auto-away times, enabling tabs, and control over a number of other hidden features of iChat.

Chicken of the VNC: This is one of a small handful of VNC programs available for the mac. While it’s not the fastest, it is one of the most flexible, Works just fine with the built-in desktop administration in OSX server, and can scan the network for Mac-based VNC servers. This latter feature makes it very useful for administering Mac-based shops. Sometimes I do wish for a faster client though.

F is for…

Firefox: Absolutely essential. Doubly so as a web designer, but there are enough sites that work better, if at all in Firefox (the administration of this blog, Gmail) that I strongly recommend keeping it around. I definitely find nearly daily uses for it even though the Safari 3 beta has reduced my need for it.
Flickr Uploader: I’ve tried several third-party utilities (and though it’s great, didn’t feel like paying for the iPhoto to Flickr exporter), and this one from Flickr is by far the most stable and snappiest, if not issue-free or slick. My wishes for it are as folllows: to gracefully deal with Photoshop and Tiff files that iPhoto handles well, and allow me to select subsets of images to batch-tag instead of taking the all-or-one approach. With these limitations it hasn’t choked on large upload sets, or completely flaked on tag handling like other programs have.

Flip4Mac: This plug-in is needed to play windows-style AVI files. Needed, not only because Microsoft has not updated their Windows media Player for the Mac, but they explicitly point you to Flip4Mac. Works smoothly, and AVI files open up under quicktime, preventing confusion and other headaches.

FreeCiv: This game is based on the classic “civilization” games by Sid Meier. It allows you to start off at nearly any primitive technological level, and advance and expand your civilization from there . Likely you will eventually take over the world. This requires you to install X-windows (available on the OS X installation disc(s)) to play.

G is for…

Google Sketchup: This nifty little program allows you to “sketch” basic 3D objects. The learning curve is fairly shallow, but what you can do with it once you start messing with it is nothing short of miraculous. There is also a “pro” version that you can pay for. This program was bought by Google and made freely available to allow people to create 3D buildings and models for their “Google Earth” program.

Google Earth: I call this a software “toy” and research tool. Mostly because it’s not as good at generating directions as the web-based Google maps or MapQuest. Nevertheless, it is very, very powerful, and gives you a perspective that is unmatched, with almost seamless zooming and navigation. it will guide you, show you streets and houses, and as people have added more and more information, even hiking trails in national parks. It will also suck you in for hours and hours of fun.

Growl: A notification tool. It doesn’t work with many of Apple’s built-in apps, but does work with a number of third-party programs and extensions. Growl allows programs to toss a message up on your screen in a relatively unobtrusive way, letting you know when certain events have happened. This can be when an upload or download is complete (Transmit), when a new IM message comes in (Adium), or when your plugged-in status on your laptop changes (Unplugged).

I is for…

iGTD: There are several decent GTD-style to-do applications out there (such as the kinklessGTD scripts if you have the pro version of Omni Outliner), and several interesting-looking ones coming out (OmniFocus and Things from Cultured Code). When I originally tried it I wasn’t impressed, but started using it after a few critically needed improvements. Despite its bugs – most of which have been fixed over its amazingly rapid development cycle – it has grown into a solid, stable, and simple to use means of sorting out your life and what you need to do.

InstantShot: A snapshot application that lives in your menubar. It allows you more control over screenshots than the usual Shift-Command-4. While I still usually use the built-in screenshots when I need a quick record of something for myself, I use this when I need to capture a specific window (and ONLY that window) without cropping headaches, or I specifically need a .jpg image format and i don’t want to go through converting it.

iStumbler: For all of your Wi-Fi discovery needs. This program will show you all of the wireless networks that are visible in the area, their relative signal strength (and how “noisy” they are), which ones are secure, and give you a moment-by-moment graph of signal strength . Excellent for plotting out where your home or business networks need better coverage.

iWork: One reason I rarely use Word anymore. Or InDesign. Keynote, the presentation program, is both easier to use thanPowerpoint, and just beautiful to look at. Pages, the writing program has now become my default for all creative writing, for letters, and envelopes. It’s also much better suited to newsletter layouts than MS Word, as it doesn’t randomly rearrange things for no reason that can be determined when you drop in pictures, etc. It exports toMS Word format, as well as directly to PDF.

L is for…

LEGO Digital Designer: A bit of harmless fun. Build almost any lego model using what feels like every lego part made.

LiteIcon: This app allows you to change your default system icons for things like the trash can, your documents folders, etc.

Little Secrets: An encryption and storage program. This allows you to open up an encrypted, password-protected file, and store critical information like passwords for banks and servers. It also allows you to drop in screenshots, PDF documents, etc. While nowhere near as pervasive or good for organizing as Yojimbo, It deals much more gracefully with data that needs to stay protected.

M is for…

Mail Appetizer: Actually an extension for the Mail.app that Apple includes with OSX, this love-or-hate plugin throws a “smoke” bezel up into the corner of your screen every time new mail comes in, with the basic to, from, subject information, and the first paragraph or so of text. It also allows you to switch directly to that message in mail, delete the message, or mark it read, and fades away after a few seconds if you decide that nothing coming in needs to be dealt with right now. In my case it keeps me from going into my inbox everytime I see a new mail notification, because I already know if it’s important or not.

Mail Act-On: Another Extension for the Mail.app. This one allows you to use keyboard shortcuts to redirect your current or selected mail via a set of custom rules. In my case I use it to file away several common general categories of mail, flag them or not based on whether I need to see it again (with a smart folder to view flagged mail), and forward them if needed – all in one easy step.

MagiCal: This replacement for the calendar and clock in your menu bar just looks nicer. it also allows me to call up the current month in a minicalendar (complete with week-of-year) without switching over to iCal.

Marathon: An absolute classic. Brought to you courtesy of the Aleph One project. Years ago, Bungie released the source code of their Marathon games, as well as their original maps and levels. The Aleph One project took these games and updated the display engine adn graphics to use modern 3D rendering technology. While the games still don’t look as flashy as anything modern, they’re still fast, fun, and occasionally creepy playing experiences with an engaging story.

Microsoft Office: The program everyone knows and loves – to hate. Used only when absolutely nothing else will do – usually when I have to send the file to another person using MS Office.

Myth II: Soulblighter: This game is perhaps my all-time favorite. Ever. I bought it back in 1999 and have played it over, and over, and over again. The engine has been updated to include intel-based Macs since Bungie released it, and I’m not sure where to get the actual game levels (I had the CD’s around still), but at least try the demo.

N is for…

NeoOffice: This is what I usually use to open up MS Office files – assuming it’s not an RTF that can just as easily be handled by TextEdit. This is a free, mac-specific, open-source office suite based on the OpenOffice project. I don’t recommend using the powerpoint clone, and it’s slower on PPC macs (and faster on intel ones since there is not yet an intel-native version of MS Office), but it does just fine in opening up most word and excel documents.

O is for…

OmniGraffle: Think Visio for the Mac. This program allows you to create flow charts, diagrams, and network maps quickly and easily.

Omni Outliner: Outlining. Whether it’s brainstorming or organizing or making checklists. Many of you will get this nifty little program written by the geniuses at the Omni Group with your MacBook or MacBook pro, and not realize what power this has. This program is intended to do only one thing, and do it very well. Create, sort, and consistently format outlines.

Q is for…

Quicksilver: I find it difficult to use a computer without this app. I literally come to a halt at clients computers and catch myself having to remember the old way of opening up programs, performing certain actions, and searching for files. This very powerful program makes it extremely easy to launch programs, or trigger various actions with just a handful of keystrokes. It is very easy to start with, and the further you dig into it, the more customizable it is. You will either find it absolutely indispensable, or hate it. Another program with a similar audience that has been recently updated and regained converts is Launchbar

R is for…

Remote Desktop Connection: This program, freely available for download from Microsoft, is a must for anyone remotely connecting or administering Windows machines, especially servers. Faster and more fully featured than VNC, it’s an absolute no-brainer for these situations.

S is for…

Safari 3: This is on the list because it’s still only available for download as a beta, and doesn’t ship yet with the operating system. That said, I’ve used it for over a month on one of my two Macs, and now installed it on my MacBook as well. I’ve heard of (but not experienced) some issues with various Dashboard widgets, and XyleScope needed to be updated, but everything else (flash, etc.) work and render the same as in Safari 2, and some of the lesser-hyped features have become indispensable. For example: being able to move tabs around, and the ability to resize text entry fields.

I’d long ago thought about trying to integrate a gallery into wordpress, but never quite managed, despite getting Gallery2 setup, to get them to mesh smoothly. Now it’s a moot point.

I’ve set up a flickr account, and I’ll be uploading all of my artwork from the past into it, and linking to it from WP. While the sidebar widget doesn’t fit in as nicely as I’d like, it works. I may get rid of it. Either way – You’ll be able to see my photos as I post them, and not just when I decide to go through the uploading rigmarole especially for WP.

In the meantime, here are a couple of photos we took when we went up to the Great Smoky Mountains national park. These were taken on the trail to, and at, Alum Cave Bluffs. You start walking along a rocky river, end up on narrow ledges, and finally arrive to a spectacular view after climbing up over 1300 feet from an already high-up trailhead.