OK, I did something moderately stupid today and found out that Time Machine was screwing up, which made everything worse.
Here’s what happened: I messed up a database today on my web server. “No problem,” thought I, “I’ll just fire up Time Machine and restore my MySQL data to a point earlier today.” So I did that.
Hours later I noticed that my blog had reset itself to October 8th, eating four comments and three posts. After a lot of messing about I’ve come to this conclusion: although Time Machine claims to have backups of this data between October 8th and today it doesn’t.
Luckily, I have all the posts and comments in other data stores about. So I’ve reposted the three posts, and I’m about to restore the comments. Sorry for any confusion! While I can make this almost seamless, there may be some oddities in the RSS feed.
Read moreLorax is Obsolete?
Say it ain’t so! Ah Lorax, we hardly knew ye! (For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, Apple announced new laptop models.)
Well, I announcing Lorax’s demise is an overstatement in any case. Don’t get me wrong, the new machines look pretty sexy and I think they are going to be great value for the money. But the difference between what they are selling now and what’s inside Lorax is pretty minimal. The changes to the Macbooks (as opposed to the Macbook Pros) are more substantial and I think all to to the good. The Pros get a new shell, a bigger hard drive, and some new video chips. (Actually the Pros can get a CPU boost at the high end as well but the default MBP now is the exact same CPU as what Lorax has.)
The video chips sound nice, but Spore runs just fine on Lorax and that’s all the laptop game playing I’m likely to do in the near future. The chipset in Lorax is good enough for light development work and that’s what I wanted. (I’ll note that when I bought Lorax a large part of my model selection was hinged on the fact that the Macbooks had the shitty Intel “integrated” chipset. It’s a major win now that all the laptops have real video hardware. And this could become more important next year when Snow Leopard comes out and suddenly you can run “general purpose” code on a GPU.)
The new trackpad sounds nice, but I’m not going to buy a laptop for *that*, or even whine too much about it. And Lorax has a multi-touch trackpad anyway. It’s unclear to me whether the new four-finger swipes are only for the new hardware or whether they’ll show up for the older machines, but at the same time I have trouble imagining I want to app switch by using the trackpad anyway. (As opposed to the two-fingers+plus click=right click.I use that all the time on Lorax.)
The new case sounds sweet, and it’s ecologically friendly and all, but I don’t have any issue with Lorax’s case.
All in all I’m happy with the laptop I have now. I mean I wouldn’t turn down a new MBP if somebody offered me one but I don’t lust after one. The new Macbooks are much more compelling to me than the old ones - it’s down to more a question about 13″ or a 15″ form factor. But I like the 15″ MBP. I think for me it was the right choice. The fact that this new model is a tweak as opposed to a major new version I think is more a confirmation about how much about the “mid 2008″ version of the MBP was solid. Except maybe the graphics chip reliability.
Read moreI don't care for this!
Affected MacBook Pros and symptoms Among the models affected are those that were manufactured between approximately May 2007 and September 2008. They include the MacBook Pro (15-Inch, 2.4/2.2GHz), MacBook Pro (17-Inch, 2.4GHz), and MacBook Pro (Early 2008). Customers who own one of these systems should look for instances of distorted or scrambled video on their screen, or the absence of video on the screen (or external display) when the computer is running.From AppleInsider I haven’t seen any video problems on Lorax, but it’s definitely affected by this issue. I’ll be keeping an eye on it, and if I need it later, well it’s blogged here.
2 year service, even if it’s out of warranty.Tilt-Shift for the win!
This is awesome:
Bathtub II from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.
(I saw it from Frederick V. Johnson’s Twitter.)
Read moreWait, what was that?
It’s “Tilt-shift photography”. (Well that and some time compression.) The gist of it is this: you tilt the camera lens respective to the sensor, meaning that the focal plane is no longer parallel to the sensor. This basically screws up the depth-of-field information and for some odd reason the human mind interprets that as “miniatures”. That footage is shot at Sydney Harbor and apparently doesn’t even have post-processing. If you want to see more the photographer is Keith Loutit and his blog has more goodness. Check it out.Fair Enough I Suppose
Just got an email from Netflix.
Read moreAs you may know, Blu-ray movies are more expensive than standard definition movies. As a result, we're going to start charging $1 a month (plus applicable taxes), in addition to your monthly membership charge, for unlimited access to Blu-ray movies.I don't think this is unreasonable over all. I knew some sort of move was in the offing and I was afraid they were going to charge more for Blu-Ray than $1/month or even something worse like a per-disc surcharge which would have meant my Netflix bill would start fluctuating based on what we actually watched. I can eat $1/month and not even debate it. While I was reading my old Netflix posts I did have to giggle because the last email they sent me read:
We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.I'm not upset over this charge, and as I said I'm almost relieved that it wasn't higher. But you can't really say I'm "delighted" either. There's an old Dilbert strip where they are all in a meeting and the Pointy-Haired Boss says something along the lines "No bonuses this year because profits are low." In the next panel he says "Next up, the CEO is getting a massive raise because of great company performance." Then in the third panel he turns to his secretary and says "You were supposed to put an item about flu shots between those two." I'm sure I butchered the actual text, but the concept is there. I feel like Netflix was supposed to put something else between "Hey we're keeping Profiles" and "New Feature: Blu-Ray Tax!". At any rate, I still like Netflix and I think Blu-Ray quality is easily worth the extra buck a month.