dsandler.org

How’s your Korean?

Hi. Just bumped Cuckoo up to 1.1.1 to fix a bug that seems only to affect some 10.5 users. See the blog for details, or just go straight to the download page.

Update 7/26: I’ve also posted the command-line tool for manipulating login items that I wrote while developing the latest release. You might find it handy.

My PowerBook seems to be cursed. I still haven’t figured out why it switches to the wrong application sometimes (example situation: in iTerm; click on a Safari window; Safari pops to the front, then the Finder immediately pops up in front of everything. WTF?). Now I have a new bug: some of my applications appear to be cloning themselves in the Finder.

Dusted off the old sketchbook, but didn’t have patience for anything fancier than mechanical pencil:

They barely got any lines in the latest Potter celluloid. Here’s hoping we see more of them next time. (As seen on Fleen: Elsewhere, others are rendering Rowling’s characters as a run-up to Deathly Hallows. Saturday is Order of the Phoenix day, hence this particular doodle.)

You might recall that, several months ago, I went a little nuts about the iTunes 7 UI. To this day, I stand by my complaints, though I freely admit that my tone could have benefited from some moderation.

The ThinkMac blog (which, by the way, posted their own gripe about many of the same things I objected to) observed over the weekend that several of the most glaring inconsistencies were tidied up in iTunes 7.3. (For those keeping score, these are gripes #2 and #4c in the original dissection, plus the subsequent discovery of the impossible-to-hit pane resizer.)

Thanks, iTunes UI team!

Over the weekend I decided to fire up Google Reader again. (I’m still a fan of NewsFire, but now that I’m using the other GApps I’m sort of hooked on instant, painless, in-sync access from multiple machines.)

The UI is better than I remember it, but what is the deal with the message latency? At 4PM central time I took the following screenshot:

Five hours? I’m all for fetching feeds less frequently, but this delay is absurd. Is Google trying to cure my ADD?

My MS Natural Keyboard is grimy. Not just the key surfaces (which I haven’t cleaned in a while, now that the ‘board lives at the office and not at home where I have numerous surfactants close to hand), but the keypress mechanisms. The more force I have to use to push each key through its accreted gunk, the less “natural” the keyboard becomes, veering instead into the general milieu of “tiring” and “painful.”

I’m not sure how effectively I can repair the key action. I suppose I could do the old keyboard-in-the-dishwasher trick to get it all soapy clean, but I’m afraid the end result will be even stickier keys (the detergent having stripped off whatever magic lube is supposed to be in there).

While I mull my keyboard’s prospects for recovery, why don’t you all tell me why I’m using the wrong keyboard and what I should really get is some expensive Keyboard From The New World (Op. 9). Humbly proffer your suggestions in the comments.

I put a new version of Pyrothèque out yesterday, just in time for the 4th. Lots of fun new features (including snazzy new splash screens—see above). Read all about it over on the toastyblog.