Jim Clark was the perfect driver. Double F1 world champion. First Brit to win the Indy 500. There were fewer Grands Prix per year back in the 1960s, but he always had to be racing – if not in Formula 1, then Formula 2, or thrashing a Lotus Cortina around in the British Touring Car series. I was 13 when Jim Clark won his first World Championship, and 17 when he died. Motor racing was a really dangerous game: every year we lost one or two drivers. But not Jim Clark: heros are meant to be immortal….
Seattle Sculpture Park
I spend this afternoon exploring Seattle’s Sculpture Park. 
It was cool and cloudy, but the rain held off; however we could see that it was raining over in West Seattle.
The range of scales, textures, colours, and styles was impressive. I’ve uploaded some pictures to the gallery.
I may go back in the summer, to see if how the pieces look different in the sun.
Upgraded to WordPress 2.5, and a rant
I just upgraded geoffarnold.com to use WordPress 2.5. The process went pretty smoothly; the only glitch was that the mobileadmin plugin that I was using isn’t 2.5-compatible. I shall have to see if there’s a new version available… hmmm, it looks as if the answer is no.
The most noticeable change with 2.5 is that the administrative UI has been entirely revamped. OK, I agree that it looks more stylish, but I’m pretty disappointed. In particular, the Write Post page (which I’m using to compose this piece) is poorly laid out. Ideally I want the basic elements to be easy to use: the text editor, the Categories panel, and the Save, Preview, and Publish buttons. These are the features that I use every time; other stuff, like the status, tags, posting time, and so forth should go below the fold, out of the way. If there’s space available, give me a bigger edit box, not swatches of colour to tastefully highlight controls that I rarely use.
This seems to be turning into a rant. So be it. Take a look at this gratuitous waste of screen real-estate:
This is the upper left quadrant of the screen in which I’m composing this post. It starts with a grey stripe which only serves to provide a link back to the first admin page, the Dashboard. No, wait, it also lets me log out, visit the WordPress site, or visit my own sub-page in the Users area.
Secondly we have the blog name, and a Visit Site button. People managing multiple blogs might need this; I’d rather banish the Visit Blog link to the grey stripe and lose the big title, with the wasted space next to it.
Then we have the menu/submenu structure. This is fine, except that I don’t see why some menu items are banished to the right side of the screen in small font. It’s a single menu; keep it together.
Next we have Write Post in a big font. I know I’m writing a post: the words Write and Post are helpfully shown in orange just above. Again, a waste of space.
Then we have a header for the Title box, and finally we actually have some content, about a third of the way down the window. For some reason, the title text is about twice as large as the body text. It doesn’t need to be.
Let me show you the full window that I’m working with:
(Click the thumbnail to see the full-size image.) As you can see, the text box in which I compose and edit the actual blog entry is about 30% of the height and 60% of the width of the screen. ((These are the dimensions on my PowerBook, with a 1280×854 screen)) And this is all wrong!! The point of a Write Post screen is to write. As much real-estate as possible should be given over to this function; the few essential controls should be kept small (but clear); everything else should be swept out of the way.
Fortunately, WordPress is open source, so I’m going to be able to redesign this page the way I think it ought to look.
UPDATE: I guess I’m not the only person who dislikes the new admin UI. My rant is pretty mild compared with some of the comments here in the WP forums.
Juxtapositionally challenged
From The Debatable Land:
The Scotsman today:
Page 1: Mystery of Severed Head Found on Arbroath Beach
Page 18: The Awe Inspiring Beauty of Scotland’s Beaches
It's not from me… honest!
It happens every few years, and it’s happening again right now. A bunch of spambots are spewing forth thousands of emails about fake Gucci handbags, and each message has my email address in the “From:” field. The result: I’ve been receiving hundreds of mailer “bounce” messages for the last few days, filling my inbox and confusing my spam filters. There’s nothing to be done about this; I must just wait for it to subside. Last time I seem to remember that it took a couple of weeks. The ever-present worry, of course, is that some spam filtering system will decide that my email address is toxic, and starts blocking my legitimate emails. E-fingers crossed….
Clue: The Vicar, in the Living Room, with a Time Capsule!
With help from The Vicar, here and here, I was able to get the Time Capsule up and running. I elected to create a brand new WPA2 network, using the TC as the router; my old (non-“n”) Airport Express is now sitting next to the HP printer/scanner, acting as a print server. I used the Vicar’s trick of doing the initial TC configuration via an Ethernet link between my PowerBook and the TC, but I still had plenty of other hoops to jump through. In several places, it wasn’t sufficient to click “Renew DHCP”; I had to actually power cycle the cable modem to get things straightened out.
Never mind; it’s all working now. But no thanks to Apple; their supposedly “plug and play” configuration software was a disaster. I know that the number of permutations that they have to deal with is mind-boggling, including a gazillion non-Apple devices, but even so they botched this one. I was trying one of the simplest use-cases – adding a Time Capsule to an existing all-Apple network – and they couldn’t even get this right. Apple has demonstrated in the past that it was willing to hold up a product until the quality (hardware, software and documentation) was good enough; in this case, they failed to exhibit the necessary courage. (Time to re-read the “Evil/Genius” article in Wired.)
And now I have to update the configuration of all of my WiFi client devices. I just did my iPhone; next up is the Nintendo Wii….. Thanks, Vicar!
New Mac update (in brief)
- The MBA continues to delight. The keyboard is the best I’ve used in years.
- My PowerBook suddenly came back to life. Sigh….
- The Time Capsule is a great disappointment. I set it up, and before I could actually use it, the Airport Utility suggested that I should upgrade the firmware from 7.3 to 7.3.1. ((Why such high numbers for a new product? Apparently it shares firmware builds with other Airport base stations.))I did, and the box hasn’t worked since then; the status light just blinks. From the support discussions on the Apple website, it seems that this is a common problem, and quite a few people have simply returned them. I’m going to try one more configuration (making it the only access point on the network, rather than adding it to an existing network); if that doesn’t work, I’ll be demanding a refund.
Got the MacBook Air
I received lots of advice from blog readers, friends, and colleagues at Amazon about the choice of a new laptop, and the general consensus was:
- The MacBook Air is the way to go, unless you’re doing serious video work or game-playing.
- Getting iTunes set up on a network drive is a royal pain, but it’s doable.
So last night I went over to the Apple store in Bellevue, and bought a MacBook Air, plus a 1TB Time Capsule and a few accessories (like a spare power adapter). I didn’t get an external DVD/CD, figuring that I could use my PowerBook as a remote drive. After all, the PowerBook seemed to have given up its bad habits, and hadn’t failed in weeks…
When I got home, I unpacked the MBA and went online. When I was sure that it was working well, I went to set up the PowerBook as a remote drive. During this process, I had to reboot the PowerBook… and it never came back. I went through all the variations, resetting the PMU and powering up with battery but no power, power but no battery, and both power and battery. Nothing worked. I left it overnight, tried again this morning, and it still won’t start. So it looks as if I can finally take it in to be fixed under AppleCare.
Recovering my files from the PowerBook shouldn’t be an issue: I have a full Time Machine backup on a USB drive. One minor annoyance is that the MBA installation CD is still in the PowerBook, so I can’t use it to set up another computer as a remote drive! (Remember when CD drives used to have eject buttons?) It’s not urgent, but I want to install the copy of iWork that I bought.
I haven’t set up the Time Capsule yet; that’s a weekend project. Do I set up a new 802.11n network, or simply extend my existing 802.11g one? Would I actually get “n” speeds, anyway: what do my other devices (Nintendo Wii, iPhone, OLPC XO, PSP) use? Does the Time Capsule go in the living room, next to the cable modem? If so, I can’t use it to provide network access to my printer. Details, details.
Meanwhile, the MBA is gorgeous. This is the first LED-lit screen I’ve used, and the clarity and uniformity are outstanding. One thing that I didn’t expect is that the keyboard feels much crisper than my work-supplied “Black Beauty” MacBook.
Tough choices
While I was in California last week, I found myself deep in the reality distortion field induced by the presence of MacBook Airs. Alec bought himself one, and several of the speakers at Stanford were using them. The weight, screen, and keyboard are pretty damn near perfect…
I’m looking at two basic options for my next laptop. The first – the conservative approach – is to get a loaded MacBook Pro with a 250GB disk (or perhaps the 200GB 7200 rpm unit, for speed). Physically it’s a drop-in replacement for my PowerBook, but much, much faster. If I use it the same way, it will spend 90% of its time as a desktop system.
The alternative is to admit that I would rarely use all of the features of a MacBook Pro, and with a lighter machine I’d actually treat it as a portable. Of course I need plenty of disk space for my iTunes library and photos, but a 1TB Time Capsule (combination 802.11n base station and network disk) could solve that. I assume that iTunes will be able to work with its library stored on a network disk; I just need to be able to rip the occasional CD using the external SuperDrive, and then sync between my iPhone and the iTunes library.
In terms of price, the two options are roughly comparable. But can I really use a MacBook Air without a second computer? I guess I could pick up a second hand Mac Mini for a couple of hundred dollars…
One of the things that’s causing me to lean towards the MBA is this MacWorld review by Dan Frakes, who actually lived with one for a while. The comments on his piece are fascinating, including this wonderful bit of truth-telling by “OlsonBW”:
Most of my friends scoff at the MacBook Air. But you know what? The only time they pull out CDs, DVDs, or their video camera is rare.
“But I use it to edit our vacation video.” They claim.
BS, I tell them. Show me the videos from your last three vacations.
Uh … they blush and then admit they only imported it into their computer and never touched it after that.
[…]
When it comes down to it, “most” of the time they never need anything that the MacBook Air doesn’t have. Once I prove that to them they are surprised at what they actually do.
[…]
People lie too much about what they actually need. They lie a lot because they’ve got to have the biggest and fastest even when they don’t use it.
And it’s true. Most of the time I don’t use all of the features on my machine. But 3 lbs. (versus 5.5 lbs.) is a “feature” that I can really use.
Tor's strategy seems to work… with me, anyway
As I noted recently, the sci-fi publishing house Tor has started making some of its “classic” books available for free download. Obviously they hope that people will read the freebies and pay for more, and if I’m at all typical the strategy is working. First I downloaded “Spin” by Robert Charles Wilson, transferred it to my Kindle, and read it over the next week. By the time I finished, John Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War” was available. I installed it on my Kindle, read it during my trip to California, and was ready for more. No problem: a quick search and a couple of clicks located and purchased the Kindle edition of Scalzi’s “The Ghost Brigades”. Excellent!
I finished this over my breakfast coffee this morning, and went to download the third book in the trilogy, “The Last Colony”. Except I couldn’t… there was no Kindle edition. C’mon Tor: you don’t have to wait until the book hits paperback before releasing the e-book version. I poked around to see if “The Sagan Diary” was available… alas, no. Reluctantly, I abandoned Scalzi for now, and checked out other works by Robert Charles Wilson. “The Chronoliths” took my fancy, and by the time I finished my coffee it was ready to read on the Kindle. Unusually, it’s set in a very tight ((I guess “condensed” would be the right term.)) typeface that I haven’t seen before on any of my Kindle purchases. I normally read Kindle books at the smallest font setting; with “The Chronoliths” I may need to bump it up a notch. It’s very crisp, though, with better definition than most Kindle typefaces.
Before leaving the subject of the Kindle, it’s worth noting ((Noting? Celebrating!!)) that they’ve added their first UK newspaper, “The Independent”, for $14.99 a month. I’ve just started the 14 day free trial: so far, I’m impressed.