iMurphy

    Slashdot just ran a link to a Linux-Watch, sarcastic article about how hard it is to use Linux these days. I am always making Top Ten lists for family and friends about why their next purchase should be a Mac. (I have successfully converted two doctors and two nurses at work. One more doc is coming around, but he’s only bought an iPod so far.) Linux a really just a subset of Mac, because anything that works on a Linux system can be made to run on a Mac, and probably already has been. The amount of software for Macs on VersionTracker alone should be enough to convert most people.

I recently listened to a few of the following podcasts, but then decided to unsubscribe but right reviews as to why. I hope to blog about the podcasts I’ve decided to stick with individually in the near future.

Web Talk Radio

    I was impressed by how many of the podcasts I’ve found are made on the West Coast, and especially here in Washington state. I guess there are a lot of tech jobs in Seattle and Portland, but that was also the problem with this podcast: they have been borged by Bill Gates. Microsoft is not the world leader in technology, it’s just the biggest. You don’t call the most popular kid in school the smartest, nor the bully the most well known. These guys have the forgivable drone of broadcaster who are a little nerdy but are most interested in making technology known to the non-geeks, but they (unforgivably) have their head in the sand regarding Mac and any kind of wish for the future. Microsoft tells you the future and if you just accept theirs, there’s no reason to dream of your own.

The Infidel Guy Show

    I am determined to be the Christian who Leftist Liberal fruitcakes cannot say, “Yeah, well you’ve never seen Fahrenheit 9/11 so you can’t diss it.” I did watch and so I can tell you why it was evil. This podcast isn’t evil, it’s just unthinking. I can’t stand people who feel there cause is so obvious it doesn’t need explaining, let alone defending. This guy has a real laziness in regards to his position; he speaks assuming we’re as cynical, jaded and nihilistic as he is. I can live with snide comments, God hating and Christian make funs (the last one is almost necessary), but to never present a rational system behind it all leaves one empty and bitter.

True Knights Combat Training

    I guess by even admitting that I had some interest in this show that I am confessing a problem with pornography/purity. Fair enough. As to why I will not be continuing to take these good folk’s bandwidth, I have two concerns. Most importantly, this podcast is merely the generalized sermon-extracts from their ministry in Michigan. Since I don’t live there, I can’t meet one on one with anybody, but even if I could, I wouldn’t. This is because they’re Catholic and their theology is a little sketchy. It hasn’t entered into much of their discussions yet, but if I want vague homilies that don’t explicitly address the issue at hand, I can find some where I’m not furtively keeping an eye out for bad theology.

    Two programs have captured my heart lately. (I really like that they’re free, too!) SubEthaEdit is an extremely smart, collaborative text editor for groups. Cyberduck is a beautiful, aqualicious FTP client. They are both gorgeous, easy to use, and fantastic Mac OS X denizens. They never crash, do everything I want, and did I mention they don’t cost anything for non-commercial use? I found Cyberduck first, back when I was looking for an FTP program on VersionTracker. It was from within Cyberduck that I found out about SubEthaEdit.

    Cyberduck (developed by David Kocher) is very standards-compliant and allows the user to use an External Editor to tweak text files on a remote server almost as if it was on the local host. I say almost, but that’s only because I am on dialup, and so there is a visible delay time as the files are shuffled back and forth. For the rest of you lucky people out there in DSL or Broadband land, Cyberduck is transparent. In the Preferences pane, they have a list of programs compliant with the External Editor Protocol, which is where I found SubEthaEdit.

    The Coding Monkeys is apparently a group of German guys who make great Mac software. They’ve even won awards. Their one program to date is SubEthaEdit. They have designed it to color documents for you, in order to make various types of code easier to read. Then you can invite people to edit these documents with you, all the while monitoring what they do and chat with them. I haven’t had a need to collaborate with anyone using it, but I can see how it could become an indispensable tool. Their website is also gorgeous.

    So these two programs are able to talk to each other so well because they follow something called ODB or the External Editor Protocol. I can’t find out what ODB stands for any where. It is, apparently, something software developers can integrate into a program so that it plays well with others. BareBones, makers of BBEdit, seem to have started the concept and made an SDK. Marco Merzwaren also picked up the idea. Now there are lots of FTP and text editor programs that are compliant with the ODB External Editor Suite.

    What is missing is an ODB graphics editor, or even a plug-in for any pre-existing programs. I don’t have the programming chops to put two and two together anymore, but I wish somebody did. Is this kind of thing up anybody’s alley? To have HTML/PHP editing, visual CSS editing (a la CSSEdit) and graphics editing all tied into FTP would be a complete website editing suite. I think that because this protocol wasn’t sponsored by Apple that it may fall by the wayside. Darn.

    OK, I must preface this entire rant by saying that it was all my fault, and all stemmed from my inability to read. Having thus disclaimed, let me proceed with my tale of woe.

A few months back, when I took a renewed interest in having this website be hosted somewhere, I went looking for a new host site. I found the fantastically cheap e-Host-One dot com and their affordable $2.95 a month plan. Overjoyed, I jumped onboard and began recreating my slice of the internet. There was a one dollar plan, but that looked too limiting for my storage needs, database plans and bandwidth expectations. Within a few hours after purchase, I promptly forget which plan I had bought.

Now this wonderful web-space I’ve bought has a brilliant web-interface called cPanel. This beautiful web-application has on one’s sidebar a constant reminder of how much storage space one is using, the size and number of mySQL databases onboard, as well has the bandwidth consumed to date. Somehow, my account was listed on this page (but not actually so) as the One Dollar Plan.

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July had started off as a good month for me, in regards to the internet. I got PHPGedView up and running and a WordPress blog starting to look right. I begin ruminating about a complicated CMS addition to my pages when I see I am using my one and only mySQL database for my blog and that my bandwidth is almost totally consumed. I freak out, at first just taking PHPGedView offline, but quickly deleting it all together, desperate to save space. I spent hours trying to find a blog software that doesn’t use mySQL (thanks to this table), and subsequently deleting my new blog after exporting it to PDF. After all that, I started thinking again.

An urgent ticket on the support forum leads to a quick response from e-Host-One: the cPanel was displaying the wrong information on my account. It was promptly fixed. Instantly, I way under my bandwidth, at ten percent of my storage capacity and using zero of my five mySQL databases. Now I have vented. Now my stupidity is public. Now I go cry.

I’m so happy Dr. Williams reminded me to get into Podcasting. The Stevenote from the WWDC had a big schpiel about it too, so I think that got me looking for iTunes 4.9 early. In order to save time, I downloaded it while on the T3 at work, USB 2.0′d it to my NTFS formatted iPod and had it installed within 30 minutes of getting home. Unfortunately, the 30 MB download for the corresponding iPod update had to be done over the dial-up, so that took until the next day. But now that I’ve tried it, I’m so excited!

I have really listened to just a couple of Podcasts at this point, the longest being Inside Mac Radio. They were very geeky, but it was the kind of radio show I’ve wished existed in the past. I was always sure I’d never find such programming. They asked their guests amazingly specific questions, all about the use of their Macs. I haven’t enjoyed a radio show so much in years.

I also found a ER doctor with a Podcast. His name is Sammy on the Web and he’s kind of funny. His pictures reminds me how many kids from my graduating class at Seoul Foreign School went into the “accelerated seven year medical program” at Duke or Harvard. Man, am I glad I didn’t do that! His Podcasts start with some Top 20 song clip and end with a clinical question to be answered in the next Podcast. I’ll definitely stay subscribed.

iTunes has their own Podcast, of course, and it leads the way with artwork and chapter links to the web and the iTMS.

All this geeking-out made me at least curious about making my own Podcast, though not seriously. If I had friends and relatives who knew enough about technology, a Podcast might save time. We end up saying the same thing a dozen times on dozen long-distance phone. But, alas, I am the geekiest person I know by a long-shot. A biweekly audio exposé on our lives, complete with the latest words and sounds from Reason’s mouth would fall onto no one’s ears. Rapid Weaver may support Podcasting, but my acquaintances do not. *Sigh*. I can’t wait for the technology to trickle down!

    I used to be good at Greek. Now, I hardly ever touch it, and it is fading from my memory. I will need my previous skill level and far beyond, someday. But for now, I just need to be able to get by.

    Typing on the computer in Greek, hopefully, will not be needed for my big idea on the web. However, a smidgen of hunting and pecking may yet be in store for me, and so I want what little I do have to do to be as painless as possible. Mac’s are great at facilitating multi-lingual structures, but Ancient Greek presents a unique challenge. I found two possibilities for a solution.

    The smart man who made the journal software that I now use, also made a program called UniGreek Mac. In it, one can switch back and forth from seen what one types in greek and it english with brackets, pluses and slashes. One can then cut and paste into other application Unicode text from the Greek side of the app. I found this very useful initially. It’ll still be useful if I find large quantity of Greek in the funky, English or amalgam style and need to paste them into Unicode, without retyping them. However, I found a more elegant solution for small jobs.

    SophoKeys, beside being cleverly named, is a mitzvah and a half. After one has installed it, there appears in the menu bar a choice of switching to Greek typing mode. Once selected, Greek consonants appears and vowel hesitantly reveal themselves only once accents and breathing marks are selected. It’s so easy!

    I suppose I must admit that both methods are ultimately good, but I was quite overwhelmed just now to discover SophoKeys. Typing straight into Greek has never been this easy. Both of these advances, however, will really help with my forthcoming Bible website.

My genealogy files are about as far-back reaching as they’re going to get, at least for a while. I think I’m moving on in life. I also updated my file on rootsweb dot com. I imagine in the future I will be going back and make the site submittable to the Mormons, and adding all kinds of fun details, but this is good for now. I will call grandma this week (hopefully) and see what I can glean from her. There is a glaring mystery about Obedia Baker and who fathered her children! I plan on finding out the town she was from before Nichols, SC and finding the Ford family from that town. That should make the rest pretty easy. TTFN!