31 October 2005

23:24	Worlds Most Powerful Subwoofer.

23:00	Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement) Borinnng. It’s a pity, because there’s a lot of good stuff (and I’m not only speaking of Gaspard Ulliel, that we don’t see enough, Florence Thomassin, that we don’t hear enough — it would be a welcome distraction — or Jodie Foster), but god is it boring in between the good bits.

19:12	DIY Hemorrhoids Cryotherapy. So you might just as well fill a condom with ice and…

19:03	The Jack PC.

18:25	What a man (Quicktime 3.6MB) (incidentally, iMovie is rather nice).

17:11	A TV show that entirely relies on Wentworth Miller’s torso, now that’s an interesting concept.

04:10	Alias 5.05 E.B. playing in Alias, P.B. playing in French, Sloane at his best… there’s only the pain of going, within the same shot, from French actors to Americans with terrible accents and mis-translated dialogues. Are the authors illiterate francophiles, or did they just have to go with France because of Michael Vartan’s origins?

03:08	Message personnel : Xarro, tu as réclamé que le status soit commentable, alors commente.

03:05	It’s addictive, it’s true. And I should consider myself lucky that two thirds of the special effects don’t work with my webcam. I want an iSight. Hey, I should sell my useless mini back and buy an iSight instead.

02:52

Heh, Photo Booth is compatible with macam and my Logitech webcam. Well, or so I’d say if I could try it, which I obviously can’t, since the program is only available with the new iMac, which has an integrated iSight so you’d have to be out of your mind to plug a Logitech Quickcam into it.

Mhh… wonder if you can get the original image, in black and white, back from the “thermal” version. I’m afraid it’s possible, but I hope it’s far too difficult for anyone to bother. (Besides, the Quickcam image is so blurry it wouldn’t matter so much anyway.)

02:41	Eh bien, ils auront tenu un an.

30 October 2005

13:30	Hotkeys: untested, because it’s a Windows program, but it looks nice.

01:35	Tiletoy [via] : open-source LED matrix displays.

01:18

Hallelujah! Here’s what technical support recommends: “disable the double click assist within WACOM control panel.” Of course, nothing in the control panel really matches the description, but here’s what works:

And it works! The tablet no longer lags, and works better than my old PC tablet (it was a serial port model, so it just couldn’t keep up).

Of course, it’s a bit pathetic they’d release a driver that offers to assist double-click, and activates the functionality by default, but can’t do so without making the whole computer lag; besides, unlike the Windows version, the OS X drivers don’t allow you to define application-specific, so I can’t ask it to deactivate double-click everywhere but in the Finder. But what matters is, it’s working now, and I can draw (yes, I do plan on improving someday) and write. Hurray!

29 October 2005

20:00	Maybe I should have watched Star Academy this year this year.

17:01

Received my Wacom tablet. Good news is, they billed me the price that was indicated at the time I ordered it, which gives me a Graphire4 Classic XL for 125 euros instead of 170. Heh.

Bad news is, an A5 tablet is a bit small for a 1680x1050 20-incher. And Inkwell is unusable because the CPU can’t keep up, making the display lag and garbling strokes. And Painter Essentials can’t keep up either, for the same reasons. And I can manage to draw a bit using SketchBook Pro, but provided I don’t move too fast, and even then the CPU is working overtime and the iMac’s fans get louder than I ever heard them.

It’s too bad, because the hardware is rather good: the removable clear plastic overlay is less pleasant to the touch than the old tablet’s soft plastic, but it’ll be much easier to replace when it’s scratched; the tablet itself is smaller, pretty, and doesn’t need external power. The only problem being that the stylus is a perfect cylinder, barrel buttons don’t stick out, so you have to look at your hand every time you need them under your fingers — and it rolls if you put it down on your desk. And the drivers are buggy, and the tablet lags, and I’m quite glad I got an involuntary discount.

Makes for a decent mouse replacement, but I’m not sure I’ll start my webcomic any time soon.

P.S. Looks like the iMac-white version only exists on Wacom’s American website. Go figure.

P.S. Thinking back, sluggishness is probably not Wacom’s fault. But that doesn’t change anything to my disappointment. If it’s not working correctly on a 2GHz G5 with 1GB of RAM…

P.S. Hallelujah !

05:10

Let’s recap the facts (not in chronological order)…

I 99%-switched to OS X — if I ever buy a video capture box for the Mac, the PC will only be left with 3DSmax (oh, and games, maybe).

OS X includes Unix, Apache and PHP, which were the reasons I needed a Linux server until now. Besides, OS X also includes Spotlight, AppleScript and other stuff that’ll fulfill my needs better than PHP could, so I probably won’t even need a local Apache server anymore (you could expect me to have one in order to test scripts for the sites I maintain, but I can’t, for various technical and totally real reasons).

And I don’t really need RAID-1; I can just rsync my main disk to a backup once a day.

So the conclusion is, a Mac file server would be much more convenient. And a Mac mini would waste less room than the Linux tower. And there were old minis on sale in Paris. And I wanted a mini, and I wanted to have a Mac for the remaining week I’d spend in Paris, and I wanted a mini, and I wanted a mini. So I bought one (rather cheap). A logical reasoning, right?

Wrong. Forgot to reconsider all the hypotheses. Here’s the thing I overlooked: I don’t need a fucking file server anymore! Since I intend to put everything on external drives, and I don’t need RAID, and all files will be on a Mac anyway… what does the mini do in the equation that two external drives^* on the iMac can’t? Well? Nothing, that’s what they do, dumbass, you bought a Mac mini for nothing, right when you’re supposed to be saving in order to move to Paris.

So what am I gonna do with a mini now? It’s not like I’ll live in so big a flat I’ll need computers in every room: there’ll only be one room!

^* : actually, two drives’s one too much, because the iMac, unlike the mini, does include a hard drive. So I only need one external drive for my daily backups. Fucking dumbass, really.

04:35	Argh, I lost my post — a small drawback of assigning Cmd-W to a trackball button. It’s four thirty in the morning, I don’t feel like writing it again.

02:48

Is Sex Necessary? [via] (Nevermind that it’s not the best day for linking to Forbes.)

"Men who exercise and have a good heart and low heart rate, and who are cardio-fit, have firmer erections," he says. "There very definitely is a relationship." […]

The drugs [like Viagra] increase rigidity; moreover, they make it possible for a man to have second and third orgasms without having to wait out intermission.

There’s a reason the penis, in its natural state, undergoes a period of flaccidity. That’s when it takes a breather. The blood within it is replenished with oxygen.

"If you do not allow the penis to rest," Eid says, "then the muscle tissue does not get enough oxygen. The individual gets prolonged erections, gets decreased oxygen to tissue and could potentially suffer priapism."

And here I was, thinking I ought to try out Viagra someday, like everybody does.

02:24	I had never actually seen fly droppings before I got my iMac. And it looks like those creatures enjoy their toilet seats smooth, white and warm.

28 October 2005

23:55	Wacom introduces widescreen tablet. About time. (But not for me — the Intuos line is too expensive with too little benefit over Graphire.)

23:01	How to punish bloggers.

20:37

Tarte chocolat-tagada

Pre-made preparation for chocolate pie, plus fraises tagada (candy strawberry-ish stuff that doesn’t taste like strawberry at all).

Out of the oven:

Five minutes later:

In a plate:

And, yes, it’s exactly as good as it looks. The sad part is, I knew very well it was likely to happen, but I couldn’t resist the urge to put candy into the preparation, like a kid.

If I don’t blog tomorrow, just assume diabetes made me blind. (Or made my fingers fall off. I think it can do something like that.)

16:18	Reçu l’écran… pas le bon, branchements VGA et non DVI. J’ai vraiment pas de chance avec ce que je commande, ce mois-ci.

15:36	DoubleCommand is finally available for Tiger. The “Disable Caps lock” option is obosolete for 10.4, but “PC style home and end keys” and “swap numpad-. with numpad-shift-.” are lifesavers (the former reinstates the numpad period, replaced with a comma on French keyboards — I had no idea it was available by pressing Shift).

14:37	Yarrow : “La commande vidéo liste le contenu du dossier Movies/Séquences de l’utilisateur.” “Séquences” ? Et on me demande pourquoi j’installe OS X en anglais.

02:07	Alias 5.04 Boring and heavy, even though the trunk twist was smart. Alias scripts have been an eternal cycle of shameless repetition for a while now, but now the writers are so straightforward about it you just want to slap them.

01:20	Alias 5.03 Blah blah stupid blah blah shut up Sydney blah blah oh, Amy Acker!

00:26	Alias 5.02 Could have been funny, but the whole episode is just too idiotic. And there’s far too much of Sydney; can’t stand her anymore. It was okay as far as action scenes went, but when they expect you to empathize with her because she’s so, so sad… I just wish she could be put out of her misery.

27 October 2005

22:20	Desperate Housewives 1.16–1.17

16:12	The girl who doesn’t change facial expressions.

06:08	Welcome to Windows XP Tablet PC Edition – Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to begin. Heh.

04:17	Knitting DNA.

03:11

The 2-Variable Intuition Test [via]:

You have 55% scientific intuition and 77% emotional intuition.

How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 14% on Scientific.

You scored higher than 84% on Interpersonal.

Interesting — especially the way emotional intuition is tested. I still have trouble believing question 15 is for real. Anyway, I don’t resent the results. At all. Can’t wait to know yours.

26 October 2005

22:54	Big Fish Bah. Well done, but it’d be working better for me if it was about anything else than this.

25 October 2005

21:25	I really like the Nokia 7380 — provided they found a decent interface to type SMS messages, and it’s available with less kitschy decor.

19:11	“Apple advertising is still cooler in Japan.”

18:51	South Park 8.04 “Yeah, we just got goth-served.”

17:41	Frappr! beta. Not quite usable yet, but you can put your pin up on the map if you like.

17:04	DIY Glowing Apple Keyboard.

04:59	Front Row on a Mac mini (How-To).

04:10	The Chronicles of Riddick Going from pointless to ridiculous, except that Vin Diesel makes body-building sexy — anyone got a video of the part where he’s doing gymnastics at the end of a rope?

01:57	Le site de Canal+ n’a jamais été parfait (j’ai même l’impression qu’il empire très régulièrement depuis quelques années) mais, quand même, un splash screen en Flash, avec le “passer l’intro” qui n’apparaît qu’une fois le chargement terminé ? C’est pour Halloween ?

00:39	Lost 2.05

24 October 2005

22:45	Around the World in 80 Days Against all odds, watchable. (Barely.)

22:01	iBelieve.

17:20	Commandé aussi un écran plat, le moins cher du catalogue, pour remplacer les quatre écrans des deux PC (dont un va être remplacé par le Mac mini, comme vous le savez puisque vous suivez attentivement) et me retrouver avec un bureau à dimension humaine. Les KVM DVI étant rares et chers, je crois que je switcherai manuellement.

17:17	Duracell escalators. Clever.

02:42	Deux ventilateurs commandés (merci Christophe), vous avez intérêt à ce qu’ils conviennent. Bien sûr, ils ne sont pas en stock, donc je ne sais pas quand je les aurai. Vivre en province…

02:05	Six Feet Under 3.06 I don’t like what Nate’s becoming, I don’t like the whole thing with Lisa, I like even less the freaky intern and what the authors seem to be planning with him.

23 October 2005

22:32

Remember when I explained that any self-respecting (or at least Garoo-respected) webmaster must keep a copy of his sites on his hard disk and edit his files there (and test them locally, if possible) before sending them onto the production server?

The problem is, you end up maintaining two mirrors of the same sites, and every time you want to change a file you have to open the FTP client, find the local copy, find the remote copy, and switch from text editor to FTP with every change in order to upload the file again. So annoying I eventually programmed my own program to automatically upload files to the right place on the server just by pressing a shortcut key in the text editor.

I knew I’d necessarily have to find an OS X equivalent if I wanted to ever work on the Mac (well, that and a Wacom tablet that’s not coming… ah, and being able to share my PC’s WWW directory without it being accessible to everyone without a password — turns out you have to define a password for your guest user: net user guest password after you have enabled the guest account) but I wasn’t in quite a hurry to look for a solution, being too afraid not to find it.

Turns out it’s not only possible, it’s actually quite simple: you only have to install Transmit, configure all your sites as favorites (paying attention to set the correct local and remote paths so Transmit can accurately determine where files are supposed to go), check the “DockSend” checkbox for each site, and… you’re done. Drag and drop files onto the Transmit icon, they’re uploaded to where they belong.

Now you’ll want to get TextWrangler to send its files to Transmit — drag-and-drop is fine for occasional use but quickly becomes a nuisance. Open your Library : Application Support : TextWrangler : Scripts folder, create a Upload Using Transmit.scpt file with this:

set fileName to "" tell application "TextWrangler" save document 1 of window 1 set fileName to (file of document 1 of window 1) end tell tell application "Transmit" open fileName end tell tell application "System Events" set this app to some item of (get processes whose name = "Transmit") set visible of this app to false end tell

Go back to Text Edit, check the Window / Palettes / Scripts menu option, select the newly created script and define a keyboard shortcut.

Explaining it all makes for a pretty long (and boring) post, but it’s so much simpler than learning C# and coding my own program. It works with only a few lines of scripting, and I can now manage my websites without having to move over to the PC’s keyboard. And you have no idea how much that changes everything.

What are you waiting for to get a Mac?

04:22	Où trouver un putain de ventilateur de deux centimètres et demi de côté, branchable en gigogne sur une connerie d’alimentation de disque dur, pour aller dans l’emplacement prévu à cet effet de mon putain de boîtier pour disque externe de bordel de merde pour que je puisse me servir du mini comme serveur de fichiers ?

04:18	Rubik’s Mario.

22 October 2005

23:33	And they go directly from the end of season 4 to Buffy’s resurrection, skipping season 5. Goddamn clueless networks.

22:32

As I announced two days ago, the minilog is replaced with a “status” block in the right column, with more and less details at the same time. Also available as an RSS feed, but you’d better define a custom refresh period, because the status will appear as new every time you read the feed.

And it’s also sporting a picture of me, to make Jakob Nielsen happy, but I’m not sure how long I can handle seeing my face when I proof-read my posts.

The status block uses Ajax to refresh on the home page (because it’s compiled as a static HTML page, whereas the status is recompiled every six minutes), so don’t be surprised if the information there magically changes mid-load. Using Ajax just for that is a bit heavy but, hey, I know how to do it and it works, so why not use it?

04:33	Six Feet Under 3.05 “Mice have germs, they deserve to die.”

21 October 2005

21:58	Will & Grace 4.04–4.06 Oh, right, I remember now: I never really liked this show, and it has scripts even more stupid than Friends.

18:52	South Park 8.02

05:32	LotR / WoW crossover [via].

04:08	Où trouver un ventilateur de deux centimètres et demi de côté, branchable en gigogne sur une alimentation de disque dur, pour aller dans lemplacement prévu à cet effet de mon boîtier pour disque externe ? Bordel !

02:52

Received the invitation to test the Flock Developer Preview. Cute, but based on Firefox and XUL (hence heavier, clunkier and less polished than a native application on OS X, or any OS actually) and… without much of a point. It’s supposed to be a “social browser”, but all it does is display Flickr photos in a bar (but only one user’s photos) or managing bookmarks on del.icio.us (but, there again, without any consideration for the community aspect of it — it’s only saving and reading your bookmarks on a remote server, is all). Ah, and a blog editor, but I have no use for that since my blog isn’t compatible with standard APIs.

Considering the beta’s maturity, I doubt it’s going to get much more useful by the time it’s publicly released. There are much more interesting and much more social Firefox extensions already.

20 October 2005

22:58	Cold Case 2.13 Great, my network’s skipping episodes.

22:19	Desperate Housewives 1.15 So they’ve all forgotten what Andrew did and that he’s the Devil incarnate? I know Bree’s proud of being a WASP who’ll shove problems underneath the carpet, but still… (Though the Solis household seems to have forgotten as well, so who cares, really.)

21:39	Desperate Housewives 1.14 Goddamn poorly-written voiceover. “Huh?”

18:48	South Park 8.05 Goddamnit, how hard can it be to show episodes in the right order?

18:09	Alias 5.01 Bah. I’m not quite sure — either it’s all brushed past way too fast and lightly (the poorly placed ellipsis when the window blinds are drawn, and the poorly placed ellipsis to “4 months later”), or it’s just because I don’t give a damn. (Thanks to P.) P.S. How could the French-speaking part of the cast not object to the French character names?!

04:41	Où trouver un ventilateur de deux centimètres et demi de côté, branchable en gigogne sur une alimentation de disque dur, pour aller dans l’emplacement prévu à cet effet de mon boîtier pour disque externe ?

04:35	Six Feet Under 3.04 I don’t know whether the season had been starting slow, or I just had trouble getting used back to it, but here we are now, I’m really feeling involved again. “I think if you’re afraid of something, it probably means you should do it.”

01:02	“Everybody needs a ‘status’ page.” I’ll keep this in mind to evolve my minilog into something more interesting.

00:48	Six Feet Under 3.03 I know it’s been a while, but wasn’t there a little bit more stuff happening in the previous seasons? “Women our age are invisible, so we can really get away with murder.”

19 October 2005

19:13	Katamari Adium dock icon. It’s cute, it’s purple, and it fits just right on my dock next to X Resource Graph, NetNewsWire and Safari.

19:07	Aperture: $499 just for a RAW version of iPhoto? There must be something I don’t get…

18:50	South Park 8.01

18:28	What, no embedded iSight in the updated PowerBooks?

16:50	La télé-réalité X de PinkTV et Citébeur. Sauf que ça ne sera pas X. Pff.

16:48	Les fonds d’écran PinkTV, disponibles en 800x600, 1024x768 et… 1200x1024. Non, vraiment, j’ai fait Get Info sur les images pour vérifier que ce n’était pas juste une coquille, et ils sont bien en 1200x1024.

04:13	Où trouver le ventilateur de deux centimètres et quelque, à brancher en gigogne sur une alimentation de disque dur, qui ira dans l’emplacement prévu à cet effet de mon boîtier pour disque externe ?

18 October 2005

22:43

Alias 4.21–4.22

Damn, it’s gonna be hard criticizing this episode when they accomplished the unthinkable: the cliffhanger managed to surprise and bluff me. Not, not the last scene, not the speech, not the revelation — just the very last image. So, let’s get it out of the way: great idea, well done. The rest, the whole rest? Jesus, what a sorry mess.

<SPOILERS>

They’re not gonna dare plagiarize Resident Evil, they can’t… nah… no, they won’t… oh, they did. Including the underground train. And the teammate left for dead. The only thing I can say about this monument in pathetism is that I dare hope that was not the prophetized fight between… oh, wait, it can’t be, since she’s still alive. Guess they’re still saving that one for later; guess there’s still some Rambaldi ahead, then (and thank God for that, because that’s the one last thing in here that’s still a bit of fun).

Even Lena Olin couldn’t save that last episode, despite all she did for the previous one. I hope she demanded a fortune for this (final? probably, I’m afraid) appearance, for bringing to an undeserving show some scenes like the one when she recognizes Nadia. (Unlike an Angela Bassett who must be in it just for the money, considering how incredibly dull and boring she is since she joined the cast.)

So, Vaughn, not-Vaughn, good guy, bad buy, Alliance or Covenant mole in the CIA, I don’t give a shit. It’s only the idea of interrupting his confession with a Jeep Cherokee that managed to surprise me, and that’s already a lot.

</SPOILERS>

17:43	Six Feet Under 3.02 Woo! “I always thought by being gay I’d avoid fucking my mother.”

16:50	Got to be realistic: if I move into the kind of rat hole I kind afford, I’ll go insane in no time. But if I get roommates I’ll go insane as well.

15:08	Où trouver le ventilateur de deux centimètres et quelque, à brancher en gigogne sur une alimentation de disque dur, qui ira dans l’emplacement prévu à cet effet de mon boîtier pour disque externe ?

03:32	Six Feet Under 3.01 Woo! (Yeah, I know I’m late.) Even though it’s not the most captivating season premiere ever. (Thanks to P.) “Are we having sex?”

17 October 2005

15:25	Okay, are they going to have my tablet in stock someday?

02:46	The meaning of Playstation buttons [via].

02:34	Lost 2.04 It’s not just a boring episode (with way too many lines for Charlie); I have trouble finding a way to comprehend the story’s “moral” that wouldn’t be disturbing. So, responsibility is too hard, let’s give it all up?

01:41	Sex and the City 6.13–6.14 The introduction of xxxx just two seconds before the whole series ends so that xxxx has to make her choice in the very last episode is really too transparent; as for the rest, can’t find a fault. Which, for a six-year-old show, is quite a feat.

16 October 2005

22:28	ER 11.13–11.14 Go Kerry!

17:25	Lost 2.03 If the authors intend to make Lost a comedy show, they have my absolute support. “We’re gonna need to watch that again.”

16:24	Lost 2.02 I don’t know what’s happening, they manage to write episodes that don’t make me roll my eyes, and I even replayed a scene frame by frame to check on something (I can’t imagine what it looks like in 320x240 — Lost is really the worst show to be sold and bought in such a format).

15:39	Coquillettes Panzani au micro-ondes Depuis que les sachets de riz prêt en deux minutes au micro-ondes existent, je me demande pourquoi ils n’appliquent pas le principe aux pâtes ; maintenant c’est fait. Verdict : ça pue, mais c’est mangeable. Mais ça pue. Et ~~ce n’est jamais très agréable de~~ je n’ai jamais aimé manger quelque chose qui pue.

04:03	Lost 2.01 This episode is far too outlandish, far too funny, for me not to give it a good rating. I’m not quite sure that’s what they were after, but I had many great laughs here; if only the whole season could be like this, instead of painfully diluting “suspense” as they’re bound to… Ah, and Jack has a nice voice. (Thanks to P.)

15 October 2005

23:50	Ah, watching old Buffy episodes, even from season 4, and comparing them to the mediocrity of current shows… Spoiled. O Joss, where art thou?

23:32

Clutter Fix

As I said, since I upgraded to iTunes 5 (or 6, or maybe earlier for other users), when I double-click a Clutter album record, iTunes starts reading it from the middle.

Turns out there was no need to load the source code (though I finally managed to), as the AppleScript files are directly accessible from within the application.

So, if you like Clutter (and there’s no way you shouldn’t if you’re using iTunes on OS X) but find it unusable because of this bug, here’s a fix: ctrl-click (or right-click) Clutter.app, choose “Show Package Contents”, open “Contents”, then “Resources”, make a backup copy of the PlayArtistAlbum.scpt file and replace it with this one (this is a zip file — you’ve got to double-click it first to uncompress it). Relaunch Clutter.

Warning: I fixed it so it worked on my machine, but can’t make any guarantees as to whether it’ll work for anyone else. Which is why you should have made a backup copy first.

02:12	Apple ‘Front Row’ Software Request Petition [via].

02:08	Plus de détails sur l’iMac Cyclope, la télécommande et Front Row: a summary of things we wish weren’t true.

00:17

The Butterfly Effect

Try as I might to forgo my multiple prejudices (wow, where are all these words coming from?), I have some trouble buying Ashton Kutcher as a clever, tortured psychology student. The actor playing his character at age 7 is almost more convincing.

As for the script itself, which was heavily recommended to me by at least… uh, several people, I think, it’s not that great. Unless the problem’s with direction (besides the lead actor). Either way, there’s something quite not working and the movie could be that much better.

A little nitpick while we’re at it, since that’s what I do: Carlos shouldn’t see the scars appear; he should have always seen them. Doesn’t matter, because it only affects a detail of the story; what’s more annoying (or at least frustrating) is the way the “theory” is never explained at all. Figures: come to think of it, it makes absolutely no sense.

14 October 2005

22:03	Will & Grace 4.01–4.03 I don’t remember if I ever really liked this show. Anyway, I’m not sure I can ever get used to Karen’s real voice. No wonder they didn’t try and find a matching French voice — nobody would have believed it.

17:10

Why don’t I see anyone complaining that, since iTunes 5 came out, Clutter started playing albums from the middle?

P.S. It must be trivial to fix, but I can’t get the source from CVS — ~~no idea if the problem lies with me or SourceForge, I never used CVS before~~ the server has trouble handling load. Couldn’t they just offer a simple source code zip?

P.S. Ah, it’s not new to iTunes 5. But it never happened to me before.

16:14	Oops Chair.

15:17	Don’t Jump. Excellent, indeed.

03:18	Pourquoi (pas) le Brésil Not like I expected to like it, anyway. Not my kind of cinema.

00:41	Scrubs 3.11–3.12

13 October 2005

23:10	Cold Case 2.09 The black sheep in the police station’s basement, the detectives trying their luck one after another to break a suspect who knows all about them, it’s all very classical… wonder if the episode would have worked as well if it hadn’t been an opportunity to see Enterprise’s good Doctor Phlox in a… different light.

22:26	Desperate Housewives 1.13

22:25	Desperate Housewives 1.12 “The sad fact is, not all lives have meaning.”

19:52	Macworld [via]: “ Front Row will only be available as part of the iMac, Apple says. The company has no plans to make it available in other Macs or as a standalone application.” Dumbasses. Well, they’re bound to change their mind soon enough, but it’s still dumb on so many levels.

18:42

How to make iTunes forget an MP3 comes from a podcast

When podcasts arrived on the iTMS, I subscribed to a couple that published songs as is, without speech or anything. With iTunes 4.9, I only had to “Convert to MP3” in order to get the songs into the regular library. Since iTunes 5 (I suppose — maybe 6) it’s not working anymore: whatever you do, it remembers it was a podcast, and only displays it in the library’s “Podcasts” category — and in none of my automatic playlists.

Here’s the solution found on macosxhints: load fixid3tag.c, launch Terminal, type gcc fixid3tag.c -o fixid3tag, then for each mp3 (which you can get by drag-and-dropping from iTunes to the Finder) ./fixid3tag chemin/fichier.mp3 and, voilà, regular mp3s to be added back to the library.

You’re free to contribute a way to get fixid3tag to accept drag-and-drops, or an AppleScript wrapper to do the same.

P.S. Oh, wait, it’s pretty simple, so I can do it myself. Open Script Editor, type:

on open target files repeat with onefile in target files do shell script "/chemin complet/fixid3tag " & quoted form of POSIX path of onefile end repeat end open

Save as an “Application bundle” (don’t know what it means exactly, but that’s what I read) and you get an application that’ll accept dropped MP3 files.

16:25	“Des fois, on est très déçu par son conjoint.”

15:38	HOWTO Make A Head In A Jar [via]. Ick.

00:28

Ceux qui m’aiment prendront le train

C’est curieux : les films de Patrice Chéreau me passent loin au-dessus de la tête, et les scénarios de Danièle Thompson ne cassent pas des briques, mais en réunissant les deux on obtient un film que j’aime toujours autant à chaque fois que je le regarde (et ça donne aussi La reine Margot, dont je ne suis pas spécialement fan mais qui est facilement le deuxième film le plus intéressant de leurs filmographies).

(C’est bizarre, j’ai la forte impression d’avoir déjà posté au sujet de ce film, peut-être même deux fois. ~~Il n’y aurait pas un problème dans mon script de recherche ?~~ Ah, oui, le problème, c’est que j’étais persuadé que la recherche séparait les mots, alors que non, j’ai eu la flemme et j’ai considéré que ça chargeait trop le serveur si on cherchait plusieurs mots.)

12 October 2005

20:32

The only thing to be remembered from this “One More Thing” is the (not particularly pretty) remote that sticks to the iMac’s side with magnets. That, and… uh, no, nothing else.

I hope at least Front Row will be a free download. Farewell, CenterStage. (Don’t bother checking the last link: I tried it, and it’s just unusable for now.)

P.S. The Apple Store offers the remote separately and mentions Front Row without including in the package listing, so you can assume the program will be available for everyone (contrary to what most tech blogs have starting assuming). I wonder if Front Row is easily usable with a (Bluetooth, obviously) mouse. And also if the magnets are inside the remote or the new iMac, and hence whether the remote sticks to the older iMacs as well. (By the way, isn’t the hard drive right there in the case?)

P.S. Their ad is so funny:

Oh yeah: with Front Row, you can watch, full-screen on your brand new 20-inch iMac, the latest Lost or Desperate Housewives episode (~~before anyone else, if I understood correctly~~), for two dollars… in 320x240 pixels. So, for the whole season, you spend more than for a DVD set, in a format that’s pretty much unwatchable on anything bigger than an iPod — it was already a bit lame to only offer 128kbps for music, but now it’s downright ridiculous.

P.S. The remote seems to use infrared, so it might not actually be usable with older iMacs, and Front Row may not be available either. Which would be a bit silly.

P.S. Watched the video keynote (which crashed the router / the connection / all of Wanadoo in Smallville), and Front Row does look cute. If it were usable on any Mac (such as, say, a mini plugged to a TV set — which has to be possible soon, at least with the next Mac mini revision) and accepted plugins (so that video capture / TV tuner box makers could add their functions to the interface — and I’ve got little hope on that front) it’d really be interesting. Otherwise, it’s a pity that CenterStage development is in such poor shape.

17:04	Microsoft, Yahoo to Link IM Networks [via] — “ and a deal to open the door between MSN Messenger and AIM has been rumored.” Will it finally force MSN to save messages to offline contacts?

16:31	The Unofficial Apple Weblog: “TUAW has just received confirmation that Apples much-anticipated, invite-only ‘One More Thing’ event is simply going to be an official apology for the ROKR phone.” Heh.

11 October 2005

22:22	Alias 4.19–4.20 Meh. And yet, Amy Irving! And, maybe, next week, xxxx ! (But that was so damn predictable it takes all the fun out of surprise.)

20:47	Stupid Candy.

10 October 2005

23:19	Glow In The Dark Hair Gel.

22:52	Van Helsing Uh, whatever. At least, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was some kind of fun (which one cloned the other?). But what’s Kate Beckinsale doing? Underworld, then this…

21:03	Oh… since last night my Flash player has gone completely silent, in Safari as well as Camino, and uninstalling / reinstalling doesn’t change a thing. Odd.

19:56	Tant que je reste reclus dans ma chambre, je peux encore oublier. C’est seulement quand je dois sortir faire des courses que je suis obligé de me souvenir que je suis à Smallville et que c’est inhumain.

19:35	C’est l’été indien, là ?

16:40	“I Hate Monday Mornings.”

02:37

Ah ben, tiens, je pourrais poster ça, par exemple :

— Oups, j’ai failli oublier de regarder la redif de Le Set pour voir Nosfell sur le plateau

— c ki ?

— Un chanteur complètement barré, icône gay chez les ceux-qui-savent parce qu’il fait ses concerts torse nu, qu’il fait de la danse, qu’il est complètement barré, et qu’il a une tête à passer ses nuits au Dépôt

P.S. Raté… j’ai dû mal comprendre le concept de best-of hebdomadaire.

P.S. Ah, oui, le best-of hebdomadaire doit être en deux parties. Zut, j’ai autre chose à faire de mes samedis soirs.

02:29	It’s boring in here… who do I have to insult in order to get some animation?

01:23	Sex and the City 6.11–6.12 Damn, I’ve missed the whole first half of the last season, you just can’t take a decent vacation. (How can Carrie still have this old PowerBook in 2003? What is Apple’s PR department doing?)

00:21	Alias 4.17–4.18 I guess it’s always been that dumb, but there’s no way it could have been so poorly written from the start, right?

9 October 2005

23:08	NYC Walk/Don’t Walk sign chair.

04:40	Ah oui, tiens, il restait des épisodes inédits d’Alias ? Ca ne reprend que cette semaine, ou j’ai déjà raté quelque chose de sûrement très… euh, débile ?

7 October 2005

16:36	Charlie Hunnam still exists. Very much.

04:19	Cool OSX Apps, the blog you have to bookmark. Lots of programs I already knew and you should download, plus a few new ones like Photo Desktop, WeatherDock and pearLyrics.

6 October 2005

22:30	Je rêve, ou j’ai raté un tiers de saison de Cold Case depuis la rentrée, là ?

22:28	Desperate Housewives 1.10–1.11 “Please do not mistake my anal retentiveness for actual affection.”

04:28	Gizmodo Announces Support for Some Form of Higher Definition DVD.

00:32	Comme une image Un peu mou et parfois limite décousu comme un film d’Agnès Jaoui, parsemé de perles comme on peut en attendre d’un scénario de Jaoui et Bacri. Je dirais bien que leurs scripts gagneraient à être réalisés par quelqu’un d’autre, mais elle a quand même un vrai talent pour la direction d’acteurs.

00:12	I was dead sure my library was going to near 50GB when I got back from holiday, ~~what with all I’ve carried back in my luggage,~~ and now it’s only a tiny bit over 30. Does iTunes delete tracks to make some room when you add too many at once? Or was I only under 20, not 40 as I thought? I did think it was odd I’d be that close to capacity of an hypothetical 60GB iPod.

5 October 2005

20:40

Vénus & Apollon (Arte)

On n’est sûrement pas censé se faire un avis sur un seul épisode, mais celui-là ne m’a donné aucune envie de revenir. (Faut dire, je n’avais pas trouvé le film passionnant non plus.) Ce n’est pas encore cette année que la série française sera sauvée.

Ca fait bizarre de voir Brigitte Roüan dans un rôle aussi… anodin. (Et Maria de Medeiros aussi, mais elle m’intéresse moins, elle n’a ni réalisé Post-coïtum animal triste ni joué dans Pourquoi pas moi ?)

17:32

The main reason I stuck to Safari was the ability to create a bookmarks folder that automatically opens into tabs (“auto-click”). Yippee, Camino now does it, too (“Tab group”, hidden in the bookmark folders’ “Get Info” panes), and unlike Safari it also works for the Bookmarks menu’s folders. Which is good, considering Camino’s bookmarks bar is very poorly integrated, visually, so I’d rather hide it.

Two problems remaining: the lack of a sidebar (I can certainly live without it) and the fact that Camino seems to get mixed up when there are several login/password pairs associated to the same page (in my case, a page requesting a login, itself hidden behind a .htaccess requesting another). It’s annoying, but the case probably doesn’t arise too often.

P.S. Ah, it’s bug 187720. You suddenly feel less lonely when you get a number. A two-year-old number.

P.S. Damn, it also mixes my Gayattitude administration password and my personal login. Forget it. Such a pity to get stuck by such a dumb bug. I’ll have to keep an eye on Bugzilla now.

02:39	Desperate Housewives 1.08–1.09 My god, Nicollette Sheridan really looks like an old dragon now. (But then, I saw Madeleine Stowe yesterday, and it’s even more apalling.)

00:13	Desperate Housewives 1.06–1.07 Much better now that all the introductory bits are done. (Seems like I can perfectly watch without the subtitles. Time to get rid of my training wheels. Thanks to M.)

4 October 2005

17:29	And the Citys Delivery Men Wept: “There are only two kinds of male cyclists - those who are impotent and those who will be impotent.”

3 October 2005

03:28	Crap, aren’t Graphire4 tablets available yet?

2 October 2005

23:35	After two months of holiday including more than a fortnight staying right in the center of Paris, the unreal aspect of living in Smallville is getting painfully obvious.

23:30	Propaganda au Queen Musique oscillant entre passable et correcte, stars de service, pétasses squattant sans bouger en plein milieu de la piste, et tout le monde qui arrête de se sentir obligé de bouger parce que deux pauvres drag queens dançouillent sur un podium. Ambiance assez moyenne, en bref.

1 October 2005

	Groupe socialiste de la CUB Visual design, HTML and eZpublish.