tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-318462432011-12-15T11:33:23.689+09:00Reviewing Products and Spouting NonsenseJ.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.comBlogger791100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-25299737084822993262008-09-29T21:50:00.001+09:002008-09-29T21:50:23.886+09:00

[LIFE IN JAPAN]A step-by-step guide to owning a home in JapanTOMOKO OTAKEhttp://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080928x3.html-------------------------The Japan Times Online: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/Online Advertising: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/jt-ad-server/ webads@japantimes.co.jp-------------------------------------------------- Copyright(C) 2006 The Japan Times Online----------

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-5633100300657560942006-11-15T11:36:00.000+09:002006-11-15T11:40:04.264+09:00

Hey! This site has moved!! It moved to a hosted domain powered by WordPress. It's not as pretty or cool looking, but that will change over time.www.goodbyehelicopter.comSee you there!

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-39052865732751202092006-10-27T08:49:00.000+09:002006-10-27T09:04:49.093+09:00

SoundBooth, a slight knockoff name of Apple's PhotoBooth? Regardless, it isn't what you think. Long ago, in the late 90's, there was a company called Macromedia and they had a splendid app called SoundEdit-16. It was easy to use, powerful, small, and could have had longer legs. It never did get the .mp3 file support it needed. Macromedia had a much loved app that many swore by, and they let it

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-49797032753090627022006-10-26T16:34:00.000+09:002006-10-26T16:45:19.614+09:00

Hmm... there seem to be some very cool things in here. Under the Tools menu there is a DOM inspector. It is actually very very very cool for web developers. Want to see the document tree? There it is in a pretty good DOM browser. As you highlight a visual element in the DOM browser, FireFox 2 will flash a red border around that element in the web browser window. Very cool and very useful. The

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-60008595613520226862006-10-26T12:25:00.000+09:002006-10-26T12:54:19.438+09:00

Wow, Lou Dobbs has balls, big ones. He held a live "town hall" meeting in San Antonio, Texas talking about the border problem, the problems of drugs and immigration from Mexico and more. What he may not have been aware of is that San Antonio is mostly sympathetic to Mexican migrants. Nobody there wants to use the words "illegal alien" because they say it sounds like space beings. Well, that's

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-44004618349037803382006-10-26T02:05:00.000+09:002006-10-26T02:14:33.934+09:00

Downloaded, installed and tried FireFox 2 on OS X today. Let me say, it is a little rough around the edges. Still can't render type at small sizes well. It seems to be picky as hell about rendering right floated elements in CSS. If there isn't a LOT OF ROOM, it will just push the right floated element off the screen. I mean it noticeably wastes available space. Oh well. It also still loads slow

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-88597052509904406482006-10-25T12:15:00.000+09:002006-10-25T12:30:09.108+09:00

Finally, some good junk! For those who still don't know, Battlestar Galactica (the new series) and Lost are both excellent. Definitely classics in the making. Both are in their 3rd seasons and things are really rolling. BG has only suffered 1 or 2 crap episodes of cliche character mushiness that were unrelated to the story arc. Lost has not done this. Both require seeing from the beginning to

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-68020222497058672492006-10-24T13:10:00.000+09:002006-10-24T13:37:27.080+09:00

Now you may be interested in web design. These days it means using CSS. Period. No more stinking tables, please. No more framesets. CSS makes things a lot easier to build and maintain because it removes much of the presentational aspects from the xhtml. (if you are not using xhtml strict, you should be) Now that IE 7 is out, you can forget about CSS hacks for IE support. If IE 7 still doesn't

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-26506050721418300412006-10-24T13:03:00.000+09:002006-10-24T13:09:22.495+09:00

creativebits.org is an excellent UK site with good tips and discussions on all things design. The tips are written from a Mac OS X perspective, but most of it should be useful even if you do use Photoshop, Illustrator, etc... on Windows. They also share the wonderful web hosting service DreamHost!

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-26876050090573800882006-10-21T19:29:00.000+09:002006-10-21T19:35:57.272+09:00

Oh no, another Wikipedia? Citizendium, it's called. Problems with wikianything and compidium-whatever:reality and fact are not determined by consensus. few of these things can ever be 100% non-biased.the biggest question is always "who decides?"so what makes you an expert?what makes you a better expert than another expert?what makes you a reasonable moderator?what topics should be included?why is

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-11089289799691567672006-10-19T13:46:00.000+09:002006-11-03T04:24:27.156+09:00

Dream Host is a truly excellent web hosting provider, a dream. They really do care about what they do and are not trying to milk customers for every little thing like all the others. Their prices are great. They offer unlimited numbers of domains / sites hosted at the same account. This is unbeatable. They do not charge extra for domain add-ons or for subdomains. As an actual ICANN domain name

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-42607096795249269732006-10-18T05:47:00.000+09:002006-11-03T04:22:04.234+09:00

Signed up for web hosting with DreamHost today. Spent the better part of last night and the morning mulling over the options for web hosting. It came down to 4 choices: Blue Host, Host Monster, Go Daddy, and DreamHost. They all offer lots of disk space and bandwidth as well as lots of one-click server software installs, free domain registration (1) and reasonable prices. Like were talking for the

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-83502313592907708402006-10-18T00:13:00.000+09:002006-10-18T00:15:49.305+09:00

John Simpson. One of the good guys. Sparse but intensely useful info on his site for server/webmaster admins and wannabes.

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-701862876453874112006-10-16T23:19:00.000+09:002006-10-16T23:36:57.239+09:00

It is not funny anymore.The Domain Name Nazis are really pissing me off.Sites like Sedo and BuyDomains.com (a.k.a. "Seeq") are really ruining the web for others. They masquerade as innnocent, honest businesses, but are no better than the profiteers who sell bottles of water at highway robbery prices during natural disasters. These people are just pirates. It is truly mind-numbing.I placed a

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-72120396639987562102006-10-16T19:34:00.000+09:002006-10-16T19:44:46.984+09:00

To this day, there are still amazing numbers of software developers that still do not suppot Mac OS X. It is truly unfathomable to me. Statistics are not necessary for this argument. It is well publicized in the media that the Mac market is growing fast these days. The big thing developers need to understand is that Mac users will spend money for quality. Period. This is obvious from the fact

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-13063126965981530072006-10-16T11:26:00.000+09:002006-10-16T11:36:32.096+09:00

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-76573084789652932142006-10-16T10:11:00.000+09:002006-10-16T10:21:37.582+09:00

moral lessons for adults...

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-4893039436916551632006-10-12T16:13:00.000+09:002006-10-12T16:14:06.386+09:00

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-13855277463727590432006-10-12T02:36:00.001+09:002006-10-12T02:36:52.397+09:00

Anybody else notice besides me? Adobe really is sucking more and more each year. Their products are less responsive, and not much more compelling. The only thing they've done right in 5 years is port their apps to OS X and finally roll Streamline into Illustrator. That's it. 99% of the functionality of Photoshop and Illustrator that people really use has been there and worked fine since the OS9

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-8613853418207270262006-10-11T03:32:00.001+09:002006-10-11T03:32:57.285+09:00

What is a "premium domain name" ?Hell, what's in a name?Given that all domain names exist as single entities, with no repetition, unlike human names... is it fair or just that domain squatting and domain brokering is allowed to continue? Google, W3C, government should all get together and begin shutting down the squatters and brokers. It is utterly unthinkable that people could just randomly

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-7443761146942839992006-10-11T00:21:00.001+09:002006-10-11T00:21:52.528+09:00

Well, while I'm on the Google kick, I think it is interesting to point out two services from Google that have not gotten  the huge press they could or should.Google Base and Google Checkout.Base serves as a repository, a pseudo-web site for you to list items for sale online, while Checkout serves as a Paypal like sales system, but probably better than Paypal and cheaper. Remember this, everything

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-19325901751079351552006-10-10T23:51:00.000+09:002006-10-10T23:52:00.949+09:00

Hmm... Google buys YouTube and makes deals with music industry and film/tv industry... now the Google Mac Blog?  Amidst background noises ongoing lately about Apple and Google working together quietly... something is afoot!!! Can't wait.I'm betting Jobs thunk up the idea that two companies with lots of great engineers and lots of trend-setting skill and industry clout are on to something and have

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-63131596735182329872006-10-03T10:11:00.001+09:002006-10-03T10:11:10.531+09:00

So, NetFlix is stumped on how to fix its "you'd like this movie" algorithm.Of course they are. This is some very tricky pattern matching. Number one, you have to analyze seemingly disparate clumps of data about your customers and your products. Stop looking at it from a recognizeable, human-readable set of patterns. Stop focusing on simple, obvious ideas like previous rentals, actors, genres

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-16394640286582835702006-10-02T23:57:00.001+09:002006-10-02T23:57:23.144+09:00

The W3C and all its proponents are constantly harping about accessibility. But accessibility of what? for who? The fundamental problem is that this established concept of "accessibility" assumes that the content is text. Most of the web is indeed text. But it has spectacularly grown WAAay beyond text only! Look at the wonders of video and audio content out there on the web. It is no less valid or

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-39119349180204793872006-10-02T00:07:00.001+09:002006-10-02T00:07:26.280+09:00

Well, old Cringely has finally updated the NerdTV site. Though, the promised in early summer season 2 is not there. The truest sense of vaporware is there, promises and promises. Some odd things lead me to believe it is all vaporware. Number one they still talk about a Steve Wozniak interview coming. That's been talked up for over a year now! Number two, they talk about shooting the 1st season in

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-75223912306627467852006-09-29T18:42:00.001+09:002006-09-29T18:42:09.674+09:00

Wow, has anyone ever paid a visit to the W3C's web site www.w3c.org ? The World Wide Web Consortium. They're the (not the only, but the main) web standards organization. Well, that's all great and stuff, but they have a systemic problem. Most of their site is in a form of academic, standardized, committee-created, pseudo-legalese that is dense and uninformative. It's truly ironic that an

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-19860257950980047122006-09-28T00:05:00.001+09:002006-09-28T00:05:44.058+09:00

So, Apple has finally decided to update .mac web mail to behave and look something more like Mail.app in OS X Tiger. Whoop dee doo...I guess they hired a slick Rails developer or two, seeing as how they're gonna include Ruby on Rails in OS X 10.5 and all... Let's just hope that Apple tries harder to stay competitive with .mac service : price ratio. As it is, they have a darn easy to use solution

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-80209733629854324362006-09-24T08:15:00.001+09:002006-09-24T08:15:49.525+09:00

In today's age, it is utterly shocking that any web site does not support Safari. It's more shocking that many sites still just cut and paste and proliferate browser information that is 5 or 6 years old. Nobody uses Netscape anymore. It devolved into a sluggish, ad-filled version of Mozilla. Many people do actually use Internet Explorer. Why? They are typical casual users who could care less

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-40727058505297667762006-09-23T09:44:00.001+09:002006-09-23T09:44:33.885+09:00

Programming schools and schools of thought are changed and changing. Thus far there have been 4 major eras. We are currently in the 4th era, moving towards a 5th perhaps.Era 1- the age of manual programming by physically arranging circuits on a board. Era 2- the age of Assembly language where programming became more abstract.Era 3- the age of high-level languages that look and read more like

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-83647474239119759002006-09-18T14:44:00.001+09:002006-09-18T14:44:34.891+09:00

Truth is, what I've learned over the last few days is that working at the UNIX level of OS X is really all about hacking the dependencies. OS X really does do a lot of security through obscurity. By having a fairly different set of dependencies for lots of stuff, the average Linux hacker out there is not going to be able to just port some virus. It's painfully obvious when you try to do

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-50574011650513410092006-09-18T00:48:00.001+09:002006-09-18T00:48:45.905+09:00

So what the hell do you have to do to override the existing OS X PHP 4x installation at the command line?Well, you just need to know a few little things...first thing you need to know is that the binary for PHP 4 is in /usr/binnext, you need to know about the ln command. It makes symbolic or hard links. These are like aliases or shortcuts. When using ln you need to pull two flags -f and -s

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-64621224222342408452006-09-17T21:57:00.001+09:002006-09-17T21:57:31.428+09:00

This one's a doozy! how to download and install Apache 2, PHP 5, and MySql 5 on OSX Tiger!Courtesy of this post at MacOSXhints.#! Important:this will only work if you have XCode installed - get it for free at Apple's Developer websiteAlso, there is an "unwritten, unspoken" order in which you should install the 3 apps!!1st MySql 52nd Apache 2 3rd PHP 5(even if you are installing different versions

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-63231408382299581582006-09-16T09:58:00.001+09:002006-09-16T09:58:59.635+09:00

So King George wants to click undo on one of the best ideas ever put into action by civilized nations: The Geneva Convention!He already put Bolton in the UN... sheesh...On a lighter note, here is a Monty Python sketch revisited by Halo. Mr. Bush would you please stand up?...

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-46700957265417819302006-09-15T19:07:00.000+09:002006-09-15T19:08:07.797+09:00

Not one to leave well enough alone, I tried all afternoon again to fiddle with installing PHP5 myself. Well, after consulting site after site after site, almost all of them refer OS X users to the Entropy package by Marc Liyanage. It's funny. I think most of them refer you there because of two simple reasons: A. It's easier to do that. B. They also don't know all the contorted dependencies issues

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-69267769903030131002006-09-14T13:58:00.001+09:002006-09-14T13:58:55.371+09:00

Huh? Easy? Well, PHP in general looks to be pretty easy, but I can't get going on it. I want to run PHP 5 on OS X. Naturally, now that it's stable and out there, why start learning on the PHP 4.x fork that will die off in the long run? Besides, the book I bought is on PHP 5, so that's where I'm heading.Problem is, installation of PHP is not for the faint of heart. Installation of PHP 5 is not

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-80448384829482042222006-09-13T21:15:00.001+09:002006-09-13T21:15:52.915+09:00

Michael Kanellos at C|Net has a nice article on "do's and don'ts" re: web 2.0 naming paradigms. Worth a read. Mostly accurate, much shorter than most of the similar things you get links to from most sources.

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-41538436579767955892006-09-13T13:12:00.000+09:002006-09-13T13:13:07.692+09:00

Wow, I am utterly shocked at what is one of the most amazingly stupid Apple software updates in a LONG TIME! Before you download and install iTunes 7, be aware that the features are not working well. One long awaited feature is the getting artwork for all songs (or videos) in the iTunes library. Well, the Microsofted this one in a major way... First, iTunes strips ALL files in the library of ANY

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-62791526461145619922006-09-06T15:10:00.000+09:002006-09-06T15:12:58.442+09:00

A Wired news article reports that the 3 Texas men arrested in Michigan for buying too many pre-paid cell phones and having a photo of a local bridge have been exonerated. Charges were, thank goodness, dismissed. This should have been obvious. Who in America doesn't know that many Arab or Pakistani business owners often sell pre-paid phones and phone cards?! That's pretty normal. Standard

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-78943845846382371872006-09-06T04:19:00.001+09:002006-09-06T04:19:19.989+09:00

A web site called Mac Enquirer has screen shots of Xcode 3!  Looks nice, but looks different. (finally) So it can be assured that lots of Xcode 3 books and updated Cocoa books will sell like crazy in 6 months. Amazon UK already has a "not yet available" Xcode 3 book listed...Mac Enquirer also has an assortment of Leopard screen shots in their "general" section.There is some cool stuff out there,

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-19579841996407063422006-09-01T21:12:00.000+09:002006-09-01T21:22:30.618+09:00

Well, I have accomplished the task assigned by A. Hillegass in Chapter 5! It's not perfect or pretty, but it works. I got the window to resize the way he asks, using the methods named in the assignment. It certainly wasn't easy to figure it all out. I read and read a lot of documentation, much of it not the right material for the assignment, but I learned a few things in the process. I have a

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-22351281414343638892006-09-01T02:41:00.001+09:002006-09-01T02:41:50.450+09:00

While I'm no Richard Stallman, meaning I don't think software all needs to be free, I do support open source software. That is, not everyone is gonna compile it, and even if they do, if your license requires payment for use, or for commercial use, then it is enforceable. But I have discovered that so-called shareware developers are indeed a loathsome lot. Many of them use freely available

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-32826877704098070182006-09-01T02:39:00.001+09:002006-09-01T02:39:27.715+09:00

Help!I'm stuck on the whole delegate, dataSource, helper object thing.It's all kind of circular, loopy thinking. I can't quite sort it out in my head. If anyone out there can help with this please let me know!!!This particular challenge exercise has me a bit befuddled. More than a bit. The assignment is a little ambiguous. I naturally have some ideas for it, but they are all overly ambitious, and

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-8654448732918166162006-08-29T03:18:00.000+09:002006-08-29T03:45:33.389+09:00

I've said this already, but I will say it again...When learning programming, particularly the OOP variety, it is important read the documentation. Get used to this. When you come to something in your book or course that is new to you, look it up in the documentation right away. Read or take notes, then refer to the documentation immediately if possible.You might be thinking,"Oh, but I got it. I

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-50354522864724963962006-08-28T20:40:00.001+09:002006-08-28T20:40:38.282+09:00

disclaimer: I didn't originate the material in this post, it came from this discussion forum on Apple's web site.This is a nifty use of a for() loop with a pointer in the decision statement to run through a C string (char array) and do something based on contents of the array elements compared to a switch-case block inside the for() loop. Logically, this would usually be for parsing text of some

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-88405604629034000072006-08-28T19:23:00.001+09:002006-08-28T19:23:04.906+09:00

In the 80's programming magazines were more commonplace than today, especially aimed at the amateur, hobbyists, and beginners. The market for it exists still, but the difference today is the medium. The proliferation of internet access has changed the whole game for lots of publishers. Publishers have scrambled to deal with it. The advertising dollars have spread out to other outlets,

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-26948453394773324142006-08-28T17:53:00.001+09:002006-08-28T17:53:01.402+09:00

Want some basic tips for learning Objective-C and/or Cocoa? Get comfortable with the ADC (Apple Developer Connection) reference material. You can access it directly from Xcode via the menu item Help > Documentation. It's all HTML, and the documentation is served up in what is basically a specialized web-browser, based on the WebKit stuff in Cocoa. Particularly if you are new to Objective-C,

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-448530850477986992006-08-27T17:35:00.001+09:002006-08-27T17:35:06.404+09:00

Something's got to give. Most mp3, wma, or other format portable digital audio players are restricted to using a particular file format or software application to transfer playable audio files to and from the device. At this time, Apple empirically has the lions share of both online music sales and audio player sales. They also arguably have the best of breed in both arenas. The two markets are

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-92155661635005268432006-08-26T20:52:00.001+09:002006-08-26T20:52:26.175+09:00

Well, I successfully built and ran my version of the "challenge" exercise from Chapter 4. Hillegass is not kidding when he says "This is hard, and you're not stupid." I feel good to have accomplished it, but I don't feel not stupid. On the contrary, my head is swimming. Cocoa certainly does involve copious amounts of reading the documentation. You have to. And you start to realize it really

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-58077906296968029992006-08-25T14:24:00.000+09:002006-08-25T14:34:22.242+09:00

So, this is the Blogger 2 beta. It's not as beta as you might expect. It's google, perpetual beta. Google beta means most what most companies call a finished release! Blogger 2 is cool. It takes a little tinkering to get a handle on it, and at this time much of the control over your CSS is taken away from you in order to use the new layout tool, but the system itself works much better!A few nice

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-68541198848537950602006-08-25T12:20:00.000+09:002006-08-25T12:29:19.642+09:00

Simply a link to a site showing ample photos of the best phone I ever had (see older posts).It includes screen shots as well, some screen shots are of the phone set to English mode. I really wish more phone developers would look back to the strong points of the JT-51's interface.I also wish more providers had e-mail implemented the way J-Phone did it. With J-Phone, you had many user-settings for

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-8813424915446847802006-08-25T11:45:00.000+09:002006-08-25T12:02:55.368+09:00

Japan's mobile phone market is probably the world's most saturated mobile phone market. Growth is small. The two fastest growing market segments are the elderly, and the pre-teens. Both are not growing fast. The elderly that want phones have them. The pre-teen and younger market doesn't really need them and with a shrinking population in Japan, this market will dry up fast.J-Phone was sold to

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1156361310970591862006-08-24T04:28:00.000+09:002006-08-24T04:28:30.976+09:00

Just signed up here for Google Analytics. They do site traffic analysis. Of course it's free, but google is fast becoming the devil in blue jeans...It may well seem to be free, but you pay by giving them more of their huge treasure chest of information. Someday, the dark side of Google will appear.Think about it. They've got more information stored up daily, than perhaps anybody else, except

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1156146884136510812006-08-21T16:54:00.000+09:002006-08-21T16:56:50.813+09:00

Had the opportunity to see somebody's 10.5 preview installation. Pretty cool. Wish I had it, but I don't. That's OK too, it's a beta, I will wait for the real thing and buy it! OSX 10.5 includes some cool things but lots of new things (again) for developers. One of them is Dashcode for making widgets for Dashboard. The other is XCODE 3. It uses implements "Objective-C 2.0" which includes the

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1156099990068615932006-08-21T03:53:00.000+09:002006-08-21T03:55:10.843+09:00

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1156086051328491672006-08-21T00:00:00.000+09:002006-08-21T00:00:51.600+09:00

Into chapter 3 now. So far, so good. Sometimes the explanations are more brief than could be. but to be fair they tend to get explained later, if you just work through it and take it as it is at times. Only problem is, sometimes, you don't know if you should type in some code, or just read it, or where to put it, or where to save something. There was one in particular, the LotteryEntry.m class.

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1156039679317175962006-08-20T11:07:00.000+09:002006-08-25T03:56:59.316+09:00

More like Axis of poor people who happen to be about as left as Bush and friends are right. Does the USA really need a new "interim" security manager for Cuba and Venezuela? Are they attacking the USA? Are they really enemies? Get real.80 million dollars for anti-Castro efforts approved, supposedly to transition Cuba to a so-called "Pro-Western Democracy"? What does that really mean? There is no 

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155982149818456772006-08-19T19:09:00.000+09:002006-08-19T19:09:09.956+09:00

So as of this date there is still officially no garbage collection per se in Objective-C, right? Well, today I was perusing the documentation for NSObject's instance methods... there is a very odd instance method called finalize.- (void)finalizeIt is apparently "called by the garbage collector" as stated in the documentation, curiously followed by a note," Garbage collection is not available for

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155850343278019892006-08-18T06:32:00.000+09:002006-08-18T06:32:23.283+09:00

Ok, all you confectionary companies and chemists out there, here is your free idea for the day:Why not find out why the hell so many varieties of chewing gum stick to everything so well. Once you figure that out, develop a new variety with the same taste and texture that doesn't stick!  Especially, one that doesn't stick to concrete, asphalt, or shoes. (add hair to the list, if you've ever had

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155850143530510222006-08-18T06:29:00.000+09:002006-08-18T06:29:03.643+09:00

WTF?!? In the USA, in many if not all states, you can buy a gun. The background check is minimal at best. I know in my home state of TexASS you can go through a process of background check and training to get a license to carry a concealed weapon as a private civilian. This is still limited by the huge number of places where you can not go within X number of feet with a firearm. If that kind of

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155758306131264832006-08-17T04:58:00.000+09:002006-08-25T09:42:39.380+09:00

The only drawbacks were:• The protruding antenna, which looked good but sustained damage easily. The design was otherwise par none.• The speaker was not quite as loud as it could have been.• There was no way to adjust the brightness of the screen to conserve battery life. Only backlight on or backlight off.• And as is still the case with far too many Japanese phones, the manuals only include a

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155747913819789052006-08-17T02:05:00.000+09:002006-08-17T02:05:13.880+09:00

Hmm... someday soon somebody will make a better browser that responds to a need that is as yet unfulfilled...Blogging has exploded. E-mail is a normal everyday activity. Many people do one or both via a web browser. Some webmail and web-based blog setups allow minimal word processing features, like bold italics etc...But these are clever AJAX type setups that are also heavy on the server and

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155743693816750412006-08-17T00:54:00.000+09:002006-08-17T00:54:53.870+09:00

Man, this is one hot book. I have been reading it on the train. No Mac in front of me. Just reading it, and a lot of things make sense right away. I'm getting through chapter 2 and I can't wait to finish it, then sit down and do it. (I'm a firm believer that whenever possible, pre-read things you are learning. The second time through is the doing stage. This way you know what difficulties or new

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155725699978943492006-08-16T19:54:00.000+09:002006-08-16T19:55:00.020+09:00

I just picked up the Aaron Hillegass book, Cocoa Programming for Mac OSX, today. Finally! I'd been hunting, or rather stalking this book for a while. Yes, the 2nd edition. It covers technologies in OSX 10.3.x Panther. Which is the sweet spot right now. OSX 10.4.x Tiger adds a good deal more, but nothing you can't learn later or live without while learning Cocoa. Thus far, I give this book the

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155652512493933272006-08-15T23:35:00.000+09:002006-08-15T23:35:12.556+09:00

At the Apple Developer Connection web site, there is a wonderful tutorial that illustrates why Ruby on Rails and Ruby itself are so hot these days. I just read this. The code is pretty easy to follow without knowing Ruby. As long as you can understand dot notation for data structures and colon notation for function arguments, the rest is amazingly clear, small and simple. I have definitely added

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155308696354312012006-08-12T00:04:00.000+09:002006-08-12T00:04:56.956+09:00

At Apple's WWDC this week there was a "preview" of OSX 10.5 Leopard.Really, it amounted to more of a preview of eye-candy stuff. Some nice tools were shown, but they were chosen because they ooze eye-candy WOW factor and generate buzz. Just typically clever Apple marketing strategy to steal mind-share from Vista. So many things are still secret. Well, regardless, there's still time to make

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155297954941945372006-08-11T21:05:00.000+09:002006-08-11T22:07:29.806+09:00

Here's a tip in plain English for those struggling to understand what happens to an object when assigned to another object of the same class.Example:ClassName *objectOne = [[ClassName alloc] init];ClassName *objectTwo = [[ClassName alloc] init];That's a normal declaration of two objects of the same class (if they were plain old variables, they'd be called the same type). But let's say you declare

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155268046844831482006-08-11T12:47:00.000+09:002006-08-11T12:47:26.873+09:00

To allay the fears of the open-sauce community (yes I said sauce) Apple has indeed released the source code for the Darwin kernel up to the currently commercially available version of OSX 10.4.7's kernel for the Intel based version. As usual, the clowns at c|net have gotten it all wrong though, calling it the source code for Mac OSX itself, which it is not. You will not get the GUI or

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155237879783021732006-08-11T04:24:00.000+09:002006-08-11T04:24:39.970+09:00

Is a Blog the same as a Web Site? Yes and No. A blog is a site driven by software on a server that automatically updates the site structure as new posts are added. Unlike an online shop, or a news site, a blog is fairly concentrated, generally, on periodically structured writing. (plus pictures and links and whatnot)Blogging is successful as a medium thus far because it does one thing many

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155224253502955492006-08-11T00:37:00.000+09:002006-08-11T01:05:48.270+09:00

Probably not. "Homeland Security" or not.This excerpt is from: LINKHeart disease699,697 Cancer553,251Diabetes71,252Alzheimer's53,679Suicide 29,423Homicide (not counting terrorism)16,774 Terrorism2,953 So.You're more likely to kill yourself, or be murdered in any non terrorist way as an Amercian. These are only the figures from 2001. We all know there have been a lot less Americans killed by

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155216107098989922006-08-10T22:21:00.000+09:002006-08-10T22:21:47.103+09:00

So yeah, now innocent people are all treated like suspects and criminals.You can own a gun in America.But don't you dare try to bring a lighter or nail-clippers or a bottle of water on an airplane!!

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1155215317390131812006-08-10T22:08:00.000+09:002006-08-10T22:10:48.543+09:00

Would you like to blow up an airplane? Well, you can. Just don't put any bomb making materials in water bottles, make up kits, eye-drops, nail-clippers, notebook computers, books, wallets, or anything else.Where can you hide it?Well,... let's see... uh, um, if you are going to blow yourself up, that is, be a suicide bomber...S T I C K T H E B O M B I N Y O U R A S S H O L E ! ! !Oh

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1154584117799508242006-08-03T14:48:00.000+09:002006-08-03T14:48:37.803+09:00

Say goodbye (again) to the venerable WebMonkey. In its heyday, WebMonkey taught a lot to a lot of people. Unfortunately, guys in suits never took it seriously enough to monetize it properly, much less support it. It was one of the gems of WEB 1.0.Now we are off to WEB 2.0 and you thought the Dot-Com Boom/Bust of the 90's was fun, WEB 2.0 is here and the Boom/Bubble is beginning now. The

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1154523678180447732006-08-02T22:01:00.000+09:002006-08-02T22:01:18.186+09:00

While yes, it is true that it is good that most web technologies are fundamentally designed to be accessible and user-centric, this is somewhat flawed.Communication is by its very nature the domain of the communicator.That is to say that the speaker/writer/designer is the one who structures ideas in a particular way so as to convey the ideas with the desired meaning and understanding. In

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1154522916996554442006-08-02T21:48:00.000+09:002006-08-02T21:54:09.736+09:00

Today, we review a few products from a small company down-under. WestCiv is a little web-standards promoting shop in Australia. Their flagship products are some well-designed and affordable browser-based courses for HTML (really XHTML) and CSS and an application called StyleMaster.StyleMaster is a tool for developing cascading style sheets. It allows you do it visually or by hand-coding or a

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1154399346400793832006-08-01T11:29:00.000+09:002006-08-02T00:44:42.850+09:00

So, you want to learn programming? Yeah, me too. Not a math wizard? Yeah, me too. Am I a programmer?? Well, yes and no. I can do itty-bitty bits of this and that. And those are indeed programs, but nothing to tell Microsoft or Apple or Google or anyone about! What have I learned about programming? A lot and a little. I have learned a little bit about how to program, and I have learned a lot about

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1154188110421560132006-07-30T00:48:00.000+09:002006-07-30T00:55:18.126+09:00

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1154186214130000222006-07-30T00:16:00.000+09:002006-08-01T14:42:09.576+09:00

Now I will recommend and castigate some books I have had and read:C All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies, by Dan GookinNot the definitive C book, by any means. But an EXCELLENT introduction to programming in general. Very readable, good support on the forums at his web site. (something that can not be said of most books) Dan gets you going to where you can at least crawl, if not walk on your own

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1154180392812847582006-07-29T22:39:00.000+09:002006-07-29T22:39:52.816+09:00

This is how we say hello when we are crashing to the ground...B O O M

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-1154178209044479002006-07-29T22:02:00.000+09:002006-07-29T22:03:29.050+09:00

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0