So now that I'm close to a week with Tiger I've noticed a few more oddities. I think most are due to my install method - I chose to "Archive and Install" which basically means it didn't upgrade the OS - it saved off the old System folder and created a new one. So a list of what applications I've noticed got screwed up since then.

Palm Desktop - This got so screwed up I couldn't fix it. I finally just bought the Missing Sync to fix it. There are a lot of people reporting problems with the sync conduits post Tiger upgrade. If you're a Palm user you may want to be careful.

Real Media Player - I try to avoid Real stuff in general, but the BBC uses it to webcast - and they are aired the fourth Hithhiker's radio series currently. This reinstalled just fine.

Stuffit Expander - Reinstalled without a hitch. Until I reinstalled it was weird - I could run Stuffit Expander and it would just quietly close.

The wacky linux printer drivers I had installed for my color laser printer - While I was looking up the complicated instructions for that I found a note that said a different model driver worker for my printer. I downloaded that it and it works better that the foomatic drivers. Score!

Wiretap - This was a bit troubling - I can't find the free Wiretap app (just the shareware Wiretap Pro) anymore. Truthfully I've always had a couple of complaints about Wiretap so when they went pay only, I went Audio Hijack Pro Ah the links I'll go to for my Hitchhiker's fix! :-)

Virtual PC - reinstall seemed to fix this.

Windows (Samba) Networking - the workgroup got set to "Workgroup" where it should be "Home". There is a GUI to change this (Directory Access in the Utilities folder), but it locks on me when I try to change the Workgroup. It works fine on Karin's machine, but I had to use unix command line kung-fu on my system (sudo vi /etc/smb.conf if you speak command line). Some people seem to have problems with Samba post-upgrade but this is the only thing I've seen. And this was a niggle - it was still working - just made navigating the network needlessly complex.

Nothing too bad on the list. The Palm Desktop debacle is the only really key one. I'm not sure what the problem is there.

1) Played a Magic Online tournament today with the new Vanguard format. Super-fun but nobody cares (pout!). Anyway I placed 21 of 112 players - not in the top 8 so no prizes, but It was fun and my rating improved. And I'm pretty happy with top quartile :-) - especially as I knew my deck wasn't the best going in. (This is actually the first "constructed" tournament I've ever played in Online - I usually stick with the "Limited" formats where you are working with a very small pool of cards.) 2) I upgraded to Tiger on Thursday. I haven't really stressed it yet but it seems pretty good. Spotlight is cool but it took like all permutions of cmd-space for various flavors. I used Cmd-Space for Quicksilver and Alt-cmd-space for iTunes play/pause so I'm all out of sorts for my two most common key shortcuts now pop up Spotlight queries. Anybody have any particular Tiger questions they would like me to look at? Spotlight seems to not search for phrases properly - Apple claims here that Spotlight will search for phrases such as "old school" or "Emotion Engine" just as you'd expect if you include the quotes. In fact it seems to only search filenames, not full text at that point. So if I do a Spotlight search for old school it will pull up any doc that has both words, but not necessarily as a single phrase. If I search for "old school" it correctly matchs phrases only - but only in filenames. This is annoying. I have already once used Spotlight - I knew I was looking for a particular email I sent, and I knew a unique word hit in it. Cmd-space and type the phrase, and bang - there the email was. I had a lot of this functionaly previously in Quicksilver, but QS didn't search inside my email or PDF's or the like.

So a few people have asked when they can read something I've written (from a fictional sense that is). I now have an answer - a plan shining in it's gleaming purity. Here's the deal - I'm currently editing and rewriting my NaNo novella, polishing it up to full book length and cleaning up some of the more hideous errors that were made. The first few chapters are now up to a point where I don't feel ashamed to look at them any more. I'm not going to post them here, among other things I don't want to actually put the manuscript under a Creative Commons license yet. But what I will do is release the chapters out to people who are willing to critique them. I'm going to make it a serial release project - I'm leaning towards one chapter a week, but I could be convinced to do one chapter every two weeks. If you're interested in reading it send me an email. The kicker is that I really want the feedback - so I'm not going to send you the following chapter until I get feedback on the current chapter :-) It doesn't have to be extensive, or great literary criticism - just a quick note on what you thought of the chapter and what you'd like to see more (or less) of. My current plan is to start it "officially" over E3 week - May 15th. What I would do is send the first chapter out slightly early so people who wanted to read it during E3 travel would have that option. Let me know what format you'd like - I have them in plain text, but I'll probably do a MS Word version, and could do PDF easily if there was interest. This will also serve as a spur to keep me moving through the story. Editing is painful, and I'm finding that I tend to procrastinate it. Having a deadline for getting the next chapter done will help me manage my time. :-) I've got a bit of a buffer in place - I'm wrapping up editing Chapter 4 now. But as we move further into the story I need to do more new scenes and heavier editing so I need to get a bit ahead of the game. The current outline has 18 chapters although that might collapse to 17 - I don't like the current ending and I might monkey that around a bit.

Sadly, that line isn't in the movie. We just got back from seeing Hitchhiker's. I quite enjoyed it, but many of the of zingy one liners are missing - the quotes that truly stand out from the book (or the radio series). My favorite scene (Majikthise and Vroomfondel) is entirely cut, but the essence of the story present. It's not the book and it's not the radio series, but it's as close to either one as they are to each other - and that's fair enough. JP, you may want to read the book before seeing the movie - you'll get more out of it that way. I was also curious - it was the first time I saw a film that wasn't entirely digital on a DLP projector. I've seen Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc, Final Fantasy, Attack of the Clones, and the Incredibles on DLP and thought it was well worth the extra effort for most of these. You might think that Attack of the Clones wouldn't count - but it was shot on digital HD cameras so no film grain present in the master. Final Fantasy is the odd one out here - they did an artificial film grain filter and it quite frankly looked poor on the DLP. It was obviously fake. HHGTG was a bit in-between the extremes. I can't recommend DLP enough for Pixar films - it just looks awesome. There was film grain on Hitchhiker's and it made the CG sequences not fit as seamlessly as they might have otherwise. But the dolphins in the intro looked great. Anyway, I'd recommend the movie - even at the outrageous price they charge. It's the first movie I've seen in the theater in 2005 and for good reason - $9.75 for a ticket is just outrageous. I know people who get upset about the profit margins on a $20 DVD, which I can understand but c'mon! how is $10 for a movie ticket to share space with the great unwashed any better? There were people there in bathrobes, and a few who brought towels. To those people I'd just like to say: I hate you. It's not Rocky Horror and I'd quite like it if you don't turn it into such. And a confidential note to the guy who made his girlfriend bring a towel, but she brought a small little hand-towel - that's your girlfriend's way of saying she's humoring you being a geek in public but you're making her feel like an idiot. Notice she didn't wear it out of the theater. Stupid thing to spend your brownie points, bro! In conclusion, I'd like to invite you all to stay off my lawn! (shakes fist). P.S. I also hate Chuji. Naturally.

Here are some photos proving that penguins have to walk through the airport metal detectors just like everyone else. Al-Qaida will not get a foothold in Antartica, not while America is watching! I have no information on exactly why the penguins were visiting in the first place. (I keep reading they were there to tour an Anheuser-Busch brewery - but that doesn't make any sense to me. What, did they find the golden ticket in their cans of Bud?)