General Disarray

Never mind. It’s not the Mac version. Should have looked a bit more closely.

i-Packages are compressed sets of files and instructions used by i-Installer, the open-source package management utility used by many to install, update and remove gwTeX (the standard LaTeX distribution for OS X) and related programs, such as fondu, ghostscript, etc. It’s a good system, since the files that must be downloaded are very large, and a nontrivial amount of configuration is necessary to get things working correctly.

But something always bothered me about i-Installer: it mostly requires an internet connection for it to work. Obviously you need the connection in order to download the software, but for removal too? What if, when WWIII starts and all of the ISPs go dark, I decide I don’t want LaTeX on my system anymore?

I finally figured out how to work around this annoyance (at least for most i-Packages). Normally when you install an i-Package, a few basic files are installed on your computer, and the rest are left on the server, since they’re not all necessary. This is efficient: you spend less time downloading, and the mirrors spend less time serving up data that you don’t really need. But by opening i-Installer, selecting an i-Directory, then opening the desired i-Package, you can choose to download the entire archive, including the configuration and installation instructions.

To do this, select Make Fat from the i-Package menu:

Then the entire i-Package will be downloaded[*]. If you want to modify the package, even with no internet connection, you can double click on the ii2 file (the i-Package itself) which will open i-Installer and allow you to perform any of the actions for which scripts have been written for that package.

The reason why I think this is important is that, because of their Linux roots, most of the LaTeX-related programs for OS X are installed directly in the BSD subsystem (/usr/local, to be exact), so uninstalling them is most definitely not a matter of dragging the application to the trash.

Anyway, with this new-found knowledge, I have become a born-again gwTeX/TeXShop user[**].

[*] i-Packages are stored in ~/Documents/i-Packages.
[**] As an aside, I have also discovered TeXShell, a frontend for gwTeX and teTeX on OS X that works just like CMacTeX — drag files onto the icon and they are processed by LaTeX (or send them to TeXShell from within TextWrangler using an AppleScript). Very convenient.

osx.iusethis.com - cool apps for the mac population:

You can store the apps you use on iusethis, so it’s easy to download them again if you get a new computer. You will also be able to help others pick the best apps, and we can suggest new apps to you based on your profile..

There have been other attempts at sites like these, but iusethis.com seems to have taken off. Lots of apps and users already. I’m chalking it up to the nice graphic design and quick ajax interface. Check the site out. I already discovered some programs that I didn’t know about. Everything is tagged, every entry has a link to an app or a demo, and it’s really easy to build your application profile. There is a mixture of free and commercial applications, too, which I like, since most of us use a combination of the free stuff and the pricey stuff.

Just make a new script containing this:

tell application “QuickTime Player”
present front movie scale screen
end tell

Play your movie and run the script.

Via Macworld: Mac 911: Full screen for free, via Lifehacker.

This is my first real contribution to the GTD world, hope it helps some people out. I frequently work with directories containing hundreds of files. For example, I might have a directory with ten consecutive versions of the same doc file, all with very similar names, as well as ten consecutive versions of ten different spreadsheets. Sometimes it can be difficult to keep all the files straight — which one is the current one? Which has that one piece of critical information?

To make matters worse, I often leave a big project for a month or more before coming back to work on it again. While I may have had an accurate mental map of all of the files when I was working with them actively, after a long break, it can be almost impossible to find a particular version of a particular document without opening each version and scanning it. And that is exactly the kind of mind-numbing work that leads me to procrastinate.

Enter file comments. On OS X, every file in the finder can have comments appended to it by accessing File > Get info, or by hitting command+i. This is what the dialog looks like:

Notes written in the Comments field can be viewed from within Finder by:

1. Setting the Finder to View as list (shortcut: command+2)
2. Selecting View > Show view options (shortcut: command+j) and checking the Comments box

Once the view is set properly, you will see something like this:

The comments are in the far-right column. They can be used to quickly identify the contents or status of a particular file or folder (or for a million other things, I’m sure).

Of course, you have to remember to keep the comments current, but I can’t help you (or myself) with that.

There is a strange irony in that, for me, the greatest diversions from the work at hand are attempts to streamline my future workflow by finding new tools and new ways of using existing tools. It was just such a diversion that brought me to Opera 9 today.

Opera is a free, cross-platform browser. Opera 9 was only recently released, and though I had tried previous versions, I found them either buggy or difficult-to-use. Much of this has changed with the most recent version of Opera.

Features
Two of the most salient features of Opera are its built-in Mail and RSS clients. Other browsers have attempted this kind of integration — the Mozilla suite, for example — but they haven’t achieved the same level of seamlessness that Opera has. The clients are kept very simple, ostensibly because the developers realize that users with very specific demands will probably use a standalone client anyway. But for those with basic needs, that means that Opera comes with very usable RSS and Mail programs.

Adding new feeds is as easy as importing your OPML (from Bloglines, for example). The default behavior is to check each feed once every three hours, which is just the right interval to stay on top of the news without losing all productivity. Adding a new mail account is similarly easy. One nice touch that I noticed was that, when adding a Gmail account, Opera automatically filled in the pop and smtp server information for me. I could have easily looked this information up, but I was impressed by the attention paid to detail.

Opera does not have an extensions capability like Firefox, though my most important bookmarklets (post to del.icio.us and ectoize) worked fine when imported from my Firefox bookmarks. However, Opera does offer widgets, which are sort of like a cross between OS X dashboard widgets and Firefox extensions. I haven’t played with them much, but they strike me as having a high eye candy: usefulness ratio.

One convenient feature that I doubt gets much attention is the Magic Wand. Unlike most other browsers, Opera doesn’t automatically fill username/password fields. Rather, it highlights them and requires you to click on the Magic Wand to automagically fill the fields. This extra click might seem like a usability flaw, but for those that use multiple accounts on the same service, it’s a welcome and unrivaled feature. For example, I have two Gmail accounts. When I visit gmail.com, the login forms are highlighted. And when I click on the Magic Wand, I’m given a choice of two different logins. When I click the desired account, Opera fills in the username and password.

Performance
On my system (OS X 10.3.9), Opera starts up a little faster than Firefox, and uses less memory, even after using the Mail and RSS features, despite the fact that my version of Firefox is running with no extensions installed. Opera performs smoothly on websites where other browsers, including Firefox and Camino, choke. For example, I’ve always had problems on One Good Move, a video site that features many embedded Quicktime files. Opera scrolls through the page quickly and smoothly, even when a movie is playing.

One area where Opera is lacking is support by web applications. Writely does not support Opera at all, and visiting the home page just redirects to a blank page ending in “unsupported_browser.” Google Calendar throws out an error message when you arrive, but all of the functions that I tested still worked. WordPress.com and Gmail worked perfectly. On other websites, some Javascript worked, some didn’t.

Overall
Opera is an innovative browser that has been optimized for high-performance. It loads quickly, uses a relatively small amount of memory, and has features that power-users will love. These performance boosts, however, come at the price of reduced compatibility with certain web applications, which are written to support Firefox and Internet Explorer (incidentally, this is just another example of why web applications will not replace desktop applications for most purposes — users want to use their favorite browsers). Anyone who uses such web apps on a daily basis will probably want to stick with Firefox. But if you’re looking for a fast, feature-packed browser that that can give you a speed boost, give Opera a try.

Oh, and you’ll want to learn these keyboard shortcuts.

Apple - Pro - Tips - Two Seconds to Sleep:

Want the fastest way to put your Mac right into a deep, sleepy-bear hibernation-like sleep (no whirling fan, no dialogs, no sound — nuthin’ — just fast, glorious sleep). Just press Command-Option and then hold the Eject button for about 2 seconds and Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. It doesn’t get much faster than that.

The tip comes from Lifehacker.

And if you’re keeping score, yes, I’m just rummaging through my RSS feeds and blogging about the cool posts. And if you’re keeping an even more accurate score, yes, I’m blogging a lot, which means that I have work to be doing.

Microsoft planning WiFi-enabled portable media player, working on MVNO for next year - Engadget:

Microsoft’s new portable audio and video player will have a screen that’s “bigger than that of the iPod video” (which isn’t really saying much) and built-in WiFi so you can not only download content directly to the player (sort of like with the MusicGremlin), but actually participate in an Xbox Live-like social network that will help you connect with other people with similar taste and interests. Whether that’s going to be the Live Anywhere service they introduced at E3 we don’t yet know. But we do know the tag line they’re pitching for the device combined with this new network is “Connected Entertainment.”

But it gets better. To attract current iPod users Microsoft is going to let you download for free any songs you’ve already bought from the iTunes Music Store. They’ll actually scan iTunes for purchased tracks and then automatically add those to your account. Microsoft will still have to pay the rights-holders for the songs, but they believe it’ll be worth it to acquire converts to their new player.

I’m unlikely to purchase a new mp3 player in the near future, but if I was in the market, this would be a very strong incentive. If Microsoft actually learned any lessons in the past few years, and released an mp3 player that did not impose scary digital rights controls, I’d switch. But maybe that’s because my perception of Microsoft has been softened by the Gates Foundation.

Open-source software development and adoption has made great strides in the last few years. The reasons for using open-source software, even in cases when commercial alternatives are available, are many, but they all involve reduced constraints on users. These open-source projects are in ongoing development, are stable, cross-platform, useful to many and are free to download and use for any purpose.

Firefox. Firefox is a great browser. It’s fast, it’s cross platform, it offers extensions, it renders websites according to standards, its user interface beats other browsers hands-down, and it’s more secure than other browsers. Firefox’s popularity has had effects beyond the application itself — it brought open-source development to the attention of millions of people.

OpenOffice.org (and NeoOffice on the Mac). OpenOffice.org is an open-source office suite that includes a word processor, a spreadsheet application, a presentation application, a drawing application, a database application, and an equation editor (NeoOffice is a modification of OpenOffice.org that runs natively on Macs). It reads and writes Microsoft Office files with 95% fidelity, and it natively saves files using the open document format, an open standard that can used by other developers. 100% free for any purpose, OpenOffice offers this tradeoff: it’s a bit slower and a lot more stable than Microsoft Office, the prevailing commercial office suite. Unlike MS Office, however, OpenOffice is completely cross-platform. It can run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux systems, as well as some lesser-known operating systems.

The Gimp. Gimp (the Gnu Image Manipulation Program) is an open-source image editing application. In functionality, it is similar to Adobe’s photoshop. It surely lacks some of Photoshop’s advanced features, but even professional designers will find more features than they’ll ever use in the Gimp. It runs on Linux, Windows and OS X and it is very stable. Anyone who creates documents — for print, for the web, etc. — will occasionally need a high-quality image editor, and for most users, the Gimp fills this need.

Inkscape. Inkscape is to Adobe Illustrator what the Gimp is to Photoshop. It is an open-source vector drawing application with about 90% of the features of Illustrator, but 100% of the features that most users actually need. Vector drawing applications are used to draw illustrations, logos, diagrams, etc, a frequently overlooked need of those that create documents. Inkscape is cross-platform, stable, and developing rapidly.

R. R may not be useful to as large an audience as the above-mentioned applications, but many professionals, researchers and students will find it useful. R is an open-source implementation of the S statistical programming language. It can be used as a statistics package, and performs many basic data manipulation and analysis tasks out-of-the-box, including data import/export, recoding, summary statistics, t-tests, regression analysis and the production of high-quality graphics. It can also be extended by installing optional packages, or by writing new packages and functions. Those that find themselves using Excel to manipulate and analyze data might benefit from learning R, which produced more accurate results, makes it easier to perform repetitive transformations of data, and has far more features for exploring data.

Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a relatively new Linux-based operating system that has become extremely popular in a very short length of time. Part of the reason for this popularity is Ubuntu’s “just works” nature. Unlike other Linux distributions, it is easy to install and use, even if you have never heard of Linux before. It automatically works with most common hardware — cd drives, network cards, laptop hardware, etc. — so you don’t have to worry about finding and installing new drivers before you can use it (this ease-of-use does not come at the expense of the availability of advanced features, but they are transparent to non-technical users). Ubuntu gets better with each release, and is already friendly enough to be used by most business, education and personal users. And commercial support is available for those that need 100% reliability.

Some runners up

• LaTeX: LaTeX has been around forever, and it should really be described as a fixture rather than an open-source project. This scientific typesetting system is the mode of communication for scores of publishers, academics, and anyone that likes beautiful documents.
• WordPress: As blogs have revolutionized personal publishing and communication, WordPress, the PHP and MySQL-based content management system, has revolutionized blogs. It is the platform of choice for most professional bloggers, owing to its extensibility, ease-of-use, compliance with standards, and community support.

You can now listen to podcasts from within Bloglines! They’ve had YouTube working for a while now, so this is a welcome feature. As much as I love Odeo, it’s annoying to see in Bloglines that there’s a new podcast in my inbox, then have to go to a different page to hear it.