Easy Rebates?

According to this
Staples has implemented an "Easy, no clipping, no mailing" rebate system, in that customers rebate submissions are completely online. If this works as advertised I see a major boom for Staples. I know I personally patronize stores that I know have a good rebate history (Circuit City comes to mind).

Cocoa Apps ... by me

I've started my trip into the wonderful world of Cocoa programming. I've been following a few tutorials, which have led me to create my first few Cocoa apps. The articles can be found at MacDevCenter.

My first program was a Currency Converter, which was basically a simple app that multiplied two numbers and printed it back to the screen. Very simple stuff, but it helped me get a feel for the Model-Controller-View concept of Cocoa and Xcode. If you're running OSX Panther (10.3) you can try them out yourself. Currency Converter.

My second and third programs were browsers based on the same engine that Safari uses. I'm actually posting this comment in my own browser. I was gonna create .dmg's for them but decided against. Version .1 and Version .2. Version .2 includes support for multiple windows, javascript and a reactive URL field.

Enjoy.

Optimizations...

Was looking around last nite (doing anything except studying) and ran across this article.
Run a G4 or G5 Optimized version of Firefox

I had to use Xbench to actually figure out what G4 I had in my powerbook (7455). I looked around the precompiled binaries provided in that link and downloaded the one for my processor family (7450). I've been running that version ever since. Using my completely informal and unscientific trials (does it FEEL faster?) I have concluded that yes the optimized versions are a touch peppier than the generic Firefox 1.0

This got me thinking, I'm sure the same thing could be done for the windows and linux versions (if they haven't been already). To that effect I'm looking forward to trying to compile an athlon optimized version of firefox for my desktop. Those of you with spanking new P4's and A64's might want to consider doing the same. But then again, if you have a computer that new, it's probably already plenty fast.

Another thing I thought of, I wonder how much faster would the OS be if it was optimized in the same way? Gentoo Linux came to mind. I've had some people swear to me that by doing full optimizations, they've got Gentoo linux to literally scream on old hardware (old being 300mhz and lower). I never really believed them, but after this first hand experience, I might give it a go. Of course that requires that I have a spare computer lying around, and due to space contraints (my room is tiny) I left all those in Fresno. \

Linux..

A nice blog entry about the state of x86 linux. Particularly Fedora Core 3 and Ubuntu linux.

Link here

Visor Also...

After a complete and utter desire to not do anything school related... I started messing with Maggie's Visor Deluxe. She stopped regularly using it about a year ago, when the batteries ran out and she never got around to getting new ones. But since she had a set of 2 AAA NiMh batteries laying around, I decided to charge them up and bring the beast back to life. After being without power for so long, the Visor was completely blank. Fortunately everything seemed to still be in working order. Because I reformatted her computer recently (spyware, adware, etc..) and didn't think to backup her PIM info, all the data that used to be on her PDA is completely gone. But since she stopped using it so long ago, it's not a huge loss. Getting it set up on her Dell was simple enough, download Palm Desktop from palm (for some reason Palm insists that only the older version 4.1.something could work with her Visor), and away we went.

After a short while I remembered that the cradle for the Visor was USB, which means that physically it was possible to connect it to her Powerbook. I set to work trying to get it working with iSync. This was a little more complicated than setting it up on her PC, but still very simple. Download Palm Desktop for Mac, install, configure HotSync Manager to sync her Visor through iSync, go into iSync, add her Visor as a device and voila it worked. Her Visor now contains all the info that's in Maggie's Address Book and iCal. Hopefully she'll use both the programs more extensively, that way they'd be of use to her.

Next project... trying to get my Palm V to talk to my Powerbook (serial to usb adaptor?)

Palm V back on!

For about 4-5 months my Palm V has been out of commission. It's been plagued with a few maladies, the biggest two were the battery life (dying) and the skewed digitizer (the thing that figures out where i'm tapping on the screen). The former problem actually sorted itself out. When I moved out of GrandMarc, I basically threw the palm into a box and forgot it for till a few days ago. Before hand I had kept it in the cradle, charging. Well to my suprise, about a month ago, as I'm digging through some boxes for some screws, I happen upon the Palm and lo and behold it still had power! I find the screws and stick the palm back in the box. A few days ago I get it in my head to set the palm up (just to charge the poor thing). After about an hour of searching I find all the components (adaptor, cradle, keyboard and the palm itself). I try to turn it on... and nothing. I guess the battery had just given up the ghost. On a whim I leave it plugged in for a few days. Later on I try the power button and soft reset a few times, success! It comes to life. I quickly hook the cradle up to the PC and sync, to save the datebook and contacts.

Feeling pretty good about myself, I actually try to use the palm... the digitizer problem pulls me back down to earth. Hnmm... the the digitizer is so screwed up that I can't get to the recalibration screen. No problem, a hard reset should get me there, and since I just synced up, I can restore all my data. I try it, digitizer is calibrated. All seems fine. I sync up, an the problem comes back. Back to the drawing board.

The next day a quick google turns up that it's actually a common problem. Of the two proposed solutions, redigi works for me. It can be found here. So now the palm seems to be working fine. I'm not quite sure about the battery life, i'll have to take it around and actually use it to test that. But it's nice to have an old friend back from the brink of death =).

Swiss Army Goodness

Maggie got me this for my birthday. After a few weeks of playing with it. I can honestly say it's great! The thumbdrive part works great. It is even removeable, incase the knife doesn't fit next to the USB slot. The knife is sharp, as are the scissors. The light is suprisingly bright. The only thing I can really find fault with is that it's so nice that i'm scared to scratch it. Also 256MB would have been perfect, but I don't think the swiss army knife comes in that size. All in all an awesome present.

New iPods

New iPods came out a few days ago.

New 20 gig U2 Special Edition iPod:


It's basically exactly the same as the current low-end 20 gig iPod. Only difference is of course the black face and red click wheel. It has the signitures of all the U2 members on the back and it costs $50 more than the standard iPod. That $50 premium is offset partly by giving the buyer a $50 discount on the complete U2 digital set. If you're a big U2 fan or just like the new look or both then you'll like the black/red iPod.

New 40 and 60 gig:



The new color iPods have a color screen, can sync your iPhoto collection (through iTunes), show album art when playing a song, and run a slideshow complete with music on either the color screen or a tv. It also has improved battery life (15 hours), but is slightly thicker and heavier than normal iPods. I'm not quite sure about that I think about the new color iPods. On the one hand they are nifty, who wouldn't want a color screen? On the other hand, how often do you really want to carry around every picture you own?