Farsong Blog-o-Matic

As a followup to the previous post:

I was attempting to listen to John Gruber's podcast about the Apple Extended keyboards. As Gruber rightly says, keyboards are one of the most important things that most people never pay any attention to. Consequently, the market is saturated with crappy, cheap keyboards that work about as well as the cost that went into their manufacture, despite the fact that the keyboard is used to interact with the computer more than even a mouse. It's sad that the best keyboards of today are models from 1992.

The Talk Show, Episode 20

We discuss one of the most important topics of our time: the Apple Extended Keyboard and Extended Keyboard II.

 ★ 

[Daring Fireball]

I have finally put words to a flaw of the iPod that I found hard to vocalise until now — a thing I think is probably also a flaw of the iPhone and iPod touch, and something that's apparent only to a few.

It's nothing so simple as a bad menu or a poor design — it's about usability on the go. In fact, it's all about how syncing is flawed, fundamentally.

Now, I browse and sync my RSS feed reader between my two computers — a G5 desktop tower and a Core2 duo MacBook Pro — because of NetNewsWire, a thing which has streamlined the processes of reading articles and blogs with its syncing feature*. I can read something from my laptop and have it marked as read when I get back to my desktop. When I've read the feeds for the day on my desktop, my laptop echoes this and shows that there are no new feeds to read.

Basically, the previous paragraph means that I read things on the go; I have decentralised my computing. It's only becoming more decentralised with web-based synchronisation. My laptop is not my main computer (it is a laptop that just happens to belong to me); I don't have more than my text-documents and project files on it — the desktop is the machine with my photo and music archives (mostly because the laptop does not have enough HDD storage for that function, but way more than enough room for usage as a mobile terminal). This is an important point.

See, I sync my iPod with the desktop. It keeps my music with me on the go in a way that's easier to use than listening to it on the laptop (plus, it frees my processor to do other things; I can bring my music with me and not be tied to a computer**).

However, almost every day, I find cool audio I want to listen to on the blogs I read. This is not always music, and as I said before, the laptop very cumbersome for listening. I want to listen to these things on my iPod.

But I can't.

I can't update the iPod. Syncing takes several minutes and the iPod is down for the count during the interim while. Moreover, I don't have cables for this with me. I don't even bring the laptop's power brick with me most days (the MacBook is heavy enough as it is).

I can't sync my iPod with more than one computer. I can't sync it on the go.

What I want to do is to be able to connect to the device from my laptop — preferably over a wireless network, but I'd be fine with bluetooth. The idea that I have to go back to a single terminal/workstation/computer to synchronise my files is a fundamentally flawed idea. It's inefficient. The iPod Touch/iPhone don't even sync wirelessly with the standard Apple hardware and software. It can be done via SSH, but that's hardly transparent.

Plus, the iPod goes down for the count while iTunes updates the iTunesDB. That's not necessary. In fact, the current iPods have more than enough processing power to support live updating — but for some reason, the newest iPods lag more on commands and menus than my five-year-old iPod.

Basically, my point is that the idea of syncing to one computer is flawed and I'd like some way to update my iPod wirelessly, quickly, from more than just one computer.


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* This syncing is one of the several things that has more-or-less stalled my switch to the eeePC or linux in general — but point me to a news aggregator that syncs with NewsGator and I'll be happy. That will be the clincher.
** Like the above comment, having a decentralised computing system like (ie, an iPod with my music on it, instead of a laptop with music) this allows me to switch to a much smaller subcompact notebook like the eeePC which has a small storage capacity in terms of music and media, but more than enough for internet, text, and terminal usage.

I have a wonderful keyboard and I could ramble ad nausium about it, thought that's a bit annoying. Suffice to say that it has mechanical keyswitches like the old IBM keyboards or the Apple Extended II keyboards, complete with the right amount of action and key force. It's built like a tank, feels great, and is loud. It always made me happy when my ex-roommate yelled at me about how loud it was.

That said, when it dies or wears out (I think I might wear through the spacebar before the keys die), I intend to get Das Keyboard. It, too, has the mechanical keyswitches. It would also make a great Dvorak keyboard. Interestingly enough, I've found that I'm quite capable of QWERTYing on a Dvorak layout (by touch). Now, I need to switch that around so as I am Dvoraking on a QWERTY.


Also of note, things which I have broken:

Firefox 2.0.0.11 spellcheck function doesn't quite work right on my main machine (the one I didn't mess with--the 1.8 GHz G5). It shows words that are misspelled, but it won't give me the context menu dictionary.

Inkscape runs on my MacBook (Intel Core2 Duo 2 GHz), but all the letters of all the menus are boxes, as if there is no text. I don't think it's an issue with X11, because OpenOffice seems to work just fine. It was actually the reason (aside from the gawdawful stacks) that I switched back to 10.4--which is working fine except for Inkscape).

If anyone has any suggestions on these, I'd be willing to listen.

Grummmmm Scrummy!

That's a silly picture.


Spent a good deal of late last night watching Firefly with Vince; I do believe that I have him hooked. ^.=.^

Watched about thirty seconds of some kind of cage-fighting that actually made me physically ill, to the point where I really felt like I was going to vomit. Two men were duking it out; they were no more than animals. Such banality and insight into the true animal side of human nature … it was too much. It makes me sick thinking of it again.


( On more recent fronts, ranting, ad nausium )