Truer Words - A Journal

The New BostonGlobe.com

seth@macrobyte.net — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:34:16 GMT

I'm beyond impressed with the new Boston Globe web site. It's the best I've ever seen. Congrats to @beep and the rest of the designer/developer team. As +Craig Hockenberry said on Twitter, other newspapers are going to look at it and either realize they need to imitate it, or they'll keep dying.

If you have a big monitor, resize your browser window from very narrow through to full screen. Go very slowly, and watch as the layout adapts to the new size, every step of the way. The images resize, the number of columns will change from 1 to 2 to 3, each column's width changes... it's brilliant.

(What I've mentioned here is just the first-glance stuff. Look around, the attention to usability and detail is intense.)

Mac and iPhone Application Bundles for the PMC

seth@macrobyte.net — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:39:17 GMT

I'm raising money for the PMC again this year (duh), and doing it the same way as last year (and the year before, and two years before that). What method is that? I ask lots of developers (companies and individuals) to donate copies of their Mac apps (and iPhone, this year), and then I sell them in bundles.

Some developers donate five copies, some one hundred. Some tell me I can have as many as I want.

I don't really sell them, either. I give them away as thank you gifts in exchange for making donations to the PMC via my fundraising account. The “buyer” builds their own bundle out of the big list of available software, then sends me an email to tell me about it, including how much they'd like to pay.

The project is a huge amount of work. Everybody gets a response, even those offers that are turned down for being too low. An accepted offer involves LOTS of email:

in: initial offer
out: your offer is accepted, please make donation
in: donation receipt as proof of payment
in: “What’s taking so long?”
out: acknowledgement of receipt, “please be patient”
out: one registration request for every app in the bundle, sent to the donors
in: one app registration per app in the bundle
out: “Thank you for your donation, you can download your software here…”

(That's just the simple ones. Some bundles have twice as many messages, due to questions or problems.)

Between sending out all those messages, there's a database that needs to be maintained to keep track of everything. Apps are reserved for a “buyer” so that we don't agree to a bundle and then run out before we can fulfill it. Registration codes have to be copied into the database when they come back from the developers/donors. The buyer’s contact info needs to be entered before we ask the app donors for registrations.

It's a lot of work. I used to do it all myself. I put the project off this year because I absolutely dreaded doing it all again.

To my rescue came Corinne Dillingham (my wife) and Cindy Compton: both have volunteered many hours on this project to help me deal with all this email, via a shared gMail account.

Corinne's helping me because she loves me and knows this is important to me. Cindy's helping because she's been bitten by cancer herself, and is still fighting it... she bought a bundle last year, and this year she's in the trenches with us.

Unfortunately the project has one major flaw: it's far too much work! I keep streamlining the process, but no matter how smooth I make it, it's all still being done manually. Three people can't possibly keep up with dozens or hundreds of people making offers all at once. We fall behind. We run out of apps but the bundle builder still lists them as available because we don't even know we're out yet, as they are "taken" by email which is still in the queue. So, we keep getting more offers for apps that have sold out.

Clearly, I'm doing it wrong.

The donors have been very generous in covering our oversells. (Thanks guys and gals!) Still...

This is the last year I'm doing it like this. Let me say that again: this is the last year I'm doing it all this way.

This is clearly a great way to raise money for the PMC. Last year I raised over $14,000, and most of the work was done in just a couple of weeks. This year looks pretty good too. It's just too much work!

That doesn't mean I'm quitting. It just means that I need to finish my "PMC app" (the database app we use behind the scenes) and make it a full web-app, like a storefront, and fully automate the process.

If I don't have it working (at least crudely) by the time PMC signup opens in January, then I'm not signing up.

There, I said it. It's scary, but true. I've just given myself a deadline.

I'll have more to say about this. I know how I want the app to behave, how it should work. I just need to make it happen, and still get paying work done in the process.

Wish me luck! I don't want to give up the PMC, but there's just no way I'm doing it like this again next year. I'm quite pleased with how this has grown and improved over the years, but it's time for it to move up to another level or be allowed to die.

In the meantime, though, go buy a Mac or iPhone software bundle! We'll continue accepting bundles for at least another week or two.

They're Gone

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:19:57 GMT

This morning, Mike and Shannon took Richie and Lauren, and left.

I mentioned this on Twitter, but couldn't possibly tell the whole back story there for all the friends who don't know any of it. So here's the back story in the form of a timeline. After the history lesson is a recap of what happened today.

December 12, 2006	Corinne introduces everybody to Mike and Shannon and explains what we're planning to do, and why. Read this one, it's the most important.
January 3, 2007	I write an abbreviated update on the status of our burgeoning family. It describes our first few visits with M&S, and how we felt about them.
January 3, 2007	A parallel update from Corinne about Shannon & Mike.
January 17, 2007	Mike and Shannon come to visit us at home for the first time (in Mystic), and we ask them to move in with us.
February 3, 2007	The four of us are learning to coexist.
February 24, 2007	More learning, and dates are set for Shannon's c-section (Lauren's birth), and their sentencing at court. Just eleven days apart.
March 2, 2007	Shannon goes to the hospital and Lauren is born
March 13, 2007	The sentencing. Mike gets 22 months, Shannon gets 20. We now have legal guardianship of Lauren, and leave the courthouse with her but without her parents.
March 31, 2007	Our first visit with Mike in prison.
April 11, 2007	Our first visit with Shannon in prison. Took a lot longer to see her because they thought she was a suicide risk and had her basically "locked down". We did get to talk to her on the phone a number of times, though.
July 26-27, 2007	A couple updates on Lauren. Some pictures for her fan club and the story of her first visit to the doctor.
August 2, 2007	Shannon calls to let us know that she is now in a halfway house.
August 23, 2007	Shannon, now in a halfway house, gets to keep Lauren for a couple of nights. I drove Lauren down there (2 hours each way) but forgot to leave her suitcase. Oops.
October 26, 2007	Corinne and I drive down to Norwalk to meet with Shannon and her therapist about setting "rules" for her when she comes home.
January 4, 2008	Status update, including a cute picture of Lauren from New Year's Day. We were preparing for Shannon to come home form the halfway house.
January 16, 2008	Shannon gets in trouble again, just days before she was supposed to come home.
January 17, 2008	She gets off with a warning.
January 24, 2008	The same day that I bring Shannon home from the halfway house, we're evicted because the landlords want to sell the house. (Eventually, they agree to give us to the end of the year because of Shannon's and Mike's situations.)
February 11, 2008	In spite of the home inspection officer telling us that Shannon would be "washing his car for a living", she starts working at the Staples in New London, CT.
March 2, 2008	Happy First Birthday, Lauren Deane!
March 19, 2008	Lauren learns to walk. Cool pictures.
May 3, 2008	Important. Shannon starts going to school for massage therapy. This is a big deal, as it means she'll have a trade. It's like a light at the end of the tunnel: we won't have to support them forever. (I don't resent it, but I don't want it to continue indefinitely.) Also, I go to court with her to help her get back custody of her son Richie.
May 4, 2008	Lauren's dancing debut. This is only here for the smiles. Mine.
June 23, 2008	Lauren and I attempt to go camping with the ecclesia. Hah. Better luck next time.
October - December, 2008	A Chronology of Chaos — Richie comes to live with us in October. My parents, who lived with us for a few months, move to Missouri the week before Thanksgiving. Dad comes back a week later to tie up some loose ends and sleeps in my office because their old room is now Richie's. We all move to Westerly, RI, in December, and Dad returns to Missouri.
January 9, 2009	Mike comes home from prison. Shannon and I pick him up. All the moving is done! (I never wrote about this here on [tw], but I don't remember why.) He settles in quickly and we all get along well. He's great around the house and is a fastidious house keeper and yard worker. He's great with both kids.
March 2, 2009	Happy second birthday, Lauren!

Since then things have just kept on keeping on. Except...

Today Things Get Ugly

Shannon got sick a few weeks ago. Stomach cramps, in the area of her appendix, but they said it wasn't appendicitis. She spent a few days in the hospital, but they never figured out what was wrong. She improved, but still walked with a limp. Her Massage Therapy instructor said she felt a torn muscle in her abdomen, and Shannon was pretty sure that was it.

She stopped going to school. The first few days were understandable: she was in the hospital, or could barely walk. But then she'd miss because she felt a little nauseous (oh, forgot to mention they got pregnant again). Corinne and I were concerned she was losing her motivation.

This morning she stayed home again. Corinne found out while I was taking my shower, and asked her about it. Mike told me she was home while I was eating my breakfast. He said the school didn't care if she missed the days, she'd be able to make it up. Shannon came into the room and I asked her about it. She gave me a completely different story from Mike... basically she sounded defeated. Making up all of her "logs" (practice massages) and schoolwork would be too much work. She'd even have to drive to Hartford (90 minutes)!

I told her/them that she can't drop out, passively or otherwise. We can't support their family forever. Her Massage Therapy certificate was the “end game”: it was to be their ticket to self-sufficiency. Mike, getting angry, said she still has her job at Staples, and they'll keep paying us our $60 per week. (Which covered their two cell phones, but not much else.)

“Don't yell at her about this, it's her choice,” he said. Now I was mad. I tried to explain that this “choice” of hers is costing me money. Everything I said resulted in the same response, almost a dozen times, “It's her choice.”

I don't remember, now, exactly how it happened, but Mike said they'd move out by the end of the week. Entirely out of anger, and now to my regret, I told him to be out within the hour. By this time, we were in the basement (their apartment).

We went upstairs, and he held the kitchen door open. I'm not sure why, as (most?) everybody else was outside. I started to go through the open door, but he snarled, “Don't you touch that door.” Well, I wasn't going to, but telling me not to touch my own door... bah. Anger sucks. I touched it. “What, do you want to fight me?” Sure. Let's go outside.

No, I had no intention of fighting him. I just wanted to say goodbye to the little girl.

Somehow, he ended up over by Shannon's car, talking to her, while I was still inside. I don't remember waiting to go out, but I must have. When I came out, I asked what they were still doing there. “We're leaving!” I told him he wasn't leaving, he was standing there talking.

I walked over to the back door, passenger side, to say goodbye to Lauren. Shannon yelled, “Don't touch my kid!” and Mike came flying around the car. I said I was just going to say goodbye to her, and Mike said I wasn't. Yes, though, I was. I opened the door before Mike could block it, and, well...

He punched me in the left ear. Big roundhouse punch. Maybe it's my height, or my size, or maybe he pulled it at the last moment, but it didn't really hurt. Definitely surprised me, though I didn't fall down or anything. Shannon yelled, “Michael!” I looked at him and said, “You're crossing a line you can't ever come back from.” (Ok, so it was a little awkward, but he knew what I meant and so do you.)

Then I walked back to the car, opened the door (again), and calmly told Lauren I loved her very much, to please be a good girl, and that I may not see her ever again. Mike was trying to pull me away, but I just ignored him. She was scared and confused, but Opa was talking to her calmly so maybe it was going to be ok. She gave me a little smile, and said she'd be a good girl.

I went inside and talked to Corinne. I was crying. Two and a half years of our life had been devoted to helping Mike and Shannon straighten themselves out and become (legally) self-supporting... all destroyed by pride. Probably pride on both sides.

Shannon came back about 90 minutes later with a Westerly cop. He was just her escort as she got some of their stuff, because (she said) she didn't feel comfortable going to the house alone.

We haven't seen or heard from them since. They have no diapers, food, or money. A few clothes. They're probably going to live with Mike's grandfather in North Stonington, but we don't know for sure.

We're both really worried about the kids, Richie and Lauren. Mike and Shannon can fend for themselves (mostly). The kids don't deserve this insanity. :-(

Apple's Changes Can't Rattle These Bones

seth@macrobyte.net — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:44:16 GMT

Last week I got an email from John Mello, a reporter working for Mac News World. He asked if, as a BBEdit user, I'd be willing to be interviewed for a story he was writing about Bare Bones. I said yes, and later we talked on the phone for about a half hour.

The article is now published, entitled Apple's Changes Can't Rattle These Bones. Kinda clever.

Among BBEdit's merits cited by the code warrior are its support of multiple languages, syntax coloring, code folding and HTML editing and preview, as well as speedy performance and powerful search features. Not only can it perform a search and replace on multiple files, but it will display the results of a search in a separate window for easy review and manipulation.

Hey he called me a code warrior. That's so much nicer than code monkey! (I'm mentioned by name a couple paragraphs earlier.)

The article is, um… a bit fluffy. It never claims to be otherwise! You can't do a one-page "company profile" as hard news.

He never mentioned my rant about email clients, even though we talked about them extensively. (No surprise he didn't mention it, I really do rant.) I was slightly surprised to find that he never mentioned my relationship with the company (which is currently on hold, but hopefully not for long...). Sean was surprised, too.

A significant point I made in our conversation ("interview") that I honestly thought he'd cover: all the editors give you a decent space to type your code. You don't differentiate editors based on which one gives you the best typing experience. Know what I mean? All of the good editors provide a decent space for entering your text. What matters to me is all the other stuff that I expect of my editor: language support, syntax coloring, code folding, performance and — perhaps most important of all — really powerful search and replace.

Anyway, I don't seem to get into the news these days for anything except the PMC, so it was cool for that alone, if nothing else. :-)

I've Had a Day... But Shannon is Home

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:57:19 GMT

I woke up Wendesday morning about 1 second before the alarm, at 6:44:59 am.

Corinne had asked me not to wake her (or Lauren). Lauren has had a really bad cold, and I had to leave at about 8 so "please just let us both sleep in."

Did some reading. At 7:30 I tried to wake Corinne anyway. We needed to pick up the pickup (heh) at the garage, so she'd have a car to meet us in Norwich at noon. "Mom and Dad will bring me," she mumbled, eyes still closed, before rolling over and going back to sleep.

I called Dad. He would have their car up in Providence all morning. So, at 7:45 I left the house on foot and walked the mile to the garage, and drove the yota home. Corinne was up when I returned, and clearly felt pretty guilty about not getting up. "I thought that must be what you had done," she said when i told her I had walked. I wasn't upset with her, though. She and Shane are/were both very difficult to awaken in the morning.

After switching Lauren's car seat into the Toyota and topping off the Blazer's radiator (there's a leak in the cooling system, somewhere), I left in the Blazer at about 8:25.

Corinne called me at some point. She told me that Steve, our landlord, had been to the house this morning. With a real estate agent. They are going to sell the house, and we'll have to move. We've been here for about 9 1/2 years. OY!

Arrived at Quinlan Cottage (the halfway house where Shannon lived for the last five months) at a little after 10. She was out on the porch with a couple other girls, waiting for me. "Yay!" she yelled, clapping.

The four of us (including the two that were on the porch with her) carried her stuff out to the car. Good grief! She went to prison with nothing but the clothes on her back, and I literally packed the truck full of her stuff for the trip home.

We left at about 10:30.

Shannon and I talked for a little while, and I had her read a letter that Corinne wrote that explained her feelings about last week's "issues." After she read the letter, she said, "I'm going to make you guys proud. No more screwing up, I'm tired of people always being disappointed with me."

Stopped at a highway rest area to get something to eat (and pit stop). Shannon's treat! ;-)

I called Corinne (or she called me, I don't remember) to tell her we'd be in Norwich at about noon.

At a few minutes after 12, we pulled into the parking lot at the Norwich parole office. There was a guy there getting into his car... very slowly. Very, very slowly. Clearly he was waiting for us to get out so he could say something. So, we got out, and he said, "Are you here for parole?" Yes. "Ok. Because you can only park here if you're here for parole." Yes, we're really here for parole. I pointed at Shannon.

So I turned it around on him. "Are you Mark?"

Heh. He looked very confused for a couple seconds. "Ohhhh... oh! You're here to see me." He looked at his watch. "And you're right on time. I'm heading out to Middletown to pick someone up." (So in other words, he was leaving right as we were supposed to show up.) "Go home, and I'll be there in a few hours."

After searching the parking lot for the Toyota, we left hoping to find her on our way home. Instead, we found her in the next parking lot up the hill, just pulling into a space. Hugs all around, then I explained what happened and Corinne and I switched trucks for the drive home so Corinne and Shannon could chat a little. I predicted that Ossifer Sarsfeld would show up at our house around 4.

Arrived at home, lugged all the stuff into the house, had a late lunch, and put Lauren down for her nap.

I was trying to work in my office (in the basement) at 4:20 when I heard the loud knock on the front door. Told shannon he was here, and ran up to answer the door then found Corinne back in the bedroom.

Shannon is not under normal parole, she's under a program called "Transitional Supervision" (TS). She's still technically a prisoner. She's not allowed to leave the state or drive without permission. Not allowed to be near drugs or firearms. Any violation results in immediate return to the clink. He said he will ask his superiors about an exception to allow her to go to Westerly (where our 'church' is) thrice a week, but he was pretty clear that she woudln't be able to take the job she'd been (almost) promised at the Westerly Staples.

She's also required to get a job. So the standard policy is: you must have a job, but you're not allowed to drive. Nice.

We'll find out about the "exception" (to allow Shannon into Westerly) next Wednesday, when she has her first weekly appointment with him in Norwich.

After he left I spent a few hours working on my class, had dinner with Shannon and Lauren (Corinne never eats dinner at a regular hour, even though she cooks it for me almost every day), then left for class (where I was teaching) at 7:15. Class started at 8, finished at 9, and I was home at 10 and in bed a little after 11.

As I said: I had a day. In fact it feels more like two or three days jammed into one.

Shannon's Troubles, Lousy System, Rule Enforcement

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:11:12 GMT

The good news is that nothing (new) is wrong with Shannon. She simply took the afternoon off work to hang out with some friends.

Of course, that's totally against the rules. Either she got the day (or afternoon) off from Staples and they were covering for her every time I called (entirely possible, as they know her situation), or she did this without even telling them she wouldn't be back after lunch. Plus, it's entirely against the rules of the halfway house: she's still technically a prisoner, and only has permission to go to work and doctor's offices.

"Hanging out with friends" and being very susceptible to peer pressure is, in many ways, what got Shannon into this situation in the first place.

My understanding is that her case worker (counsellor?) at the house had only three options: send her back to regular prison for the rest of her term, give her an infraction ticket (wrist slap), or scold her but do nothing. It appears that she chose the third option.

Shannon's biggest issue is that she's very selfish, thinks only about what will make her happy now, and doesn't care about long term consequences. The proof is that she would do this knowing that she was already a month beyond her scheduled parole date, and that we were just waiting for the home inspection.

Her counselor was supposed to tell her that I wasn't coming down. She just called me to ask if I was still coming. This was my first chance to talk to her.

All she did was drive around Norwalk with her friend Jen, wasting gas for the day. She had the day off from work, so I was right that Staples was just covering for her. Three different people at Staples covered for her, including the manager. Wow.

I've said from the very beginning (including in my letter to the Judge) that the things Mike and Shannon need to learn are not going to be taught in prison. She needs strong role models, discipline, and guidance. At the halfway house, all she has is a bunch of people that believe "bad" means "got caught." (Including the staff!)

People — especially kids — only learn from their mistakes if there are consistent consequences for making them, for breaking the rules.

For example (and I talked to Sean and Jim about this last year, so they may remember it), let's say you have a rule in your house: no bouncing balls in the house. Do you enforce the rule (issue some sort of punishment) for breaking the rule, or do you just tell him to knock it off? In my experience, most parents don't really enforce the rule until the bouncing ball annoys them or the kid breaks a lamp.

Which means, of course, that the rule was "don't annoy your parents" or "don't break a lamp."

The rules at the halfway house include, "don't go anywhere except pre-approved places, and come straight home afterwards" and "don't lie to the staff." Shannon broke the first rule by hanging out with a friend for the day instead of working (and I'm betting this was not anywhere near the first time), and did it by telling the staff that she had to work that day when she wasn't even scheduled.

I'm not writing this to suggest that I'm giving up. Corinne and I talked about it last night... she's close to wanting to give up, but I've reminded her that we never thought Shannon would learn anything (good) by going to prison. It's going to be up to us to straighten her out when she comes home.

Next week.

This means we're going to need strong ground rules, and some way to enforce them.

(At least she's ok. That was concern number one.)

Shannonigans

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:12:51 GMT

This morning we got a call from a CT Parole Officer. He wanted to do the "home inspection" to make sure we have a safe, legal environment for Shannon to be released into for parole. We've been waiting for this call for about a month now. The officer said he would be here between 2 and 3 PM.

I tried to call Shannon at work (Staples in Norwalk, CT) to let her know it was finally happening, but they said she wasn't there yet.

The parole officer showed up at 11:30. I figured he'd be early, as they want to make sure they're not releasing her into a house of druggies, weapons, etc. They show up early so they can surprise you in the middle of hiding stuff or cleaning up. We have nothing to worry about in that regard, of course, but the cats had just knocked over one of their food bowls, and Lauren's stuff is EVERYWHERE. Still, baby-related clutter is not considered dangerous (if only they knew!).

He disagreed with almost everything we said, mentioned proudly that he's a full law enforcement officer with a gun and a badge (even grabbed at his gun so we'd know where he hides it under his jacket), and said that the halfway house "lied to your faces" about Shannon being able to get a job at Staples in our area. "Yes, she has to get a job or she'll go back to prison, but it won't be at Staples. She'll have to work at a place like the car wash where I just washed my car."

He "approved" us and the house, and said we should expect a call from her parole officer tomorrow (he even gave us his name, as he was already assigned).

I didn't like him (the guy inspecting us), but I don't have to. He's not there to be liked, just to make sure the house is safe and that we really do want to sponsor her. He was gone in less than 30 minutes, but he pushed enough of my buttons that I then had a small argument with Corinne about something as trivial as how I answered one of his questions. Growl.

After he left I tried to call Shannon at work, again. This time they told me that she was too busy to talk to me. I told them this was very important. They said they would have her call back. (Shannon calls me in my office or at home all the time, and knows both numbers by heart.)

At about 2:30, her new parole officer called. (Maybe these guys are just perpetually early. If so, they should be running the whole state government.) He gave me a date and time to pick her up at the halfway house: one week from today, in the morning. Excellent! From there we bring her straight to her orientation at the parole office in Norwich (for all of us), then we can bring her home. He also mentioned that subsequent visits will be in New London, which is a bit closer.

I called Staples a third time, and told them I have an important message for Shannon and must speak to her. "I'm sorry, she's not here." I pressed him, and he said she hadn't come back from lunch. "Do you mean she quit?" I asked. "No, no! We don't know what happened. She just didn't come back."

Oy.

So I called the halfway house, hoping she had gone back there. First I told them who I was, and that Shannon's parole had finally been approved. I gave them the name of the officer, and the date and time we'd be picking her up. I told two people, and the second was her actual case worker, who was pretty excited for her. I told them that I'd tried to call Shannon at Staples to let her know, but that she hadn't come back from lunch and I was hoping I could talk to her there at the house.

She wasn't there. They didn't actually set off an alarm, but they might as well have. There's a phrase they use to describe someone who disppears, even just for an hour, when living at one of these halfway houses: "Escaped Prisoner" or "Escaped Convict." In the background, I could hear people using the words, "possible escapee."

They took my office number and said they would call back when they knew anything so I wouldn't have to worry. That was about an hour ago. I'm worrying.

In fact, I am currently as stressed and anxious as I can remember being in the last couple of years.

It's possible that nothing significant happened. She sometimes has appointments with her doctor, dentist, or therapist. She may have forgotten to tell them that she wouldn't be back right away. If that's the case, or something like it, then they'll slap her wrist and be done with it.

Blood pressure guages within five miles of my house are all going haywire while I wait for news.

La vie à la Maison de Dillingham

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:46:38 GMT

“Life at the Dillingham House”

(At least, that's what I was trying to say. Flip?)

It's 2008 already. When did that happen?

Lauren is over ten months old already. Not walking by herself yet, but she's learning to imitate us: she waves, whispers "kitty", and of course says "dadadadadada" all the time. She can crawl at about 32 mph. Her favorite thing is playing "boo" with me or Corinne. Her least favorite thing is seeing any of her toys stacked up. Just put one block on top of another, and she'll streak across the room to knock them down.

Shannon should be coming home this month. Still waiting for the home inspection.

Mike is still up at Osborn C.I., but he's been moved into "the program", so he has a little more freedom, more social interaction, and a little less boredom.

Corinne spends most of her days cooking and taking care of Lauren (somebody's going to misread that and find it funny or disturbing), napping in the afternoons, then enjoying her time off in the evenings.

Me? I'm pretty much on the same schedule i've been on since Lauren started sleeping through the night (at six weeks). Up around 7, work most of the day, come up in the evening to have dinner and watch (play with) Lauren until it's time for her to go to bed. Then I tell myself I'm going to work until I go to bed, but I end up playing Scrabble (online, it's actually called Scrabulous) until bedtime.

PMC registration has already opened, and I've already started (casually) looking for sponsors.

Now you're all caught up. Any more questions?

A Good Weekend

seth@macrobyte.net — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 04:40:43 GMT

It's only Saturday night, and it's already been an excellent weekend.

Art and Sarah (brother-in-law and Sister) had their third child (Lydia Sarah Peña) on Thursday. Technically not the weekend, but I didn't see her until Saturday so I'm claiming it.
I got a new (to me) lens for my camera. Love. It.
After almost three weeks, my Toyota pickup is back on the road.
We got a phone bill for $890, and that doesn't include my (relatively inexpensive) cell phone.

Whoo! What more could one ask for in a single weekend?

OK, well, three out of four isn't bad.

I was going to write about each of those things in more detail tonight, but I've totally run out of steam so I'm putting it all off until Sunday.

Bootleg Movies

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:33:37 GMT

Yesterday at the barbershop, everybody in the room (seven people) was talking about bootleg movies. Based on the comments, I was the only one there who hasn't ever owned one.

It started because a military guy was in the chair talking with John (the lead barber) about American Gangster. They'd both seen it already: the guy in the chair saw it at the theater, John saw it three weeks ago on a Russian bootleg DVD. (Three weeks ago! The movie was released to theaters AFTER that!)

The military guy said he hasn't seen a bootleg of AG yet, but the guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan always have loads of movies with them, all bootleg and some of them pre-release like the AG that John had.

It would have turned into a swap-meet but for the fact that nobody had any with them. (And to be clear, I don't want one and the whole idea kind of bugs me: it's no different than software piracy.)

Earlier this year, another regular at the diner where Rich and I have breakfast every week offered me a copy of the latest Spider Man movie. I had it in my hands, then it occurred to me that the film had just come out in theaters. "What is this, a bootleg?" I asked out loud. He was very upset, told me to shush, and immediately put his movie away again. "How do you know none of these people are cops?" he whispered back.

(Note: This story about the Pirate Act on Ars Technica reminded me to write this.)

Look Out Kitties, Here She Comes!

seth@macrobyte.net — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:45:43 GMT

Friday night at the hotel room, Lauren figured out how to crawl. Our first reaction was "uh oh", but really it was very exciting.

What prompted the crawl? A piece of pizza! Clearly a child after Corinne's own heart. (Ok, the pizza was wrapped in shiny aluminum foil, but still...)

The full story is actually on Flickr, because I managed to get a picture of her just before she crawled, and another one seventeen seconds later when she took her first, uh... "crawl-step."

I must get a movie of this tonight, while she's still very hesitant and deliberate. There's nothing else like it.

PMC Fundraising Update (Multiply and Subtract)

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 13:18:33 GMT

So far this year I've raised $3,058.10 for the Pan-Mass Challenge. That includes the five auctions which have closed already, and the very generous donations which were made before the auctions started.

There are still at least twenty auctions left to run, so I'm pretty sure I'll meet my goal of $6,600.

It's a little frustrating to watch the money shrink on its journey from an auction buyer to the PMC (the charity). Since misery loves company, I thought I'd explain the process to anyone who cares to read about it. ;-)

One of the auctions closed at exactly $200, so let's use that for our example.

The auction contained 49 applications, having a total retail value of $1,086.12. (This was a bad move on my part, I shouldn't have included so much software, but I'll say more about that in a separate post.)

Auction sold for:	+ $200.00
eBay: Bold Listing:	- $1.00
eBay: Item Subtitle:	- $0.50
eBay: Insertion Fee:	- $2.40
eBay: Final Value Fee:	- $7.00
PayPal Funds Transfer:	- $8.96
Subtotal:	180.14

So there $180.14 is left to donate to the PMC. But we're not done.

In order to be listed as a "Charity Auction" on eBay, I have to commit to make the donation through their Giving Works program, which uses Mission Fish. They take the payments and pass them on to the charity. For a fee, of course.

What fee? $3 plus 2.9%. In this case, that's $8.22, leaving $171.92 to finally end up at the PMC.

Thankfully, the PMC raises most of their operating capital separately from their rider-raised funds (mostly through major corporate sponsorships), so over 99% of the money we (the riders) donate goes directly to Dana-Farber.

Back to my original point: of the $3,058.10 that's been raise so far this year, just under $1100 of it is from the five auctions which have already closed. We're on track.

New "Main Page" for the Auctions

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 16:56:51 GMT

I was told — nay, warned — that my post about the first auction was too obviously written for the regulars here at [tw]. New people coming here from links on other sites wouldn't "get it."

OK, I can see that.

So now, if you're linking to the software auctions, please consider changing it. Link Here Instead.

That page tells you what it's all about, how you can help, where to get more info, and finally lists the auction(s). I hope you'll find it succinct, and it even has John Gruber's, Rich Siegel's, Kerri Hicks's and Jim Correia's blessings. ;-)

Sleeping Babies

seth@macrobyte.net — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 22:41:36 GMT

While we're not yet ready to call this a pattern, Lauren has slept through the whole night, for two nights in a row now.

She is 50 days old today. I thought this wasn't supposed to happen until she was at least twice this age! That's not a complaint. This is more of a "WOO HOO!!!!" than anything else. :-D

She has a wicked case of baby acne now — something I'd never even heard of before a few weeks ago — but she's still adorable.

Anyway, part of the trick to getting her to sleep through the night seems to be topping off her tank, burping her thoroughly, and swaddling her immediately before we all go to bed. Last night, she slept for eight hours. The night before it was seven. Yay!

Refugees from the Weather

seth@macrobyte.net — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 22:26:04 GMT

Sunday that crazy storm started to blow, the Nor'easter that dumped record amounts of rain all over the northeast. Very early Monday morning — around 4:00 am — there was a very powerful blast of wind and our power went out. (I happened to be awake at the time.)

Later that morning, Connecticut Light and Power didn't know when our service would be restored (but they were "aware of the problem"). By noon they were reporting (through their phone service) that our power would be back by 12:00 am on the 18th (so, midnight on Wednesday morning). This was on Monday the 16th. So we were facing up to almost two days without power. Nuh-uh.

That's not going to work. We have a baby here now, and would really like to keep her warm and well fed without resorting to extreme measures. We talked about finding a hotel room for the night, but Ellyn suggested we talk to Eric & Bonny about staying in their summer rental property for the night, as it's currently empty. They said yes, so that's what we did. (Thank you guys!)

After returning from my weeekly breakfast with Rich (and, this week, Kerri, Teddy and even Lauren!) in North Kingstown, Corinne and I decided to pack up the vehicles and trek back to Mystic. The phone company was still saying that service would be restored by midnight tonight, and we really wanted to be home. (Plus, we'd only brought enough "baby stuff" for one night.) (Pictures are of Rich and Kerri holding Lauren.)

First thing we saw as we approached the house? The garage door ascending in response to the truck's built-in remote. YAY!!! According to the blinking clocks all over the house, the power had been back on since before Corinne called the first time this morning.

Incidentally, this storm was no joke. Though western CT received more rain than we did, it's rather hilly around here so the streams, creeks, brooks and rivers all rose significantly. One in Waterford (just a few miles away) rose a full nine feet. Also, the wind ripped our closed deck umbrella right off of its base and tossed it over the edge, wrapping it around the birdfeeder I had mounted to the side of the deck with a fancy wrought-iron hanger. (Our only losses were, thankfully, the umbrella and some wind chimes that I think were given to us as a wedding present.)

I've posted some pictures of the very flooded Mystic River Road.

Mailsmith 2.2 Mostly-Semi-Sorta (OK Totally) Public Beta

seth@macrobyte.net — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 20:19:20 GMT

At long last — and folks, I *do mean* LOOOONG last — Mailsmith 2.2 has been released to (semi-)public beta.

Like John Gruber and Michael Tsai, I've been using pre-release versions of Mailsmith for years (nay, centuries!), so most of these features are not new to me. But still, I'm very happy with this release. It's good, and a very welcome improvement over the previous public release (which was already my least-disliked email client).

(That may sound like a backhanded compliment. It's not intended to be. My old thoughts on email clients still ring true today.)

The change list in this 2.2 beta is commensurate with the amount of time Mailsmith's users waited for it. Some of my favorites:

Excellent Unicode support. Their new and improved support was what inspired me, last year, to treat all messages in Conversant as UTF-8.
Zip compression. StuffIt no longer required.
Inline spell checking.
The new Simple Query window is wonderful (though this is an area that's clearly still in beta)
Replies can be automatically moved to the same mailbox as the original. Love it!
"Send PDF with Mailsmith" — handy workflow feature
The new soft wrapping options and format=flowed feature are conceptually related, and are a couple of my favorite new features.
The whole Menus preferences system (mainly because I like to hide what I know I don't need)
The clippings changes, because they stem from work I helped with (a little) in BBEdit and I have an ego ;-)
Growl support
Don't Bug Me! My number one favorite new feature is the "Do Not Disturb" feature. See the "Mailsmith" menu, or the dock icon's contextual menu. (I called it the "Don't Bug Me" feature when I requested it. I saw another beta tester refer to it as, "the greatest feature he never knew he needed.")
Spotlight support.
All the new toolbar icons.
The text version of HTML messages is much nicer. It might look surprisingly similar to some people around here... ;-)

The list is so long that I'm reminded that anybody new to Mailsmith 2.2 probably won't know where to start. So I suggest that you set the following (new/changed) preferences if they're not already:

Under "Sending," set "Move it to Original's Mailbox"
Under "Editing: General," set "Soft Wrapped Line Indentation" to "First Line"
Under "Mail Lists," set "Show Buttons in Lists"
Under "Menus," turn off the "Tools" menu if it isn't already.
Make sure you at least notice the options at the bottom of the "Menus" preference pane, where you can control which items appear in the contextual menu.
The simple query window won't default to the currently selected mailbox(es) unless you run this command in Terminal:
defaults write com.barebones.mailsmith Misc:AlwaysUseSelectedMailboxesForQuery -bool YES

Update: I see Michael agrees with me.

The issue here is that users have two conflicting "needs" with the Query windows. I almost always want the Simple Query window to open with the current mailbox pre-selected. However, there are a few occasions (and it's probably more common for other types of users) where I have carefully chosen a subset of my 63 mailboxes (folders) and run a search, then realized that I left out a search term. With the above preference set the way I have it now, reopening the Simple Query window reverts the mailbox selection to the "current mailbox", so I need to reselect the subset of mailboxes to search.

I'm not the fan of "prefs for everything" that I once was, and I totally understand the need to keep the UI clean and simple.

My thought for this particular problem would be a way to move back and forth through a history of selected mailbox sets. When a query is run, another set is added to the history unless it's identical to the most recent set.

Just thinking out loud, I guess.

If you're a Mailsmith user (past or present), give this new version a spin. The link for downloading is at the bottom of the change list.

A New Stage In Life

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 00:18:28 GMT

The sentencing didn't go particularly well. Mike was sentenced to 22 months, Shannon to 20. This wasn't a surprise, but it was a disappointment: as we came to know them, we understood them (including how and why they did what they did); with understanding came care and eventually love; with love came hope (for a light sentence)... and with all of the continuances, hope turned into a sort of positive thinking, a groundless belief that they wouldn't really "go away" for so long.

But once we were there, it was clear that the hope had simply provided a chance for them to experience something like a "normal life" for a couple of months. Their lawyers both told them that it didn't look good... it was really a 'vain hope.'

I won't go into all the gory details. The judge thanked me for our letter and acknowledged that he had read it. I hope it had something to do with his decision to shave a few months off of both of their sentences.

Our relationship with Mike and Shannon started with, "We're going to prison for two years, would you take care of our baby while we're gone?" Everything that happened while they were here was good for all of us in many ways, but in the end it worked out almost exactly as it started: theyv'e gone away for almost two years, and we're raising their baby. (Who, not coincidentally, is sleeping on me as I write this.)

Policy in the CT state prison system is that non-violent offenders can be released on parole after 50% of their sentence has been served. Emphasis on "can be."

So now we start a new stage in our lives... one where Corinne and I get to raise a baby as our own, together, for the first time (Shane was already fifteen when we met). We'll make sure Lauren knows her parents by taking her to visit them as often as we can, realistically (that will probably mean one on one week, the other the next week).

One last thing: Mike had a message that he asked me to pass on to everyone: they started a new life when they came to live with us, and regardless of when it happens, they'll continue down that new road when they come home again. (He also said, very clearly, that he's very happy to have a home. He even gave me permission to go into "his room" to get stuff for the baby!)

Pudge on Gruber on Amoroso on Steve Jobs

seth@macrobyte.net — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 23:31:16 GMT

Steve Jobs wrote an essay about why he thinks the music industry should drop DRM (the 'feature' that prevents you from using music you've purchased at the iTunes music store on more than a few machines).

This greedy clown at Macrovision, Fred Amoroso, responded.

John Gruber translated Macrovision's response from “PR speak" to English. John's a funny guy.

Now Pudge, on /., has translated John's story from "Pundit-speak" to English. It's funny enough to have me laughing out loud most of the way through it.

Macrovision has been in the content protection industry for more than 20 years, working closely with content owners of many types, including the major Hollywood studios, to help navigate the transition from physical to digital distribution.

We've been helping and encouraging the entertainment industry to annoy its paying customers for more than 20 years.

I have an amazing power to state the obvious.

Very funny stuff. I'm glad that John linked to it himself, too.

(There's a lot more if you follow the link, that quote is just one part.)

BBEdit 8.6.1 Released

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 13:46:19 GMT

BBEdit 8.6.1 was (finally) released yesterday (8.6 was released the first day of MacWorld). By this point, it should be no surprise to any of the [tw] regulars that I had a hand in this release, too. I like working with Bare Bones, and (more importantly) they seem to like me. Or at least my work. When I'm not breaking stuff.

Ahem. (When would that be, exactly?)

The 8.6.1 release notes have the full list of new features, so I'll just list the stuff I'm personally interested in, or which I was involved in writing.

Support for .strings files.

This happened because a bunch of Rich's Smart Friends were hanging around the booth on the first day of MW, impressing me with their history. One of them whined about BBEdit not supporting "strings files" (which I hadn't heard of). That night, I whipped up a base implementation, filled it out a little more throughout the week, and had it finished a couple days after the show.

I was going to release it myself as a free download, but it turns out lots of Mac programmers wanted it, so BB decided to bundle it. :-)
Improvements in the TeX module.

I worked on the TeX module for 8.6, but TeX is a HUGE system. In fact, it's a whole family of huge systems (TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt, BiblioTeX, etc.). Every time I look at it, I find more stuff we need to consider supporting in the TeX module. Most of those things are optional, "would be nice" features. The improvements that went into 8.6.1 were "duh, this should have been in there from the start" features. My bad.

Having said that (with tongue somewhere in the vicinity of my cheek), I will say that I'm rather proud of the TeX module. It has been a tremendous amount of work, but it has enabled TeX editing/navigation in ways that I haven't seen in other editors (and it's going to be even better).
Fixed a JSP-related hang.

I had nothing to do with this, but I did write the new Java module for 8.6 so I was afraid for a while that the hang was my fault. :-) (See previous comment about breaking stuff...)
Anything related to the Java module.

Adding support for Java's generics was especially interesting.
Markdown Upgrades.

8.6 included a new Markdown language module. This was truly the most difficult language module ever. There may be no less parseable language in the whole world. (It's really a convenience language, designed for converting into HTML via script, piece by piece.)

In 8.6.1, I worked with Mistah Grubah to get the last of the bugs and his personal nits worked out. John wrote Markdown in the first place, and in fact he warned me in advance that writing the Markdown module for BBEdit was going to be a huge challenge. (Also see John's funny blurb ★.)

Finally Wrote the Letter

seth@macrobyte.net — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 02:51:55 GMT

This evening, I finally wrote the letter to the judge who is hearing Mike's & Shannon's case.

I should have written it weeks ago, I guess, but regardless: I'm really glad it's finally done.

I may post it here tomororw, but I'm going to ask them if they're ok with it, first. They probably will be.

Lots of people have asked about "the situation" around here right now. Posting the letter would answer a lot of questions (as I'm sure my proofreaders would agree).

Live Reviewer

seth@macrobyte.net — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 21:09:16 GMT

One of the other members of the Prototype Core team just asked me to be his only English-speaking "Live Reviewer" for a forthcoming book on Prototype / Scriptaculous.

I'm not sure if I should be happy about this, or just sorry for the other English-speaking reviewers (as it implies they're not 'live'... come on guys, stay with me...). ;-)

Macworld 2007 Recap

seth@macrobyte.net — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:27:14 GMT

My intent at the start of my travels for MacWorld 2007 was to provide daily updates on my goings-on and derring-dos. Hah. With all the hours in the show hall, and Dinners (with a capital D) every night, I quickly learned that there was almost no time for writing.

This entry will attempt to provide those details which I can recall…

My previous entry finished on Monday morning, and mentioned my plans for the day. This is where we'll pick it up.

Monday

Booth Setup

Bare Bones rented a 2-meter booth in the "overflow hall". There was room there for two presentation stations, or one station and stacks of literature, window stickers, and CD's. They chose the latter.

When I arrived (30 minutes early), nobody and nothing was at the booth. No boxes, no computer, no literature, nobody from Bare Bones. Nobody. So, I spent some time chatting with the guys from provue (makers of Panorama), and then went back to my hotel room.

Back to the booth again at 2:30. The "media rental" guy was there, and was annoyed that we hadn't received anything yet, so he made a call and five minutes later the computer (Dual G5 tower) and the display (30" Apple Cinema) were delivered.

The mac had the wrong display card for that display (only 64 MB of vRam), so it was only able to drive it at 1200x800. I thought that was actually a *good thing*, as it was for presentations, not "daily use." Eventually everybody agreed (or at least agreed to give it a shot), and I'm glad: the display looked great if you were standing back a few feet. We often had large crowds watching our demos, and the low-resolution display made it possible for them to see everything we were doing.

Brian Arrives

Brian arrived in the area a bit early, but I couldn't leave until 3 so he found a parking space over on Mission St. and then walked over.

We met up outside, and I took him downstairs to the show entrance. Couldn't take him past the doors for the lack of an Exhibitor badge, and the 90 year old security guard was clearly prepared to Take Him Out.

Eventually Rich came out, they met, we all chatted for a minute, and then Brian and I found his car so we could go…

Touring Fisherman's Wharf

Oh the tourist-trappiness. It was nearly overwhelming. Every shop offered kitsch at off-season discounts.

In the mid-nineties, while traveling all over the country at the behest of RR Donnelley's sales people, I'd been to San Francisco with Dirk Samuelson (an RRD employee). We found a shop, somewhere, with some very high quality sweatshirts and I bought a couple for my girlfriend, Corinne. Only recently did those sweatshirts wear out enough to require dumping, so I picked up a couple more. I couldn't find anything quite as nice as the old ones (isn't that always the way?), but I did my best by looking at the offerings of every single store.

Brian picked up some chocolate for his girlfriend (whose name happens to meet Macrobyte's standards, even though he hasn't worked at Macrobyte in many years ;-). Then we dropped our packages at his car and returned to Pier 39 for some pictures of the sea lions and us in front of Alcatraz.

After the pictures, he drove me back to the Marriott and then headed back out of the city.

Brian worked for me at Macrobyte for over a year, and we've been friends for over a decade, but that was only the second time I've met him!

Working the Booth

One of the benefits of working the Bare Bones booth is that everybody already knows about the flagship product, BBEdit. In fact, a lot of the people who come to the booth just want a new t-shirt, want to talk about how they use it every day, or they just want to thank someone for creating it. Very cool. Some were very enthused, and that's putting it mildly. (The one day I wore the shirt all the way back to my room, I was twice accosted by BBEdit fans.)

Bare Bones wasn't there for the accolades. It makes for great PR, but the real point was to demo their newest product, Yojimbo.

Truth be told, I was a bit skeptical about Yojimbo before the show. I'd been a beta tester, and then I'd used 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 a little. I installed version 1.3 but didn't do much with it. My problem was that I was too conscious of what it didn't do, so I never really gave it a chance.

That first day, I completely avoided doing demos of Yojimbo, and instead focused on answering questions and doing anything else I could think of that would save me from having to demo an app I wasn't really sure about. I watched Ciaran and Patrick, though, and some ideas started to gestate.

Wednesday morning, first thing, someone asked me to give them a demo of Yojimbo. Overnight I had thought about it enough to know how to tackle it, so I gave my first version of what would become "Seth's Yojimbo demo." It was effective, and I showed most of the app's features in about seven minutes.

Over the next three days I gave that demo many dozens of times, and kept refining it down to the point where I could literally demonstrate every feature of the application in under five minutes, while at the same time I told a simple story about using the software.

With practice I became more effective, and learned what to say. For example, I could show someone how to encrypt something in the application with a single click, but that always resulted in glazed eyes or the question, "Why would I want that?" However, as part of the story I mentioned that the receipt for the gift I've just purchased is right there for my wife to see, but I can hide it from her by just clicking that encrypt button: immediate comprehension.

People like stories.

Tuesday

Breakfast at the Garden Terrace again, this time with Patrick Woolsey (Rich Siegel's partner at Bare Bones) and Ciaran Benson (who worked the booth with us all week).

After eating, Patrick and I went down to the hotel's Shipping & Receiving dept. to pick up the t-shirts and schlep them over to the hall. Ciarnan went to the printer to pick up data sheets of BB's products.

Once we were all at the booth, we only had two things to do: collate all the data sheets and media kits, and fold a couple hundred t-shirts. Ciarnan worked on the paper while I folded.

Eventually, I figured out how to fold the shirts so that the Bare Bones logo was centered on the front. I showed Patrick and a volunteer from another booth how to fold them. With three folders we made short work of the pile.

Then I helped Ciarnan finish with the media kits and data sheets, just as hundreds of visitors swarmed the show floor.

Rules of the booth: drink a lot of water, use the Purel (hand sanitizer), and ask everybody if they have a question. Most will say "no," immediately before asking a question.

Rich's Friends

A bunch of Rich's friends came to the booth toward the end of the day, expecting that Rich would join them for dinner. He had other plans already (see below), but they still hung out at the booth for at least an hour. The bantering was fun.

Someone fussed that BBEdit doesn't support a certain, very simple file type used by Mac programmers. So that night I started throwing a module together, hoping to finish it by the end of the show. Didn't quite get there, but I did have it fully functional by Sunday night. (In fact, it's already in that gentleman's hands and is being beta tested.)

Dinner with the New Rock Stars

Brent had written to a small group on Monday night about having dinner on Tuesday. In his words, "A post-keynote, post-first-day dinner with a few smart folks sounds like just the thing." Apparently, a typo resulted in my receiving the invitation also, but rather than point it out I simply accepted. ;-)

So, Tuesday night we met at the top of the escalators before walking to the restaurant. Attendees included Brent Simmons, Buzz Andersen, Gus Mueller (his page mentions meeting me, in a funny way), John Gruber, Niall Kennedy, Patrick Woolsey, Paul Kafasis, Rich Siegel, Ted Leung, myself, and possibly one or two others whose names I can't remember (sorry!).

Update: Here is Ted's picture of the dinner.

I don't remember what I ordered, but it was terrible. Yuck. Niall — sitting right next to me — made me very jealous with his gigantic, juicy hamburger. Wah.

After the introductions, we mostly talked about the death of Apple Computer, Inc. (the pundits were right all along!), the new Apple TV, and the iPhone. Most notably, the lack of 3rd party app support on the iPhone, which bit everybody in that group right in the tuckus.

Oh, and I told my...

Funny John Gruber Story

What John Gruber story? OK, here:

BBEdit 8.6 added support for the Markdown language. (Markdown is like HTML shorthand, basically.)

Writing the Markdown support for BBEdit was very challenging. This is a language that's designed to be processed once, to convert the markdown to HTML. Speed of processing was not a consideration. However, I (that is, BBEdit's Markdown module) need to process at least part of the Markdown content with every keypress, so as to figure out what to color and how to color it.

While John was beta testing the module for us, he had a bunch of very particular bug reports and feature requests. He wanted everything to be just so. It was tiring, but I appreciated it because we needed a lot of testing very quickly.

Then he submitted one last bug report. Apparently, inline links can have titles (which I knew), and those titles are delimited by quotes. Here's an example:

This is some [linked text](<link_url> "link title").

The syntax docs on John's site said that inline link's titles were delimited by double quotes. Markdown.pl, John's implementation of Markdown in perl — the canonical Markdown interpreter — used double quotes to delimit link titles.

John's bug? He pointed out that even though it's not documented, and the interpreter doesn't actually support it, it's (somehow) a bug that BBEdit did not support 'single-quote delimiters' around the link titles.

(I still think it's funny, but I guess I can see why nobody else would.)

Wednesday

I don't remember much about Wednesday except the MacSB dinner, which was a couple blocks from the show.

After walking down there, I almost went into the wrong place. The restaurant I could see had a sign that said "Chaam Cafe," so I assumed I'd been given the wrong name. However, as I drew near I saw another restaurant next door, and the part of the sign I could read said, "t Cafe". I found out Thursday that others actually went into Chaam Cafe, and two of those with whom I spoke enjoyed a Mac-related party with a bunch of people they didn't know, and got a free meal out of it!

I ate with Paul Kafasis of Rogue Amoeba, Jerry Kayne, and Willian Van Hecke from The Omni Group. However, the restaurant was very crowded and I was tired, so I left as soon as I was done eating.

Thursday

Breakfast

As with every other day on the show floor, we had breakfast at the Marriott. Rich joined us this time, and Agnes (one of the Omelette chefs) recognized him immediately and asked where he's been all week!

"The Fetch guys" sat with us.

MacBrainiac Challenge

Rich was the captain of the developers team for this year's edition of the Macworld game show, which pit the developers against the reporters with trivia questions. Chris Breen was the host.

At the last question — which was actually a challenge, not a question — the teams were tied. The challenge was to send Chris an electronic birthday greeting from their computer (one computer per team), without using email and with the understanding that his laptop was completely off the air.

The solution was to send an SMS message to his cell phone, from iChat. The contact info had been pre-loaded onto both machines, but you had to know how to use iChat with SMS. The reporters tried to use text-to-speech to have their mac deliver the message to Chris vocally, but that answer wasn't accepted. (This really annoyed Andy Inhatko.) Frankly, I think the only reason it wasn't accepted is that it's not the answer they expected. The question should have specified that the solution had to work whether Chris was in the room or 1,000 miles away.

Anyway, the developers won.

Show Floor

My Yojimbo demo was in full swing by this point.

The last couple days of the show mostly blurred together, but I think this is the day that Merlin Mann interviewed Patrick at the booth for about fifteen minutes. You can watch the video, here.

Patrick is about 6' 4" (Update: that said 6' 1" originally. Sorry Patrick. All you little guys look the same!) and weighs a good and very solid 280-290 pounds. Throw in the dark hair, the beard, and the low, rumbly voice and you'll see why I call him Paul Bunyan. :-) Put a knit cap on his head, a plaid, flannel shirt on his shoulders, and an axe in his hand...

Rich wasn't around for most of the day. He spent all day meeting with press people, being interviewed about BBEdit and Yojimbo.

Dinner

Rich made dinner reservations for us at a Chinese restaurant, Brandy Ho's. I walked all the way (a couple miles) in, which felt great. Man, what a city for people-watching. (Corinne wouldn't have enjoyed the walk quite so much, but as I walked I thought about how much she would have loved seeing all the people.)

In attendance at dinner: Rich, Patrick, Naomi (BB's PR person), Sandy (former BB marketer), Sal Sahogian.

Yeah, that's right. I had dinner with Saul, who you all know. :-D

He told a very funny and very memorable story about his days as a nightclub manager in NYC. No room to retell it here, but the best line was, "Sal, I'm starting to get upset," said in a very quiet voice.

After dinner, Rich joined me for the walk back and we mostly talked shop until we had to split for our separate hotels.

Friday

Friday was a blur of exhaustion, sore throats, and Yojimbo-demo-burnout. ;-)

The show ended at 4 PM on Friday instead of 6 like the rest of the week, and most of the hall was rolled up by 4:30!

I couldn't find anybody at the show who was actually selling iPods (how crazy is that?), so after the show I walked to the Apple store to buy one for Corinne. Picked up a 30 GB black (which she seemed to really like when I gave it to her Saturday).

Apollo

Update: I met Apollo on Friday, for the first time ever. Not sure how I forgot this when I first wrote it up, except that I was tired of writing!

(Apollo is a cyclist from the bay area, who has made some very generous donations to my PMC fundraising efforts in the last couple of years. He also had a horrendous bike accident that nearly ended his cycling for good.)

He works right down the street from the Moscone Center, so he took an extra-long lunch break to meet me and see the show. Rich and I were out wandering the show floor (after a friendly, thirty minute chat with the tm boys). We had stopped to talk to a known BBEdit user who happened to be 6' 6" tall (Rich said he felt like a hyphen between us), when this stranger walked up and said, "You must be Seth Dillingham!" He figured it out based solely on the fact that there were two guys there wearing BBEdit t-shirts, and I was really tall!

The most notable moment for Apollo, though, was clearly when the cute Australian boothbabe stepped in front of him and offered him some information about some product. Let's just say she could have sold him any software... ;-)

Apollo went back to the BB booth with me, experienced The Yojimbo Demo, took a couple pictures, and went back to work. Nice to meet you finally, Apollo!

Bare Bones took us out for a huge steak dinner at Harris' Restaurant. A little too far to walk (I was told), but totally worth whatever it takes to get there. Wow. Second best steak dinner I've ever had, and certainly the best ever at a restaurant. This was a celebratory "family dinner," with Rich and Patrick, Naomi, Ciaran, and myself.

Saturday

Saturday morning I packed my suitcase and caught a cab. There were five people in line ahead of me for the cab, but they all got on a shuttle.

Took the taxi to Rich's hotel to pick him up, and then to the airport. So far, it was all smooth...

Airports Schmairport

My itinerary said United Airlines, but when I tried to check in with United they told me I was supposed to go to US Air. GRRRRRRRRR. That's in another terminal about 500 miles away. So I said goodbye to Rich and hurried over there (though I had plenty of time).

Check-in took forever because my bag was overweight. This also cost me $50. It took them 20 minutes to print the receipt for that $50. This meant that by the time I got to the security line, I was already pretty frustrated.

Beep! That's me, trying to go through the metal detector.

"Sir, you'd better take off your watch and your belt. If you beep a second time, we have to do a personal inspection." That sounded ominous.

Beep! That's me, trying to go through the same metal detector with a tiny, forgotten pillbox in my pocket. I had to strip down to just shorts and t-shirt and stand in a phone booth which is rigged to detect eplosive residue. After that, the "personal inspection." I had to stand with my arms out the sides, palms up, while they wanded me from head to toe. This is all done right out in the open, of course. For your protection.

I checked my anger. Humiliation is the order of the day when you fly, now. It's the next best thing to security!

On the flight to Philly, I sat next to a Java programmer who was very jealous of how fast my MacBook Pro could wake from sleep (he had a Dell), and an old consultant to the printing industry who knew all about the startup of the RR Donnelley Lancaster West plant (which is where I met Corinne). He even thought he recognized her picture.

Philly to Providence was just a 40 minute flight, and I sat next to a couple who cuddled and made out the entire time. Touched down in Providence just a few minutes early, and walked straight to the baggage claim...

... and right past Corinne, who stood there looking amused. I realized what I'd done just a second too late. ;-) (In my defense, I was expecting her to be waiting for me outside, and I was trying to read the signs to see where my bags would come in.)

Thank you, Bare Bones, for letting me help out at the booth. It was a great week! (And it's even better to be home!)

Traveling Solo!

seth@macrobyte.net — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 01:27:02 GMT

After RailsConf in June '06, Corinne said she was never going to another technical conference with me. I was too busy during the conference to pay much attention to her or spend much time with her. We never went anywhere or saw anything: I only left the hotel to pick up some supplies at local stores, and once to pick up pizza with Greg.

She was bored out of her mind, and was quite serious: no more travel with Seth to technical conferences.

Then I was offered a chance to work at the Bare Bones booth at MacWorld SF (which starts Tuesday). Yes, that's right, I'm almost certain to be the tallest and most unlikely booth-babe in MacWorld history!

Months had passed since RailsConf. The bad memories had subsided. "Ooh! San Francisco!" took their place. She wanted to go. I remembered the frustration (and reminded her), but frankly… I love having her by my side and didn't put up much of an argument.

We got tickets for the both of us.

Then Mike & Shannon — and the unborn baby — came into our lives. Work has been pretty good for the last few months, but it's not like we're rich (we couldn't have afforded this trip as a vacation, for example). With a bigger family to care for, the cost of (her) tooling around the city all week started to weigh on our minds. Last night she announced that she didn't think she should go.

For me, that came out of nowhere. I wasn't expecting it. I argued that it was too late for that, and that she'd change her mind again by morning.

Over the next 20 hours or so, we did what we also do when we disagree: we both switched sides. Repeatedly. (Note that this is not the best way to solve a disagreement!)

We tried to compromise by switching her return trip to Wednesday instead of Saturday, but it wasn't an option.

Now I'm sitting here in a hotel near the Providence airport, by myself. I used to travel alone all the time (I ate United's "Mileage Plus" program for breakfast) when I consulted for RR Donnelley, but I haven't gone solo since we married in 1997.

So the lonely giant goes off to San Francisco, mateless, and will miss his little lady every step of the way. If you see him on the streets of the big city, listen closely and you'll hear him mumbling. "It's only a week. It's only a week."

On the other hand… not having her with me means there will be nobody to stop me from buying (for her, of course) the brand new G6 iPod Phone iTV Pro. Or whatever they're going to call it. :-D

In the “Family Way”

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 20:53:13 GMT

Abbreviated update on the status of our burgeoning family…

Shannon (the mother-to-be) called me Monday night, just as we were leaving Gary's & Ellyn's, to ask if Corinne and I would take her to the doctor on Tuesday. (Asking us for help is a huge step in the right direction.)
We took them (her husband Mike went, too) to the doctor. Then to the hospital. Waited for hours in a mostly-empty emergency room, but what the doctor thought was kidney or gall stones turned out to be a minor infection and a pulled muscle.
At dinner, had some "straight talk" with Mike. Clearly depressed and resigned. They got into this situation through a combination of bad circumstances and bad decisions, and he feels the responsibility. I hope the judge is lenient, and will write to him soon to say as much, but we're preparing for the worst (ie, two years).
They're living with friends, but haven't had much of anything to eat lately because none of them have jobs and they all live on food stamps. (Try getting a job when you're homeless and 'going away' soon...).
While still a little wary and cautious, I'm starting to understand them. With understanding comes trust (a form of it, anyway). I'm also, definitely, starting to care for them both as people.
After we return from MacWorld, we're bringing them over here at least for dinner.
Sentencing is January twenty-something.
The baby is due early March.
No, Daniel, having a baby in the house won't prevent me from taking a day to go for a bike ride with a friend I've never met. Of this I'm quite sure. There will of course be sacrifices, but nothing so drastic. ;-)

For more details and better prose, see Corinne's update.

A Sense of Family

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 01:44:31 GMT

Jed moved in with us at the end of July, 2005. His bedroom was in the back corner of our finished basement, right off the incomplete kitchen. My office is down here also, at the other end of the house.

I've always worked long hours — being self employed makes that almost unavoidable — but having Jed down here changed something for me: I regained a sense of family that (I'm ashamed to admit) I'd lost at some point in the years since Corinne and I were first married.

It's not that there was any trouble in our marriage. Not even close. We still felt like a couple, and we've always been in love with each other. We just weren't a family. Maybe it was related to losing Shane, I don't know.

Children aren't a required element of a family: I believe you can be a family of two. Plenty of parents-and-children "units" aren't very family-like. So, to my mind, children aren't the key.

Having Jed around provided me, at least, with that sense of family. The moment he left (Dec 6th), I was instantly aware of the loss of that feeling. I felt family-less.

At the same time, I became keenly aware of Corinne, upstairs, going about her day. She's home more now that she's not working, and her “office” (the bird room) is still having the drywall repaired and repainted, so she spends most of her time in her “new” office (the livingroom right above my head), or in the kitchen which is just one room over. I hear her movements, puttering around the house, talking to the animals or on the phone (or to herself!)

So what of it? I've found my lost sense of family by doing the obvious: spending more time upstairs, with the person (and critters) that make my family unique. I've totally stopped watching TV (for a couple of weeks, now), too, so when I'm upstairs I'm able to pay more attention.

Aside

Related to this — though I'm not quite sure how — is another change. I've been going to bed earlier and getting up earlier, every single day. Going to bed by 11 and getting up by 7 when everyone else is still sleeping, then having my breakfast and doing the readings out on the deck as the sun comes up.

Nothing earth shattering, but it's weird that this happened without my making a conscious decision to do it. For months I had been going to sleep extremely late, and then was too tired to get up at any decent hour.

Again, it changed when Jed left, but I think this is just one effect in a long chain of causes-and-effects.

I can't over-stress what a big deal this is for me. A lot of things in my life feel more “right,” now, than they have in a long time. And of course, this “sense of family” is stronger than it was when Jed was here (brother versus wife...). Plus, work has been more challenging and rewarding than it has been in years.

Questions

What will happen when the “bird room” is finished (possibly Friday, with a couple more days to move all the stuff back in there) and Corinne's office is no longer in the living room? There's no room for me to park in the bird room in the evenings, so it looks like we're going to replace Corinne's eMac with a used (or cheap and new) laptop so that we can BOTH be in the living room (or wherever).

If we're going to do it, I'm hoping we can pick it up before MacWorld SF. It'll be handy for her to have her own machine, so she can still check her email after mine is stolen from the show floor. ;-)

(Oh, hey, I hadn't yet mentioned that we're going to MacWorld...)
With all of these changes, all this new-found sense of family and rightness, will things get even better (or just “differenter?”) when we have the brand new baby girl here in the house?

(Oh, hey, I guess I hadn't mentioned that yet, either!)