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I’ve spent my evening concocting an interface skin for Whamb, which is a lightweight audio player for OS X. It is freeware, and works nicely, with a very small footprint. The skin is basically a slapdash of standard UI elements and some iTunes elements. It is meant to be small, easy to use, and fully featured.

If you’d like to download it, go nuts. It is a zipped bundle, and needs to be unzipped and installed in /Library/Application Support/Whamb/Skins to work. You can also put it in the ~/Library equivalent if you want it enabled only for your user. If you want to try the skin out without installing it, just drop it onto the Whamb program logo. This skin may require version 1.2 of Whamb, but I don’t know for sure. When in doubt, upgrade!

Today I awoke to what sounded like rain. Turns out that it is nature’s most absurd weather pattern, freezing rain and sleet. High in the atmosphere clouds of water vapor condense into droplets of rain. As the rain falls, it enters a front of cold air that is being pushed over the city. The temperature drops, and each droplet of water gets cooled to beneath its freezing point. As the drops come crashing to Earth, some droplets are already frozen solid, but most are merely supercooled. As the supercooled droplets connect with objects on the ground, they instantly crystallize, coating the object with a tiny disk of ice. With time, this ice begins to build up as hundreds upon thousands of supercooled raindrops connect with surfaces like the sidewalk, and the windshield of your car. Soon, the entire area glistens with a sheet of pure, smooth ice.

But then, as the temperature continues to drop, nearly all of the water droplets freeze solid before reaching the Earth. A frozen raindrop is a beautiful thing, nearly a perfect sphere, clear and pure, surface as smooth as glass. As these little balls of ice build up on the road, they coat the initial sheen of ice with a layer of tiny ball bearings.

As your foot, or the tire of your car, presses down on these ball bearings, the pressure causes the surfaces of the balls to melt ever so slightly. As they melt, the water begins to lubricate the balls of ice, and the smooth ice beneath. In no time at all, the coefficient of static friction between the foot and the road has dropped to nearly zero. What this means, of course, is that the foot cannot maintain traction, and you will fall on your butt, or send your car into an uncontrolled slide.

As your car glides sideways down the interstate, gently rotating, you might ponder for a moment on the sublime beauty of the physical world. Marvel at how each of the universe’s multitude of properties have joined together to the singular effect of releasing your car from the constraints of friction, allowing it to dance freely across the road as though perfectly weightless. Isn’t the universe a wonderful and mysterious thing?

Of course, then your car drifts off the road into the gravel in the median, and the rapidly changing kinetic friction causes your car to roll three times, releasing the airbag and eventually laying your car to rest upside down on top of a crashed snow plow.

That is how many a St. Louisan began their morning, but thankfully not me. I managed to navigate Madalene’s All-Wheel-Drive, ABS equipped Subaru station wagon safely to work. However, nearly all of the employees of the museum called in to alert me that they would not be braving the weather this morning. I couldn’t really blame them, as many of them live much farther from work than I. So, we ran operations in complete skeleton crew mode. Almost none of the programs ran, and only a couple of the movies. I was unable to do a single demonstration today, due to my complete lack of staff, and my laryngitis, which successfully prevented me from doing any demos myself.

The entire building had probably 1/4 of its regular staffing, and lots of special allowances were made. The cafeteria gave the staff free pizza, and the few visitors who braved the weather were treated to empty galleries, and no lines. For one session of the Discovery Room, our special area for families with kids under 8, we had only four visitors, a nice Russian family. Of course, being from Siberia, they didn’t understand what the big deal was. This weather probably counts as a nice spring morning to them. A few other people came later in the day, correctly anticipating a deserted museum. Today’s total attendance for the entire museum is probably less than 50 people. The day began stressfully, with my illness and the lack of staff, but the pizza lifted everyone’s spirits, and in the end, a good day was had by all. In a few minutes, we’ll close up the museum, and everyone will try to get home before the sun goes down.

Most of you probably know all about the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers that are currently working on their missions on Mars. Spirit landed just over two weeks ago, and its twin, Opportunity will be landing tonight, 10:05pm CST, on the opposite side of Mars. These rovers have been given lots of attention, and are very cool projects. But one hope I have is that once people see how cool these rover missions are, they might be interested to learn more about some of the other missions currently going on. So here are a few suggested links to missions you might find interesting.

• Stardust – Stardust is a robotic spacecraft launched on Feb. 7th, 1999 with the mission of collecting material from a comet, by actually flying directly through its tail, and then return to Earth for collection, allowing us to see first hand what comets are made of. On Jan. 2nd 2004, it made a huge milestone by actually flying past Comet Wild 2, approaching to less than 150 miles from the comet. The craft was heavily battered from the dense cloud of gas, dust and ice surrounding the comet, but it made it through without damage. This short flyby video is not to be missed! In a little over 700 days, Stardust will make its way back to Earth, to return the comet and interplanetary dust samples that it has collected.
• Cassini-Huygens – The Cassini-Huygens project is one of the most ambitious interplanetary missions ever launched. Its mission is to explore Saturn and its largest moon, Titan. Of all the places in the solar system that may harbor life, or conditions appropriate for it, Titan is among the most likely. In fact, many scientists hold higher hopes for Titan containing life than Mars. It contains large amounts of frozen water, and its atmosphere is thick and rich with organic compounds. The Cassini robotic satellite will study Saturn, its rings and its 30 known moons, while the Huygens probe will be sent to the surface of Titan to study its composition, and search for signs of life. This mission encompasses some of the most advanced instrumentation available, and the Huygens probe, once deployed, will be the most distant man-made object to land on a celestial body. In about 6 months, Cassini-Huygens will reach Saturn, and about this time next year, the Huygens probe will begin its decent to the surface of Titan.

• SOHO – The SOHO (SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory) project is a joint mission between the European Space Agency and NASA to survey and study the most awesome source of energy we rely upon every day, the sun. The SOHO spacecraft was launched in 1995, and has seen nearly 3000 days of operation. The mission timeline has been extended several times, and is now set to stay active until at least 2007. SOHO has been a spectacular success, and its wide array of instrumenation is all fully functional after many years of service. If you are curious about the current solar weather, from the SOHO Homepage you can see current images of the sun, videos of recent solar activity, and an update on the solar wind speeds. At the moment solar winds are moving at a brisk 447 kilometers per second. Make sure to check out the Hotshots section of the gallery for some amazing and colorful videos of solar flares in action, including the recent solar activity from late October/early November 2003. SOHO is proof that cooperation between space agencies works!

  This is just a tiny sampling of what is going on in the world of space exploration. For more, check out the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Missions page and the main NASA Missions page. As a final editorial, I’d like to note that George W. Bush’s vision for renewed space exploration is admirable, but may not be the best method for moving forward. He proposes a series of rapid movements to finish the International Space Station and prepare a base on the moon to use for a departure point for extended manned space missions, including manned missions to Mars. While this is all well and good, he proposes a total of 12 billion dollars be moved toward this goal, but only 1 billion of this will be new money. The other 11 billion will be pulled from other parts of NASA’s budget. Manned space exploration is important, but many feel that we might set ourselves too far back if we sacrifice some of our less glamorous yet highly valuable projects in favor of a manned mission. Perhaps, with time, people will begin to see more of what our space programs around the world are doing, and will be able to justify increased budgets to support both popular manned missions, as well as the valuable scientific research performed by inexpensive and durable robotic spacecraft.

  P.S. If anyone else has a favorite mission they want me to put up here, leave a comment with some info about the mission!

  

On January 22nd, 1984, Apple ran an advertisement during the Super Bowl that introduced the first Macintosh computer. Almost at once the Macintosh revolutionized the idea of personal computing. Tossing aside crude interfaces, and adopting the attitude that anyone, and everyone, can use a computer, they changed the entire industry. Apple hasn’t always been on the forefront, but they have deeply affected how our culture thinks about computers, and still provides a driving force of innovation that trickles through the entire computer industry. My family’s first computer was a Mac IIsi, and after years of using Windows, Linux and everything else, I’m right back where I started, on the Mac. I still use Windows, and I still love Linux, but for now, there’s nothing quite like Mac OS.

I’m pretty pleased to be using a Mac, and when I consider how far things have come in 20 years, I’m pretty excited about what the next 20 have to offer.

Panther now lives on my Beige G3! Currently, the 10.3.2 update is installing, and things have been going well. For the curious, here was the basic procedure…

My Mac’s stats are as follows:

• Beige G3 Rev. A
• XLR8 G4/466MHz processor upgrade
• 768MB RAM
• Stock 24X CD-ROM
• Generic USB card
• ATI Radeon Mac Edition

• ATTO PSC UltraWide SCSI card

  To install Panther, I removed all but one stick of ram, all my USB devices, and the ATTO card. I backed up my critical data onto another drive, and pulled it from the system for good measure.

  I then partitioned my drive into two pieces, a 512MB and a 5.5GB from the remainder. I booted off of an OS 9.2.1 CD, and then installed OS 9.2.1 on the small drive. After running into an issue where OS 9 would crash on boot, which was solved by booting with extensions off (holding down ‘shift’ while booting) and removing some offending extensions, I proceeded.

  I downloaded version 3.0a11 of XPostFacto and ran it. I inserted the Panther Install CD, and in the options menu, I specified a throttle of 10, set my input device to Keyboard, and my output device to my ATI card. The ATI card is required, because Panther does not support the onboard video on these Beige G3’s. It is a shame, but on the other hand, the onboard video sucks, so you really should be upgrading anyway.

  Fiddling with the ‘options’ menu on XPostFacto can take the most time. I tried many different combos before finding something that worked. What worked for me may not work for you. I recommend checking out OWC’s Tech Forum and reading about other people’s experiences.

  After initiating the installation from XPostFacto, the computer rebooted, and began loading the installer. I got all sorts of crazy text messages, which could be identified as the BSD kernel loading. Eventually, the installer loaded, and I began the standard procedure of installing and choosing options.

  After the installation of the first CD finished, the computer booted up, but then failed, giving me CLAIM Failed errors in Open Firmware. I booted back into OS 9 (with the assistance of the Startup Disk control panel on the OS 9 boot CD), reran XPostFacto, and reinstalled BootX, the Extensions, and the Startup Items. Then I used XPostFacto to choose the 10.3 partition, and used it to restart the computer.

  It booted back into Panther, I finished the installation, fiddled with my settings, and installed the 10.2.3 update, which seems to have gone fine!

  I still have some things to do, mainly reinstalling my USB devices, my ATTO ExpressPCI PSC SCSI card (this will be the one to give me trouble, if anything does), the extra memory, and the Powerlogix CPU Director software to activate the cache on my processor. Then of course there is all the software reinstallation and backup restoration.

  But for now I can breath a sigh of relief, and go to bed, confident that everything is going to be downhill from here.

  Update: After a day of installing stuff, things are working quite well, with one exception. My ATTO ExpressPCI PSC card is detected by the system, but drives connected to it do not mount. The card was once an Apple BTO card, but has been reflashed to the ATTO firmware v.1.66. The system detects the card, and the ExpressPCI configuration lets me view the card’s details (even showing the connected drive), and the Panther drivers for the card have been installed, but still, no mounting. I may need to play with the termination settings some more, as it seems others have gotten this card working with Panther on Beiges.

  In good news, my Wacom Graphire2 works great, my Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse work great, and early boot video is enabled thanks to XPostFacto (set the keyboard as the input device and your video card as the output in the NVRAM settings, then reboot and enjoy). The video looks great thanks to the new card, and I’m loving Panther’s speed and features. It is clearly faster than Jaguar, and the Finder finally feels like a real product instead of being sort of half-assed. Expose is a great feature as well. I’m also enjoying the improvements to Mail, mostly speed, improved Junk filters and threading! PDFs load lighting fast, and Photoshop and Illustrator (both CS) run like a dream. Sound works fine, including global volume control.

  In terms of network performance, I’m amazed that finally, for true, OS X will detect and mount my PC’s shared drives! And the PC will mount OS X’s shared drives! Previously, this feature just wouldn’t work. Not at all. Along the same lines, I can now use my PC’s printer over the network. Unfortunately, I still have some driver issues to work out there, but the basic functionality is there, which is another first for OS X. I’m amazed at what Apple does with OS X in each revision. More and more this is feeling like the OS I really want to be working in.

  Aside from this ATTO problem, I’d say things are working quite swimmingly. More updates as I try to work through that remaining issue.

  Update II: The printing issue has been solved thanks to the Gimp-Print drivers included on Disk 2 of the Panther install! A driver for my Deskjet 1120C (connected to an XP box via the parallel port) was included, and works great.

  

Feeling sympathy for my mac problems of late, Billy has bequeathed to me a Radeon Mac Edition PCI, which is in fact, the perfect card to solve my problems! Now, I haven’t installed the card or Panther yet, and there is a dangerous road ahead fraught with alpha software, unsupported hacks, totally ridiculous lengths of SCSI ribbon cable, and a long handled spoon. But, Jebus willing, I’ll have Panther on this Mac by morning. I’ll post my experiences as soon as I’m able. Thanks, Billy!

Today has been a pretty good day in general. I got some good job-related news. A nice man sent me a copy of the service manual for the Phase Linear 700 Series II which Berg and I are attempting to repair. The procedures described in the manual will make life much easier for us. Also, I got to eat both sushi and falafel today. And when we went to get the falafel, the cheerful shop proprietor had several young women behind the counter so he could show them how to use a hookah. He sells them in the restaurant, and is quite skilled in their use, which isn’t immediately obvious to the novice. While we ordered, he had it drawing well, and was showing them how to place the coal, keep it drawing well, etc. I like that guy a lot.

Update: Its 3:30AM, and no luck yet. Curses! However, the video card is working great! Its just that dumb ol’e Panther does NOT want to install on this Mac. Not surprising, since it is technically unsupported, but I am failing where other’s have succeeded. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, but they may have to wait until tomorrow…

After trying to install Panther (OS X 10.3) on my Beige G3, I realized that it isn’t possible with my current configuration. Technically, the Beige isn’t supported by Panther, because it doesn’t have any built-in USB ports. However, some people have had success installing it with the assistance of XPostFacto a utility that previously allowed Old World non-G3 Macs to install OS X. Ryan, the author, is now updating the software to assist Beige G3 owners in the installation of Panther. It seems that it is possible, and some people have had success, but the major block at the moment is the fact that Panther does not support the internal video on the Beige. XPostFacto may solve this problem in the future, but currently it does not.

The only way anyone has had success with this install is by using an additional video card, such as the Radeon 7000 PCI or the Rage 128 PCI. There is a Mac version of the Radeon 7000 PCI, but unfortunately it still costs just over 100 dollars. There is a PC version of the same card which only costs $40. However, it lacks the second monitor output, and has a little less RAM. The card won’t work directly in a Mac, but a savvy user can flash a PC card with a Mac ROM and allow the card to be used on a Mac. This may be the path I have to take.

If anyone has one of these Radeon 7000 PCI 32mb DDR video cards they would be willing to part with for a reasonable price (20-30 dollars), let me know!

In the meantime, I’m trying to get Jaguar back on this Mac, but I seem to have misplaced my install disks. If I let you borrow them, please get them back to me soon! However, its possible I just lost them around the house…

So for now, the Mac is totally non-functional. Weep bitter tears for the last of the Old World Macs…

Update: I found my 10.2 disks! They were hidden amongst all the Space Ghost VCDs for some odd reason… I would never have found them if I wasn’t overcome with a desire to watch Space Ghost again last night.

You might have been wondering why I didn’t post for a few days. The story is both shocking and horrific…

There I was, walking down the street one fine morning, several days ago. As I rounded a corner heading into an alley (which I intended to use as a shortcut) I noticed a small monkey standing in the middle of the path, about 20 feet ahead of me. At first I was worried that he was an abandoned pet, in need of my assistance. But as I got closer, I noticed he was wearing a tiny eye patch, and was brandishing a letter opener at me. Making soothing noises, I came closer, trying to figure out where this little monkey had come from.

When I had gotten about 5 feet from the petite little ape, he screeched, and leapt at me. It is easy to forget just how far a monkey can jump when they want to, and in an instant he was on my face, biting me and whacking me with the broad side of his letter opener. At the same moment, several other monkeys jumped out from behind nearby trash cans, and joined their friend in attacking me. After a moment of fierce fighting, I was overwhelmed, and brought to the ground.

My first thought was that I was going to be killed, and torn to bits by these little beasts. But after knocking me unconscious, they drug me off to their hideout, instead of brutally killing me. When I awoke, I was tied to a chair in a damp concrete room. I could hear monkeys chattering in an adjacent room, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I tested my bonds, and found them quite secure. Soon a monkey poked his head into the room, and seeing that I had risen, called out to his compatriots in the next room.

The monkey with the eye-patch came in to see how I was doing. Instead of his letter opener, he now came bearing a Sharpie marker and a scrap of paper. He began to scrawl on the paper, and wrote in crude English, “U huooMan?” which I took to mean, “Are you a human?” I nodded, and he grunted happily. The guards around him nodded as well, pleased with my response.

After several hours of slow questioning, I began to assemble in my mind a picture of the situation. Apparently, the monkeys were part of a rebel insurgent group waging guerilla warfare on the city. It seemed that the police had captured a member of their group, and were attempting to arrange an exchange of hostages. As an employee of the local science museum, they had singled me out as a respected member of human society, and captured me in order to recover their comrade.

I was instructed to phone the chief of police, and to arrange for my transfer. They were to meet in the basement of a Steak and Shake that serves as a sort of neutral zone. Bongo would be released at the same moment I was, and I would rush into the arms of the police, while Bongo would run off into the night with his honor guard.

I made the phone call, and the chief grudgingly accepted to the terms. However, he noted that if I was hurt in any way, he’d call things off immediately. The scheduled transfer was not for several days, so they untied me and moved me to my own cell. I was kept in a broom closet, and fed overripe fruit twice a day. They allowed me a sampling of human magazines for amusement, but all they had was Sports Illustrated, Women’s World, and back issues of Teen Bop from 1992. Oddly, they seemed to think this was quite a crop.

Finally, the day of the transfer had come. They tied me up and put me in the back of a ‘73 Mini Cooper, which the monkeys had fitted with an inflatable human shaped ‘driver’ as well as auxiliary controls for the operation of the vehicle. Let it be said at this point that monkeys are terrible drivers.

After narrowly avoiding death on the motor-way, we finally arrived at the Steak and Shake. The police chief was waiting inside, and the monkeys rolled me into the room, tied up like a cigar. Bongo was seething from within a pet carrier cage next to the chief. The chief reached toward the latch of the cage, and the monkeys reached toward the knot holding my bonds. But just before we could be released, we heard a loud bang and the door to the basement room flew open. A greasy fry cook dressed in Steak and Shake regalia was standing in the doorway, brandishing two tommy guns. “Everyone get down! We are taking control of this meeting!” he shouted, sending a warning spray of bullets toward the ceiling.

At that moment it was obvious what had happened, the neutral zone had been compromised by a third party, and we were all being taken hostage. In a flash, the head monkey made a decision. He threw his letter opener directly at the fry cook, yanked on my bonds, and leapt behind a pile of boxes containing uncooked potatoes. Not fully understanding, I followed him as the other monkeys leapt through the air, aiming for other hiding places. Chaos ensued as gunfire was exchanged between sides. Crawling around behind the boxes, I ended up next to the chief, who handed me his sidearm. He was going to throw a box of milkshake flavor syrup at the attackers at the door, and attempt to disarm them with kung-fu. I was to provide covering fire from behind the buns. I nodded, and he was off. As he threw the box of syrup, bullets tore through its outer skin, spraying sticky, mint flavored goo all over the room. Suddenly, he was on top of the assailants, fists flying. The monkeys made their move simultaneously, jumping on the attackers and biting them fiercely.

Seeing my chance, I took aim and fired a single shot, knocking a grenade out of the hand of one of the attackers, saving our lives. Soon the monkeys and the chief disarmed the final attackers, and tension rose as the monkeys and the police turned to face one another. I called out for a truce, and at once, the monkeys gathered themselves, and fled. But as the last monkey dashed away, the leader monkey poked his head around the corner, glaring at us with his one eye. “Until tomorrow!” he screeched, in barely intelligible English, as he grabbed his letter opener off the floor, and disappeared.

After being checked for wounds, the chief shook my hand, and sent me on my way. After getting cleaned up, I finally arrived at home to write this.

Its a new year now! How many weeks will it take me before I actually get in the habit of writing 2004 on stuff? We’ll see! The other day I wrote 1997 on something before I caught myself. I don’t know why, only that my brain had misfired drastically.

New Year’s night was spent at Forest Park for the big celebration. An amazing number of people were in the park, with the final estimate being between 75,000 and 100,000 people! We were able to walk to the festivities, which was good, because all of the parking filled up, and over 70 shuttle buses were running at full capacity getting people in and out of the park. There were events at the main stage on the hill, at the Science Center, at the zoo, at the art museum, and various other locations throughout the park. Everywhere you went there were people hanging out. Certain areas were designated as alcohol free, such as the zoo. However, alcohol was allowed in most other areas. Shockingly, there was almost no disturbances due to rowdy drunk people. In fact, the police reported that they made NO arrests in the park that night. The police presence wasn’t overwhelming either, it was just that people weren’t being very unruly.

I went with Madalene, Barb, Joe and Caroline. We saw a dance performance, walked around in the zoo, danced to disco music, and checked out the art museum. We then watched fireworks at midnight. I dispensed a few ‘monkey kisses’ to ring in the new year. If you want to know what a monkey kiss is, the best way is just to receive one, so if you are curious, ask me about it next time you see me.

I recently found a 20 gallon fish tank by the side of the road, and it has been needing a stand strong enough to hold it. I decided that the best solution would be to build one myself, both for the fun of it, as well as to save money. This is the design I ultimately came up with in Autocad. The whole thing is built out of pine 2×4s, and 3/4 inch plywood. Lumber has recently gone up a lot in price, so it cost more than I was hoping. The plywood was 30$ for one sheet, which is quite high. But that is the price we pay when we cut down all the trees.

The design includes an open front, though I will be covering that with a fabric drapery, instead of traditional cabinet doors. The whole thing is ludicrously strong, and slightly oversized for the 20 gallon aquarium. The top space is 37” by 19”, when the tank is only 30” by 12”. The reason for this is the fact that a large number of tanks come in the 36” by 18” footprint, and a stand of this size leaves me a lot of flexibility for upgrading tanks. Say I want to move to a 30 gallon, or a 30 gallon breeder, or a 37 gallon, or a 38 gallon, or a 40 gallon, or a 55 gallon, or a 65 gallon. All of these standard sized tanks will fit quite nicely on the 36” by 18” footprint. I like flexibility. I’m also fairly certain that the stand is strong enough to hold as much as a 65 gallon tank, despite the fact that such a setup would weigh around 700 pounds.

I’ve built the main frame of the stand already, and all that remains is a final sanding and leveling, staining and varnishing, and the drapery. Then I need to figure out the filtration system for the new tank, and then move things over. How fun that will be!