I just went through a Quisition deck on my iPhone and it worked great.
One of my goals has always been to have flashcards on the go and Quisition on the iPhone gives me that, without any modification to Quisition needed.
If the iPhone had a custom SDK, it would have taken me weeks (or even months) to port Quisition. It may have been slicker, but you can't beat something just working, with no additional effort required. And a certain amount of slickness can always be added later via an alternative stylesheet triggered by user agent.
by : Created on June 30, 2007 : Last modified June 30, 2007 : (permalink)
Apple sure knows how to put on a show.
I headed down to the Apple store at the Burlington Mall around 4.30pm. Ended up being 100th in line. Some people had been in line since the morning (which turned out to be completely unnecessary).
Was around 6.20pm before I made it in the store. I was greeted by a handful of Apple Store employees who cheered and clapped me. They made each one of us who had been in line feel like a celebrity. All that was missing was the red carpet.
The on the way out, more cheers and clapping. To top it off, I was then interviewed by a local paper.
Some people thought I was crazy buying it today. The atmosphere made it all worth it.
Will report more once I've actually tried it out.
UPDATE (2007-07-06): The Lowell Sun has the story online. That's my hand, drink, and iPhone bag in the first photo :-)
by : Created on June 29, 2007 : Last modified July 6, 2007 : (permalink)
Has anyone faked the User-Agent to see more?
UPDATE (2007-06-29): Now that the iPhone is out, the page (on a real iPhone) has the title "Device Error page" and the body text "If you'd like to view an RSS feed, just enter the feed URL directly into Safari's address bar."
When you do that (e.g. http://jtauber.com/atom/full/) it actually redirects you back to http://reader.mac.com/mobile/v1/{{the feed url}}
by : Created on June 27, 2007 : Last modified June 30, 2007 : (permalink)
I've finished putting up the news on the Tintin movie from November 2002 when I first started my previous site thru May 15th 2007 when news broke that Peter Jackson would be taking on a bigger role than simply WETA providing a CG Snowy.
Still more to update, but you can now view the site at http://tintinmovie.info/
by : Created on June 22, 2007 : Last modified June 22, 2007 : (permalink)
The Monty Hall Problem is one of my favourite examples of a counterintuitive solution in mathematics.
It works as follows:
Now, the counterintuitive solution is that you double your chances of winning by switching. This is counterintuitive because Monty opening one door hasn't told you anything new about which of the two remaining closed door is likely to have the car behind it.
Here's how I think about it mathematically: when you pick your door, there is a 1/3 chance it's behind the door you picked and a 2/3 chance it's behind one of the other two doors. When Monty opens one of the doors, he hasn't changed that fact: there's still a 2/3 chance it's behind one of the two doors you didn't pick. It's just now he's narrowed down which of the two doors it could be behind. So there's a 2/3 chance it's behind the door you didn't pick that's still closed as opposed to a 1/3 chance it's behind the door you original picked. So you double your chances by switching.
Sound convincing? Well, some people still like to see it played out. So here is a little Python program that will play 1000 games and show you the proportion that would be won by a stayer and the proportion that would be won by a switcher.
by : Created on June 19, 2007 : Last modified June 19, 2007 : (permalink)
So I watched the keynote this morning and, like many people, was underwhelmed.
Maybe I was expecting too much after Steve's amazing performance announcing the iPhone but there was just nothing to get really excited about. The best part was John Hodgman at the start. Steve's high point (which isn't saying much in this talk) was his faux announcement of all the different versions of Leopard.
Nothing new was revealed about Leopard that excited me. The interesting stuff for me is mostly hidden away at http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/technology/unix.html: Terminal 2 (with tabs), Python 2.5, Scripting Bridge support for Python, DTrace support (including for Python). Time Machine and iChat Theater are cool but we already knew all about them.
All evidence continues to suggest Spaces will be application-centric rather than window-centric. i.e. it's not clear to me you can have different Safari windows in different spaces. All the demos talk about having different apps in different spaces but not different windows from the same app. Hard to see how you could divide up activity areas without allowing more than one to have a browser. But maybe that's supported and I just haven't see it yet.
Regarding the "Web as iPhone SDK" announcement: I have no problem with that (and actually talked about it when the iPhone was first announced). It's actually my preferred way of developing applications for the iPhone. But I think Steve presented it the wrong way. It felt too much like "sorry, it's the best we could do under the circumstances".
Am I still looking forward to Leopard? Absolutely. Do I still plan to buy an iPhone at the end of this month? Of course.
I just don't think this was one of Steve's best.
by : Created on June 12, 2007 : Last modified June 12, 2007 : (permalink)
On the weekend, I came across a piece of software that is so good-looking, it makes me minimize all my other windows just so they don't distract from the beautiful UI of this one.
It's Midnight Inbox from Midnight Beep.
I haven't started to use it yet, so can't comment much on its functionality. But it sure looks nice.
And sorry PC guy—unlike Safari, it's Mac only.
by : Created on June 12, 2007 : Last modified June 12, 2007 : (permalink)
I have 8,175 songs in iTunes. 700 of them were purchased on iTunes Music Store.
I just upgraded to iTunes Plus (for the higher quality more than the non-DRM) and took advantage of the limited-time ability to upgrade existing songs.
Unfortunately there were only 23 of them.
UPDATE: Although a normal song takes about 3 seconds to download in my new apartment, many of the iTunes plus upgrades are taking hours and/or timing out. I wonder if they are being served up from a different location that's overwhelmed.
by : Created on June 1, 2007 : Last modified June 2, 2007 : (permalink)