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So, I spent most of last week trying to get the needed cable to run dual monitors off of my Mac Mini. I originally bought another mini-DVI adapter, which is what came with my Mac Mini. So, I returned that and bought a mini-DisplayPort adapter. Upon plugging in the adapter nothing was recognized. I restarted a few times, then did some research online only to find that most people are running USB video adapters. Upon reading this I assumed that the Mac Mini didn’t support dual monitors natively. I planned on returning the cable, and in my laziness kept it plugged in. Today I was browsing through my “System Profiler” when I noticed that it registered two monitors. I quickly turned on my second monitor to find my Desktop image greeting me. Surprisingly enough my dual monitors were alive and well. I’m not at all sure what happened or why they suddenly decided to start working, but I’m glad they did.

An interesting problem cropped up at work today. I wrote a script that uses our company database which is MySQL based. Everything has been running great. We were running MySQL on a Windows XP machine. Today, we cut over to a nice Dell 1950 server running Ubuntu Server 8.04.2 with MySQL server installed. As soon as we have the new server up and running with a restore of our data I test my script to make sure it is able to connect. To my dismay I find that it errors out saying that the MySQL object is returning nil (Ruby equivalent to null for you non-Ruby folks). I start thinking about the differences between the Windows and Linux versions of MySQL. I check that I can get onto the server using MySQL Client, which I can. After a bit more thinking and tinkering I finally figured out that Ruby was using an older version of the MySQL connector. Our Windows machine was running MySQL 4.3, and the new Ubuntu Server is running 5.0. One very important change took place between these versions, and that is how passwords are encrypted. A quick Google search revealed that you can force a user account to have a password encrypted using the older encryption format with a parameter. So, I created a new account just for my script with the necessary permissions, and like magic I’m able to connect.

As a side note, I haven’t abandoned my project. I have actually moved forward a fair bit. I have grabbed the necessary components, setup a bug tracking account, and setup an SVN repository for development. I have started development. I will keep you abreast of my progress. As of right now my tentative date for a first version is Saturday evening.

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Now playing: Maroon 5 - Harder To Breathe
via FoxyTunes

I am reminded of the Top Gear episode where a Ferrari Daytona is pitted against a high end speed boat. During the race Richard Hammond talks about how he is falling in love with the imperfect vehicle. I am reminded of this as I think about today and having spent a whole day on a Mac for the first time in my life. To be honest, I never thought this day would happen. I will be the first to admit that I, over everyone else, detested Macs for their locked down nature, and their Utopian, canned experience used to sell their products. After a whole day in their world, or sampling the Cool-aid as some might say, I’m growing rather fond of certain aspects. The big thing is that everything just works. As someone who has always loved the thrill of getting things to work on Linux this is a huge change for me. I bought the cheapest Mac made, the Mac Mini base model, expecting absolutely nothing short of a sad experience. What I found was something better than my supercomputer Windows components ever offered. In terms of gaming I don’t see myself switching anytime soon, unless Valve decides to port their games to Mac OSX. What amazes me is how well thought out every aspect of the experience is. The reason you get more done on a Mac is because you spend more time DOING what you set out to do, rather than working around problems, or getting things to work. Linux has its charms and speed when it’s setup properly. Windows was an ideal experience for me because compared to Linux everything worked very quickly. What I didn’t realize is how much time was invested in getting the little things to work. For example, iTunes is available for Windows, I personally wasn’t a big fan because of its closed nature, but say you use it on Windows and are playing your music and podcasts. You start compiling some heavy code, or launch a large application, your music will immediately begin to stutter or crackle. Eventually it comes blaring back after the load adjusts itself. Network hiccups like this happened to me constantly as well. On the Mac the load is handled beautifully. Music and media in general is such a large part of the experience it has the highest priority by default and never stops going. The concept of having 30 places where people can store data on Windows is so antiquated in comparison to the centralized nature of everything on OS X. Everything has a place, every type of data belongs somewhere. Applications are self contained, and run from these container, not installed and strewn across your system with hidden nuggets for you to find and clean up later.

The types of applications you find for OSX are so inspired as well. I don’t do any photo, video, or music stuff which Mac is known for, but even something as simple as programming web pages turns up results and applications that are so fun to code in that you are left wondering why you were punished all those years before. Coda is one such app, that adds little animations to show the completion of brackets or braces. Something that to a Linux efficiency freak such as myself is completely pointless, but I find myself intrigued and entertained at the same time that someone would thing to do something like that. The investment of time ensuring that things just work rather than look like they work is truly inspiring as a coder, knowing that such perfection can be attained through good and orderly code. The music sounds clearer, the networking runs faster, everything has a high shine polish on it no matter how seemingly insignificant it may seem. The drivers act as though they utilize every circuit the chips in my Mac Mini have to offer.

There are a few little bugs that do bother me, time may correct these, but seeing as I use a Windows machine everyday at work I think it’d be easier to fix them. The first one was that the “Home” and “End” keys didn’t take you to the beginning or end of the current line. This is a shortcut I use very frequently as a coder jumping to the start or end is something I do many times a day. I was lucky enough to find a small program someone had written to fix just that issue. There are still a few others which include: the “return” key in Finder should open the selected file (not try and rename it), F2 is for renaming files, low memory is becoming an issue (I didn’t expect to be using this machine this much). Most, if not all of these, are correctable. Tomorrow I will go pickup the converter cable to attach a secondary monitor.

I had a theory from a while back that the most important aspect of any operating system, aside from the kernel, was how the drivers were written. Effectively using the hardware you have as insignificant as it may seem is by far one of the largest things lacking on Windows. Windows uses hardware, Mac and Linux integrate hardware into how they function. I always could tell that music had more depth under Linux, and I can safely say the same on OS X.
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Now playing: Saving Abel - Beautiful Day
via FoxyTunes

Today was surprisingly full of things to do. I helped move around my parents new built in cabinets as each was painted in the backyard. After this we headed out for the afternoon where I purchased a Mac Mini. I had been thinking about buying a “cheap” Apple, if such a thing exists, for a while for iPhone development use. I’m no wiz kid at this sorta thing, but I thought if nothing else I’ll learn some neat stuff. So, I have spent the later half of the day setting up my new little machine. I’m rather impressed at how effectively it handles large loads. Being only the base model with 1GB of RAM I wasn’t expecting a screamer, but I have been rather nasty to it, and it just doesn’t give up. I’ve experienced only one lock up of a single application and that was iTunes, which I’ve experienced lock ups with on Windows when it was the only application running.

While I was installing updates and getting things settled in on the new system, I took the time to explore what IDE apps are available for OSX and stumbled upon a nice one called Coda. I’ve only played with it breifley and will have to use it to get a better idea of how well it works, but in terms of bragging rights it looks like a great program. I played with a few of the sample applications for the iPhone, but have a lot of reading to do before I figure out what I need to make various things work, or to write an application at all for that matter. Luckily I have tomorrow off from work, so I will have some time to play around with it some more. I didn’t however manage to get my timeline laid out. I still need/want to do this, my new toy kinda distracted me from that task. I will take another stab at this tomorrow and see if I have anymore luck, cause I sure as heck don’t have anymore money :-).

Happy 4th to everyone. Not a lot has happened since I last posted, but I have been thinking through some things and wanted to take the time to write them down here. I have put in some tentative start dates for some of my other Goals, such as Piano Lessons and Flight Lessons. These should be starting in Late Aug, which is also roughly when I will begin looking for a condo. Saving is going well and I’m roughly 1/3 of the way to my goal for a down payment amount. I’m excited to be starting some new endeavors which will hopefully help balance my work schedule with some outside time. I have also added a goal for starting a web based business. This is something I’ve tried to start in the past, and something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I have had several ideas about concepts for these web businesses all of which seem to be sound in principle, but have never launched. Seeing my time about to shrink again, I want to start taking measures to make this happen. So, my goal is to post daily status reports about my progress (or lack there of) towards starting a small web site. I’m hoping to start small, with something I can easily finish and manage, and then to build that out to something larger that will benefit many people and might even benefit larger corporations. For tomorrow, I want to establish a rough timeline with dates (this is a big deal for me, I never commit to dates for myself). I will create a page to keep my project status posted, but I don’t want to release too many details on the specifics of the site, as I don’t want somebody to get there before me :). Wish me luck, here’s t trying something new.