Julio Santos

I’m taking 5 minutes away from the mac, to tell yall how it’s going…but then I’m going back!

When I decided to upgrade my first computer,

I came across the first in a long series of forks in the road. Apple or IBM PC-XT? At the time, the apples looked too much like the Commodore 64 I already had, and the XT seemed way more hackable (no I didn’t think about it for too long - I just listened to my gut, that’s all). So I went with the XT.

For the longest time, PCs had the right level of hackability to me. About a decade later, Linux was great but mostly for people who liked to code by moving magnets close to the disk (I hear it’s better now). Macs were for people who didn’t like to code.

PCs seemed to provide just the right level of hacking satisfaction - and I could afford one.

Okay, enough with this apologizing.

For the past few years, the mac combination of pretty and power has been very tempting. I couldn’t resist no more and finally got me one of those things!

(click the image for more)

At first, after the excitement of running Finder, and iChat and ls -lisa, I thought I was going to hate it. None of my key shortcuts that I’ve known for so long, seemed to work. ctrl-c doesn’t copy, and ctrl-v doesn’t paste.

The most frustrating thing was the installer. After downloading and double-clicking the file, it shows this huge dialog with a very simple message:

Drag this big-huge icon to this big-huge location (or something like that).

Well, I couldn’t see it. Clearly no install will have be that easy, so why are they lying to me, telling me that all I have to do is drag this icon? Why they don’t tell me how to actually install this app?

Well, I guess I’ll try what they’re suggesting, since no one is watching. I know it won’t work, and I won’t mention it when it will obviously do nothing.

Drag…drop…

Whoa! It did work!

So anyway, I’m starting to get the hang of it. Enough that I’m hooked. Speaking of being hooked, time to play with it some more.

One of these days I’ll compare the Thinkpad and the Macbook Pro side by side, just for extra fun.

While waiting for the macbook pro, I reshuffled my systems at home. My thinkpad becomes the main system, the old main system becomes Morgane’s computer, Morgane’s computer becomes a pile of pc parts behind the couch.

While I was waiting for the mac (it’s so sweet btw! I’ll talk about it later), Fabienne and I shared the thinkpad. Nothing wrong with that of course, but the whole trillian thing was a total mess to set up for more than one account on the same computer.

After banging my head against the wall, trying to have my contacts load when *I* log on, and her contacts load when *she* logs on, as opposed to mine no matter what, here’s what made it work:

- When creating trillian profiles (one per user), make sure that:
+ profiles have the same name as the users
+ *disable* automatically log on
+ don’t use the default preferences location. instead make it point to the user’s “my documents” for example
- no password. well, a blank one
- edit the trillian shortcuts and add /profile bob if you’re bob. for example:
“C:\Program Files\Trillian\trillian.exe” /profile bob

whew

As usual you can get it from here.

Lots of bug fixes. 139 apparently.

I didn’t have time to play much of lotro today, since, you know, I got the mac and all - I’ll say a word or two about it later, but lotro for now.

I don’t think I’ll get addicted to it at all (that’s not a bad thing I think). I made it all the way to level 3 so I must know all there is to know about the game:

- It looks like there won’t be much PvP.
- Lowbies get to kill spiders and wolves (for the gazillionth time)
- At least in the newbie area, there are invisible walls. I don’t like that, but I think it’s only there.
- I can only play a “good” race: dwarf, elf, human, hobbit. That’s no fun.

Here are “a couple” of screenies.

Back in the day when I was a mmo-head, I guess I must have signed up for the Lord of the Rings Online beta, because they tell me I got in. Or maybe it’s open now, or whatever. Of course I know better not to start a new game…but just in case…

Since Apple won’t let me run their OS on a virtual machine, I found a loophole for running it, I ordered a MacBook Pro. Take that Apple!

Well, for now they’re still winning though, as the system seems to be stuck in Alaska. What is up with that!? I want it!

I paid the extra $15 to get it in 3 days, so they better put it on a direct flight from Anchorage to Sunnyvale International Airport.

edit: this just in!

Feb 16, 2007 6:30 AM - Departed FedEx location - OAKLAND, CA

sucks

…until Apple changes its licensing policy, we prefer to not speculate about running Mac OS X in a virtualized environment

That’s a bummer. I was hoping that a year after the Intel announcement I would be able run Mac OS X without having to get another system. Seems unlikely.

The brilliant Alistair Cockburn, during a talk he gave recently to the bayxp folks, referred to XXDD, which was entirely new to me.

Apparently Alistair, and Jeff Fredrick and a couple of other folks, were talking about how lame the term TDD was (TDD stands for Test Driven Development). It’s supposed to be lame because as any decent agilist knows

“Test Driven Development Is Not About Tests”(™).

Which is like saying that Computer Science is not about computers (interestingly, that’s true, CS is not about science, just like astronomy is not about telescopes, but I quickly digress)

You can read all about the rationale right….here.

I would like to say a few things:

1) Jeff! I resent that you never mentioned this fine story to me. My only hope is that your source of inspiration was what you were drinking at the time, and that you forgot all about it the next day.

2) Couldn’t the whole thing be solved if instead of Test Driven Development, you call it Test Driven *Design*? Because, though TDD is not about testing, it is about design!

3) Great. Just when I no longer need to say that Extreme Programming is not about coding while skydiving, I now need to start saying that XXDD is not about beer. Oh, and XX is *not* good beer. This is where good beer comes from.

Today was my last day at

.

I’m sad that I won’t be seeing my friends there that often anymore. Some I’ve known and worked with for more than 8 years. It’s cliché I know, but they became like family.

But I’m very excited about this whole new page. I really am. Despite being excited, I don’t want to say too much about it just yet, so I won’t (that’s the great thing about having your own blog, you don’t need to say stuff, if you don’t want to).

I can say this though, I was very impressed with everyone I met there. Smart, passionate and on a mission to change the world. What more do I need?

Recently I’ve been looking for a text editor like textmate without having to get a mac. I want the windows equivalent damn it.

Over the years I have used many IDEs and text editors. The only one that I was really attached to, wasn’t even a real text editor (F4 I think it was the edit key). It was norton commander. God I loved that thing. Then windows was everywhere and supposedly there was not going to be need for using the keyboard anymore. I wonder how that turned out.

So, while hunting for a decent alternative to textmate on windows, I thought I would have to give up or write my own. I just want an editor for plain old text, ruby, lisp, javascript, css and the occasional html file. How hard can that be?

Here’s what I have tried so far:

Nothing really exciting, except for intype, quite promising indeed. Then I came across this today:

I’m very excited, it seems that I’m done.

Just for completeness, I’m still not going to use:

- emacs
- vi

edit:

Others I had forgotten or didn’t know about:

It’s about time I mention it then. I canceled (again) right before Christmas. The pattern seems to be this:

- Activate account around July
- Play the game like my life depends on it
- Around October start wondering what the hell I am doing
- Push the “cancel” button around December

I’m free again.

Here are some of my alter egos:

The Glorious Lord Tar-Palantir! Ultima Online

Mage in Asheron’s Call

Bounty Hunter in Star Wars Galaxies

Big dude in City of Heroes

Enforcer Atrox in Anarchy Online - Unfortunately I can’t find the evidence anymore, but I looked a lot like the young fella here

Warrior in Asheron’s Call II

Necromancer in Guild Wars

Wizard in Everquest II (I was a rat!)

Warrior in Dungeons and Dragons Online (for a whole weekend)

Priest in World of Warcraft

Seen on the internets, here actually.

EDIT: Wierd, digg thinks “wierd” is misspelled.

I lawled