Dangerously Opinionated

Now, I don’t mean to be bitchy, but think in your mind of a giant list of all of the things that you might want to run in Parallels on OS X. OK, got it? Now, in your top five, do you have “Ubuntu Linux”? You do?

Then why the hell isn’t it supported in Parallels in a rational way?

What’s even worse is that it won’t even install with the “2.6 kernel” generic Linux profile.

What’s even more worse is that the Parallels forums are full of the normal noise and crap that is typical of any forums. As far as a search for “Ubuntu” on the Parallels forums goes, it’s an unmoderated unauthoratative mess of crazy talk and differing directions, including “run Q instead” which, based on my last evaluation was akin to “poke yourself in the eye with a sharp stick” and seemed more like trolling or astroturfing than an actual honest helpful suggestion (since the poster in question has only made three posts in his history, and all of them are “use Q”).

The greatest thing about Q is that it’s not a “search engine optimized” term, so it’s impossible to Google for, and my constant mention of it won’t contribute to its popularity. Q, Q, Q.

But the good news is that I found a reasonable site that summarizes what you need to get through the installation of Ubuntu 7.04 in Parallels which seems to work just jim dandy.

Hint to Parallels: I know you’re optimizing the experience for Windows, but I imagine that Ubuntu would be a good idea to support also.

So recently I’ve been reading all of my RSS feeds using Google Reader. The thing I like the most is that I can click “Share” and it goes to my own special little feed comprised of articles that I pick. I don’t have to write any commentary, I don’t have to do shit — it just pops the article right in there. Pretty sweet, and pretty easy.

Here’s my problem. I got my first “subscription-only” RSS feed, and I don’t know what to do about it — Google Reader doesn’t support feeds that require authentication. I mean, I can read it in my primitive NetNewsWire reader, but I lose my wonderful “share” functionality.

One thing that pops to mind is that instead of using authentication, use obscure directory names and symlinks. So if you want to authorize Joe for a feed, you make a directory called “Joe-asalkjshflkjh234ihlkjh234″ or whatever. The point is that it should have Joe’s name in it (so you know it’s Joe’s) and some amount of random crap in it, so that it’s hard to guess. Put a symlink in the directory to the actual feed, and then give Joe the URL.

Now, one thing that might happen is that your jerkwad RSS reader might do something with that feed other than use it to make an article list for you (like they might retain the feed URL and it might get leaked). That’s a bit rude, but I’m not sure what you can do about it.

The good news is that if you want to remove Joe’s feed, just rm it, or if he needs new credentials, just mv it. Unless directory browsing is turned on for your website, no one should know that directory is out there.

Testing out the TextMate blogging bundle. TextMate rulez.

Here’s a challenge for you. Ready?

In Java and C++ on OS X, output to the console the following string:

I have €100 to my name.

You’ll be surprised how hard this is.
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So I found out that GeSHi is even smarter than I thought. Check out this Java snippet:

Note the links for the Java classes. Not perfect, but not bad. Automagic.

So a few weeks ago there was some giant event at SourceForge where no one could use developer CVS. For like four days. So congratulations — SourceForge, you now have officially “one nine” uptime for 2006.

I know it’s free. But does that mean it has to suck? I’m sure everyone’s working hard. But it’s not like there’s no money coming in.

The Fink guys are pissed too. I presume there is some market that’s served by poor IT. Now that I have a Dreamhost account, I’m going to manage anything I do going forward through them instead.

I was messing around with Beta 3 Beta 4 of the Parallels VM environment for Intel OS X.

Dayamn.

I got Windows XP SP2 plus Cygwin plus Visual Studio 2005 on there without a hitch. And it’s fast. CD, network and sound all works perfectly. I’m a fan. Can’t wait until the final release.

It kicks the shit out of the QEmu-based turds:

• OpenOSX WinTel for Mac OS X. I actually paid money for this. I’m not sure it was even worth the time I spent downloading it. A crappy interface, and the product basically doesn’t work. Got as far as installing Windows XP SP2, (after like three attempts), went to install updates and “some of the updates could not be installed”. Winner.
• Q. Despite staking out a letter of the alphabet, and a small amount of graphic design sensibility, these guys couldn’t even boot the Windows XP SP2 disc.

This is the Open Source way. Provide a product that works on your own machine, and not anywhere else. Quality is a secondary concern to the technical masturbation. Well, enjoy it. I hope you spend my $25 on making the product better.

Note that I didn’t provide a link to those jerks. Not going to give them the satisfaction. And I do apologize if this is harsh, I really do — but when the stuff just fundamentally doesn’t work, I don’t have a lot of compassion.

I found some cool links today. All stemming from the same link.

• David Weiss is involved with the Mac Lab at Microsoft. He provided a tour of the lab that’s cool. An evil army of 150 Mac Minis are part of the population.
• I read some of his other posts, and found TN2124 at Apple — debug tips which seem pretty handy.
• Which included a cool URL hack to open a man page (on OS X anyway). Check out the ktrace manpage. Or if you’re not on OS X, don’t.

I ended up on some ADD fest and found Apples to Oranges and their bar graphing stuff. Sweeet looking.

I figured I’d test a code snippet and see what happens.

That’s a PHP example. How about Objective C:

Outstanding! One issue is that when you specify the “code” tag, you have to use double quotes, and you have to know the random identifier that GeSHi uses (Objective C is “objc”). So for instance:

Won’t work. But:

Works fine.

I’m excited.

Oh, and by the way, I did this with the Code Snippet plugin, which uses GeSHi for syntax highlighting (which seems cool in its own right).