LaunchBar vs. Quicksilver

Anyone who has ever talked to me about Mac OS X knows that I think LaunchBar is the best utility ever. As soon as I install a copy of Mac OS X, LaunchBar is the first application I install. If it's not installed, then I find myself hitting command-space and wondering why nothing is happening.

Yesterday I found out about an upstart competitor to LaunchBar named Quicksilver . Lots of people were writing gushing reviews, so I decided to download it and try it out. It's a lot like LaunchBar, but it has more eye-candy and visual modes. It also claimed a few improvements over LaunchBar, such as Internet searches and iLife integration. I thought it had promise, but I decided to move back to LaunchBar since I ran into some bugs while trying to configure my Quicksilver "catalog". (In fairness, QuickSilver is still in beta.)

Today, Objective Development has launched a counterattack with the release of LaunchBar 4 Beta 1 . It has all of the features of Quicksilver and then some. Probably the biggest new feature for me is "Fast, multithreaded indexing engine, performing live index updates in background." It was always annoying to install a new application, try to use LaunchBar to launch it, and then remember that you hadn't rescanned your Applications folder recently. This LaunchBar update should make that a thing of the past.

The Mac OS X application launching utility market is in for some interesting times. Quicksilver has the visual edge, but LaunchBar 4 has more features. Quicksilver is free (at least during the beta), and LaunchBar is $20. Hopefully this competition will result in a wave of innovation that will benefit all Mac users.

Hardware RAID for Power Mac G5

Lately I've been thinking that I should take better care of my data. A hard disk in an old PC of mine died. Fortunately the data on it wasn't important, but it made me think how much data I'd lose if my G5's drive died. I'd like to setup a RAID mirror on my G5 to protect against data loss. Apple has software RAID support in Mac OS X, but I'm wary of software RAID. There are often compatibility and booting issues with software RAID. Also, according to XLR8YourMac.com , using Apple's software RAID to create a mirror can reduce disk performance by up to 40%, which is unacceptable.

As for hardware RAID, there seem to be a number of external Firewire solutions , but most of them are very expensive, and overkill for what I want to do. I'd also prefer internal RAID, since I plan on making the RAID mirror my startup drive. The only product I've seen that fits my needs is the Acard AEC-6890M . It supports hardware RAID 0 and 1 using Serial ATA drives. The problem is that I haven't been able to find many reviews of the card. Also, the company's web page is a bit difficult to navigate, and doesn't inspire total confidence that updated drivers will be available (if needed) for future Mac OS X revisions. I have seen a few good reports on the card on messages boards, though.

Anybody ever dealt with Acard, especially with their RAID cards?

Feedster

Feedster is a great way to find RSS feeds for sites that don't have their own feeds, or don't display them prominently. Just today I found feeds for maddox.xmission.com and Inc. Magazine through Feedster.

Class Schedule Planning

Registration for Fall 2004 starts soon, so I'm trying to determine my schedule. This will be my final semester at Case. There are no classes that I have to take, although I do need a technical elective. I think I will only take 1 or 2 EECS courses, and fill the rest of my schedule with some practical courses that I'd like to take before graduating. I plan to work full-time for awhile after graduating, so this may be my last chance to take courses for some time.

I really like the entrepreneurship class I'm taking right now, and I'm looking at some follow-up courses that I think could be very practical: Accounting 101 and Entrepreneurial Finance (ENTP 310). The finance class has very good course evaluations. Accounting 101 is a co-req for it. I just hope Accounting 101 isn't too basic to be useful. If anyone has taken that class, let me know what you thought. Another course I might take is Game Theory (ECON 329). I've heard good things about this course from Josh . Still another course I might take is Intermediate Micro Theory (ECON 308).

If anyone has recommendations, post a comment or send an email.

Gallagher and IBM

Here's a nutty story about some comedian named Gallagher, and his watermelon smashing show at the IBM booth at Comdex 1993.

(Via inessential.com )

Hoax Hilarity

The people in the library might think I'm crazy, but I couldn't help but laugh out loud after reading this headline and first paragraph from an article in today's Wall Street Journal:

Bizarre Hoaxes On Restaurants Trigger Lawsuits

The restaurant industry is struggling to get in front of a bizarre hoax in which outlet managers across the country have been duped into strip-searching employees or customers.

Basically, a guy has been calling restaurants pretending to be a police officer and telling managers that they need to strip-search people. He even got one manager to perform a cavity search. I'd link to the article, but WSJ is subscribers-only.

The Apprentice

I recently decided that I wanted to check out The Apprentice, since it's been getting so much buzz. I downloaded a bunch of episodes, and so far I really like it. It's very addictive, which is a hallmark of Mark Burnett shows (I'm also a fan of Survivor). I even purchased the theme song from the show on ITMS:

The O'Jays - For the Love of Money

Mathematics of Marriage

After writing yesterday's essay, I was reminded of a book that I put on my Amazon.com Wishlist some time ago: The Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models . I just checked the library catalog, and KSL has a copy of it, so I'll have to pick it up tomorrow.

Long Distance Relationships: An Analysis

Yesterday I somehow got into a discussion of long distance relationships (LDRs), and I offered my view that LDRs where you agree not to see other people are usually pointless. I wasn't satisfied with my argument, though, so I spent some time thinking about it last night, and I came up with this:

Let's view relationships as a market in which you are looking for another person to satisfy certain needs. Different people are able to satisfy those needs to different degrees, and of course you are looking for the person who best satisfies your needs.

Now let's consider two forms of LDRs: those in which you agree to not see other people, and those in which you don't. Then the following scenarios are possible:

See Other People LDRs

During Separation: Obviously you can stay in contact with your original partner via a variety of means, but certain needs cannot be met this way. You can see other people though, so your needs are met to some degree by somebody new. The degree to which your needs are met may be greater or lesser than before.

After Separation: There are three scenarios.

1. Your original partner met your needs better than anyone you met during the separation, so you return to them.
2. You met someone new while you were separated and they meet your needs better than the original partner, so you stick with them.
3. Your original partner met your needs better than anyone you met during the separation, but they met someone else while you were separated, and don't want to get back together with you.

Don't See Other People LDRs

During Separation: You stay in contact with your original partner, but some needs are not satisfied at all.

After Separation: There are two scenarios.

1. You get back together with your original partner, and your needs are satisfied again.
2. Something happened while you were seperated, so you don't get back together. For example, your partner was frustrated that their needs were not being met, and saw someone else anyway. Or you've "grown apart". In any case, you are back on the market.

Given these scenarios for See Other People (SOP) LDRs and Don't See Other People (DSOP) LDRs, what is a rational course of action? Well, scenarios 1 and 2 in SOP LDRs are better than any scenario for DSOP LDRs. You get your needs satisfied at some level during the separation, and then, at a minimum, you go back to your previous level of needs satisfaction. You may even end up finding someone who better satisfies your needs. However, there is a danger, namely scenario 3 of SOP LDRs. Your partner may find someone better than you, and leave you.

Thus, it seems that the choice between SOP LDR and DSOP LDR hinges on how much you fear scenario 3 of SOP LDRs. If you aren't worried about scenario 3, then you should definitely go with a SOP LDR. However, if you are worried about scenario 3, then the issue becomes a little more murky. Going with a DSOP LDR doesn't guarantee you anything: scenario 2 of DSOP LDRs could occur.

If you are worried about scenario 3 of SOP LDRs, then it is probably because you believe that you have benefitted from a "market failure". Essentially, you think that you've found a partner that is much better than the average partner you could expect. Thus, you want to protect this market failure, and might go with a DSOP LDR. The problem with this strategy is that your partner is likely to figure out that a market failure has occurred sooner or later, leaving you with an increased likelihood of a scenario 2 DSOP LDR, which puts you back to where you started.

For all of the above reasons, I think SOP LDRs are usually the way to go. If you are not worried about your partner meeting someone better than you during the separation, then the outcome of a SOP LDR will be better than any possible outcome of a DSOP LDR. If you are worried about your partner meeting someone better than you, and decide to go with a DSOP LDR, then you have a better than average chance of the DSOP LDR ending with you and your partner separated. Thus, the only reason to go with a DSOP LDR is if you are worried about your partner meeting someone new and you are nearly certain that you will be able to get back together with them after the separation. This scenario seems pretty unrealistic to me.

Erotic Photo of the Day

Oh, baby. (Taken from an Apple advertisement.)

The Hardware-Software Interface

EECS 314 hardware and software group members consult in the design of an ISA for the Nybblet processor.

New Technorati

Technorati has released a new version of their site. The most noticeable new feature is that you don't have to pay to create a watchlist. Watchlists allow you to be notified when someone links to your blog. If you have a blog and haven't yet signed up for Technorati, now might be a good time to do so.

Weekend Update

I slept in late on Saturday and Sunday, and I think I'm finally over the flu.

Saturday evening Jason, Lynn, Dave, and I went out to Luchita's for dinner. I had the Steak Fajitas, which were good, if a little overpriced. I really liked the chips and salsa. It was good to get out of the dorm, and we had a good dinner conversation.

Saturday night a bunch of us sat in the suite, drank some beer, and continued discussing topics that we started on at dinner. We also watched a few episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is an absolutely brilliant show. Some people didn't really like Curb Your Enthusiam, but I don't think that they understood that it's not a "ha-ha" laugh out loud show. It's more of a "watch the screen between the cracks in your fingers as you recoil in horror" type of show.

Sunday I accomplished a fair amount of work (much more than I did last week, when I had the flu). Wrote up a project proposal, set up a CVS server for projects, and continued studying aspect-oriented programming. Jason and I finally watched last week's episode of The Shield, which I thought was good, but not as good as the first episode of the season. Parts of the plot were a little hard to follow. Plus, I thought the way Vic handled the gun-buy at the beginning of the episode was a little too half-assed, even for Vic. But at least we did get to see Dutch in top interrogation form.

San Francisco Symphony

Jason and I went to see the San Francisco Symphony at Severance Hall yesterday. Each week Case has a drawing for tickets to see the Cleveland Orchestra, and this week I won. Through an exchange program, the San Francisco Symphony happened to be playing, though. This was the first time I had seen an orchestra performance at Severance Hall, and it was quite good. Michael Tilson Thomas conducted a few pieces that I had never heard before (or at least didn't remember hearing). All of the numbers were good, but I wasn't blown away by any of them. My primary enjoyment came from getting to watch all of the members of the symphony and pay attention to the little things each of them did. For example, the timpani player had to dampen his drums to shorten the length of some notes, and it was funny to see him reaching out to place his hands on four different drums as quickly as possible. After the concert, some guy in front of us actually yelled out, "bravo!" multiple times, which was pretty amusing.

I probably didn't enjoy it as much as I could have, simply because the flu I contracted on Monday is still lingering, and I felt pretty tired. In fact, I think I'm going to go to bed right now...

SICP Lecture Videos

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is one of the most influential CS texts ever. It is the introductory book used at MIT. Now a series of video lectures based on the book have been released. Twenty 500MB DivX files in all. Fortunately, MIT has a fat pipe.

DARPA Grand Challenge Photo Gallery

Nice photo gallery and commentary on the DARPA Grand Challenge over at lemonodor :

The 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge is over. The final standings are in. Every media report so far has focused on the fact that nobody made it to Las Vegas, and missed the fact that this was actually a historic, impressive display of robotics.

Internet2 DirectConnect Hub

I was just informed of a new DirectConnect hub, for Internet2 users only. If your school is on Internet2, then I highly recommend that you check out i2hub.com . And remember, as i2hub.com states:

We are all from universities, so it's obvious that this service is for educational purposes only.

Recent ITMS Purchase

Rock Star (Jason Nevins Remix Edit)

(Yes, I'm a sucker for music played in iPod commercials.)

Roundup

Tonight's episode of The Shield kicked ass. It set a good stage for the third season, as well as being excellent in its own right. David and I have the following predictions:

• Mackey and Shane (a.k.a. Cletus Van Damme) butt heads and have a falling out, endangering the proceeds from the Money Train heist.
• Dutch's pride gets the better of him, and he goes through a rocky time. Mackey takes advantage of this, perhaps.

While poking through the BBC websites for Coupling and The Office, I came upon an interview with Ricky Gervais (David Brent from The Office), and he was praising a show called Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO. Now that I've finished watching all three seasons of Coupling (supposedly a fourth season is in filming), I'm going to have to check CYE out.

Here's a funny rib of events like BloggerCon : Attend PhoneCon 1876!

Browns Sign Jeff Garcia

Big news out of Berea today: the Browns have signed Jeff Garcia. Looks like it's the end of the line for Tim Couch. I have mixed feelings about the move. I don't think Couch is great, but I think the main problem is the offensive line. Given a little more time to throw, I think Couch could improve significantly. Garcia seems pretty decent, though, and he's got experience, which may be what the Browns need. Now Davis and Policy need to get out there and sign some offensive linemen.

Hopefully the Browns will be able to get something for Couch, instead of just releasing him. But unless there is more than one team seriously interested in him, suitors will probably just wait until Couch is released to talk to him. Someone said that ESPN was speculating that Couch might be traded to the Cowboys for two second round draft picks. I suppose that's the best we can hope for.

Taxes Completed

I spent this afternoon completing my taxes. Due to my out of state co-op, I had to file four returns, which sucked. I have a fairly large refund coming, which is bad in some ways (I gave the government a free loan) and good in others (obvious reasons). I don't believe there was any way I could have prevented the large refund, due to only working part of the year. Now I just need to fund my IRA, and I believe all of my 2003 tax-related transactions will be complete.

The Shield Premiere In One Day

Tomorrow (Tuesday) at 10pm on FX is the premiere of the The Shield , Season 3. This is one of the best shows on television, if not the best. It's a gritty police show where the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys is not always clear. In other words, it feels real. The first two seasons are available on DVD, so if you're not already a fan, then I recommend checking them out.

David and I are going to have a The Shield premiere party, so if you're in the Alliance area and want to come, let me know.

Coupling

Now that spring break has arrived, I've finally had time to watch Coupling , the sex/dating situation comedy from the BBC. Although I normally dislike sitcoms and dismiss them as "contrived", I really like Coupling. Of course, the situations in Coupling are contrived, but they are also hilarious. Often times the gags build, so that after you've seen the obvious gag coming, there are two or three more gags that you weren't expecting.

Jeff: "I mean, where exactly do you take your socks off? My advice is to take them off right after your shoes, and before your trousers. That’s the sock gap. Miss it, and suddenly you’re a naked man in socks. No self-respecting woman will ever let a naked man in socks do the squelchy with her."

I'm on a BBC kick lately. First The Office , now Coupling.

Midterm Exams Completed

I got through all five of my midterm exams without too much difficulty. None of them hit me with anything out of the blue, and I'm pretty confident that I did well on all of them.

Unfortunately, at 9pm on the first day of spring break, I got an email from my AI professor assigning a project to write an Othello playing program, and announcing that the project would be due on a date approximately three weeks after we get back from spring break. That means that I'll have about as much time to work on the Othello program as I had to work on a much simpler Mastermind playing program that was due last week. Also, we haven't even talked about adversarial search, alpha-beta pruning, and related topics in class yet. And to top it of, I forget to pick up a copy of Paradigms of AI Programming from the library before driving home for break. Grrr.

Now I've got one more item on my list of things to do over break:

• Do taxes
• Work on Cocoa Programming Competition app
• Work on Aspect-Oriented Programming project for OO Software course
• Read up on Trusted Computing for Computer Security project
• Read up on Othello for AI project

Weekend Update

I had a fun and reasonably productive weekend. Friday night I went to go see Master and Commander at Strosacker . I'd already seen it once, but I liked it enough that I wanted to see it again.

Saturday I had lunch with Phil, Jason, and Lynn at Phnom Penh . This restaurant is one of the best kept dining secrets in Cleveland; their pad thai is amazing. Everyone except Jason had the pad thai. Jason had asian basil fried rice, which is similar to pad thai, with rice substituted for noodles. After lunch we headed to PetsMart, where Phil picked up some new fish for the AquarIBM (a fishtank made out of an old IBM PS/2). Saturday evening, Phil and I went to see Scarface at Strosacker. I had never seen it before, and wanted to find out what all the fuss was about. I thought it was a very good movie, but not good enough to make any of my favorites lists.

Sunday we headed to Chipotle in an attempt to take advantage of this offer . Unfortunately, there was a very long line at Chipotle, so we decided to eat at Grum's Sub Shoppe instead.

Now it's time to buckle down, complete a few homework assignments, and then begin studying for my upcoming exam gauntlet .