Blog posts for 2006

I wanted a high performance laptop that could run both Mac OSX and Windows. I ordered the 17 inch MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz 2GB RAM Dual Core laptop. This post will discuss my experience with the performance of the laptop, my disassembly of the laptop, my experience with apple phone support, my visit to the apple store, my experience with replacement parts and my overall impressions of the MacBook Pro.

2 weeks ago I received my MacBook Pro directly from apple.com. I took it out of the great looking box and tried to turn it on, but there was no response. I figured the battery was dead, so i plugged the laptop to the wall and pressed the power button. Again no response, so I held down the power button, I noticed that the power button was loose.

Eventually I got the computer to turn on. After working for a couple hours I figured the battery would be charged enough. The power plug is magnetic so I really wanted to try popping it out as I've seen so many times in their commercials. Once I pulled the plug, the laptop turned off right away. I plugged it back in, turned it on again and watched it boot back into OSX. I checked the power management settings and everything was OK. At this point I figured I was doing something wrong.

Every MacBook Pro battery has a little button and 5 LEDs next to it. You press the button to see how charged your battery is. It's a very nice feature that allows you to see how much battery power you have before turning on your laptop. The next day, I noticed that my battery was fully charged. I again pulled the plug and realized that it turned off the computer. I figured I had a faulty battery and looked on the net for anyone with a similar problem. I found a couple forums that described the issue. From this forum I found the apple battery exchange program, but noticed that my serial number wasn't in their list of acceptable serial numbers for an exchange.

I called support and found the customer support rep to be very helpful. They had me try 5 or 6 different things and then they put me on hold as they called a manager. A couple minutes later the support tech was back and told me that I did indeed have a faulty battery. He asked me if I had purchased the Apple One Care when I purchased my laptop. I informed him that I did. He asked for my credit card number in case I didn't return the faulty battery after the replacement battery arrived. I happily provided it.

There are a couple important parts of the support call that I left out.

1. The Apple One Care didn't arrive at my house yet, and they didn't have a problem helping me.
2. The laptop wasn't in my name, my business partner ordered the laptop online.

On both issues, they understood and did NOT give me a hard time. They could have used either one of these as an excuse to not help me.

They informed me that my battery would be at my house in 5-7 business days. I asked them if they could ship it express because I had a trip to San Francisco in a few days. He said that it was not possible for replacement parts even if I were to pay for the extra shipping cost. On the second business day my replacement battery arrived. I was very happy because it arrived within a couple days of my trip.

The replacement battery fixed my problem. But another problem started to occur. The loose power button that I mentioned at the start of this posting started to move around and it became harder and harder to turn on the laptop. I didn't have time to deal with it yet so I went on the trip to San Fran.

When I arrived there I realized that there was an Apple store only 5 minutes from my Hotel. I went in and asked a rep at the 'genius bar' if he could help. The genius bar is a big desk with several tech reps that can help you with any and every problem you have. He informed me that he would help me, but for future reference, I had to make an appointment to get help. He told me it would take 7 business days to fix the power button. He would have to replace the whole front panel.

The apple store, by the way... was amazing. It was glass, 2 floors with translucent steps and all computer models and iPods were laid out with a lot of space. You were free to play with anything and everything. Upstairs they had their famous commercials playing from a projector. They had a few rows of chairs and they held tutorials on Mac OSX software every day.

My trip to San Fran was only a few days, so I couldn't leave it with them for 7 days. I asked the genius bar tech rep if he could do the repair by the next day and he said that it wasn't possible. He mentioned that he saw this problem before and that it was a missing spring in my power button. So he wrote me up a case number and told me all I'd have to do would be to call apple and reference the case number. He also moved the laptop out of my business partners name and into my name.

After arriving home I couldn't bring myself to return the MacBook Pro for what would probably be another 2 or 3 weeks while apple looked at it. It might even be longer because of the holidays. I decided to take the chance and take apart my MacBook Pro. Knowing that it was very possible to mess it up and void the warranty, I still thought I'd take the chance.

Disassembling the laptop was pretty hard. Figuring out how to get the front panel off took me about an hour. Once I got the front panel open I had to figure out how to put the power button together properly. I was crossing my fingers that the 5 pieces that make up the power button was all I needed. After about 2 hours of playing with it I finally figured out how to get the power button working. It had nothing to do with a spring like the apple tech at the apple store mentioned. I don't think he was educated at all about the issue. If anything his suggestion cost me a lot of extra time because I was trying to rig the power button so it would touch a sensor on the main board. There was no spring and there is no spring involved in the power button.

So now I finally have a fully working MacBook Pro. I've been using it for about 2 weeks now and the performance is nothing short of amazing. I love the glossy display, I love the speed and I love the performance. I'm overall very pleased with apple and their support, although the apple store techs at the genius booth didn't turn out to be of any help.

As for working with the actual laptop, I love the way you can scroll left <-> right by dragging your index and middle finger from left to right. Ditto for scrolling top <-> bottom. I like that there is a single button and that you can right click by placing your index and middle finger on the pad and pressing the button. The build in speakers are very loud and clear. The symmetry in the laptop and the silver finish is beautiful.

The end result is that I'm extremely satisfied with apple support, I'm extremely satisfied with the performance of the laptop, I'm a little disappointed that I had a laptop with a bad battery and a broken power button. And I believe that in the future I'll only buy apple hardware. That has to say a lot, that even after all the problems above I still would only buy apple.

BusinessWeek estimates it took 10,000 employees about five years to ship Vista. That's 50,000 employee years. They estimate about 10 billion in cost to develop the operating system.

But is the operating system something that is wanted by consumers in the first place? I don't think so. As long as people can use the latest applications and play the latest games, do they really care about a different operating system?

I'm not sure why I'd want to upgrade from Windows XP Pro, to another platform where i get annoyed by security popups every 2 seconds. I'm not sure why I'd want to develop software for this operating system and learn an entirely new language, when I know I can use the old languages and it will work on all old and new versions of Windows.

I can't see vista taking off and making its costs back. Surely it will make in the billions, but I think relatively it will fall flat on its face. I think Microsoft took too long to get it out the door.

What should they have done? They should have released smaller, incremental changes. End users don't want to have to re-learn everything. They want small sets of new features. I'm anxious to see if Vista ever does overtake XP, like XP did 2000. I don't think history will repeat itself though.

I was going to write about when people started to hate Microsoft, but I came across something more interesting... the supposed reason why people hate Microsoft.

Many people say that one of the main reasons people don't like Microsoft is because of the size of their dominance. "People simply don?t like big monopolies". On the contrary though, Apple's iPod owns a huge amount of market share for digital audio and video players, yet they are still absolutely loved by almost all. Many people find it exciting that they are so big.

I believe that it's because of perfection. Microsoft can't be bothered with perfection. Instead they focus on copying the latest features, and getting something out the door. The focus on simplicity and elegance, is simply not there. With Apple the ease of use is there, the perfection is there, the focus on usability is there. I don't believe the people who work at Microsoft want to build the best thing possible. I don't believe they are inspired to do so. I don't believe they have the drive to. I believe that the employees want to get their job done, and that's it. At companies like Apple or Google, the employee's goal is to create something great, something perfect, something that has a great ease of use. And that's why we love them.

One example that comes to mind: When Microsoft launched their Live search, it was supposed to be a Google killer :)... you couldn't middle click on links to open them in a new tab. Did Microsoft not care that just about every Firefox user uses this in their everyday use? The quality is just never there with Microsoft. It took them years to realize that tabs give a superior ease of use and that people that browse everyday can save a considerable amount of time by using Firefox. Microsoft's lack of simplicity and usability is why I personally don't like Microsoft. They don't try to make things usable. They try to make them for idiots.

One final reason that could have a lot of effect is that Apple doesn't disclose what it is releasing and when they are releasing it until it is ready (most of the time). Microsoft always disappoints all of their customer base.

Who is Jef Raskin? Jef Raskin started the Macintosh project. He hired Bill Atkinson who put together the first prototype.

Jef named the Macintosh after his favorite type of apple, the McIntosh Apple. This name was only supposed to be a codename, the real name would eventually be the Apple V; However, the Macintosh name stuck.

Why is the Macintosh important? For one, it was the first computer to popularize a graphical user interface. It is also the moniker used in all of apple's computers.

Steve Jobs abandoned (or was forced out of) the Lisa that he was working on, to work on the Macintosh. Jef and Steve didn't get along and in 1981 Jef left the Macintosh project. The first Macintosh was first released in 1984.

It is said that Steve had more influence on the end product than Jef, which I would believe to be true if he was on the project without him for the final 3 years before launch.

I have an Apple 30" cinema display and new Mac Book Pro Laptop. The 30" cinema display has a max resolution (which I use) of: 2560x1600. The screen is huge and is sure to give me a huge productivity boost for my work. The price tag on the 30" apple display is around 2k USD, but over time it'll pay for itself. I'm extremely happy with it. Ever since I got an iMac several months ago, I will never go back to PC hardware. Everything is bright, nice, fast, and overall just plain better with Apple.

If you're a programmer, and you you use visual studio for programming then you should be using this shortcut. Go to Tools Customize and then click on the Keyboard button. Select "Edit.GotoNextLocation". And assign a global keyboard value of F4. For the GotoPrevLocation set it to shift F4. Then whenever you have build errors you just hit F4 to go to the next error. Ditto for when you have a find in files window.

Linked senses rare in some people, but does exist. For example hearing music and seeing colors, or having tastes as you see things. Read here.

I want one: Transparent fridge and washing machine

This kid uses echo location to find out where he is.

Funny weird Al video: White and nerdy

You are in a prison. There are two doors. One leads to freedom and the other leads to certain death. There are also two guards in front of the doors. One always tell the truth while the other one always lies. You can ask only one question to one of the guards before you open one of the doors. What question do you ask?

See the 2005 commencement speech at Stanford by Steve Jobs.

If you haven't heard of iTV, it's a product that apple will be releasing in the first quarter of 2007. Not many people realize it, but it's going to change their lives. In the future, say goodbye to DVDs and any other type of disc based media. Say hello to new ways to view video for free such as integration for your TV with youTube. Say hello to podcasts on your TV from sites like revision 3. Say goodbye to renting and purchasing movies. Everything will be downloaded and synced automatically to your iTV box.

iTV will power it all. It will connect wireless into your home network. Just about every home that has a TV and a DVD player currently will have one, including you. The price has been announced already, $299.00 USD.

Probably the most impressive guy on the planet...

• Steve Jobs was booted out of apple by the board in 1985.
• In 1986 he bought "The graphics group" which he renamed to Pixar. He purchased it for 5 million.
• After leaving apple he also founded NeXT.
• The internet was CREATED by Tim Berners Lee on the NeXT operating system.
• In 1996 apple bought NeXT and used it as the basis of their OS X operating system. They bought it for 402 million.
• In 1997 Steve started work as interim CEO back at apple.
• In 2000 he dropped the title interim and became CEO.
• In 2006 Disney purchased pixar for 7.4 billion.

Best homepage you can set is a random Wikipedia page. Simply add the following as your home page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

IE 7 is finally out to the public and out of beta. I wonder if it will effect firefox's market share, or the rate of increase of firefox's market share. If i had to bet i would say that it will slightly slow the rate of increate of firefox's market share. So my guess is that firefox will continue to gain market share.

Read them here

You can see the picture of myself in the About Me section.

Yahoo! and MSN, along with others in the search market, had the chance to buy youTube, but they let Google scoop it up for the small amount of 1.65 billion. Just another example of Google being a great company, they seen that video is becoming a huge part of the Internet and the Internet's future, and they decided to become #1 at it by buying youTube. iTV by apple is coming out first quarter of 2007, and i would bet that this has a lot to do with Google. Live streaming from Google's youTube to iTV? I think so...

From this commercial the Nintendo powerglove looks even cooler than the Wii remote.

I hope Wii turns out to be a bigger hit than the power glove :) I bought the power glove and used it at most twice.

Everyone talks about how innovative Nintendo has become for going in a different direction from PS3 and XBox; however, this type of thing has always been Nintendo's focus. From the power pad, the NES ROB robot, Nintendo duck hunt gun, Nintendo gamecube bongos, DDR mat, ... Some of them were huge hits, others not so much, but it's the reason I love Nintendo so much.

Google code search allows programmers to search source code. Works very well.

Pretty cool map of the Internet

The X Prize Foundation is partnering with a wealthy geologist (Canadian woohoo) to offer a $10 million prize to any team that can completely decode the genes of 100 people in 10 days.

If you've ever used it before, you know that it wants to run at startup. If you specify in the settings not to run at startup, then one day you decide you want to use it, you start it, and it will automatically add itself to startup again when you try to close it. This is annoying. If you specify once that you don't want something to run at startup, that should be enough. Google please fix this.

We're starting to see more and more contests which propel technology beyond their current boundaries. In these contents, an objective is given which has never been accomplished, and a cash prize is given for the first person or team of people to figure out the objective. This is a great thing, and wealthy people should be doing this same thing for their fields of interest. In 10 years or so, I plan to setup some similar prizes. It?s a good way to make your life useful and help advance civilization. I believe that this type of prize system will only increase in the future. It will become people?s full time careers to pursue some of these breakthroughs, or be sponsored by a company that is pursuing them. A good example of this is the Ansari X prize. Other more recent examples are the Hutter prize for compression human knowledge, and the anti-aging research prize.

Teach Yourself Piano is a great local (to Windsor Ontario Canada) band. I head them at Chapters book store a few days ago, and now listen to their music daily.

When adding a header file include that is not from a directory in your include directories, it should ask you: "Would you like to add [path] to your include directories?"

I have 2 cats, and they (one of them) must be very smart because they went pee on my ALT software T-Shirt. This is a company that I have worked for in the past and very much dislike. It's the first time they went pee on any article of clothing of mine. By the way, I wasn't wearing the shirt at the time :)

You can get them here

I've never seen windows work so fast and nicely before. And of course it's on apple hardware. Pretty funny

I purchased this book for learning more about compression and information retriaval. So far it's very good. The second chapter has a very good coverage of text compression.

Web tracking tool Google analytics is now open [here[1]. I tried it out and it is far superior to any other website tracking tool I've used. It is still a little buggy though, but I'm sure the bugs will be worked out soon.

I'm going to start studying compression a lot more (yes inspired by the Hutter prize) so that I can hopefully be the first to win the competition. The prize money isn't really important as I believe it will only work out to about 1-3 thousand euros. I've always had an interest in compression, so this just gives me a reason to study it more, and a distinct goal to follow. I have a lot of catching up to do in the lossless data compression field, so this is more of a long term goal.

There is a new contest relating to compression here. All you have to do is beat the previous record and you can win up to 50,000 Euro.

ou can now go to http://urlzip.org and "zip" your long URLs into small URLs. Converting long URLs to short URLs is useful when sending long URLs via email. You can also set keywords for your URLs, so that you can always access long URLs just by remembering a short URL.

URL redirecting via this page is temporarily disabled because of this email I received from abuse@myspace.com with a CC to abuse@godaddy.com. So much for trying to provide an innocent good service to users for free with no ads:

BrianBondy.com is hosting numerous files being used to redirect users to third party affiliate sites for commercial gain.

The user accounts posting the redirects were compromised through illegal means. Immediately remove the redirects on your webserver, and desist in any continued use and abuse of the MySpace.com site and userbase.

MySpace.com can and will take legal action against BrianBondy.com for it's involvement in these illegal activities.

MySpace.com

I signed up to be notified when I could join writely. I never got an invite. Today I went to lost password and it seems that it bypasses the wait for a new account. It emailed me a pass that I used with my email to access Writely. If anyone needs an invite, please try the above. If it doesn't work, just email me and I can invite you.

[Creator of Python talks about Python 3000[1] (Python 3.x series)

With XULRunner you can develop your own XUL applications without having Firefox nor Thunderbird installed. This leverages the power of XUL, XPCOM and it's extensibility. And of course it allows you to make cross platform applications.

After doing some package installs, and seeing how great Ubuntu is with upgrading and installing new software, I'll never go back to Fedora. Being based off of debian is awesome.

I installed Ubuntu Linux, and I'm very impressed with it. I previously tried to install Fedora Core 5, Fedora Core 5 had problems with starting up (would hang at udev loading), after a few hours when I got in, my sound and network didn't work. I installed Ubuntu, the installation for Ubuntu took about 5 minutes, and everything worked including my internet with no configuration. It looks really cool and fast too. I would highly suggest to get Ubuntu if you want to install Linux.

I finally signed up for an account at Wikipedia. I've made several anonymous changes in the past. You can see a list of my contributions here at my wikipedia user page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Netzen

I've been starting to learn programming on my apple computer. The cool thing is that all dev tools on Mac are free unlike in windows. The bad part is that it is quite a bit different from programming Win32 :(. I guess maybe i should be using Carbon (Which is more for porting applications from C++). Apple claims that they will be updating both Cocoa and Carbon as time goes on equally.

I've been reading a lot about hole punching. With hole punching, you can get past routers and allow peer to peer communication. The problem is that you can always connect to an outside host, but when an outside host is trying to connect to you, your router doesn't know who to forward the communication to. This is because all computers on your LAN have the same outside WAN IP. In general, you bind multiple sockets to the same local IP and port. With one of the sockets you connect to a public server, known as a rendezvous server, your router then makes a hole for your local address and port. You then use that same local address and port to connect to the LAN IP and WAN IP of the peer you are trying to connect to. With the same code you can even build a portable library that works on all OS's. Very cool! :)

I got a new apple iMac computer today. My first impressions of it is that it is very cool. It has a remote control, a built in web cam, built in dvd/cd burner, as well as built in wireless. It has a ton of software and everything just works out of the box true to the commercials :)

I updated the DynamicDNS service so that you can pass paths directly to the mapped IP.

For example: http://www.brianbondy.com/brianbondy/testing123/hi.html

I found this interesting, almost all sites that don't take up the whole screen are fit to an 800x600 screen resolution. I think the last time I myself used this screen resolution was 10 years ago. It seems that only 12% of people today still use this screen resolution. And there's a good chance that of that 12% of users most of them are not very tech savvy. So if you have a technology related site, or are selling software online. You might as well make your site look better for the masses and build it to fit 1024x768 instead.

1. 1024 x 768 56.15%
2. 1280 x 1024 15.79%
3. 800 x 600 12.04%
4. 1280 x 800 4.09%
5. 1152 x 864 3.90%

Long URL paths that you want to send to people via email often aren't clickable because email clients will insert line breaks in the middle of the URL. I created a page that will allow you to turn a long url into a small URL. You can access it here

Dynamic DNS now allows a real http path to point directly to your computer. After creating a dynamic DNS called for example 'brianbondy' you can now access the dynamic IP via http://www.brianbondy.com/brianbondy Since the dynamic host brianbondy is linked to 127.0.0.1, you can access the web page on your local host via that URL.

Added a new submit URL button to the Links page. It will add the submitted URL to a database for my manual review.

Added a new section available here which allows you to keep track of your non static IP address via a user defined host name. You can use the SOAP Dynamic DNS API to update your IP address periodically, as well as check what the IP address is via the API. You can also simply use the form on the Dynamic DNS page to access the IP address of your host name.

Added tools and descriptions for the following topics: Base64 encoding, Base64 decoding, URL encoding, URL decoding, and obtaining HTTP headers. You can access these pages and tools via the 'Other' link on the left hand navigation bar.