jules blog

Regional jets are pretty slim but 1st isn’t bad as the ‘equipment’ (as the airlines call it) is still reasonably new. The Embraer 190 is a narrowbody and is supposed to give that large jet feeling without the heft.

Or that’s what the brochure said before I took one out for a spin at the dealership. Good for medium runs they say. The parking at Whole Foods with one of these is hell I would imagine. And it’s not practical like a helicopter where you can just leave them hovering and tied to a tree. Read more »

Oh, Verizon. For a while we were bosom buddies. We got our thang together a few years ago and you tempted me with your naked DSL (or the much more painful sounding “dry pair”). And all was well. You steadfastly schlepped bits across the ether and I gave you about $40 a month. We agreed I wouldn’t see anybody else for the next twelve months. Perfect harmony as Stevie and Paul might say while sitting around the old Joanna one night.

Getting a hookup with Verizon was good old fashioned courtship. In that phone company kind of way as I had to wait for about a week after I ordered. Oh, but the anticipation. Nothing like those holla back cable companies who’ll show up the next day or in some magic cases configure things right over the phone. Sluts.

The advantages of dry pair over regular DSL really comes down to the concept of not needing a POTS line. I haven’t had one for quite some time. I crossed the chasm and signed up for VoIP as soon as I learned about the technology and quickly migrated to Skype and Gizmo as they became seriously useful. Bonus.

But then things started to sour between me and my vzw.

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If you have a BlackBerry and you’re not hooked into your company’s BlackBerry Exchange Server you’re faced with a few choices on how to keep the thing in sync with your Mac.

There is a free version of PocketMac’s SyncManager and it’s rather basic. It lacks features that the Windows version has such as being able to upgrade the BlackBerry’s OS and so forth. I find myself being really annoyed when I delete contacts on either the Mac or the BlackBerry and then have to battle through a host of clicking “yes, I really do want to delete this” buttons on the next sync. iSync is rather elegant in its handling of this situation and only asks for confirmation should you go over a 5% of mass contact whacking. Conflict resolution is equally groovy. No, there is no iSync plugin for the BlackBerry. Please don’t get me going on the lack of Bluetooth-based syncing.

Your other choice is Mark/Space’s Missing Sync. It does a bit more than SyncManager and for that privilege you’ll have to shell out $40. My favorite part of the whole thing is SyncMinder which reminds you that you need to sync. A friend just lost about three months of contacts and calendar dates after a hard drive crash (oh noes!).

Google quietly updated Google Sync this week and the sexiest new feature is automatically syncing with Gmail’s address book should you enable the feature. It happens over the air, no wires needed and works very well with Google hosted. So there is simply no need to remember to plug in and sync — huzzah! Calendar syncing has worked well for me for some time and I’ve been eagerly awaiting the addition of syncing contacts. Others appear to be less impressed.

Now there’s really no need to plug the beastie into your computer anymore. Over the air syncing is automatic and effortless.

I watched somebody highlight a whole page from a Web site today with the idea of copying it to another program. It was positively painful to watch and literally took two minutes longer than it should have. For short grabs the click, hold, drag, release, copy dance is fine. But for rambling swath of words and spaces there is a simpler way.

• Click at the start of where you want to copy. You won’t get a visual indicator that the cursor is in there but it is.
• Now navigate to the end.
• Then hold down shift and click at the end of your desired text selection.
• The entire block of text is now selected.

That’s it. It works in every Mac browser I’ve tried. And it should work in X and Windows as well.

Bonus points for not using the clipboard to copy it. One of the grooviest Mac ninja moves is to drag and drop the text to an application that’s hidden behind your current window. Your Mac is perfectly happy to respond to key presses while the mouse button is down.

• Click and hold on the text for about a second. If you click too quickly you’ll lose what you’ve highlighted.
• Keep the mouse button depressed. Then hold down the ⌘ key (’command’ or ‘apple key’ depending on your keyboard) and peck at the tab key to the target application. Let go of ⌘-tab and the target app will pop forward.
• Now you can drop your text into the right place.

If you pick the wrong app just ⌘-tab again until you get the right one. And if you change your mind drag the text up into the menu bar and let go of the mouse. There’s nothing up there that’ll have any harm done to it should a large block of text fall like a cartoon piano from the sky.

You can also send the target application keystrokes so if you forgot to create a new document something like ⌘N will work just fine.

Holy cow, people are still cherishing a computer released in 2003?

The funny thing is you see 12″ PowerBooks in the most and least likely places. I recently flew back from Germany and there was chap two seats over from me writing code on one; they’re a conference-goer staple; they’re alive and well lurking underground in DC and NYC’s subway systems; and they show up in coffee shops in Phoenix, Tampa, San Francisco, Albuquerque, and Charlotte. But why? Read more »

Into every life a little dirt must fall. And there’s no grubbier place than your hands. Door handles, public transport, and keyboards that have endured hours of endless typing and pizza. It’s a wonder we haven’t all been wiped out by some kind of super germ already.

If push ever comes to shove and we are attacked by a plague of human/keyboard eating microbes I’m calling upon Apple or RIM to save us all. I’ll suggest the human race build large scale version of the teeny balls that are in the Mighty Mouse or the Pearl and roll them around the planet for a while. I’ve never seen something that vacuums up more grease and schmutz than either of of the trackballs in these devices.

For a while I’d just replace the trackball in the Pearl from one of the cheapie online places. A few bucks to be able to scroll seemed like a wise investment. But the Mighty Mouse? A bit more pricey and doesn’t come apart unless you don’t plan on putting it back together. Alcohol cleaners didn’t do the trick plus that’s a waste of good booze.

Then it dawned on me. A zero cost solution. Turn the devices upside down and roll the trackballs on a piece of copier paper. The grot sticks to the paper, there’s no flammable fluids doing damage to expensive hardware, and it takes a couple of seconds.

The simplest solutions are always the best.

Oh, iPhone. You’re so close to being perfect yet so far away. You’re a train that’s just left the station and I’m running along behind carrying my, ahem, technology baggage. I’ve got my ticket in hand but you’re just out of reach.

And, damn girl, I just can’t get on board when you’re all distant like that.

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That’s a bit strong I suppose. They might not be the devil but they certainly have the fallen angel on speed dial.

The main beef with USB wireless, printer, and just about any other peripheral driver you can think of is that so many of them are poorly written. While it’s a better state of affairs than it was operating systems still crash enough without wantonly adding third-party generated instability. You know, by doing a crazy thing like printing or connecting to the ‘net when you’re out and about.

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When you set up a new WordPress-based Web log you’re asked if you’d like the world to know about it and this magic happens through Pingomatic. Click through to Options then the Writing tab in your WordPress admin interface it’s there at the bottom.But what exactly does that mean? Who’s coming to see my new post?

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Fly around the US for a bit and you get used to the act in the same way that your feet callus if your shoes rub you the wrong way. Flying used to be fun in the days of flap displays so maybe we should bring them back. These things could be related.

It’s no great secret that domestic North American air travel is pretty awful. The real perks come when you pucker up and get yourself a passport. Transatlantic coach is much better than domestic first class and, therefore, the levels above must be better still.

Or are they?

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