You cannot use the application “Preview” with this version of Mac OS X

Since upgrading to Leopard, I’ve had occasional problems launching applications. So far, it’s happened with Preview.app and Stickies.app, both on the MacBook Pro and on the Mac Pro. In both cases, a reboot solved the problem, but I’ve read that some folks are having the problem persist. Annoying!

After trying Time Machine (FAILED — wouldn’t even run on my machine) and Apple’s Backup.app (tried on my MacBook pro for critical files — FAILED), here’s what I’m going to attempt next… (read more »)

Douglas and Emily at Koi Palace

Douglas Seifert and Emily are in town for the holidays, and as has been tradition for years (with Douglas, anyway), we went out to eat dim sum. I’ve basically stopped eating shrimp because of the horrible way in which it is fished, but I am embarrassed to say that I do still have a bit of it when out for dim sum. Luckily, it’s only once or twice a year… (read more »)

After creating a striped array in my MacBook Pro, my network copy speeds have roughly doubled when copying to the fast (and ridiculous) disk setup in my Mac Pro. I used to see copy speeds of 30-35MB/s at most; now, it is not uncommon to get sustained copy speeds of 65MB/s or more. I’ve even seen it burst up to 90MB/s.

Obviously, this only happens when I’m copying large files, like virtual machines. For normal file copies over the network, I don’t see much of a difference.

Kai (Peter) Chang has planned yet another cool even here in the Bay Area. Alex Roy, known for driving across the country in 32 hours and 7 minutes, will be at Enigma Motors in Dublin, CA, on November 26th between 6-8pm. He’ll be promoting his new book, The Driver, and upcoming movie, 32 Hours 7 Minutes.

A replica of the M5 used by Roy to make his record-breaking run will be on-site at the dealership, along with other members of Team Polizei. Since the audience will likely be predominantly mail, Peter has also managed to convince a runway model and some of his friends to auction themselves off for dates.

The dealership is a few blocks from a BART station in Dublin, and shuttles will be running to and from the station during the evening.

Event details: [facebook] [rsvp @ eventbrite]

Today, I manually changed SMTP servers for my accounts in Mac OS X’s Mail.app for the last time. Using this cool script as a model, I now have a script that sets specific SMTP servers for specific accounts based on the name of the Airport network I’m currently connected to.

Now, all I have to do when I change locations is run the script, which I can do in 1 second by using Quicksilver. I love making my computer use more efficient!

Thanksgiving dinner with Geoff, Livia, Sigrid, and the kids

Geoff and Livia cooked up a delicious dinner at Steve and Sigrid’s place this afternoon. Yum! [see photos]

Because of baby schedules, I got home at around 5pm. By 6pm, I could have sworn that it was already late in the evening. I feel like I shouldn’t work today because it’s Thanksgiving, but it’s still pretty early.

Maybe I’ll just go to sleep.

Hello, readers. If you’re reading my journal or journal comments via RSS, can you please click on the following links so I can count the number of folks using RSS here? I’m testing Google Analytics to see if it tracks these properly (minus those of you who right-click and copy the link like I do).

[i read your journal using rss] [i read your journal comments using rss]

Thank you. :)

I’ve been wanting to cut my nails since I returned from the Bahamas last night, but my nail clippers are in my bathroom bag, which is in one of my dive bags. The dive bag is zip-locked shut, and I have to use scissors before I can open it. Or maybe the bathroom bag is in the 4th bag, which is coming back via a luggage shipping service…

At the same time, I’m trying to scrub 8 hours of underwater audio to prepare it for Shawn’s editing job (OTS com system chatter recorded to an Edirol R-09) while trying to simultaneously get through select line items on my TODO list and following up on a couple of Wetpixel Quarterly issues. Email keeps coming in (damn, these long fingernails are pissing me off), and I’ve been on the phone catching up with calls I missed.

But somehow, I had time to write up this rambly post and hit “Publish”.

two tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier) in the bahamas

I returned this evening from a short shark-diving expedition to the Bahamas aboard the M/V Shearwater, which was planned as a result of a serendipitous meeting at DEMA earlier this month, including folks from various shark and ocean conservation organizations (listed previously).

We worked long days to capture all of the footage we needed for the project, but still managed to have a great time. Despite a sour forecast, conditions at Tiger Beach were the best I had ever seen: at least a dozen tiger sharks, dozens of lemon sharks, and a few hours of 200 ft visibility!

As usual, Emma was there… but she looks a lot smaller because she gave birth. I hate to say it, but she pretty much looks like a normal tiger shark now. Still, she was as sweet as ever, and it was a pleasure to get to spend time in the water with her.

UPDATE I’ve uploaded some more photos to a flickr page. (read more »)

We’re off to the Bahamas: Rob Stewart (Sharkwater), Kim McCoy (Sea Shepherd), Alison Kock (Save Our Seas), Julie Anderson (Sharksavers), and Jim Abernethy (JASA).

Not shown are Shawn Heinrichs (Blue Sphere Media), Christopher Chin (COARE), Kurt (Sea Shepherd board member), me, and crew members The Donnie Lama, Mancha (Wade), and Rob.

It’s going to be an interesting week.

Being alone in my (now) semi-furnished loft, packing for yet another trip, has become all too familiar in the past couple of years.

I’m not sure it’s worth it.

baby jack eats blueberries

Baby Jack let out an anguished cry when I walked out the door the other day. I was pretty surprised! I see him so often that I may be confusing him. But it’s ok. I leave tomorrow.

I’m just getting a glimpse at all of the emotions that come out of watching someone grow up from birth. At least I’ll be prepared when (if?) I have one of my own.

Using macs to sell Windows products is fun!

I realize that this sort of thing is only funny for a very small subset of people out there, but I’m not afraid to admit that I’m a huge nerd. I think it’s funny. So what? :)

I’m a die-hard user of Yojimbo, so when FileMaker announced Bento, I became both excited and worried. I’m excited because it could be better than Yojimbo. I’m worried because if it’s better, I’ll want to switch… and it may not have an easy import feature. :)

I have a ton of information in Yojimbo, and I love that it syncs across my machines via .Mac. I keep lots of miscellaneous information in there like travel itineraries, product serial numbers, PDF manuals for cameras, and more. Spotlight indexing makes it really easy to find, even when Yojimbo is not open.

I’m going to try out Bento, too.

So, all I want to do is print envelopes through Address Book.app on Mac OS X. I’ve concluded that it is impossible. I found a way to do it. (read more »)

Does anyone out there know of a company called Callwave? They’re some sort of service that takes over your mobile phone voicemail to provide additional services.

I am not a customer of Callwave, nor have I ever been. But for the last year and a half, I’ve been billed 3 times a month by Callwave; each month, I am billed twice for $3.95 and once for $7.95. (read more »)

My friends frequently call me up to ask me whether a particular fish species is ok to eat. If I’m near my computer, I usually go to Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch site to look up the fish in question, but I’m often caught away from a computer.

Luckily, the Blue Ocean Institute has launched fishphone.org, a web site formatted for web-enabled mobile phones and PDAs. All you have to do before you order fish at a restaurant is hit the website on your mobile phone and choose a fish species in the drop-down menu. If you don’t have a web-enabled phone, you can SMS 30644 with the text, “FISH fishtype”. The SMS database isn’t as complete as is the website, but it’s a start. (thanks, Warren)

For some reason, my mother and father keep forwarding articles about the correlation of breastfeeding and high(er) IQ to my sister, which is funny because she wasn’t breastfed.

I miss her being in the Bay Area.

Sweet. (read more »)