Problems with ggplot2 0.8.9 and R 2.13.0 on Mac OS X via plyr 1.5
This morning I tried to completely update my R installation. I first dumped a list of all the packages I have on my system using the installed.packages() function. Then I installed R 2.13.0 using the OS X disk image. And finally I reinstalled all of my packages from scratch. Unfortunately, I ran into some serious [...]
iBad: The FSF Kool-Aid and Other Dystopian Hallucinations
The people who worry that the iPad will bring about a dystopian future for home computing keep forgetting something: for the rest of humanity, their ideal world of perfectly hackable machines is already a dystopian nightmare. It’s a world in which nothing works without spending hours setting it up, in which basic features are missing [...]
Cleaning Up an iTunes Library with MacRuby
For a little more than a year now, I’ve been meaning to write a script to rename all of the files in my iTunes library so that they’re in proper English title case. In large part, this project was inspired by reading John Gruber’s post about a Perl script that he’d written to convert text [...]
Two of Unison’s Quirks
As many people know, I adore the program Unison. That said, Unison has its fair share of quirks. Today I found myself confronting one that I had spent a whole day confused by about a month ago. Unison stores a cache of information about the file system for every directory that it synchronizes. On Macs, [...]
iPhone SSH Clients
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of my work over an SSH connection. I therefore decided that I should finally invest in an iPhone SSH client. After looking at pTerm, TouchTerm and iSSH, I decided that I should purchase iSSH. I have to say that this was one of the better app purchases I’ve ever [...]
Mac OS X 10.5.7 Observation
Is it just me or does the Dock respond much more smoothly under 10.5.7 than under 10.5.6?
Making the Most of My Mac
For literally years I’ve been meaning to write a post about my favorite programs and utilities for the Mac, but I’ve always managed to put it off. Given that I recently sent my girlfriend my old Powerbook, I thought that I should finally write down a list of the programs and tools that I’ve found [...]
Negative Items Left to Delete under Mac OS X Leopard
Until today I’ve felt that, at this point, Leopard has been patched enough to be relatively bug free. While transferring files across my home network today I changed my mind, because I found that the number of files left to delete that’s shown in progress dialogues can become negative. You can see what I mean [...]
Bug Still Present in iPhone 1.1.3 Firmware
The bug I complained about on January 12, 2008 is still present in the recently updated iPhone firmware, version 1.1.3. Perhaps 1.1.4 will solve the problem.
Oscar Wilde Dashboard Widget
I loved my Oscar Wilde widget and its endless supply of clever snipes at human pretense, but I discovered today that it was using, by itself, a full 250MB of memory to run. Has anyone else ever used the widget and seen this kind of memory use? I almost suspect virus-like behavior with that amount [...]