I really like Growl. It’s the kind of thing that ‘just works’, and they do it nicely. It tells me when someone send me a message when I’m not present, or updates some files in my Dropbox shared folders. Or when I receive a new Pinboard bookmark. And lot of other things. You may not like the number of notifications, but you can customize it.

The point is, the notifications go away after a certain amount of time. They may have been important, but if I don’t read them immediatly, they’re gone from my desktop. Luckily there’s the Growl.log file. It is basically a file which reports any Growl activity. To enable it, type in the terminal (change YOUR_USERNAME with your username)

touch ~/Library/Logs/Growl.log
defaults write com.Growl.GrowlHelperApp GrowlLoggingEnabled -bool YES
defaults write com.Growl.GrowlHelperApp GrowlLogType 1
defaults write com.Growl.GrowlHelperApp "Custom log history 1" /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library/Logs/Growl.log

Unfortunately the way the log is ugly. So I said tried to make it nicer with perl. The point is, I don’t know perl. I had to google a lot, but I’m satisfied with the resulting growl.pl.

In order to use it, save it somewhere, let’s say ~/Dropbox/Scripts/growl.pl. Then from a terminal type

touch ~/Library/Logs/growl_geek.log
chmod +x ~/Dropbox/Scripts/growl.pl

Then you’re done. You may even wish to have GeekTool display the prettified growl_geek.log. I do with the command ~/Dropbox/Scripts/growl.pl && tail -20l ~/Library/Logs/secondgrowl.log, where 20 is the number of line from the end of the log you wish to display.

It’s time to pick up a whiteboard marker and think fresh. There are other problems/opportunities in the world that need attention, and there are other individuals I’d love to get the opportunity to work with and learn from.

Evan Williams, on his blog

The practice of code

If you wish to keep an offsite Time Machine backup in a place which you don’t consider safe (for me it’s my office: although I’m the only one working there, my collegues could in principle get it when I’m out), then this link is for you. It will drive you through the whole process, from creating the encrypted disk image (to an external USB HD, or someplace else), to the Time Machine preference pane configuration.

Dear coffee, I love you

Also, now added to the places I like to visit, two for joy, in Amsterdam.

Twitter’s official iPhone app, formerly Loren Brichter’s Tweetie and an otherwise awesome client, got a lot of negative reactions from the recent addition of the Quick Bar, a mandatory trending-topics banner on top of the tweet list. A lot of people really hate it calling it the dickbar…

Marco on his blog. I guess that Loren now sees some similarities between atebits acquisition by Twitter and Faust’s deal with the devil.

I hate computers. It’s ironic, because I spend most of my time with them.

Thomas Troppenz

This is kind of a prediction, since at the time I’m writing this, Papers 2.0 is not out yet. But I think it all boils down to the 30% cut they would have to give to Apple.

The advantages of the Mac Apple Store are basically two: visibility and simplicity (to install, pay and upgrade). The disadvantages are that every upgrade has to be review and accepted, and that you lose 30% (well, probably slightly less, since every payment system will cost you something).

But Papers.app does not need visibility: it’s already well-known in academia, an environment where collaboration and information sharing (including the software used to get things done) is broadly practiced.

And Papers users are usually geek enough to not notice the easiness of the Mac App Store anyway. At least I know I am :)

See, I started in this business because this is what I wanted to do. I knew I wasn’t going to write the great American novel, but I also knew there was more to life than buying something for a dollar and selling it for two. I’d hoped to create something, something which could be held to the highest standards. And what I realized was I wanted to give the news to the world, and I wanted to give it unvarnished. The more we all know about each other, the greater the chance we will survive. Sure, I want to make a profit. You can’t exist without one. But John Bontecou is all profit. Now if we give him license to absorb Parrish Communications, and he has his eye on a few others after us, in order to reach the world you will have to go through John Bontecou. And not only will you have to pay him to do this, far more important, you’ll have to agree with him. Reporting the news is a privilege and a responsibility, and it is not exploitable. Parrish Communications has earned this privilege. John Bontecou wants to buy it. As your Chairman, I urge you to agree this company is not for sale

William Parish, Meet Joe Black. I guess they didn’t watch the movie at the Huffington Post.

Everybody these days is chatting about the forthcoming iPad 2. In particular, people are wondering whether it will have a new higher resolution display. There seems to be three classes of people.

1. The ones who say no.

2. The ones who say yes, it will have a 2048x1536 screen (four times as many pixels, doubling the pixels in both dimensions)

3. And finally the ones who say yes, it will have a higher resolution, but the number of pixels will not be doubled.

The guys from the second group were initially supported (tenuously, perhaps) by Engadget. The tech blog heard from a trusted source that the next iPad will indeed have a higher resolution. Since the only way to prevent anti-aliasing¹ is to double the resolution, the rumors of a “Retina” display started. This way the iPad would inherit the gorgeous screen from the iPhone 4, making the individual pixels invisible from the distance at which we use our devices.

But then people from the third group announced “Hey, that’s not gonna happen, because RAM and GPU needed to support such a display are too pricey.” Therefore, since Engadget source didn’t say retina, the guys from the third group started with “It will have a higher resolution, like 25 or 50% more”. At this point, Apple prophet John Gruber also said no retina.²

But he also said that it will be either the same, or nothing. He bet on the same resolution. I tend to believe him, but I’ll come back to that later.

The saga doesn’t finish here though. Someone found 2048x1536 px images in the iBooks bundle in the iOS 4.3 beta. The retina display crowd (our second group) was, of course, very happy. John the prophet at that point, having heard enough of these rumors about the tablet, clearly said that was an oversight by a designer who knew who eventually the iPad will go Retina.

So who’s right? As I said, I tend to believe John, but for different reasons — I don’t think is a matter of RAM, or GPU, or battery consumption or display price. After all with the iPhone processor, Apple already showed the world amazing things. Also the battery is not a great issue. I think people would give up a bit of battery for such a good display. And they would probably pay some more for it (like they do with the current Macbook Pro HD display).

So, why on earth is Apple not introducing retina in the next generation iPad?

I think it has to do with competition: no one is good enough yet. Why have higher prices slow down the growth of the product, when there’s no one capable of doing anything similar? The others tablet maker will need a year, if not more, to be competitive with the iPad in terms of price and appeal (if they ever get there). Because if competitors could only come up with the pricey Samsung Galaxy Tablet, then Apple can wait, most likely another full year.

Probably when Google will present the Nexus T(ablet) with the revolutionary resolution of 1920x1080 px, produced by HTC with 2 cameras, Android 3.1415, 4G connectivity, because you cannot ever get enough, 5 hours of battery life and six speakers, because you know you’ll need them, all starting only at 799$…

And then Apple will announce that the iPad 3, with retina display, longer battery life³, iOS 6 and starting at 499$ (with, thank God, only one GPS and two speakers).

As Tim Cook already said

I think some enormous percentage of people are going to select an iPad there.

I know I would.

Latex Style

Check this out if you use LaTeX. A lot of insightful tips.