Overall, I’m very happy with the upgrade. More details after the jump.

Installation

While I won’t say it went flawlessly…

… it was pretty painless once I got it right. If you’re like me, and you install a lot of third-party extensions, especially those that link in at the kernel level, do not choose the default “Upgrade” option when installing Leopard. You’ll end up with what I’ve come to call the “Blue Screen of Discontentment”. But, you’re about to say, I was never given an option! Yes, you were. It was hidden behind the “Options” button on the dialog where it asks you which hard drive to install to. Pick “Archive and Install” and don’t look back.

Once I figured that much out, installation went flawlessly across all three of my Macs (yes, I bought a “Family Pack”).

Features

Like I said, the flagship new features in Leopard, while cool, aren’t as mind-blowing as you might think. But they’re still pretty cool.

Time Machine

Alright, in the grand scheme of things, Time Machine is pretty awesome. While technologically, its barely a step above rsync and a cronjob, I genuinely think this is the first backup solution that will actually get the masses to back up their data regularilly. It does, dare I say, make backups sexy.

However, a couple gripes about it:

• Despite the product announcements to the contrary, it doesn’t seem to support backups to AFP drives not hosted on another Leopard machines. This is quite annoying to me. I have 2 terabytes of gigabit ethernet-accessible storage at my fingertips, but I can’t use it for Time Machine, since it resides on a Linux box. Luckily I recently purchased a 250 gigabyte Firewire 800 drive which is now happily accepting my Time Machine backups. That doesn’t, however, help me with my older PowerBook, which I rarely plug into a hard-line ethernet connection or Firewire drive. Since I never do any multimedia work on that machine, it would be perfectly reasonable to perform Time Machine backups over 802.11g wireless, since I’m backing up nothing but ASCII text (source code and blog post drafts, primarily).
• The complete inability to do something as simple as forcing Time Machine to take a snapshot at a particular time. I want to say “Hey, Time Machine, I’m about to do nasty things to my home directory, save me from myself”. But unless it happens to be an hour since the last time it backed up, I’m out of luck. Boo! At least give me an AppleScript hook (I looked…).
• While the Time Machine UI is very very slick, there’s no way to get it to simply dump out a visual “diff” of all the files that have changed between versions. So if you just want to see how many files have changed in each backup, you’re out of luck.

Cover Flow and QuickLook

Alright, fine, cool gimmick. I’ve come to like it a lot, especially for browsing images and PDFs. Its a nice application of technology, and it’s quite cute.

But, honestly, it is really only good for browsing images. It really doesn’t break from the normal file browsing paradigm, and it doesn’t make the task of browsing deep file hierarchies any easier. In fact, its only really useful if you have a very flat file hierarchy, which my hard drive has never seen.

Spaces

It’s strange to say, but I almost feel like Spaces is the most finely refined “feature” of Leopard. So what’s the big deal? It’s nothing that new. Virtual Desktops have existed in one for or another for probably two decades, so the concepts behind Spaces are nothing new.

The best thing about Spaces, in my opinion, is that it simply gets out of the way. Once you have it set up right, it simply gets out of the way. I have Spaces trained to keep my Textmate instances in one “Space”, my Safari in a second, and my chats in a third. Using motions you’re familiar with, you can simply tab between apps, and it jumps you directly to the proper Space without any fuss or muss. It is really, really, really nice, to see virtual desktops finally done right, especially under MacOSX.

Overall

I haven’t had much time to play with the other features, like Mail and iChat, but I’ll say that the most compelling thing about Leopard is not the big headlining features, but the OS as a whole. Overall, it is a snappy, fun to use OS.

For some reason, it just plain feels faster. Its hard to explain. I was expecting it to absolutely crawl on my old 1.5 Ghz 12″ PowerBook G4, but to my surprise, it made my old laptop feel young again. In fact, this entire entry, as well as most of the screenshots presented in it, were created on my now three year old PowerBook. And let’s not talk about how much faster it made my new MacBook Pro feel.

And the new, unified look tightens the whole experience. All the apps mesh together to create a more consistent experience, where the OS simply disappears from view.

All in all, I think that Leopard is a worthy upgrade. While I think I’d still be pretty happy with my old Tiger installation, I’m very glad I upgraded. Overall, I’m getting more done, in less time, while having more fun doing it, than I did before Leopard. Well done, Apple, well done.

So a week or so ago I discovered lala. It may just be the simplest and best dotcom idea I’ve seen in a long time.

I have CDs. You have CDs. In all honesty, I’m sick of most of my CDs. And you probably are too. I might not have listened to my Nirvana “In Utero” CD in 8 years, but maybe you’ve recently suffered a bit of nostalgia and you want to listen to them again. So why don’t we trade?

Within a half hour or so of me having my beta account I loaded a bunch of the CD’s that I knew I had into my “I Have” section and I’d added a bunch of CD’s I wanted to my “I Want” section. About an hour or two later I discovered that I’d had my first match and that somebody wanted my copy of The Clash’s “London Calling” (an excellent CD by the way). And simultaneously somebody was shipping me Jurassic 5’s “Quality Control”. And I was only out $1.

Too cool.

Update: If anybody wants lala invites, add a comment below and leave the email address you want it sent to. I have a bunch.

For their May 3-9th edition, the “Seattle Weekly” (a local free paper) decided that they’d do a cover story on sailboat racing. Great! I couldn’t be more excited about more coverage about racing.

But they couldn’t have gotten it more wrong.

Where should I start?

With cigarette in hand and a bottle of Gatorade pressed against his crotch, Dave Marod squeezes his enormous yellow Hummer into a parking slip in Silshole Bay Marina’s L-Dock at 7:45 AM on a cold Saturday morning in early March. A trifle hungover, wearing dark shades, rubber overalls, a black vest, and brand-new deck boots, the 37 year old Marod exits the Hummer and laughs about what a favored target his rig has become for eco-consous vandals who slap stickers on his bumpers. Best one to date: “I’m changing the Environment. Ask Me How.” Having descended the pier to slip 30, Marod loads a passel of gear onto his 35-foot Carroll Marine One Design sailboat, a premier racing yacht that Marod scooped up for a cool $80,000 late last year.

Ok so we’re already off to a great start here in the first paragraph of the article. So far that I’ve learned that:

1. Sailors are drunks
2. Sailors don’t give a flying shit about the environment
3. Sailors are rich assholes

Ok, so you’ve got me on #1. The vast majority of the sailors I’ve met are quite the drinkers, and if they weren’t, I probably wouldn’t trust them very much. Fine, you win there Mr. Seeley.

On #2, I think you should start talking to the “pleasure cruisers” with 50+ foot powerboats that regularily fill up on 1000-gallon tanks of fuel just to go out for a nice weekend drive around the Sound. Most racers are pushing it if they burn a 30-gallon tank or two of diesel in a season, which I’m sure is less than what you burn in a month driving your biodiesel-powered Jetta.

3. Ok, so I will be the first to admit that owning a “premier racing yacht” is not a financial venture for the faint of heart. Congratulations to Marod who can afford to buy a 1D35, a boat that probably puts him in the top 5% (if not the top 1%) of boat owners worldwide, at least when it comes to those who race their boats. I’ve raced for two years with a very competitive 1D35 program - it is not a cheap venture. But that doesn’t mean that racing is merely for those who can afford to take a neatly piled stack of $100 bills and light them on fire. For a few grand you can buy a very competitive racing dingy. For free, you can race on “other peoples boats” (OPBs, as accurately described in the article). There is no need for one to sink a huge financial investment into the sport simply to go out on the water. I’d estimate that less than 1 in 20 competitive racers actually own a boat. If you want to get into racing, all it takes is dedication and a pair of shoes with non-marking soles.

It all goes downhill from there:

Today, during this 27-mile race to Posession Point on the southern tip of Whidbey Island and back - the second in the Corinthian Yacht Club-sponsored Center Sound Series - the crew is in go-like-hell mode, as helmsman Marod didn’t drop all that dime to waste his Ferarri on a bunch of pleasure cruisers. “Some of my friends like the solitude and being one with the ocean,” explains Marod. “All that shit’s fine, but I just want to beat the other guy and his expensive boat.”

Marod… Dude… seriously here, you’re not helping the cause. I love you, you have a kick ass boat and I’d be glad to come on and show you how to correctly race a 1D35, but you’re not putting on a good image here. First of all, you’re racing in Seattle. This is not San Francisco or LA or San Diego. Take a road trip and they’ll show you what real 1D35 racing is like. Second of all, even those of us who live for nothing more than kicking ass in grand prix boats also still enjoy just being out on the freaking water, no matter what the results are. Don’t make the rest of us look like jerks. Consider yourself an ambasador to the rest of the Seattle racing community. Make us look nice here…

They eventually cut us a break and interview a “blue-collar sailor” from Ballard, Garey Harr, who races on a “homey 27-foot Coronado” out of Silshole. He’s quite a nice guy, like most sailors I know. So apparently we’re not all assholes. But we’re still drunks. Not that I’m disputing that last point.

Then, ignoring Corinthian Yacht Club, even though they’ve just spent half the article on races run by them, they immediatly jump to the “jewel” of Seattle’s yachting community, the Seattle Yacht Club. Ignore the fact that Corinthian is nearly completely volunteer run and that you can be member for only $75 a year and (even without membership) you can participate in over 1000 races per year, they decide to focus on Seattle Yacht Club:

In the basement of Seattle Yacht Club on a tranquil, drizzly Portage Bay morning, a food service worker is spreading white linen over a a banquet room table… “Do you know where the silver polish is?” the worker inquires to no one in particular.

Ok, in six months of racing competitively in Seattle I’ve met one racer who actually is a member of Seattle Yacht Club, and he was 17. Seattle Yacht Club is the undisputed holder of the crown for the title of “most snooty yacht club in Seattle”. And they run less than 20 races per year. So why its suddenly been decided that they’re the authority on what a “real” yacht club is like, I don’t know. Its like going to Churchill Downs when you’re doing an article about rodeo barrel racing.

Here they interview the most eligible sailor of all those interviewed in the article, Brian Ledbetter, a silver medalist and an America’s Cup racer who now runs SYC’s racing program. He actually provides some great insight into the nature of sailboat racing and the sport in general, but of course that’s played down as much as possible.

The remainder of the article is spent mainly on fluff about the “schizoprenic nature of the sport” of sailing… a sport where the rich can rub sholders with the “surfer dudes” who seem to occupy its bowels. Only when they interview the naval architect Bob Perry does the nail get hit directly on the head:

“Sailing is an increcibly unifying thing… I can bump into any sailor anywhere in the world and have a lot in common. Parachute me anywhere there’s saltwater and I’ve got instant friends.”

To me, being part of this sport has shaped me more than any other individual experience in my life. With very little investment of my own - maybe a set of foul weather gear, shoes, and a pair of gloves - I’ve been able to experience things and go places I would have never been able to otherwise. It has shaped me as an individual and I’ve made lifelong friends. Anyone with the dedication to show up once per week and go racing can expect the same.

The author of this article could have spent his time highlighting the benefits that one can gain from being a part of the incredible community that surrounds sailboat racing. He could have spent his time interviewing junior sailors or members of community sailing programs. But instead he decided to reinforce the sterotypical negatives - the blazer-wearing, rum-drinking, whitebread image that most people already have of sailboat racing.

This, I feel, is sad and wrong. You cant go out sailing for one race, walk around one yacht club, take a few pictures, and expect to understand what it means to race sailboats. Until you fully understand that, you have no place writing an article about us. We’re better off without you.

When I started this blog, it had heavy political leanings. I used it as a place to speak my mind about politics and current events, because, at the time, I loved politics.

But since then I’ve decided I just can’t handle it anymore. I can’t watch network news, read an opinion column, or even enter a simple political debate with a friend without wanting to scream, cry, or throw up. I skip over the “Politics” folder in my RSS reader, because sometimes I just can’t stand reading it.

It used to be that one of my favorite activities was to talk about politics. I grew up having long winded political debates with my father, and I loved it. My ex-girlfriend and I used to go to the local pizza joint and argue for hours over pitchers of beer, and I couldn’t have had more fun. We had nothing in common politically, and that was exactly why it was so enjoyable. I could go on for hours and hours about politics and never tire of it. I had strong opinions and I loved talking about them.

But now everything seems to have changed. My father, who used to share many of the same Libertarian ideals as me, has been driven further to the right, I feel, in response to the liberals’ continuing march to the left. On fundamental things I’m beginning to disagree with him. My ex-girlfriend has moved to Germany and I don’t talk to her anymore. I can’t have a political debate with a friend without fearing that it will break down into personal attacks. I once had a friend tell me that voting for Bush was a “personality flaw” and he couldn’t be seen with somebody who had. I never discussed politics with him again.

The personal has become political and politics itself has become personal. We’re no longer just people who happen to have positions and opinions, we are our positions and opinions. Politics has taken over our homes and our relationships and I’m afraid we’ll never be able to get it out again.

And in the process I’ve been driven further into my own ideals. I don’t identify with either major political party anymore. When people ask me what political party I stand with, I tell them I’m a Libertarian. And then I shut up, because to continue elaborating on my political opinions would be an invitation to personal attacks from my friends on both sides of the aisle.

I want to be able to be proud of my opinions again. I want to be able to stand tall and fight for them without being afraid that I will be alienated for them. I want politics to be fun again.

So I didn’t watch the State of the Union tonight. Because the only thing that would make me more frustrated than the State of the Union itself would be watching the rebuttal after it.

Go pick up those dusty computer science “theory” books you decided to save thinking that maybe, just maybe, they might come in handy some day. Read them! Brush up on data structures, algorithms, and object oriented programming concepts. Practice big-O program analysis. Write some recursive algorithms. Review all those topics that you “forgot” because you thought you would never use them again.

I’m tired of screening Java developers who can’t tell me how the internals of the libraries they use are actually implemented. When computer scientists talk about “data structures,” we talk about hash tables, binary search trees, and linked lists, not java.util.Collection. We learned about program analysis in school because we were supposed to use it - if you can’t tell me about the runtime implications of the algorithms you choose, then you shouldn’t use them.

You got the degree, so you’re obviously not stupid. Now start using what you learned.

A great album for a great price. We really should encourage this method of distribution, so I encourage you to go check it out.

It also includes “This Year,” which is a freaking awesome song. Go get it. Now.

The nice thing about doing this on a Tivo is you can pause, rewind, and catch up with the live broadcast.

9:07PM - If only Tivo could fast forward through all the clapping…

9:10PM - Elections in Iraq/Afganistan = good

9:11PM - Its like a Blue & Gold Dinner, everyone has to clap for everything (come on you ex-Cub Scouts, you know what I’m talking about).

9:13PM - Fiscal responsibility… Right side of the aisle stands and claps, left side grumbles. Any surprises yet?

9:16PM - I think the Democrats must have hurt their hands clapping at the beginning. They look unhappy.

9:18PM - Ooh… Hydrogen cars are back!

9:20PM - Temporary worker permits. Something I really really agree with. Maybe I’ll post more on this another time. (Notice the Dems still don’t stand…)

9:21PM - Ok he’s pulled the Social Security card. Lets see how he plays it.

9:24PM - He’s explaining the problems with Social Security very well here… I wish more people understood this.

9:25PM - …of course, his explanation is met with grumbles and bitching from the left side of the audience. Boys, this is Congress, not Parliament.

9:29PM - I’m starting to really like the personal investment account thing. Unfortunately, for those who believe that “investing is only for rich people,” it’ll probably only come across as some sort of tax shelter for the wealthy. I think that will be one of their biggest challenges in getting it passed.

9:30PM - Ok I start my career in the fall. When can I start depositing?

9:32PM - Be careful with the whole anti-gay-marriage thing. You just lost a point or two…

9:35PM - At this point it appears my Tivo remote has stopped working. I’m now stuck about 7 minutes behind and I don’t want to reboot…

9:39PM - Ok… Moving on to terrorism.

9:41PM - I’m surprised how little time he’s spending directly on terrorism this time. He seems to be approaching it from more of a safety/freedom direction.

9:43PM - Technically, by advancing the spread of democracy in the Middle East, we ARE “imposing our style of government” on them. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with that.

9:47PM - “Weapons of Mass Murder” is the new “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Catchy, I like the allteration.

9:49PM - I think for the next SOTU the audience members need to wear red or blue ties depending on which party they’re from. It’ll help us figure out who’s who.

9:50PM - Whats up with the dudes with the blue fingers? Indelible ink in the Iraqi elections?

9:52PM - Ah yes, Sophia has the blue finger too. It is an election thing. We should do that here, instead of those dumb “I voted” stickers.

9:58PM - Flugerville. I bet that isn’t part of the SOTU drinking game.

10:02PM - Great ending!! Rebooting…

… Time travel to the Democratic Response …

10:11PM - Rep. Slaughter (D - New York) seems to think there’s nothing at all wrong with Social Security. And when asked if she could agree with anything he said he had planned, she ignored them and started talking about how if we could do stem cell research and everyone could be a scientist, we’d have no problem making up the extra wages we need to fix Social Security… But I thought nothing was wrong with it?

10:16PM - Democratic Response: When Bush wants to do things our way, we’ll be “non-partisan.” But when he decides to do things his way (when he gets “off track”), we’ll be there to “hold him accountable” (and stonewall anything he proposes).

10:18PM - Yep, there’s the “its just a rich man’s tax escape” response. And since when does God advocate the redistribution of wealth? And what about that “separation of church and state”? Stop talking about God so much. Who do you think you are, Bush?

10:19PM - This is too damn sappy.

10:23PM - So what are you saying that he didn’t just say?

10:24PM - Do you realize how much the shopping list you just rattled off will cost? If he were to actually buy all that stuff you’d accuse him of being “fiscally irresponsible” and overestimating the danger of terrorism. And half of it is the responsibility of state and local government anyway!

10:25PM - You’re throwing our money out in handfulls again. And you said the “faith” word. Bad Democrat! Bad! Bad!

10:26PM - We need to protect the Constitution and the ideas contained in it? THEN STOP MAKING THINGS UP THAT AREN’T IN IT!

… blah blah blah, same old same old …

10:47PM - Democrats: The party of not trusting the American people to make their own decisions, especially when it comes to their hard-earned money.

For a party that keeps talking about how we need to be “non-partisan,” they can’t seem to ever play nice with the Republicans.

If you’re wondering what network I was watching on, I started out on CSPAN and then switched to NBC for the Democratic Response. Don’t ask my why I picked NBC, it was simply the first channel I found after I rebooted my Tivo.

Today when I was getting my hair cut, the 20-something man to my right was getting his hair done because he was having an impromptu wedding this weekend. He was getting married early because he was being shipped off to Iraq on the 27th of December. He was enlisted as a medic in an Army engineering regiment and was looking forward to his assignment.

The woman cutting his hair was born in Iraq, and grew up in Mosul. He was asking her questions about what to expect when he got over there, and she was telling him stories about what it was like growing up in Iraq under Saddam’s rule.

The woman cutting my hair was Jordanian, and was telling me about her Chaldean husband who worked construction. Chaldeans in Iraq were heavily persecuted for their Catholic faith under the Ba’ath party and many of them fled to the west to escape. Her husband was thinking about returning to Iraq to work on its reconstruction. Apparently you can make $100,000 US for a six-month tour as a construction worker - more than enough to buy a house in Detroit.

On my way out I wished him the best of luck and told him to take care of himself. I don’t think there was a soul in the room that wasn’t proud to have him there.

This is the point where I remind all the liberals of their promise to “like, totally move to Canada if Dubya gets re-elected.” Go go… shoo… leave now…

My Canadian friend Arthur has even provided a step-by-step guide on how to immigrate to our socialist neighbor to the north. You have no excuses.

Update: In case you live in a cave and haven’t seen the news, Kerry has conceded.

It’s going to be ugly. If the election is anything even approximating “close” (especially if it’s in favor of Bush) we’re not going to find out who won until January. This morning the media was already complaining about the Republican monitors in Ohio and the evil punch-card ballots. The litigation is going to start tomorrow and last until they either lose all their appeals or the election is reversed in favor of Kerry.

In the meantime, I’m going to watch the polls and be hopeful. Most of all I just want it to be clean. I don’t think I could handle another 4 years of election bitching.

Some good URLs to watch for coverage on todays events:

• http://www.electoral-vote.com/ - It took me until this morning to notice that he was pro-Kerry, so I guess that qualifies him as fairly well balanced. He’s got a great red/blue state electoral college map and has promised to stay up all night keeping it updated live.
• http://www.instapundit.com/ - Comon… its Glenn Reynolds. If anybody will have up-to-date coverage of all the blows, it’ll be Instapundit.
• http://www.foxnews.com - Slanted, yes, but its not CNN.

Update: Somehow I managed to completely miss that the mind behind electoral-vote.com was Andrew Tanenbaum, the inventor of the MINIX operating system, precursor to Linux.