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According to CNet, Apple is about to introduce a music device. I have no idea what this will be, or even if it will be, but what I want is a very small portable player, with built in airport (wireless networking a.k.a. wi-fi a.k.a. 802.11b) and the ability to play music files stored locally, or streamed from any other airport connected device. Also, I'd like an open plug-in interface so that it could be easily extended by third parties to recognize any music file format (mp3, ogg vorbis, etc...)
It should run something like iTunes. When I turn it on it should display an index of all music files in the device, plus automatically scan for any open airport connections, initiate those connections, and build an extended index of all music files accessible over the local network.
The player itself should wirelessly connect to other players in the vicinity (you could set yours to private if you wanted) or to other Macs. This interface should also be open so that third parties could connect as well (so, for instance, this device could connect to a suitably configured linux music server as well as a Mac.)
Nice to dream.
Fixed a major problem here that has been plaguing me for some time. All content is stored in a mysql database, and these pages are all assembled on the fly when you request them. So the particular URLs (like /jim/weblg/) don't really exist in the file system on the server. Instead, every request is sent to a central php script that parses the REQUEST_URI, looks up the path in the database and then grabs all the posts associated with that page and spits them out. I had been doing the redirection with an errordocument line in my .htaccess file pointing to the central php script (so it was like every request was 404ing, but then the 404 page was the central script that would then built each page.)
In any case, the problem was that the server was sending a 404 code back to the browser in the head immediately followed by a 200 OK code. Even though that is not correct, most browsers had no problem with this. But a few did. Like some versions of IE on the MacOS and at least one of the Opera betas on the MacOS.
After much struggle to find a way around this I just figured out that my host has mod_rewrite enabled, and that I can access this through my .htaccess file. So now the redirection is done with a rewrite rule instead of an error document and I believe this has solved the problem. Rex Swaine's handy HTTP viewer helped me out a lot in fixing this.
As is befitting a sci-fi writer, Bruce Sterling provides a bunch of different possible outcomes for the present political mess. Nothing earth shattering, but he has a good eye for the future, and it's refreshing to see these scenarios without the usual freight of the authors political views also being layed bare.
Here's 4 photos I took from the F train in Brooklyn coming back into Manhattan. This is the most impressed I've been with the relatively new Canon G1. The train was really shaking. I've always loved this ride, and these are the best shots I've ever gotten of it.
Ars Technica has an in depth look at MacOS X 10.1. Love that "I want to believe" poster on the first page.
This is interesting: "Apple is also reported to have a Cocoa-to-Perl bridge functioning in-house. There is already a petition online asking for the release of this code. If AppleScript can do it, why not Perl too?"
Just in case you have to entertain some kids today, here's a joke from the Janet, the queen of knock-knocks. It's all in the timing:
Knock knock
Who's there?
Interrupting cow
Interrupting c...
moooooo
The fissile flim-flam. Three russian journalists try to buy nuclear material on the black market.
Mozilla 0.9.5 has been released.
O.K., I'm going to try to get off politics and back on track here. I guess never having had much of a track to begin with is slowing up this segue. But soon. Real soon now.
Tonight we're going out for dinner as it is our solemn patriotic duty to spend money in local eating establishments (Rudy said so.) And tonight especially so, it being the arbitrary but nevertheless important one month ago day...
The city still smells. Depends on the day and which way the wind blows, but sometimes I wake up in the morning at it is quite strong. Police activity in the Lower East Side is apparently back to normal, what ever that means. Large ad-hoc monuments of flowers and signs are mostly gone, but American flags remain. Everywhere. And firehouses are absolutely bedecked with red white and blue ornaments.
Large upscale restaurants are hurting. I'm assuming all other businesses that rely as much on tourism are hurting too. More local establishments outside the immediate Wall St. zone, like say a little cafe on Clinton St., aren't feeling too much of an effect. I rode home in a cab the other night and was asking the driver what he thought. He said the worst was over and his shifts were getting better.
I guess we'll see about that.
I'm sure the reason I haven't seen this (Pakistani ISI director linked directly to Mahmud Atta) in the U.S. media is because it's incorrect. I mean, our media would never censor anything that might be unpopular with the government. Right?
Now what about getting all those who aid and abet the terrorists? (If you know who backs the ISI you can guess why this will be impossible for the U.S. to do.)