TidBITS#761/10-Jan-05
=====================
Welcome to 2005! As we gear up for Macworld Expo, we're
starting the new year off with a rich collection of Mac news
and information. Apple releases new Xserves and is shipping
Xsan, Boingo finally launches its service for Mac users, and
old favorite Graphing Calculator arrives for Mac OS X. 2005 also
brings a successful move for our main mailing lists - Adam shares
the details. Lastly, Matt Neuburg listens to several random sound
utilities, the Omni Group releases OmniWeb 5.1, and we note a
few more Macworld Expo events.
Topics:
MailBITS/10-Jan-05
TidBITS Mailing List Move Complete
Upgraded Xserve, New Xsan in Pre-Expo Announcement
Boingo for Macintosh Launches
Graphing Calculator Comes to Mac OS X
Tools We Use: Random Noises With SonicMood
Take Control News/10-Jan-05
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/10-Jan-05
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-761.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/2005/TidBITS#761_10-Jan-05.etx>
Copyright 2005 TidBITS: Reuse governed by Creative Commons license
<http://www.tidbits.com/terms/> Contact: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------
This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
* READERS LIKE YOU! Help keep TidBITS great via our voluntary <------ NEW!
contribution program. Special thanks this week to Ron Risley,
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<http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html>
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* StuffIt Deluxe 9 from Allume Systems improves on the Mac's
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Celebrating 20 years of Macintosh development with Express 2.1.
For a 30-day demo or to purchase, visit <http://www.nisus.com/>
---------------------------------------------------------------
MailBITS/10-Jan-05
------------------
**Helping Asian Tsunami Victims** -- The mind boggles at the
loss of life and destruction caused by the recent earthquakes
and resulting tsunamis. Our thoughts go out to the millions
of people affected, and particularly to our readers in those
countries. More to the point, we encourage you to donate to
one of the many aid organizations working to help restore the
foundations of daily life - food, clean drinking water, clothing,
sanitation facilities - without which many more people will
die. See Google's Tsunami Relief page and CNN's Aid Groups
page for more information and donation links. Our hope is that
the individuals, institutions, and governments of the world can
draw together in helping the victims of this event, which, though
terrible, was at least free from malice or ideology. [ACE]
<http://www.google.com/tsunami_relief.html>
<http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/12/27/quake.aidsites/>
**Circus Ponies Software Sponsoring TidBITS** -- 2005 is starting
on an upbeat note for TidBITS, with Circus Ponies joining us as
a sponsor. I've been relying heavily on their NoteBook program
since the middle of 2003, when I realized that I needed to take
manual control of my to-do list (see "The Well-Worn NoteBook"
in TidBITS-745_). Since then NoteBook has become a fixture on
my Mac as a repository for random bits of information, lists
of things to remember, and instructions for complex tasks that
I perform too infrequently to remember. But part of the other
reason I use NoteBook is that Jayson Adams and Elizabeth Statmore
of Circus Ponies have been extremely responsive to bug reports
and suggestions; to my mind, that's a key aspect of any program.
Although Circus Ponies has only been developing NoteBook for
Mac OS X since 2003, the program has deep roots leading all
the way back to NeXTstep, and it's great to see such programs
surviving to the present day. If you're looking for an information
repository, be sure to give NoteBook's 30-day demo a try; the full
version is $50. [ACE]
<http://www.circusponies.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07803>
**Nisus Software Sponsoring TidBITS** -- If NoteBook is an old
program from a new company, Nisus Writer Express is a new program
from an old company. Nisus Software is celebrating its 20th year,
and the company's flagship program is now Nisus Writer Express,
a complete rewrite of the classic version of Nisus Writer that
TidBITS has relied on from the very beginning. Our next generation
content management system will help us wean ourselves from needing
Nisus Writer running in Classic mode, and at the moment, Nisus
Writer Express is the leading candidate to become my most commonly
used word processor, thanks to its combination of writing and text
processing tools, most notably the Document Manager that lets you
start writing without even worrying about saving your work; the
real-time integration with the free Nisus Thesaurus; and clearly
presented statistics on the document and selection, something
that's essential for any professional writer. It's a slick little
program, and in my usage, it's further along than any of the other
new word processors I've tried. So, if you find Microsoft Word
overkill for what you need, but TextEdit too little, Nisus Writer
Express deserves a look; it's $60 and a 30-day trial version
is available. [ACE]
<http://www.nisus.com/Express/>
<http://www.nisus.com/Thesaurus/>
**Adam Takes the Fifth!** The findings of the annual MDJ Power 25
survey are out, and this year the industry insiders who
participate in the polling placed TidBITS's publisher Adam Engst
fifth in the list of people who wield the most influence and
power in the Macintosh industry. This is Adam's fifth consecutive
placement in the top five vote-getters, and Adam is still the
only member of the top five who doesn't work for Apple Computer.
As in years past, the MDJ Power 25 tends to favor Apple executives
and employees: 14 of the 25 positions were awarded to Apple,
with CEO Steve Jobs, Executive VP Tim Cook, Software Engineering
VP Bertrand Serlet, and VP of industrial design Jonathan Ive
filling the top four slots. However, the 2004 list was not without
its surprises: Apple's de facto #2 man Tim Cook wasn't even ranked
in 2002 or 2003, Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walt
Mossberg climbed to a #7 ranking, and Macworld's editorial
director Jason Snell sprang off the "honorable mention" list
to a #11 placement. Also surprising: Avie Tevanian dropped to
#10 (largely in favor of Bertrand Serlet), Apple's Phil Schiller
didn't make the list this year, and the only third-party
developers to earn slots were Microsoft (Bill Gates and MacBU
Manager Roz Ho) and Allume's Jonathan Kahn. [GD]
<http://www.macjournals.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbser=1246>
**OmniWeb 5.1 Ships** -- The Omni Group has released OmniWeb 5.1,
an update to its full-featured Web browser (see "OmniWeb 5.0:
The Powerful Web Browser" in TidBITS-742_). This version
incorporates numerous fixes, but most notably integrates Apple's
latest WebCore rendering engine for improved performance and
rendering compatibility (OmniWeb is built on top of Apple's
WebCore framework, which are also used by Safari). OmniWeb 5.1
is a free update to current registered users; a new license costs
$30, and upgrades from versions earlier than 5.0 cost $10. A fully
functional 30-day demo is available as a 5.9 MB download. [JLC]
<http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07775>
<http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/releasenotes/>
**Partying at Macworld Expo SF 2005** -- Although we're not seeing
the types of extravagant Macworld Expo parties that existed
several years ago, this year's show offers several opportunities
for Mac fans to gather and have fun. Adam and I have a full slate
of appearances this year (see "Macworld Expo SF 2005 Events" in
TidBITS-760_ to see when and where we'll be), but I wanted to
mention a couple of additional events.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07933>
On Tuesday, 11-Jan-05, everyone is invited to the Party for the
People, starting at 8:00 PM in the Piazza Lounge of the Parc 55
Hotel. Also worthy of note is the 19th annual Netters Dinner on
Thursday, 13-Jan-05; registration is now open at $18 per person
for the hot and spicy meal at Hunan (registration wasn't active
when we published the original announcement in December). As
usual, consult the Hess Memorial Macworld Expo SF 2005 Events List
for updated information on these and other happenings. Hope to
see you there! [JLC]
<http://www.shadovitz.com/partyforthepeople05/>
<http://www.seanet.com/~jonpugh/nettersdinner.html>
<http://www.ilenesmachine.com/partylist.shtml>
**Nisus Writer Express 2.1.1 Released** -- Nisus Software recently
released version 2.1.1 of Nisus Writer Express, their increasingly
powerful word processor for Mac OS X. Whereas version 2.1 focused
on improving the speed of scrolling, searching, typing, and
opening documents, 2.1.1 is aimed at squashing bugs. A number
of crashing bugs were fixed, Paste As Text Only has been improved,
the spelling checker is more accurate around superscript text,
and styles imported from Word documents no longer appear with
gibberish names. Overall, version 2.1.1 of the program feels
significantly tighter and more solid than previous versions,
and I'm using it more and more for drafting longer TidBITS
articles. Nisus Writer Express 2.1.1 is a free update for all
owners of Nisus Writer Express; new copies cost $60, and upgrades
from Nisus Writer Classic 6.0.x are priced at $45 (add $5 to all
these prices for a CD). The update is a 21.3 MB download. [ACE]
<http://www.nisus.com/Express/>
<http://www.nisus.com/Express/releasenotes.php/>
**DealBITS Drawing: GarageSale Winners** -- Congratulations to
Tim Williams of mac.com, Jim McElligot of hemostat.com, and
Keith Rettig of multirater.com, whose entries were chosen randomly
in last week's DealBITS drawing and who each received a copy of
iwascoding.com's GarageSale. Even if you didn't win, you can still
save 20 percent off the purchase price of GarageSale (making the
single-user license $19.99, or the family pack license $35.99)
through 17-Jan-05. Order using the third link below to receive
your discount; this offer is open to all TidBITS readers. Thanks
to the 1,114 people who entered, and keep an eye out for future
DealBITS drawings! [ACE]
<http://www.iwascoding.com/GarageSale/>
<http://www.tidbits.com/dealbits/iwascoding/>
<http://order.kagi.com/?3W91&lang=en>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07931>
TidBITS Mailing List Move Complete
----------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On 31-Dec-04, I moved all our subscribers from our aged Power Mac
7100 running ListSTAR 1.2 (we're talking systems that saw their
last significant upgrade in 1997) to our shiny dual-processor
Xserve running Web Crossing, which serves static and dynamic
Web pages, provides a high-performance object-oriented database,
and handles all our normal and mailing list mail (short of three
translation lists that I still need to move), among other things.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07930>
Overall, the move went well, although the welcome message
generated quite a few more bounces than I'd expected due to the
roundabout method we'd used to track them in the past. Picking
the holiday break also meant a slew (almost 400) of out-of-office
replies - I feel like I know many of you just a little bit better
now. And most surprising, since I seldom run across them in normal
mail, were all the challenge-response requests, of which I
received about 125 from at least 10 different systems. In an
intentional break from our standard policy of not responding
to any challenge-response mail, I chose to respond to each one
manually in this specific case, since I wanted to reduce the
confusion of switching to a new system as much as possible.
And do I have opinions on the usability of challenge-response
systems now! But that's a future article.
**Explaining Common Confusions** -- Needless to say, some
confusion still resulted, thanks in part to the fact that people
aren't always caught up on reading TidBITS and thus didn't expect
the move. Nothing I can do about that. But a few other things
came up that perhaps I can explain a bit better.
* Several people were horribly offended at being given a TidBITS
account with a password and wondered why it was necessary. The
primary reason is that we spend a lot of time helping people
change their email addresses and cleaning up mailing lists after
people abandon old addresses. We're too small to be spending
time on unnecessary clerical tasks that everyone can easily do
themselves. In fact, this was one of the reasons I chose Web
Crossing for our server software in the first place; it has
full-fledged user account capabilities. So, for instance, if you
want to change your email address, you can do so in your account,
and the new address will immediately be reflected in all of our
TidBITS and Take Control mailing lists. If you don't want to
change your email address, there's no need to log in to your
TidBITS account at all; should you ever want to do so, you can
always request a new password.
* A number of people have been confused by the interface to the
Web Crossing preferences. It's not ideal, and it's certainly not
pretty, but if you just follow the instructions on our Account
Help page, I don't think you'll have any trouble. Redesigning the
preferences pages is on my list of things to do; it's one of those
areas of Web Crossing that hasn't received interface attention
in a number of years, and it's clearly due for some work.
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/account-help.html>
* Some folks have been confused by the fact that we appear to
have two subscription interfaces. Here's the deal. The TidBITS
Subscriptions page was brought over from our old server;
it's a nice interface and is easy to use for subscribing and
unsubscribing, as long as you know which of your email addresses
to use. However, it's a "dumb" form that requires email
confirmation of all changes made through it to prevent people
from messing with other people's subscriptions. Then there's
the Manage Subscriptions page, which Web Crossing maintains
automatically and dynamically as part of your TidBITS account
preferences. It lists the mailing lists to which you're
subscribed and lets you change how you're notified of new
messages. So, both pages can be used to unsubscribe, but only
the TidBITS Subscriptions page can be used to subscribe to new
lists. Simplifying this dichotomy will take some thought; we need
a public page that people without accounts can use to subscribe,
but at the same time, it's nice when the system can identify you
and help you manage your specific subscriptions. As I become ever
more familiar with the Web Crossing mindset, I'll figure out
a better approach.
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/list.html>
* The above confusion seems to have been exacerbated by the fact
that some people don't realize we offer TidBITS in four editions:
Text Issue, HTML Issue, Text Announcement, and HTML Announcement.
Each edition has a different mailing list; the vast majority of
our subscribers receive the Text Issue, which is the full TidBITS
issue in 7-bit ASCII text. The HTML Issue is the full TidBITS
issue formatted with minimal HTML that looks good in all email
programs that support HTML mail. Relatively few people are
subscribed to the announcement lists; instead of the full issue
each week, subscribers receive a summary of the issue and a list
of articles with links to our article database. If you wish to try
a different list than the one you're currently subscribed to, use
the TidBITS Subscriptions page to subscribe, being sure to use the
email address that's currently associated with your TidBITS
account (otherwise you'll end up with two accounts).
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/list.html>
**Smoothing the Road** -- These transitions are never perfectly
smooth, but overall, I think this one has gone pretty well.
After I finish moving the last few translation lists over,
it will be time to concentrate hard on the content management
system. I certainly hope to keep any downtime to a minimum,
but it's impossible to predict how things will develop, so
thanks for bearing with us on this server move!
Upgraded Xserve, New Xsan in Pre-Expo Announcement
--------------------------------------------------
by Mark H. Anbinder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Perhaps paving the way for Steve Jobs's scheduled keynote address
at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Apple last week announced
an upgraded line of Xserve rack-mount servers, as well as the
availability of its long-awaited Xsan storage area network
product.
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jan/04xserve.html>
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jan/04xsan.html>
The top of the line Xserve G5 now sports dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5
processors and a 1.15 GHz front-side system bus, which Apple
calls the fastest in the industry for a 1U rack-mount server.
A single-processor 2.0 GHz G5 configuration will remain available.
Formerly, the Xserve G5 was available in single- or dual-processor
2.0 GHz G5 configurations.
<http://www.apple.com/xserve/>
In talking about the school's upgraded supercomputer cluster
made up of 2.3 GHz Xserves, Srinidhi Varadarajan, director of the
Terascale Computing Facility at Virginia Tech, said, "1,100 Xserve
servers are now achieving over 12.25 trillion operations per
second, a speed increase of 20 percent over the original system's
performance."
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07542>
<http://www.tcf.vt.edu/>
The new Xserves support up to three 400 GB drive modules, offering
up to 1.2 TB (terabytes) of internal storage. The Single 2.0 GHz
Xserve sells for $3,000, and the dual 2.3 GHz model sells for
$4,000; these and a $3,000 cluster-optimized configuration are
available immediately. The first two configurations include an
unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server, allowing an
unlimited number of Mac, Windows, or Linux clients to connect
to the server. The cluster configuration includes a 10-client
license.
At the same time, Apple says it has begun shipping its Xsan
storage area network solution, a high-performance cluster file
system announced last April at NAB (see "Apple NABs Pro Video
Attention" in TidBITS-727_).
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07647>
<http://www.apple.com/xsan/>
The software, available for $1,000 per client or server node,
allows up to 64 systems on a network to share files and volumes
up to 16 TB in size, reading and writing to the shared storage
simultaneously. Xsan works with G4- or G5-based Xserve or Power
Mac computers running Mac OS X 10.3 or Mac OS X Server 10.3, or
with Xserve RAID storage units. Using Fibre Channel multipathing
(two Fibre Channel computers connecting a computer to the SAN),
Xsan offers up to a theoretical throughput up to 400 MBps.
Boingo for Macintosh Launches
-----------------------------
by Glenn Fleishman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Boingo Wireless has finally released their Mac OS X client
software for connecting to thousands of commercial wireless
802.11b hotspots. Boingo is an aggregator, meaning that they
combine for-fee hotspots from dozens of networks into a single
user account: subscribers use one login and pay a single session
or monthly fee, either $8 per day or $22 per month for unlimited
use. It's a lot cheaper to subscribe to Boingo than to pay for
accounts on all the individual networks that you might need to
access while traveling.
<http://www.boingo.com/boingo_for_macintosh.html>
Adam and I have been fans of Boingo since its inception - and
we've been lobbying founder Sky Dayton, an old friend of Adam's
as well as EarthLink's founder, for a Mac version since they
announced themselves three years ago. The reasons for delay would
make a long story, but what's important is that the waiting
is over.
Use Boingo's online directory to determine which locations might
be useful to you. They have several thousand hotspots in their
aggregated network, including all of the Wayport-serviced hotels
and airports, which number about 1,000. The company is striking
new deals all the time, and it's likely to grow quite a bit this
year. They also have an increasingly large number of locations
outside the U.S., useful for international travelers.
<http://www.boingo.com/search.html>
The reason client software is so important for fee-based hotspots
is that there are few standards (and few networks conform to the
same standards) for logging users into the hotspot networks. The
client has to handle the back-end authentication, which is the
careful and secure dance of sending a user name and password; make
sure an account is active; and allow that user onto the network.
Use the code PDLST0419 to sign up for unlimited service and get
your first month free. Boingo's client software works with Mac OS
10.2.8 or later; previous versions of Mac OS X 10.2 require Safari
to be separately installed.
Boingo doesn't require any term of contract nor charge a
cancellation fee when you discontinue your month-to-month usage.
T-Mobile by contrast charges $40 per month for their unlimited
month-to-month plan with no termination charge. So there's no
penalty with Boingo for signing up only during months when you
have heavy hotspot needs while traveling.
Graphing Calculator Comes to Mac OS X
-------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
There's a story behind every piece of software, but I doubt any
can compare with the tale of Graphing Calculator, which shipped
with the first PowerPC-based Macs and continued to be bundled with
Mac OS 8 and, in version 1.3, with Mac OS 9. I won't attempt a
second-hand retelling, since Ron Avitzur, Graphing Calculator's
primary developer, has done such a good job already, but suffice
to say, Graphing Calculator was a program written by Ron and
another developer, Greg Robbins (who lived a few miles from us
in Seattle when we were there) after their jobs at Apple had
ended - the twist is that they continued to go into work at Apple
every day, using their still-active badges and offices. Graphing
Calculator's genesis is probably the ultimate skunkworks story -
there was nothing official about it until the very end, and
yet it shipped on 20 million Macs and helped untold numbers
of students better understand mathematics.
<http://www.pacifict.com/Story/>
Now a new chapter in Graphing Calculator's story has begun.
Ron has just released a Mac OS X version of Graphing Calculator
3.5 through his company, Pacific Tech, which sold more-advanced
versions of the program even while Apple bundled the free
version. Interestingly, most of the porting work was done by
Marco Piovanelli, a programmer who's best known as the creator
of the WASTE text engine used by innumerable Macintosh programs
as well as Graphing Calculator itself.
<http://www.merzwaren.com/waste/>
My math background is sufficiently weak and distant that I cannot
evaluate the program on its mathematical merits, but a glance at
the feature list reveals an impressive set, given that it can
graph simple and complex equations in two, three, and four
dimensions, including multiple equations on the same graph. You
can even have Graphing Calculator automatically substitute a range
of values for a parameter in an equation and animate the resulting
graph as the numbers change. A slew of examples and demos show off
just what the program can do, and you can see some screenshots
of some seriously high-end mathematical features at the Complex
Functions page below. As Ron jokingly told me, "It helps visualize
functions of a complex variable in four dimensions, a feature
every seventh grader needs!"
<http://www.pacifict.com/>
<http://www.pacifict.com/ComplexFunctions.html>
You can save any equation in Graphing Calculator's own format, of
course, but you can also save in RTF (the equations and graphs
are saved as graphics) for importing into other programs, in HTML
format for posting on the Web, and in QuickTime movie format for
showing off animated equations. It's also easy to change the look
of the graphs, add text boxes with explanations, and print your
equations. There's also a free Graphing Calculator Viewer program
that lets you view and interact with (but not type into) Graphing
Calculator documents, making it a useful demo version.
<http://www.pacifict.com/FreeStuff.html>
Previous versions of the program have long been popular with math
teachers around the world thanks to the ease with which it enables
students to visualize highly abstract mathematical concepts. An
included (look in the Help menu) activity book called Learning
Math with Graphing Calculator helps you explore how you can learn
more about mathematics using the program.
<http://www.pacifict.com/Books.html>
If you're at all interested in math, or if you help others learn
math, take a look at this new version of Graphing Calculator for
Mac OS X. You can download a free version of the limited Graphing
Calculator 1.3 for Mac OS 9 or 1.4 for Mac OS X to check it out.
If you want the full feature set, Graphing Calculator 3.5 for
Mac OS X 10.3.6 or later costs $60 for students, teachers, and
parents, $40 for students with ID using it on only a single
machine, or $100 for everyone else. Mac OS 9 and Windows versions
are also available for the same prices.
<http://www.pacifict.com/Order.html>
<http://www.PacificT.com/StudentDiscount.html>
Tools We Use: Random Noises With SonicMood
------------------------------------------
by Matt Neuburg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Call me weird - and no doubt you will - but I often like to
have my computer make random noise. The reason is that when
I'm working at my computer on a piece of writing, I don't like
silence. To stay focused, and to help drown out the distracting
natural and artificial noises of the neighborhood, it helps
me to have some steady sound proceeding in the background.
That sound, however, must not involve human voices, such as
radio or television. If Terry Gross or the Car Talk guys are on,
no work will get done; instead, I'll listen to them. The same
thing applies to music. Unlike many people, I can't tune music
out; music as background doesn't work for me. Perhaps this is
because of my classical training - I don't know - but whatever
the reason, when music is in the air, I tend to listen. This
phenomenon is especially troublesome, by the way, in drug stores
and restaurants that use Muzak or "Easy Listening" or other
pseudo-musical perversions; I can't stop listening, and what
I'm hearing is horrible, so I typically run screaming from the
place moments after entering. How people can actually work in
such venues, or what restrains them from suing their employers,
has always been a mystery to me. Everyone complains of the ghastly
holiday music that pervades workplaces in the run-up to Christmas,
but to me, the whole world sounds like that all year round.
But I digress.
<http://www.npr.org/programs/fa/>
<http://www.cartalk.com/>
As I said at the outset, while working at my computer, I often
want sound, but not speech, and not music either; and the solution
is random noise. I'm referring here to sound that goes nowhere and
has no discernible pattern, sound that is gentle and pretty and
unobtrusive. Such sound has nothing to grab the mind's attention,
nothing to remind the hearer of the passage of time; yet neither
is it soporific or monotonous. This sort of sound, I find, helps
to keep my mind alert and relaxed; it pleases me and warms the
atmosphere, yet it leaves me free to focus on the task at hand.
There are a surprisingly large number of good random noise
generators for Mac OS X. Yet most of them do not quite fit
my needs. Jon Klein's Musik makes random notes, but uses just
one instrument, and patterns rapidly start to emerge, so that
it quickly becomes boring and annoying at the same time.
(Klein is best known for his remarkable cross-platform Breve
artificial-life simulation environment.) Composer Karlheinz Essl
is single-handedly responsible for several interesting real-time
music-generation applications. His FontanaMixer is an attempt to
recreate a famous aleatory John Cage piece; it's remarkable, but
it grabs most of your CPU, making it hard to get anything else
done, and its sounds are raspy and clanky, involve a human voice,
and are mixed with long periods of silence, as if someone were
muttering while sorting through the garbage cans in an alley - not
exactly conducive to great expository writing. His Seelewaschen
is also quite CPU-heavy, visibly slowing down my typing rate;
it involves a tolling bell reprocessed to give various raspy,
chirpy effects - sobering, but not relaxing. Much more to my taste
is Essl's now classic LexikonSonate, which plays a random but
extremely musical and sophisticated piano; it stops and starts
rather a lot, though, and the piano sound is rather percussive.
Besides, the very qualities that make its output musically
brilliant and intriguing militate against its use as subconscious
background - it makes me want to listen.
<http://www.spiderland.org/musik/>
<http://www.spiderland.org/breve/>
<http://www.essl.at/works/fontana-mixer/download.html>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage>
<http://www.essl.at/works/seelewaschen/download.html>
<http://www.essl.at/works/Lexikon-Sonate.html>
**Make the Mood** -- By this point you're probably thinking to
yourself: "I see what this fellow is after. He wants something
more along the lines of Music From the Hearts of Space - hippy-
dippy, mellow, environmental earwash. He wants ambient music."
You're right; I do. That isn't at all the kind of music I like
to listen to, but it's the kind of music I want playing when
I don't want to listen. And that's why my favorite background
random noise program is presently SonicMood, from Bit of
Paradise Products.
<http://www.hos.com/aboutmusicright.html>
<http://homepage.mac.com/johnrhall/BitofParadiseProducts.htm>
SonicMood has all the right elements for me. It uses pleasant
QuickTime instrument sounds, combined into small, gentle ensembles
(no more than three different kinds of instruments), playing long
tones in a variety of modes (scales), sometimes sounding rather
like a cross between foghorns in a harbor and Palestrina on drugs.
Each combination of parameters - number and choice of instruments,
maximum polyphony, average duration and pause, amplitude range,
and mode - is called a Mood, and you can edit existing Moods
and create new ones. Not only is each Mood random, within its
parameters, but SonicMood also cycles through its Moods, randomly
or sequentially, at time intervals that you define. Thus SonicMood
provides an ever-changing kaleidoscope of unobtrusive sound
environments - and if you do find any of the moods objectionable,
you can simply eliminate it. (SonicMood can also display images,
but this isn't a feature I use; in fact, I usually hide SonicMood
completely right after starting it up.)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Pierluigi_da_Palestrina>
SonicMood might not be everyone's cup of tea, but surely I can't
be the only person in the world who occasionally wants this sort
of sound to emanate from the computer, and in any case it has
certainly been helpful to me in my work, and therefore, quite
directly, to TidBITS. So, in the class of Tools We Use, I
recommend it to your attention. The developer, John R. Hall,
is very responsive to suggestions; he quickly added a Dock menu
at my request, so that I could pause and start SonicMood without
making it visible. SonicMood is just $10, with a 30-day free demo
trial period, and is available for both Mac OS X and Mac OS 9;
version 2.0 is available now, and version 3.0 should be released
shortly.
<http://homepage.mac.com/johnrhall/SonicMoodPage.htm>
Take Control News/10-Jan-05
---------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
We've been a little unhappy of late with how Take Control news
has been appearing in TidBITS issues. It's not taking the place
of other Mac content; our issues have just been getting longer.
In an effort to make issues more coherent and easily scanned,
we're moving short announcements and other articles about the
Take Control project itself into this Take Control News section.
Excerpts from new books that stand on their own as useful articles
will continue to appear independently. Most of the items that
appear here will be taken from our Take Control News weblog,
which may carry other items about Take Control or electronic
books. We'll see how it works out.
<http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/news/>
**Take Control of Your AirPort Network 1.1.3 Released** -- Just
before Christmas, we pushed out a free update to Glenn Fleishman's
"Take Control of Your AirPort Network," bringing it to version
1.1.3. If you haven't subscribed to the update list (and thus
been informed already), click the Check for Updates button on
the first page of your copy to load a Web page that lets you
download the update. The update includes information about
changing the name that appears for a printer connected to a USB
port on your AirPort Express or AirPort Extreme Base Station,
using WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) encryption with WDS (Wireless
Distribution System), using Keyspan's Express Remote control
with an AirPort Express and iTunes, and how to turn off Ethernet
and/or the AirPort interfaces using the latest firmware update.
Glenn also updated the screen shots for the latest version of
the AirPort Admin Utility 4.1 and added a pointer to a new list
of AirPort-compatible printers that replaces the one Apple pulled.
<http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/airport.html>
<http://www.efelix.co.uk/tech/1013.html>
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/10-Jan-05
------------------------------------
by TidBITS Staff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The second URL below each thread description points to the
discussion on our Web Crossing server, which will be much
faster.
**Personal Finance Software** -- Quicken is the undisputed champ
when it comes to personal finance software, but alternatives
do exist. How do they stack up? (24 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2415>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/275>
**How many updates is too often?** At what point does a
developer's software updates overwhelm its users? And do
beta releases count as updates? (12 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2422>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/282>
**iPhoto-like options for Mac OS 9?** Readers suggest software
options that offer some of the functionality of iPhoto, which
runs only under Mac OS X. (5 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2419>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/279>
**Backing up both Mac and Windows computers** -- A program such
as Retrospect can handle backing up data on a mixed-environment
network, but what issues are likely to arise with other software?
(7 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2418>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/278>
**Take Control of Backups for low end users** -- Joe Kissell's
Take Control of Mac OS X Backups ebook covers how to create an
effective and thorough backup plan, but some readers look for
something even simpler. (30 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2413>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/273>
**'Shared' Mail and Browser on Multiple Macs** -- A reader with
multiple Macs in his house wants to be able to go to any machine
and access his own email and Web settings. It sounds like a simple
problem, but the solutions can be complicated. (19 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2412>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/272>
$$
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