found drama

THE WEEKEND ROOOOOOOOOOOUND-UP! … in all its glory?

Much to be b’gock’d about.

(1) Got Resin working on KetelOne this weekend. Step in the right direction. Now I just need to figure out how to make it talk to Apache (and vice versa). And convince it to recognize the Xalan jar sitting in its lib dir. [ OH! How much I still need to learn… ] The frustrating part is that I keep mentioning this to ppl I know that work w/ web app servers daily and they’re all like: “Oh! Yeah, that’s easy.” W/o offering any real insight. Some help has been offered … but alcohol seems to keep interfering…

(2) Decision made: This XML/XSL ish is forking awesome. I may be managing at the moment — but I’d give all the management perks up in a heartbeat to program and focus all (and I do mean *all*) my efforts on XML-based data projects. I knew this shit was powerful but DAMN my man.

(3) Spent approx. an hr at a Borders this weekend reviewing several OS X books that I’ve been considering and/or weighing against each other and/or anticipating…

(a) Running … Panther … Davison’s book. Spent a lot of time leafing through this one. Interesting points: History of MacOS as it shoots toward OS X; user-friendly approach to some potentially non-user friendly (but powerful) tasks you can run; cool peek into the boot process; fairly comprehensive. Why I didn’t pick it up: Not enough coverage on FileVault (er… any?); section on printing felt lacking in the Mac-to-Windows-shared-printer info that I have been oh-so-still-craving as of late.

(b) Learning Unix for OS X … very much a neat project and glad it’s out there. Interesting points: Neat tear-out quick reference sheet in the back; nice reference for newbie-to-intermediate folks on the shell. Why I didn’t pick it up: Maybe a little too basic; seemed to gloss over or skip a lot of the material I feel I still need the primers on.

(c) OS X for Unix Geeks … Jepson is everywhere! Interesting points: Feels like a really comprehensive grip on the Unix-ness of OS X; comparison of Terminal app and xterm; decent coverage of using X11 apps on X; good coverage of terminal commands (less exhaustive than the Nutshell but much more depth on those covered. Why I didn’t pick it up: seemed like they cheaped out on the quick reference tear-out (guess only newbies get that, eh?); again, coverage on printing/CUPS seemed to focus too much on X- or Unix-served printers (fuck Windows but still…); while I’d like to geek myself as a developer, I’m not that much a of a *nix developer to benefit from about 1/4 to 1/3 of this one.

(d) OS X Hacks … Whoa! … Interesting points: 1st impression = awesome!; comprehensive coverage of a lot of should-be-obvious and not-so-obvious tricks, hacks, and kludges to bend of the OS to your will; hacks detailed range from the easy to the balls-out tough, from the armchair geeky to the I-speak-in-Assembly geeky. Why I didn’t pick it up: Randomly flipping through pages, I kept feeling like I was hitting on things I had little to no interest in (iTunes broadcasting over web?); I felt like 1/3 the hacks I’d figured out on my own already; a couple of them (FTP from the Finder!?) I knew were flaky-at-best to begin with.

(e) Definitive AppleScript … definitive! … Interesting points: Looks to be very much the comprehensive guide; decent AppleScript appendix; nice analogs drawn to other languages. Why I didn’t pick it up: Price tag seemed a little steep; didn’t plan to get that involved in AppleScript; even flipping through and checking out the examples and dictionaries, the language still seems pretty obtuse; part of me leans toward the Nutshell…

AND THE BIGGEST NEWS…
For those that didn’t already here: We have basically sold out house already.

Rock on.

And we think we may have found the phattest fucking pad 20-somethings-dreamhouse of all time and at a price that is to fucking die for. We wait further instructions from the Elder Gods … but GODDAMN! If Cthulu ain’t down he can go funk himself. This one must be ours.

About Rob Friesel