The answer is that I read from the top down. Since tweets and other items tend to build on each other, you want to read the oldest first, then build up to the most recent. Given this “I’ll read them all in order” approach, my eyes can just flow straight down if the oldest is at the top and the most recent is at the bottom.

Otherwise my eyes have to read the bottom item (moving a small amount down) then jump up tho the next item and read a little down, then jump up. I keep doing this for a long time.

Newest at the bottom solves this problem.

When I realized my home directory had almost 200GB, I had to figure it out. 3 minutes later, I found that ~/Library/Application Support/SyncServices/Local/save.isyncplayback was close to 180GB…bingo, there is it.

A quick Google and some link following had me to the Apple Forum topic: Save.isyncplayback folder eating my hard drive in no time. A few months ago, I had been trying to figure out a Plaxo/iCal sync oddness and must have turned on verbose debugging. Turned it off and cleared the history… I’m a happy camper again with plenty of disk space.

Make it a simple process. Take every line item, have everyone fill out a yes/no check list. Anything that gets enough checks stays in, everything else leaves the initial bill and get a chance at round 2 in a month.

Why Democracies Fail…: “What won’t work is strong arming conservatives in the name of faux compromise with legislation filled with broken window spending, pork barrel projects and political grand standing. If it’s such an urgency, we should be cutting every debatable program to get something out the door. If the majority party were really interested in bi-partisanship instead of earning a political win, this would have been done already. “

(Via alexrudloff.com.)

A neighbor I respect a lot says that a big part of the financial crisis is that nobody (especially the banks and financial firms, but even other potential players in the mix) are not doing anything because they don’t want to act until they know what the government will do. Why write off or sell your bad assets for $1 if the gov’t might pay $3 (or even $10). In this view, definitive action is needed, but people would have to believe it would be stuck to (which kinda nullifies my “second round” in the first part here).

Tibco hardware appliance tackles rising messaging volume: “Tibco started a beta programme last summer and McNamara said that one of the beta triallists already had one installed. He added that he expected that most users would lease the products, although he was reluctant to discuss pricing on the appliance.”

(Via InfoWorld.)

I do find the whole topic of appliances in IT interesting. I’ve seen it change the way things are approved, procured, charged back (or not). It is a balance between general purpose vs. purpose built, with some gray on each side.

On the iPhone side, we’ve got updates to Radioshift Touch in
development. Better yet, we’re hoping to shipping Airfoil Speakers
for iPhone in the next month or two. This will make it possible to
receive audio on the iPhone (and iPod Touch) via wifi, just as
Airfoil Speakers for Mac, Windows, and Linux already do! Keep your
eyes on our site and the App Storefor information on both these new
applications.

This is just what I need. There are many times during the week that I’m on conference calls. Too many of them have me in “listen mode” where I’m supposed to be learning something. Being shackled to my desk during these times can be tough, especially since many of them are during lunch time.

I can have phone calls go through my Mac at home. So to solve this, I sometimes turn on Airfoil and use AppleTV as a remote speaker on the TV within earshot of the kitchen to broadcast the call while I make lunch.

This is suboptimal because I need to turn the TV on beforehand, and it means the TV is blasting. Ok if I’m home alone, but if anyone else is in the house, it doesn’t work.

Airfoil speakers on the iPhone/Touch will be perfect. I’ll have portable speakers and be able to turn it on and off right next to me. Looking forward to this small improvement.

While I am comfortable on the command line, I live in a GUI, so I wanted some tools to help me learn, use, and manage it all. So I’m looking for a graphical subversion client. So far, I’ve been playing with these:

Versions.

Platform: A Mac OS X application. While I use Windows and Linux also, so much of my “SVN related” time will be Mac OS X that this is actually a plus.

Pros: Mac OS X native and very nice looking.

Cons: No built in editor (or viewer). It would be nice to have a “quick look” function that assumed a plain text file if it didn’t know the extension. There is support for the Mac OS X quick look facility, but it doesn’t work with enough artifacts given odd file names used for config and other text oriented files in the stuff I’m working with. The assumption that you edit in an app specifically designed for the file type is ok, but sometimes not appropriate or worth the effort for a small change.

Synchro SVN.

Platform: A cross platform application that works fine on Mac OS X.

Cost: Normally $99, but currently $59. If I read it right, I, as a single user, can put it on the various computers I use (desktop and two laptops, including the one Windows laptop I sometimes use).

Pros: Built in editor that is sufficient for quick changes. Cross platform could be handy. Revision graph could help make sense of the lineage of versions and branches.

Cons: Being cross platform, it isn’t very pretty to look at.

Cornerstone.

Platform: Mac OS X

Cost: $69. I, as a single user, can put it on two computers (which is probably ok since I normally use one iMac and one MacBook)

Pros: Mac OS X native and looks good. Has most features I can think of using. Built in quick revision comparison is very simple, quick and useful.

Cons: A built in editor would be nice, but there are a lot of built in “quick view” options, both leveraging the OS “quick look” function as well as a built in text viewing feature in the main app window (“Toggle Contents”) which worked very well for my needs.

Decision. I’ll decide in the next week. Right now I’m torn between Cornerstone and Versions. If Cornerstone was a little less I’d pull the trigger. May end up there anyways because of the built in previews (or diff and contents).

There are a slew of other clients available. A table listing and comparing can be found on Wikipedia.

United has charged extra for Economy plus for quite a while, but you supposedly get more legroom. Today when I went online to check into my flight home from Orlando I went to select my seats. No seats were available when I bought my tickets (except Premium seats which I didn’t qualify for) so I looked at what was available. Two choices… A single available middle seat, or pay $10 for a “choice seat” of which there were 12… Two full rows in the middle of the plane. Not exit row or anything special. So if I wanted a aisle or a window, I needed to pay $10.

I didn’t check in. I’ll wait and see what I can get at the airport in the morning… Can’t be any worse than a middle seat.

UPDATE: checked in at 6am and I had a middle exit row (better than a regular middle) but was able to select an aisle (albeit in the back of the bus)

Finally, as if I don’t throw away enough credit card offers that come in the mail, now USAirways has their flight attendants pitching CC offers on the intercom and hawking brouchures up and down the aisle…I hope they at least get an individual bonus if they hook one of us sardines.

My wife’s nano could do this a long time ago. THe iPod Touch could do it after the upgrade to 2.0 earlier this year.

FInally with the Apple TV update a few weeks ago, I have it on the atv, and I’m happy!!!

“Plumbing for plumbing’s sake is not sustainable”

Which she followed by an analogy of the stone soup story: infrastructure & federated service development… “we bring the stones, everyone else brings the vegetables.”