Re: Name change

Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 2007-04-07, Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

snip

Ye gods. 9 inches, eh? Well, well, well. That's `original Mac size',
that is - and they didn't have greyscale at all in standard trim, just
black and white. That's when I found out about the joys of overlapping
windows - you just don't have the room for anything else if you ask me.

One window 'maximised' was all I could manage on that thing. The office
desktops were text-only two-colour 80x25 character 13" displays at the
time (obviously, not running Windows).

You can do a lot with an 80x25 character display.

I often do.

I used to - but don't any more. 25 lines - well, I recall thinking
that 80x25 was a pretty big display, but I like to see more on the
screen than that these days.

Over in uk.comp.sys.mac, things to do with monitors are being discussed.
It seems that one bod at least has a pair of 23" LCD monitors hooked up
and loves the combination. It's not just me, then. I suspect the
liking for two monitors in the Mac world is partly down to the fact that
the MacOS X UI isn't very space efficient.

If you don't mind losing control and ownership of the images,
<http://tinypic.com/> hits the spot.

Hmm. `No nudity of offensive content allowed'. No `offensive' content?
Hmm. Terms and conditions, me no like. Nothing offensive means you can
get into trouble for perfectly innocent behaviour just on the basis of
someone complaining that you offended them.

What can they do if they don't like your picture? You aren't registered,
so the only sanctions they have are to remove the file and perhaps report
you to your ISP - or block your IP number if they're confident enough that
it's 'static'.

Hmm. Still, I'm not keen on it, and - oh, it's just a rip-off that
site, designed to get access to pictures, surely? Don't trust it.
Don't trust it at all.

The world is full of people quick to claim 'offence' about
all sorts of things, so businesses and law-enforcers usually take a
reasonably robust attitude to such complaints.

Law enforcers? We don't have them in this country. Law enforcement is
an invention of the fascist bully-boys in the USA as far as I can tell.

[snip]

I have a self-hiding 'panel' as well,
which you an see in the latest screenshot.

Is that the thing along the top? It seems to be akin to the MacOS
`Dock' - an entity I consider to be a Really Big Mistake in the
implementation we have. The problem is that it's used for `everything':
launcher (app, file, folder, disc, server, and all other entities),
displays all running user apps, keeps icons of minimised windows, it's
where the trash is now kept, and it's also meant for information display
(application icons displayed on the dock often display information).

The panel I use can have such things included, or not; it's very
configurable.

The problem with the `dock' is that it ain't; it's a hang-over from
NeXTSTEP, and I suspect the `non Mac' version might well have been
heavily configurable - but of course that's not the Apple way, is it?

Some of the features, such as the 'iconbox' which shows an
icon for each window (either globally or on just the current virtual
desktop) can be used seperately from the panel, or not at all. I don't
have to have a panel at all, but it has its uses so I keep it 'hidden'
except when I 'mouse over' it, so it isn't intrusive. I can minimise or
close the GKrellM display too, of course, but on a 'widescreen' diplay
there usually seems to be room for 'something' lurking at one side.
Windows can cover it any time I want, anyway.

Uhuh - sounds nicer than the dock. btw, the MacOS X dock can be set to
hide itself if you want it to, popping up when you shove the mouse near
the appropriate edge of the screen. It's how I've got it set - I
mostly just want to not see the never-to-be-sufficiently damned thing.

Thing is, as soon as you have more than a few icons, they get far too
small and it's just unmanagable. That's why I've got `DragThing' - much
more like the old-tyme Mac `Launcher'. Nice big friendly buttons,
switchable to different `panes' of launcher buttons, and you get a few
things on top of that - I have what's effectively a menu of all running
user apps with a GUI face, and *only* the running user apps with a GUI
face, so it's manageable. There's a separate one for discs, and
DragThing also gives me trash icons all over the place - on a couple of
the `magically appearing' menus, and on the desktop.

There's a 'desktop menu' for
launching less frequently used apps. I have no icons on my desktop, just
'post-it notes' as required.

Righto. A tidy desktop is the sign of a sick mind. My desktop is a
mess, for all that I try to keep it tidy. I collect junk, and drop it
on the desktop until I manage to work out what the hell to do with it,
which can sometimes take a while.

My computer 'desktop' is the only tidy thing in my life.

<grin>

I do have a little toy on my desktop; it takes the form of a small
animated 'thing' which moves around the screen, along the top of the
active window or the bottom of the display, taking various forms which get
up to 'appropriate' antics - yesterday, a skating acrobatic penguin; today
a little white kitten (which is curled up atop this window, snoring, at
present). Is that sane enough? <G>

Oh yes. There were many such things for the old line of the Macintosh
OS - but not `all rolled into one' like that. The kitten wouldn't be
called Neko, would it?

I'm currently trying to track down a game which involves piloting a
paper aeroplane around a house. Well, actually, I mounted the disc
images I think contain it, and then immediately went and did something
else.

[snip]

System stats, eh? Who really needs that
sort of info when using a computer normally? Okay, in my case, I can
tell if I'm thrashing the CPUs for some reason 'cos the fans get faster
and a lot louder - but...)

Rowland.

Well, you seem to have the system or CPU temperature, and the time, and
various launchers, displayed across the top of your screen.

Umm, ish, okay, so I do have a temperature displayed. Not sure why,
mind, and I'm not sure which temperature it is (there are many
temperature sensors). Aside from the rest of it - well the menubar is
the place to keep controls, so that's what I've got there.

Judging by the temperature indicated, I'd say it's the CPU itself (or one
of them, or the hottest, or something).

Nah. Far too cool. I've had a look at the application, and after some
poking around, I've found out that it's displaying the air tunnel
temperature. The processors are showing 42°C-55°C at the moment.

And the bum is at 44.0°C (main logic board backside, that is).

The bits that measure highest temperature at the graphics processor IC
(58°C at the moment), and the memory controller diode (57.5°C). Not
sure exactly what that last one is, but I do know that you can use
diodes as thermometers.

I have a 'hyperthreading' P4 CPU
so the two CPUs shown by the monitor are not quite two independent things;
hence only one CPU temperature display.

Righto. No need for stuff like hyperthreading here (apparently, it
slows down Windoze) - four CPU cores in two chips. I've just got four
real processors :-) Who me, smug? Oh yes.

Actual launchers - well, while I could use *one* of those things as a
launcher, I mainly use it for finding folders.

I generally launch a terminal (RXvt) and run mc (Midnight Commander) a
very nice text-based file manager (and editor and ftp client etc), for
'finding stuff'.

Righto. ISTR hearing about a Mac port of Midnight Commander. There are
diddly-ump ways of `finding stuff' on this 'ere Mac. I use whichever
one I happen to remember and think is easiest at any given moment.

Anyway, to explain: the temperature probably ought to go, 'cos I don't
have any need to see it. It's displayed by the Temperature Monitor app,
which I keep running 'cos it keeps a log and I've been interested in
what the hell goes on at times (some software doesn't play nice and
sometimes uses 100% of a CPU - with four CPUs, this can happen even with
a pre-emptive multitasking OS).

Yes. That's one of the things I use GKrellM to tell me about. CPU and
disc activity, LAN traffic, a sort of 'mini top display', etc.

I've got Activity Monitor to give me the `what's up now' info; the thing
about Temperature Monitor is that you can use its temperature log to
infer `when the trouble started'.

But the rest of it? Okay: the green icon to the right of the
temperature is SMARTreporter, which will tell me if either of my
internal HDDs fails its self-check. Then we've got the `dial up my ISP'
icon (and yes I do have a modem connected as well as the broadband
router), the `Classic' icon (for the backwards compatibility OS) because
it's a good idea to turn it off if you're not using it.

The union flag is the `UK keyboard layout' sign, and there are a couple
of character related palettes available that way which I've never used
much but probably would if I did much wysiwyg text stuff. Volume knob
is obviousl. Time and date - handy reference material. The small
parrot is `my login icon' - the menu there lets you switch between
different users on the fly.

I remember key-strokes for 'switching users', but it's rare for me to have
more than one human using my computers - and when I do they're usually all
me.

There is that. But here - well, we've got two `real' user accounts, one
`non admin user' account, and one other I'm not going to admit to 'cos
it's attached to the bottom of a tree and I don't want to tempt fate,
y'know?

And then the small filing cabinet is XMenu:
a configurable pull-down menu of files and folders so you can `just get
to whatever' in the file system without hassle. And the small blue
magnifying glass is the bloody, bloody Spotlight (system search) icon
and the sooner Spotlight is shot, the better.

Is that one of these new-fangled 'index everything' things?

That's not the problem. We've had indexed searching on Macs for yonks.
It's just that you can't avoid it now - it's compulsory. There is no
other `Find' provided by the GUI. You wanna search for just a file by
name? Not easy, and it's impossible to get the results displayed in a
fashion that I can use readily. It's just a total bloody disaster if
you ask me.

One of these days, I'm going to sit down and make some notes on `how to
use find from the command line' and stick to using that. It's not as
bad as all that - MacOS X has a nice `open' command in the Terminal
which is about the same as double-clicking a file in the Finder.

They've
infiltrated the Linux world too; my distro, Mandriva, had 'kat' included
in the default installation for a while - and then made it optional in
response to the shrieks of agony as it hogged CPU clicks and disc access
apparently making some peoples systems almost unusable while the initial
index database was constructed.

Mac users have the same trouble - but they just have to scream in
anguish because Apple won't make Spotlight off-switchable. Well, okay,
*Apple* won't do that - but people have found out, so, erm, we don't
have to suffer.

Presumably someone thinks they're a good
idea, but I can't see why.

It can be handy to look inside files, but I'd rather do it `as and when'
rather than use an index. Indexes - oh, they just cause problems.
Thing is, that sort of thing is also `the Unix way' to an extent. Maybe
things will get sensible in another decade or two.

I like to see
what my machine is doing;

I know the feeling - but I find I'd rather not be distracted by that
sort of thing. I mean, I've often got `Activity Monitor' running (think
of a GUI version of top, and then add brass knobs and all the other
monitoring in that line you can think of), and I can't help keeping an
eye on things when I have. Waste of flippin' time, that's what.

I'm very good at ignoring things.

Lucky old you. I'm not.

Except
that sometime they will be some process got itself messed up - usually
Classic - and needing a bit of a prod (aka kill -9, or `Force quit' in
MacOS X terms).

'Runaway process'. We get those in Linux sometimes too.

Werl, yeah - after all, Linux is basically the same sort of OS as MacOS
X.

Lots of ways to
stop them, fortunately.

<feral grin> Who needs anything but kill -9? Nuke the bastards out of
existence, that's what I say.

Mind you, it's quite entertaining to see a process thrashing away and
chewing up (say) 60-80% of one CPU - with the overall %CPU /idle/
indicator floating around the 75% mark.

Which reminds me: I've got a song called `kill -9', by a British space
rock band called `Born to go'. The rest of the lyrics are Unix commands
too, apparently. I've not checked carefully, but I reckon the claim is
near enough true. Mind you, the fact that Unix has commands like
`whoami' helps.

Unix commands and tools seem to have been given 'interesting' names as a
matter of course. I think the geeks of old got a kick out of log entries
such as 'creating child' and 'terminating parent' and 'executing killall'.

Not just of old, I expect.

when the scanners are out on force it's fun for
a little while to watch the router 'status' and logs too - rather like
being indoors and watching the sleet and gale doing their worst out there.

Fair enough.

I've long taken the line that I really don't want to know what it's
doing behind the scenes - but while that's what I'd *like*, here in the
real world one does have to pay attention and yes of course you've got a
point about the entertainment value. Not that I'd know how to interpret
what's going on by looking at any indication of network traffic.

Rowland.

My knowledge tends to stop at the point of "I didn't make it do that so
what's going on?". That's when I sometimes start learning more stuff.

In the Linux world, you can at least get access to the information you
need. Macs - well, it can be hard to track down what you need to know.
Apple has never been particularly interested in informing its users
about what they want to know.

Rowland.

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