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While I Was Out

Morgen and I have been back from our vacation to Indonesia and Hong Kong for more than a week now. We spent the first few days getting caught up with email and bills and struggling with jet lag. Now, life is more or less back to normal, which for us means far more work than time in which to do it. However, we’re also very happy to be home and quite excited about several new things on the horizon.

A lot happened during our absence. Some things readers may be wondering about:

How was your trip? It was mixed. There were wonderful parts and awful parts. I think that, in all, it sort of leaned slightly toward the unpleasant end of the scale. Which is, you know, just one of those things when you travel. On the plus side: I successfully turned 40. We saw some really cool things (still sorting through bazillions of pictures). We ate well. We avoided at least 13 disasters. We didn’t get sick (other than the usual minor digestive disturbances). We have some interesting stories. On the minus side: we ran into significant logistical problems. We couldn’t afford to do some of the things we were planning to do. We found the heat, the pollution, the noise, and the crowds oppressive. We experienced many frustrating cultural differences. We have some interesting stories.

What’s going on with Interesting Thing of the Day, SenseList, and The Geeky Gourmet? Progress is occurring!

  • ITotD: There haven’t been any new articles on Interesting Thing of the Day since December; older articles from the archives have been appearing three times a week. Although we would have liked to keep new content going before, during, and after our trip, there just wasn’t time to make it happen. We hope to start publishing new articles next week, and later this month we’ll be fiddling with the format of the site a bit in ways that I think will benefit everyone. Interestingly—and not for the first time—we noticed that the site’s revenues actually increased significantly during the time we were away. Seriously: we didn’t lift a finger the entire month, and it turned out that January produced our highest AdSense income ever. Go figure. Maybe if we just forget about it entirely, the income will skyrocket. (But we won’t!)
  • SenseList: We’re ramping back up. Look for all new, daily lists starting on Monday, along with a few site tweaks and an increased marketing and publicity effort. Our plan is to test some new approaches over the next four weeks and see if we can increase the site’s effectiveness dramatically.
  • The Geeky Gourmet: I haven’t forgotten about it! I can only type so fast, though, and it’s just a lower priority for the moment. During a brainstorming session on our trip, we came up with an idea that might make it easier to infuse it (and our other sites) with new life without requiring too much effort. Stay tuned.

Your recent update of Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac doesn’t cover VMware Fusion, which went into public beta in late December. What’s your take on it? The beta looks reasonably good: better than Parallels Desktop in some respects, not as spiffy in other respects. I expect the final product will be pretty hot, but that the competition between the two for the ultimate feature set will be pretty intense for the foreseeable future. One thing VMware still has to do is provide support for running copies of Windows installed under Boot Camp, as the new betas of Parallels can do. One thing Parallels still has to do is match the performance and device support of Fusion. The next major update of Running Windows will cover Fusion, as well as the Leopard implementation of Boot Camp, in detail (meaning it won’t be released until after Leopard ships, and I’m not yet sure how long after).

Your recent update of Take Control of Mac OS X Backups doesn’t cover CrashPlan, which was introduced at Macworld Expo. What’s your take on it? (And is there an echo in here?) I’m testing it right now, and I’m in contact with the developers to discuss my impressions and suggestions for future development. CrashPlan is certainly a cool idea, and the best implementation I’ve seen so far of peer-to-peer backups. For automatic offsite archives, I can hardly imagine a simpler or more foolproof approach. However, I have some interface concerns, and a few essential pieces of basic functionality are currently missing, such as the capability to back up to local volumes and to create bootable duplicates. It also remains to be seen how it will stack up against Time Machine in Leopard. But look for a detailed review in the near future. The next major update of Backups will cover CrashPlan, as well as Time Machine, in detail (meaning it won’t be released until after Leopard ships—I’m not yet sure how long after—and yes, there’s definitely an echo in here).

In your review of backup software for Macworld (February 2007 issue), you gave Prosoft’s Data Backup a higher rating than Retrospect, which you’ve always recommended in the past. What gives? I got a few letters about this. Some wanted to know why Data Backup got such a high rating, since the version reviewed didn’t even support direct recording to optical discs. Others wanted to know if I’ve decided I no longer like Retrospect or am changing my recommendations.

Both are good programs, and both can accomplish the majority of backup tasks most people need. Data Backup has a much better interface and is actively under development. Retrospect has far better network support and scheduling options, and offers a long list of features that no other Mac backup program has—along with a sucky interface, bugs, expensive tech support, and updates that are very slow in appearing. (Also, there’s now a credible rumor afoot that EMC Insignia, having laid off a large percentage of the Retrospect team, is effectively putting the product into “life support” mode, or will soon.)

So it depends on what you need. For an individual backing up a single machine to a hard disk, Data Backup will be way easier to use, and is a better choice overall. But if you have more than one computer or are using optical or tape drives, the balance tips in Retrospect’s favor, despite the interface, bugs, and costly tech support. In addition, if you’ve purchased my Backups book, you have at your disposal a Retrospect primer that can take the edge off the interface, so I’m more likely to recommend Retrospect to someone reading my book than someone reading Macworld. Of course, the whole backup landscape could change with Leopard’s release, and I’ll revise my recommendations accordingly.

What other Take Control stuff are you working on? Egad. Lots of stuff. To wit:

  • Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard is pretty much my top priority; it’ll be somewhat like Take Control of Upgrading to Tiger and Take Control of Upgrading to Panther, but will contain tons of new information, such as more detail about preparing your system for an upgrade, dealing with the peculiarities of external USB and FireWire drives on Intel vs. PowerPC machines, upgrading various Windows-on-Mac installations, and much more. As usual, we plan to release the ebook at the exact moment Leopard goes on sale in the U.S., whenever that turns out to be.
  • An update to Take Control of .Mac, primarily to cover the new & improved Webmail interface. Not sure when this will ship, but it shouldn’t be too far in the future.
  • Take Control of Apple Mail in Leopard, which will of course follow in the footsteps of Take Control of Apple Mail in Tiger and Take Control of Email with Apple Mail. This, obviously, will also have to wait for Leopard, but I don’t know how soon thereafter it will appear.
  • Smaller updates to several other ebooks are under consideration.

What do you think about the iPhone? It looks cool. I’m not thrilled with the 2-year Cingular contract in the U.S., the lack of 3G support, the closed operating system, and the fact that it won’t be available until late this year in Europe and next year in Asia. But I want to reserve judgment until I see the final product. I am looking to buy both a new cell phone and a new iPod this year, so I’m going to defer those purchases until I see whether the iPhone can meet my needs. It might, and that would be groovy.

February 8, 2007 by Blogging Mac Stuff

New Year’s Update

Hello all. Over the past couple of months, this blog hasn’t seen much action, and the other alt concepts sites have also been pretty quiet in recent weeks. Apart from the holidays and related travel, Morgen and I have been frantically preparing for our upcoming trip to Indonesia and Hong Kong—we leave in a matter of minutes! There’s been so much to do that a few things, such as actual work, have gotten put on the back burner. However, I did want to provide a few updates before I head off on my big 40th Birthday Trip.

Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac: A couple of weeks ago, we released version 2.0 of this book, which reflects the huge number of changes in the Windows-on-Mac world in the last several months—major updates to both Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop, the release of CrossOver Mac, and the sort-of release of Windows Vista. Of course, no sooner did we get the new edition out than VMware went and released a beta of Fusion, yet another interesting way to run Windows on your Intel Mac. So I’ll update the book to discuss that at some point after I return from my trip. In the meantime, I think all the information there is still solid and reliable, and it’s a great improvement over the first edition.

Take Control of Mac OS X Backups: Version 2.0 of this book—a significant expansion—is also pretty much ready to go, and has been for weeks. But because of the holidays and preparations for Macworld Expo next week, it may not be released until mid-January or so. This new version discusses Time Machine to some extent, but after Leopard is released, I’ll do another update that covers it in detail.

Interesting Thing of the Day, SenseList, and The Geeky Gourmet: All these sites will be running on a greatly reduced schedule during January. We plan to collect lots of interesting things, lists, and food stories on our trip, and will be back with fresh content in February.

Macworld Expo: This’ll be the first time I’ve missed the show in I can’t remember how many years. But it’s for a good cause: you only turn 40 once. I’m sure I’ll have 32,768 email messages awaiting me on my return, informing me of all the cool things that were announced and that I must immediately buy. And, of course, there will inevitably be all sorts of books requiring updates .

So that’s the update. If there’s anything I forgot, I’m sure it’s on my list somewhere, and I’ll attend to it in February. See you then!

January 2, 2007 by Blogging Books Travel

Revolution Number Nine

It’s been a crazy day.

A couple of days ago, we saw a huge spike in the number of visitors to SenseList, thanks to a mention on digg.com. That was pretty cool, especially since SenseList hadn’t yet attracted a great deal of attention since we launched the site in July. But today, we saw an even bigger surge of interest, this time due to a mention in Yahoo! TV’s daily The 9 (we were #5). In both cases, the post that attracted so much attention was 32 Weirdly Specific Museums. Which is funny, because that was, for me, one of those off-the-cuff, phone-it-in kinds of posts, based on an article I wrote for Interesting Thing of the Day way back when: Museums of Interesting Things.

Prior to today, I hadn’t even heard of The 9. But it was the eeriest thing to be watching a video of this perky blonde, in a very E.T.-style show, rattling off the day’s hottest nine Web pages according to Yahoo, and to have her mention SenseList as though everyone had heard of it already—complete with the SenseList logo I created up there on the screen. It was like seeing my own name in the newspaper or…I don’t even know what to compare it to. Very odd. But, I mean, way cool.

Meanwhile, Morgen and I spent the afternoon hanging out with Jillian Hardee, who has written a couple of articles for Interesting Thing of the Day (Highgate Cemetery and Assateague Island). Jillian, who lives in West Virginia, was in town for a conference her husband’s attending, and it was a delight to meet her and show her some of San Francisco’s interesting spots. The three of us turn out to have quite a bit in common. For example, we’d been planning to take her to see 826 Valencia, a pirate supply store (really), and during lunch she happened to mention how much she liked pirates. So that was a pretty groovy coincidence. We also visited Mission Dolores, all three of us having a fondness for cemeteries.

September 26, 2006 by Blogging

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Although I write about scientific topics from time to time and fantasize about being a mad scientist, my actual profession is that of a computer geek and writer, not a physicist. So what are the chances that twice, within a one-week period, I would be randomly queried about the Second Law of Thermodynamics? Pretty slim, I’d think…but then, I’m not a statistician either.

The first occasion was last Friday. Morgen and I were on vacation in Las Vegas, and we were having a drink at Quark’s Bar in the Star Trek-themed portion of the Las Vegas Hilton. (I highly recommend the Star Trek: The Experience Backstage Tour, by the way!) When I say “a drink,” I don’t mean just any drink, but the strongest drink in, probably, the entire galaxy: a Warp Core Breach, which contains 10 ounces of liquor (and various other ingredients), plus dry ice in the bottom of the fish bowl-sized glass to make a nice steam effect. (It wasn’t our first one of these, incidentally, though it was the first on this particular trip.)

So we’d gotten about a third of the way through this when a guy in full Klingon makeup and costume comes up to us and starts dishing out the usual “humans are so weak” insults. (We were also visited by an Andorian and, I think, a Ferengi.) We played along as best we could. I don’t remember the exact exchange, but it must have had something to do with the dry ice, and I was presumably making the point that humans could actually be pretty smart on occasion. The Klingon challenged me: “What’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics?” I couldn’t think of it and hesitated, pointing at the drink and complaining that it was affecting my cognition. “Fine,” he said, “What’s the Third Law of Thermodynamics?” I couldn’t think of that one either. The Klingon grunted and moved on.

Now, I would have loved to put a Klingon in his place, and I felt a bit ashamed at my performance there, because I am in fact pretty familiar with the laws of thermodynamics, having written about them in my article on Perpetual Motion Machines. Had my head been clearer, I might have rattled them off, if not necessarily in the right order. But, of course, due to the nature of my occupation, this isn’t the sort of material I generally need to keep on the tip of my tongue.

Then yesterday morning I got an email from someone who’d read the aforementioned article and claimed he’d invented a device that could “escape” the Second Law of Thermodynamics. He explained this little project in great detail, and although I didn’t fully comprehend it, it seemed to amount to a way of recovering otherwise lost heat energy and turning it into electricity. That, of course, is fine as far as it goes, but if it doesn’t go all the way, and clearly it can’t, then it won’t in fact violate the Second Law. Which, for the record, goes like this (at least in one formulation):

Heat cannot be turned into other forms of energy with 100% efficiency.

I’m at a loss to know what cosmic meaning I should attach to this remarkable coincidence, but it certainly reinforces the value of, for example, brushing up on my physics and keeping my distance from Klingons in bars.

September 15, 2006 by Blogging Travel
Joe Kissell is a best-selling, award-winning, hyphen-overusing author and technologist, and the publisher of Take Control Books. He enjoys making complicated topics easy to understand. He’s also a husband, dad, and dreamer. Having lived in numerous places in the U.S., Canada, and France, Joe has now settled in Saskatoon.

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