Did you hear that? Its the sound of my head exploding.

I've been away from the internets most of the day, but apparently Verizon just freed its network.

AT&T, I'm about to switch carriers. You better do something.

In Boston

I'm currently in Boston at the Materials Research Society meeting. I just gave a talk about my work with the IBEX mission. I have another talk tomorrow.

Leopard upgrade: Part II

I've managed to upgrade my notebook to Leopard, but I borked the install the first time. It looks like most of the apps I used will at least start. I didn't install macfuse, and I haven't yet installed fink because it looks like the install will be more involved than just drag-and-drop.

There were a few unfortunate things that happened so far during this process. First, it turns out that my old PowerBook doesn't have the MHz for Leopard, so I had to trick it. Second, there was some weirdness with my keychain; somehow the transfer from my old install to my new install grabbed all of the necessary files, but screwed up the items in keychain. After a few minutes of manual futzing, I straightened things out.

I have to say that I really dig the tabbed terminal and spaces. I haven't tried out time machine, but I think I'll like that app as well.

Upgrading to Leopard

I recently purchased Leopard and soon I will install it. I don't want to lose my data, so I've planned out this event:

1. Mirror the current install on a new external disk using SuperDuper.


2. Verify that my computer can boot from the external disk in the even that the install goes sideways.


3. Install Leopard.


4. Migrate my user directory from the backup disk.


5. Install the apps I use.

I have a list of OSX apps that I use every day. I think a few will become unnecessary (or, god forbid, unusable) once I upgrade. Also, I've added a few to the list. Here is the new lineup:

• OSX
  
• X11
  
• developer tools. I don't know how this will work with the new version.
  
• iWork
  
• iLife
  
• FlickrExport
  
• iScrobbler
  
• firefox
  
• textwrangler
  
• OmniGraffle Pro
  
• OmniOutliner Pro
  
• Adium
  
• Vienna
  
• Flip4Mac
  
• Perian
  
• TeXShop
  
• colloquy
  
• Alarm Clock 2
  
• Grand Perspective
  
• MarsEdit
  
• MoneyDance
  
• macfuse
  
• fink
  
  • wget
    
  • pwgen
    
  • subversion client

I'll update the list as soon as I install Leopard.

OpenDocument and Leopard

I bought a copy of Leopard on Thursday and I was reading the specs when I found that TextEdit will now read OpenDocument format. I am very pleased with this development. Hopefully iWork will support all of the OpenDocument formats in the next release.