Marcus Hamaker is The Sleepy Geek

Just got notice that 10.6.3 is available for release from my update manager.

The update includes:

• performance of Logic Pro 9 and Main Stage 2 when running in 64-bit mode.
• printing reliability.
• sleep and wake reliability when using Bonjour wake on demand.
• a color issue in iMovie with HD content.
• glowing, stuck, or dark pixels when viewing video from the iMac (Late 2009) built-in iSight camera.
• an issue in which the Finder reports a -36 error when copying directories to a drive formatted as FAT32.
• reliability of photo screen savers.
• compatibility issues with OpenGL-based applications.
• an issue in which shadows in PDF of Aperture book are black instead of gray.
• an issue in which the microphone level in iChat may not increase the volume after reducing it to prevent a feedback event.
• the reliability of certain third-party USB devices.
• the Accounts preference pane can now limit login to members of groups hosted by a non-Apple directory service, such as Active Directory.
• DNS server ordering as specified in Network Preferences and DNS reliability. For details about how Mac OS X v10.6 handles unresponsive DNS servers, see this article.
• the reliability and compatibility of QuickTime X.

So go update and be merry. More details can be found here.

Geek on!

In an article posted from on their blog, the Facebook developers put their new homepage online for us all to see. I actually noticed the change before I saw the post in my reader and my first impressions are good. Some of the things they have done in the past have taken away functionality and in tern made the experience a little less fluid. This change moves things around on the screen and seems to make navigation more intuitive.

The now have moved notifications to the top bar and cleaned them up. Notifications, messages and requests are now 3 spearate icons as seen here.

A revision to the left menu didn’t actually catch my eye at first. They have centralized more there now for easier access.

The left menu has been organized to make it easier for you to communicate with and discover content from your friends. You can now access your messages and other core features all in one place, to the left of your News Feed.

And the last major change is how you interact with games and applications. Now a dashboard with everything centralized. This may be important to some, but the games don’t really catch me at all. If you do play games or connect to a lot of apps, a dashboard idea like this is great.

Have fun with the new changes!

Geek on!

source

I just saw notice in my WordPress admin page that version 2.9.1 is ready for download. I am starting this article on Tuesday but am going to finish up some details on Wednesday before posting it so that I can make sure it doesn’t break anything!

You will see notice in your admin page like we have for the versions since 2.8 I believe. A nice upgrade util is included with WP and after backing up it is the easiest way to update your installation.

After a little looking around this seems to be the list of bug fixes that are included with this release through bugtrack. WordPress also stated in their blog post that the biggest fix was scheduled posts and pingbacks not working correctly.

WordPress 2.9.1

Posted January 4, 2010 by Ryan Boren. Filed under Releases.

After over a million downloads of WordPress 2.9 and lots of feedback from all of you, we’re releasing WordPress  2.9.1.  This release addresses a handful of minor issues as well as a rather annoying problem where scheduled posts and pingbacks are not processed correctly due to incompatibilities with some hosts.  If any of these issues affect you, give 2.9.1 a try.  Download 2.9.1 or upgrade automatically from the Tools->Upgrade menu in your blog’s admin area.

All seems well with the update – I have had it installed for a day now. All the plugins hat I use and the theme that I use seem fine. I would take the plunge with this one but like always, BACKUP FIRST!

Geek on :)

In a blog post this afternoon on their official Blackberry Blog, RIM has announced that a version of the Blackberry Desktop Manager will be released for OS X. A welcome relief for all of us OS X users who up until now have been fighting with a Windows version (you know we all have Windows somewhere cause of these kinds of issues).

From their post they list some features:

Sync your iTunes® playlists, calendars, contacts, notes and tasks

Add/Remove applications

Update your device when new software becomes available

Backup and restore your device data with such features like automatically scheduled backups and optional encryption (security is #1 as always…:) )

Manage multiple devices

Head on over to their post and take a look at some of the screen shots of the new software that is supposed to hit the web in September.

Geek on!

I always run my Software Update on my machines. I like to be up to date no matter what OS I am running. For some reason my OSX machine that is already at 10.5.7 won’t update any of the things that require a system restart to install. I am looking for alternative means to install the updates but it’s frustrating that they won’t just go :P

I will keep you posted on my woes but this isn’t the most interesting way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Lucky for me I am not too mobile due to back pain so this is appropriate activity.

*** Update – I was able to download the updates and install them manually from www.macupdate.com. Worked like a charm. Still is concerning though :|

So you’re trying to build up a following on Twitter, but things like sleep, work, and bathroom breaks are getting in the way of your goal to out-update Scoble?

via Schedule Twitter updates with Twuffer and FutureTweets.

Most of the content on the page is still the same but I have done a lot of back end work in the past couple of days. I use the WicketPixie theme that Chris Pirillo created with the help of some friends and it has served me very well. I like the layout as it allows me to add a lot of extra content to the side bars yet still have a cleaner look.

After a call out on Twitter/Facebook last week to my followers and friends, I found that many had problems with load times and broken Java. I really believe that the first public release of WicketPixie was broken by some of the things that I added to it and I have been limping without realization since then.

I did some looking and I found an updated version through http://chris.pirillo.com/wicketpixie/. The version that I downloaded was an RC or Beta depending on where you look on the site, but with a little tweaking it has worked out well. I had made quite a few changes to the original theme so I had to apply those same changes to the new version of WicketPixie.

I am happy with the outcome so far but I am curious to see what you see. Drop a comment here and let me know how it’s working. If you have and trouble at all, please send me a reply on Twitter @thesleepygeek of course :)

How many hits will those two words get in a Google search? Probably only an amount that the Google computers can compute and that is the reason that the people over at TweetDeck have incorporated Facebook support into an already popular Twitter client.

I have installed the version that now has Facebook integration. It is not available as a standard upgrade through the automatic notification feature but can be downloaded here.

So far so good in my books. They have not over complicated their integration with Facebook, limiting it to just updates of your friend’s statuses. This is a good move in my books. In a review that I did over the weekend (submitted today, I know) about PeopleBrowsr.com I mentioned that it is great because it is the same on every computer but the extra features above TweetDeck were not really a benefit to me. This was largely because their integration of other features seem overly complicated for a program that needs to react and be used very quickly. TweetDeck has kept the Facebook integration simple and thus it is very fast and easy to navigate.

Now I have a conflict… PeopleBrowsr.com for reasons mentioned here, and TweetDeck for it’s continued simplicity.

Have fun with the new version Tweeps!

Turns out that it was time to make some changes on the site. The old background and colours are gone and I am back to something a little more blue. It was time to update some of the plugins I use, 6 of them had newer versions and who knows what those updates would fix.

I have been working on testing a recording scenario for podcasts and that has taken most of my free time lately. The techy side is a lot of fun but my real dilemma is still the theme. I have been talking with a friend who I think will join me as a co-host about this and we are both really interested in tech/geek crap in general. I think that we are going to shoot for a general tech show related to current events and then throw some interesting features into the show.

Only outstanding thing right now on the blog is the email. Right now I am getting 2 copies every time I post. EMAIL ME IF YOU ARE TOO!!!!

Ciao for now.

Last night I was out and started to receive large numbers of text messages. I couldn’t look at my phone all the time and I wasn’t sure what it was until we were on our way home. Strangely enough I started to received updates from Twitter. It was really late when we got home so off to bed I go leaving the investigation until this morning. Well sure enough when I login to Twitter I see a message saying “SMS Alert: Canadian SMS delivery is now enabled for Bell Mobility subscribers.” Well that’s great news but I am not with Bell! Their blog post regarding the deal can be read here: http://blog.twitter.com/2009/02/for-whom-bell-texts.html#links

It seems that their deal reached with Bell has opened up text messaging with Rogers as well and I can only assume if that happened it was a mistake that opened it up with Telus and Fido. So today I hope I am living the good life and we’ll see how long it lasts. They probably opened up all the texting because they don’t have a way to desciminate between different carriers… but I am sure they are working on that if costs are concerned :)

PS: Here is another perspective on the subject: http://mashable.com/2009/02/20/twitter-canada-sms-2/