Blog Archive for June 2007
New CityBuilder.org Site
Last year, the website CityBuilder.org was the host of tons of information relating to building cities for Christ in the People of Praise. Much of the short video pieces were related to fixing up and building houses in Allendale, a poor neighborhood in Shreveport, Louisiana. However, the weekly live video broadcasts covered a much broader section of topics applicable to City Building and People of Praise life in general.
Tonight starts the second summer of live videos, but this time they're not going to be from Louisiana. This year, there are city building projects of different types in Indianapolis and also starting in Memphis, Tennessee in the fall. So, this year's broadcasts are, at least for now, coming from South Bend, Indiana. Who knows what they'll be about, but I'm told that you'll be able to watch them anytime from their archives on blip.tv, which is great. (They also put up the archives from all last year too!) So, if you want to learn a lot more about People of Praise life, check out what we've been thinking and talking about this summer and last and, if you want, join in the conversation. Also, don't miss the nice new CityBuilder.org website, which includes a blog, photos, and much more about our life in common. Join us live tonight, too, if you like.
Safari on Windows? Why?
This morning was Apple's WWDC Keynote, where Steve Jobs speaks to the world and a the thousands of the developers actually in the room. Because it's to the developers, it's always the more geeky and technological side of stuff. Last year they spent a lot of time looking at the new features of Leopard, which of course they did again this year.
Mac OS X Leopard, available in October, is certainly a nice upgrade to the already-popular Mac OS X line. Steve Jobs touted 10 new features, including a neatly redesigned dock that might convince power users to start using it. The new look of the desktop, somehow actually looks like it stole some of the ideas from Windows Vista, in my opinion. There's also a nice preview option called Quick Look which promises to be a bit faster than actually opening up a new program. 
He did some amazing stuff with rendering a couple hundred movies at one time using the Core Animation system as well. And, finally, Mac OS X Leopard looks like an incredibly easy system to back up and move data between networked computers.
For me, though, the more interesting parts were after Steve said his famous "One more thing...." The two things here were both a bit of a disappointment during lunch hour while reading a live news feed, so I thought I'd wait a bit before writing a bit of a rant. But, after watching the full keynote myself, I'm still a bit mystified.
Steve Jobs announced the availability of a Beta version of Safari for Windows. The formerly-Mac-only browser, based on the open-source Konqueror engine, is known for being a fairly lightweight engine that adheres to web standards well. And, well, if you're looking for all that Apple shininess that you're used to from iTunes, now you can have it in your browser. But really, why? Steve Jobs said it's 1.6 times as fast as FireFox, another quality browser. I don't think that's reason to switch from a free, open-source browser to an Apple browser.
The other big thing that Steve touted was that Apple has experience writing Windows apps. As someone who's still waiting for the money to buy a MacBook Pro and leave Windows, I can't help but contest that statement. Almost every time I close my iTunes, it crashes before closing. If I have iTunes open, another user on my Windows XP machine cannot open the program to listen to music. Steve, if you're letting your iTunes developers take vacations, they're selling you short. I did download Safari and it does let multiple users run the program at the same time, which is good.
Also, I have about 5 friends who live on the block who have MacBooks. Every single one uses FireFox and I've never seen them use Safari. If nobody on Mac uses this Apple product, why would anyone else use it? Sure, it looks nice, but it still doesn't look like it has half the features or extensibility of FireFox, the leading browser for persons who use the web constantly.
The second thing Steve announced was their "solution" (read: cop-out) for making apps for the Apple iPhone. You can use the powerful XHTML and JavaScript functionalities of the iPhone's built-in, full-featured Safari engine to make apps for the iPhone. (Steve used the buzzwords "Web 2.0" and "AJAX" instead of "XHTML" and "JavaScript", but it's the same difference.) OK, so the app they came up with worked nicely and did the basic integration with the other apps, but besides that, it was fairly boring. And although they touted that you can make it look just like the iPhone's interface, how did they do it? Were those contact list pages just basic unordered lists of information? Were they using a bunch of images to make those nice rounded corners and that search icon? It seems so, because they claim there's no SDK or API. So, have fun accessing the same "Web Apps" that you use on the Palm or BlackBerry. And, wait, what happened to "Web Standards" if we have to make a desktop version, a Palm version, a BlackBerry version, and an iPhone version of a web app? Sounds like 1998 wants its <blink> tag back with all that custom development.
Why do I want a real development system for the iPhone platform? Well, on my Palm-based phone I have open-source games, a third-party mail client that I love, a program with the entire Bible, and even an open-source SSH client. If I can't do that stuff on the iPhone, it's not the killer phone for me. Yeah, it might crash every so often, but I know that's my fault, not the phone. Of course, maybe if it is running full OS X, they can sneak a Terminal app in the interface somewhere so that I can administrate my servers remotely. If they do that, I'll probably go for it.
So how was this year's WWDC keynote? It was OK. Not what I was hoping for, for sure, but I suppose the real Mac fanboys are happy. I guess I'll find out the real story when I listen to MacBreak Weekly and TWiM tomorrow.
Minneapolis Biking Adventure #1
Last week we biked to Hidden Falls and on Tuesday I biked to and from work, but I needed to kick it up a notch this weekend because I didn't bike at all on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. So, I biked for 17 miles (and got a bit of walking in over by the lakes). Here's the map:
First, I biked along the Hiawatha Light Rail line for a bit until I got to the Lake Street Area. There I biked right onto the Midtown Greenway, which stretches all the way through South Minneapolis and a good way beyond. The Greenway is a great, long path that replaced an old railroad bed that stretched all the way through South Minneapolis and further west. 
The western end of the Greenway opened in 2000 and is a nice, wide path in most places for biking and walking. Throughout all of Minneapolis, it is in a bit of a trench that goes underneath almost all the streets along 29th Street, but it is nice and green and has landscaping projects going along with it. It is connected to a further trail west, such that I biked past Highway 100 before turning back.
Plans are still in gear for the east end of the Greenway, although it is almost complete. The crown jewel of the Greenway seems to be a bridge they are currently constructing that goes across Hiawatha Avenue and the Light Rail line. (Temporarily the bikers and walkers just had to walk across the busy street at a light, but now you can't even do that with the bridge construction.) It looks like the designers were trying to rip off Norman Foster, but I just found out from this blog post that it is because of all the obstructions they had to get the bridge through on the East side where large power lines, another bike path, and light rail collide. It'll definitely be fun to ride across.
On the way back, I decided to take a more road-focused but direct way home. I rode up Hennepin Avenue until it became a bit of a freeway, at which time I found a cool bike/walk bridge and a path down to Loring Park. I just then biked through downtown on Nicollet Mall and then across the Hennepin bridge to University Ave. It was a great 17-mile trek, and I really enjoyed exploring Minneapolis by bike.