maniacal rage

Speaking of the Leopard intro movie, I just spent a few minutes watching the intro movies from all the major releases of OS X. It's fun to see just how much better each version gets. Check them out:

• 10.0-10.2 Cheetah/Puma/Jaguar (on YouTube)
• 10.3 Panther
• 10.4 Tiger
• 10.5 Leopard

I'm pretty sure 10.6 Domestic Shorthair's intro movie will be downloaded directly into your brain. I heard that's a new feature they're working on. That and a tabbed Finder.

Leopard installed on my new iMac in about twenty minutes. Granted, this was a fresh install and I skipped the DVD verification as well as opted out of installing all but the Gutenprint drivers and English languages, but that's still pretty fast. So fast that I missed the new Leopard intro movie. I walked out of the room expecting the installation to take an hour and came back shortly after to find the setup panels waiting for me.

I had seen the leaked movie on YouTube a while back, but that's not exactly high quality. And since Leopard is the first version of 10.5 to be released in a fully HD age, I was looking forward to seeing the new movie. Luckily, ArsTechnica uploaded it as part John Siracusa's excellent and exhausting review, so I could finally watch it in high resolution.

It's gorgeous. If this was your first Mac, and your first experience with an Apple computer was the intro movie, you'd be in heaven. Hell, it's my 7th Mac and I fell in love all over again. These little touches are part of what continues to separate Apple from the rest of the pack. Contrast this excellent movie with the Windows Vista boot "orb" to get a better idea of what I mean.

I'm having some OS X deliver déjà vu here. I just noticed that my Leopard FedEx delivery, which was scheduled for delivery by 10:30AM this morning was updated with an exception: "Future delivery requested." Enraged, I called FedEx. The representative told me this:

Apple is shipping lots of computers [sic] today. Like over 130,000 packages in NYC alone. So we're having trouble delivering them. Apple guaranteed 10:30AM delivery through us, but we're too busy so we're pushing it back. You'll have it by 5PM today, we promise.

I would have been okay with this response except for the fact that this is exactly what happened with Tiger two years ago in NYC. And with Tiger, the delivery didn't happen until Monday.

Here's what they did last time (and what I'm betting they do this time as well): They change it to "future delivery" and promise it will be here by 5PM. Then, at 5PM, they update it with a new exception that states a delivery attempt was made but no one answered. Except they don't even try.

There's no way to prove FedEx didn't come to the house and once the delivery exception says failed delivery, you have to wait until the next business day (FedEx ground will deliver on Saturday, but not overnight, so we're talking about Monday). All FedEx has to do to lighten their load is update customers with bogus information and they have until Monday to deliver.

Why does Apple rely on a company who has "trouble delivering them" for a release like this?

Update: Wow, it actually got delivered! When the FedEx guy handed me the box he asked, "Can I ask you what this is? I've got like 500 more in my truck!" I told him it was a new version of Apple's operating system and he just sighed. Then he said, "Well, I'm really, really busy because of it!"

Macworld has a new feature story called Picking Our Favorite Leopard Features, wherein various staff rate their favorite new stuff in 10.5. Among the selection are the commonly-touted features like iChat screen sharing, Cover Flow in Finder, Spaces and Time Machine, but Rob Griffiths chose something no one else mentioned, and a feature I'm particularly thrilled with: AutoFS.

There hasn't been a lot said about AutoFS, but I consider it to be one of my most-requested features for OS X: Putting network mounting on separate threads. Griffiths defends his decision to include it in his list (at number two no less) and describes it thusly:

Why give up such a high draft pick for this seemingly obscure technology related to networked volumes? Because AutoFS in OS X 10.5 is, quite simply, a revolution. AutoFS is responsible for the mounting and dismounting of network shares, and in Leopard, it will uses separate “threads” for these tasks. What does that mean in English? It means the end of the spinning rainbow of doom you see when you, for instance, click on a network share in the Finder, only to remember that you put the shared computer to sleep earlier.

One of the most irritating issues with OS X is the Finder's inability to deal with network-mounted disks gracefully. I need an abacus to count how many times in the last week alone the Finder has hung for two minutes because my Airdisk became unavailable or Katia's iMac was sleeping when I tried to access it.

Since switching to the Mac in 2002, this has been one of my biggest (and most common) complaints with OS X and I'm absolutely thrilled it has finally been solved. While it's nice to have lots of shiny new GUI features in 10.5, I can't help but be even more excited by the simple core functionality updates like AutoFS.

Speaking of Half-Life², I've just refreshed the color scheme here on the site to a palette inspired by the game. In fact, it's more than just inspired—the background image is derived directly from a screenshot (manipulated, of course).

I've always been a fan of the steel and orange look of the HL series, so I figured I'd give it a shot here for a while. I might continue on this theme and pull some more color variations out of the game in the near future.

And note: This color variation still contains the "invert colors" feature, which might make it easier to read for those of you who prefer dark text on light backgrounds. You can find the invert colors option in the footer of every page. It will set a cookie as well, so you don't have to keep clicking it. Of course, clicking it again will set your colors back to normal.

Games are taking over my life. These last few months, as noted by others, has been a hard period on gamers. It started with BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Then Halo 3 landed and immediately started consuming evenings. Halo 3 improves upon the second game a surprising amount and I find myself constantly interested in playing, which I didn't think would happen. And then The Orange Box came out. Basically, my month is shot.

Half-Life is still one of the greatest games ever made, and was the first "cinematic" FPS I ever played on a PC back in 1998. I remember playing the game nearly straight through, eyes glued to the screen. The expansion packs, Opposing Force and Blue Shift, were also a lot of fun.

I eagerly awaited Half-Life². When it finally came out in 2004, I immediately started playing it on my outdated PC and fell in love again. Unfortunately, at the time, I was having enormous amounts of arm pain due to a damaged nerve in my right elbow. I couldn't finish the game.

Fast-forward to this month and I was finally able to finish the game on the XBOX 360. And, fantastically, I can now finally play Episodes 1 and 2. If you haven't played any of the HL games, now's the time to start. Especially since Portal is included with The Orange Box, and Portal is awesome. (I'm not even going to go into Portal in this post. It deserves its own entire rambling post.)

Yesterday, I received The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass for the DS from GameFly. There's another bunch of hours. Oh, and Guitar Hero 3 comes out next week. Okay, so I'm getting nothing else done.

I was supposed to fly home on Friday, but the weather was a mess. In Seattle it was dark and brooding, raining on and off in torrential downpours that filled the streets with nearly a half-foot of water in 10 minutes. In New York City, it was supposed to get even worse throughout the day.

I'm a terrible flier. Or, at least, I used to be. Having traveled quite a lot the past few years, flying is getting easier and easier each time. But still, there are a few things that add exponential amounts of stress to the experience. One of those things is hearing the words, "severe weather across the US, especially on the west and east coasts." Not exactly thrilling me and pushing me toward the gate.

Once my flight was delayed to the point of me getting in at 1AM, as well as dealing with the stress of knowing it was going to be a very bumpy ride, I decided it was better to just delay by a day: The weather report for Saturday was drizzle in Seattle (also known as "normal") and perfectly clear everywhere else.

After waiting on the phone for 30 minutes, I finally managed to change my flight. The JetBlue rep told me there was going to be a $45 fee, which I replied I would not be paying. She paused for no more than half a second before saying, "Okay, no problem," and changing the flight for free. I guess she had to try first. JetBlue is so on edge with their customers after the recent canceling/holding-people-on-a-plane-for-30-hours fiasco that I'm sure I could have told her I wanted a free flight and gotten away with it.

And, as expected, the flight yesterday was crystal clear. Take off was a little bumpy because of the huge gray clouds hovering over Seattle, but the rest was perfectly smooth. Another pleasant side-effect of flying Saturday afternoon was the airport was a ghost town. I made it from checking out my hotel to sitting at the gate in 31 minutes—probably the fastest airport trip in my entire life (keep in mind that Sea-Tac is an estimated 25 minutes' drive from my hotel and I had to return a rental car).

It's amazing how such a small change could make my travel experience so much better. While I'm still not the best flier, little things like this make it easier and easier to do. If given an opportunity to make things less stressful on myself, I'll always take it.

I'll be in Seattle for most of this week, but before I go I should mention that we've just released episode 26 of the podcast. Over 30 minutes of quality audio, straight to your brain.

It's the beach-ball episode! We talk about male enhancement drugs, life two-point-oh and our new name machine. What does that have to do with beach-balls? Everything!

You can listen to the episode right now using the built-in player on the site, and subscribe to get future goodness.

Oh, and don't forget to stop by the forums, which are starting to get pretty active.

We're hard at work on the next two episodes of the podcast. In the mean time, I forgot to mention you can also find (and comment on, and support) MRTV on the two most popular video sharing sites: YouTube and Vimeo.

We'll be uploading future episodes as well, although we're usually a few days behind. We're also uploading individual parts of episodes so you can link directly to, say, the iPhone incident sketch from episode 1.

I certainly did not expect to be in an ambulance last night. But, after a full day of being nauseous and short of breath, with my heart beating very hard, Katia thought it might be a good idea to call the nurse service of my insurance company. I told the woman all my symptoms, my history, all that good stuff. She was very nice and patient, and at the end of the call she calmly said, "Okay, Garrett. I'm gonna go ahead and have you call 911 and get an ambulance out there right away. Then have them take you to the hospital." Not exactly what I wanted to hear. Then again, I was feeling light-headed and having trouble breathing so I figured maybe it was solid advice.

And so the EMTs took my vitals (heart rate was tachy at 122, blood pressure was fine and lungs were clear) and suggested that I go to the hospital. They gave my oxygen in the ambulance, which felt really nice since it was the first time in many hours I felt I could get a full breath of air. Katia followed us in to the hospital, occasionally waving to me through the back windows of the ambulance.

They took me to Woodhull Hospital, in Brooklyn, which turns out to be a really awful place. It was crowded, loud and dirty, and the staff wasn't exactly interested in helping out. Luckily for me, it wasn't a real emergency, since they gave me a bed, some oxygen, and never came back. About the only thing they did in the two and a half hours I was there was take my temperature (101.3°F) and accuse me twice of being on drugs. Finally, we decided to leave and head to Overlook Hospital in Summit, New Jersey, near where we used to live. It's a very nice, clean place and we knew we'd get seen pretty quickly.

At Overlook, they took my vitals again and things had calmed down for the most part. My pulse was only 99, my temperature was 99.8, and my breathing was a little easier. We waited for a while and then a doctor finally came in and asked a few questions. He seemed pretty sure it was a fluke—that running too hard yesterday and being out of shape, combined with anxiety had caused it—but wanted to do a chest x-ray to be sure. They gave me IV fluids, some Adivan to relax me, and some anti-nausea medication as well. Then they did an EKG. I was exhausted at this point and fell asleep.

A few hours later they woke me up and took me to have my chest x-rays, and then a few more hours later they woke me up again to tell me everything was fine. They sent me home at 8AM. We drove back to my mom's house in Staten Island because traffic back to Brooklyn was so bad, and I slept a few more hours. Now I'm back home and doing well. I'm really hungry, though. I feel like I haven't eaten in two days.

I realized something today: The best way to get a hold of me, if you don't know my phone number, is to direct message me via Twitter. I'm not sure when this happened, but I respond fairly quickly to Twitter DMs, assuming they're during acceptable parts of the day.

The best way would be to call me, since I always have my phone, but for obvious reasons I don't make my number public. Instant messages are good too, but not when I'm away from my computer, which is a good part of the evening and most of the weekend. Since I have Twitter set to SMS me direct messages, it fills that gap of communication.

In episode 2 of Maniacal Rage TV, we announced during the viewer mail segment that you can now call us and leave a voice message. The number is (347) 394-3025. When you call you get a nice recording (with the familiar MRTV jingle) and you can leave a question for the mail segment or just general feedback. Give it a shot!

Another two weeks of hard work and we're ready to release the second episode of Maniacal Rage TV. With special guest stars Matt Urban and Amanda Crater.

This episode is encoded at a higher quality, so it will look really nice on your iPod, iPhone and even your Apple TV. And, of course, on screen.

Watch the new episode right this minute using the built-in player, or download the higher resolution version used in the feeds. Then again, it would be even easier if you just subscribed and got all this good stuff automatically.

As always, you can send us feedback via the forums or by sending us email.