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The latest version of VMWare Fusion lets you run virtual machines in headless mode. The strange thing is that it’s not enabled by default. To enable it you need to run the following on your console:

defaults write com.vmware.fusion fluxCapacitor -bool YES


Apple should add microformat detection on the iPhone in Safari. Maybe it could work like this: If a valid hCard is detected on a page, there could be a visual cue of some sort letting the user know; When clicked the user would be prompted with a preview of the detected hCard attributes and be asked whether they wanted to add that person/business to their contacts. Obviously, Safari on the iPhone already detects phone numbers and will dial them when clicked - but adding hCard detection really would be the most logical since you have the opportunity to capture a lot more information as a contact.

So I pushed out a new site for the business, check it. In other news, barring some major catastrophe I will be a first-time homeowner in the coming week(s?). I can’t wait to actually have a yard. And a grill. It has been far too long (6 years!).

I was running some errands today and almost everywhere I went I was asked, “do you have any plans for the holiday weekend?”. While it does provide some smalltalk and is friendly while taking care of the business at hand, I was thinking on the way home: holidays are for people that have a 9-to-5 job and a boss. For somebody like me they are a perfect time to work while everyplace is crowded. I like to think of most Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as holidays

• Two bug reports filed with Apple (WebKit/PDF Kit, BigTop)
• Digital Signage app for OS X is *live* at SLA
• Leopard Server Seminar March 5
• iPhone SDK March 6!
• Taxes loom on horizon
• Downloading Leopard Server from ADC - I have plans…
• Two weeks of cycling eminent
• All for now

I am really impressed with the new Mac Mini. Not that the old ones weren’t cool, but the new ones have a good bit more power under the hood. One of my current projects involves running a native OS X app on an huge 46″ LCD in portrait mode. I wasn’t sure what sort of resolution the Mini would be able to drive the display at though, and on Friday I needed to figure that out. So I hooked everything up and started installing Leopard on the Mini (which was awkward, since the installer doesn’t have the ability to be rotated (see picture). Anyhow, after it was all done and I was able to rotate the display orientation in OS X, it was running at *full HD* (1080 x 1920). Impressive!

Now I have to get busy building the application that is actually going to run on this setup (it will be wall mounted in a (semi) public location). On top of that, I woke up this morning thinking that it’s going to be a little awkward to do certain things to the system once it’s live since there will be no mouse, keyboard, or any other kind of HID. I’m going to play around tomorrow with Speakable Items on the Mac, and a bluetooth headset. Full voice control! Should be secure also, as it will only be paired to a single headset. I sense a few Easter eggs in the making…

I am a little surprised I had not heard of eAccelerator before. Turns out it is a fork of the older Turck MMCache (no longer under development). Anyhow I installed it on my development server and production server tonight - with very promising results.

I have been using Subversion for a while on a VMWare appliance (Helix) for a little over a year, but only recently started using Trac (also part of the Helix appliance). First, let me say that Helix worked flawlessly from day one and allowed me to set up a mighty fine SVN server with zero effort. What irked me the other day is that I couldn’t upgrade the server with the normal (and clean) method of using apt-get or aptitude because some parts of the Ubuntu base were borked up. So I decided last week to just build my own appliance with Ubuntu “Gutsy Gibbon”, Subversion, and Trac. So far I like it a lot better (newer Trac builds are pretty slick over the 0.9 in Helix). Here is a screenshot of my customized Trac install:

I still have some things to tweak, but I really like it. I am planning on building an appliance for VMWare Appliance directory in a few weeks for public consumption (I am waiting on Ubuntu jeOS to use as the base OS install, sweet!). I did do one thing differently with this vm than I have done in the past: I added a second disk for all of my project data. So the OS is setup on a 3GB disk, and I have a second 10GB disk mounted at /projects. Should be cool to play with later, as I should just be able to copy the disk to another vm and mount it, with only my projects on it.

In my spare time (eh, what is THAT?) I’ve been picking up Objective-C and Cocoa for doing some native apps for OS X. So far so good, although quite different than what I have gotten used to doing for a paycheck for the last few years. Maybe I can post something cool in the near future about what I’m playing with.

I’ve been through some PC’s in my geek time, with the first one being a 486 DX2 66mhz machine I bought in 1991 specifically spec’d out for CAD work (AutoCAD R12 for DOS). It had a whopping 16 megs of ram, and I’m not even sure what the HDD capacity was, maybe 250 megabytes. Windows 3.1. Anyhow, I’ve been through quite a few machines since then; I probably still have some of the relics in the storage closet (doh!). But I’ve really been wanting one of the Intel-based Macs for a while, and now that I’ve started learning and using XCode/Cocoa/Objective C, it became more obvious that my trusty G4 iMac wasn’t really the best tool for the job. Long story short, one thing my Dad seems to have instilled in my life was using the right tool for the job (This might explain my current bicycle ensemble as well, although I will not blame him for that, haha). Today I ordered 24″ iMac with an additional 1GB of RAM. I will be waiting out on the sidewalk in front of the building in anticipation on the indicated delivery date to say the least.