Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Hold down the Command key while clicking to show the menu.    

Run and get some.

As part of my move to Leopard I wanted to take the opportunity to get a little hard drive headroom.

I found a reasonably priced and compatible model (Hitachi Travelstar™ 7K200) from macsales online store.

While the installation instructions seemed a little involved I actually have a decent set of tools. Turns out it was pretty easy. I am impressed at the assembly of the MBP. Lots of screws - all metal-on-metal.

If you’re thinking of an upgrade and have the tools and an open work area you should go for it!

A lot of my time is spent demonstrating our products. In various situations I use Safari (of course), Firefox, Opera, and Camino. I use multiple browsers in order to demonstrate application compatibility, to exercise multiple authenticated user perspectives and to take advantage of browser-specific features. My demos (and most of my routine browser use) are based on a large set of bookmarks.

Until today I tried (and mostly failed) to keep bookmarks in sync manually. Not any more!

Today I found Safari Bookmark Exporter (SBE).

SBE is a free and simple utility that exports my Safari bookmarks into mutiple formats. It is smart enough to find my Firefox profile directory and render a proper bookmarks.html. I’ve been using this just for a day and I can’t imagine not having it!

I am finally a Leopard user!

I had been holding off pending the release of what I’d hoped would be a final release of my contact manager (Daylite from Marketcircle). Unfortunately, I was faced with waiting until mid-January (the next time I’d have the time to do something like this) or use a third-beta release. I chose the beta release. :^)

I also relied on the fact that we have several new people starting work at Zope Corporation in the near future. We’ve all but standardized on MacBook Pros. Since these new folks start in January we had some extras laying around waiting for their users.

I had an incredible “itch” to have a clean install. First, I had a 200GB 7200 rpm drive (an upgrade from the 160GB 5400 rpm drive I had) that needed to get into my machine. Second, I had been experiencing some “weirdness” with Sync Services (constant complaining about a machine that I’ve not had for a long time). Third, I’d downloaded and installed a number of applications that I ended up never using. /Applications and ~/Library directories contained lots of bones from these experiments.

Last (but not least), I’d used the Apple Migration Assistant in the past to go from Panther to Tiger on a Powerbook and again to go from that Powerbook to my current MBP. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I missed the opportunity to have a proper spring cleaning and fresh OS install.

I made a clean install on the borrowed MBP, ensured I had the latest releases of the software I use, and generally “moved in.” Only after I was comfortable in my new (and temporary) digs did I look back at my “old” MBP. After copying /Users/rob to the new MBP (and making another backup on a firewire drive), I made another clean Tiger install on my “old” MBP. Then, finally, I used the Apple Migration Assistant again to move all of my now-tidy configurations from the borrowed MBP to my old MBP.

I want to take a moment to thank Apple for not hassling its users with incessant serial numbers, registration keys and the like. This process was smooth and hassle free!

I’ve been with Leopard for almost a week. Daylite is still not in final release for Leopard :^( but everything seems to be working well. The UI is very nice (nicer than Tiger, imo). I think I like Time Machine - I know I like the idea of it, to date it hasn’t been intrusive. It’s real test will come when I have an uncontrived reason to restore something. I’ll keep my fingers crossed until then.

My one complaint is that the keyboard sharing app I use (OSX2VNC) crashes on Leopard. I’m looking for an upgrade or a replacement.

Verizon started trenching the backbone fiber lines three months ago and finished about five weeks ago. Three weeks ago I repeated the perfunctory ceremony of checking to see if my house qualified for FIOS. It has been so long in coming that I had to run the loop qualification web page twice to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating! Three minutes later I had my install date for 30Mbps down and 5Mbps up. Install day was Monday October 29, 2007.

I learned some interesting things during the install from watching and talking to the the technician (Darren, very nice guy):

• The ONT (Optical Network Terminal) hangs on the outside of the house and is powered by household power (my technician did a great job minimizing the impact of this wiring requirement!). The FCC’s 911 stipulation requires Verizon to install a small UPS to power the ONT during a power outage. Interestingly, the UPS is there ONLY to provide dial tone. Apparently the TV and Internet circuits in the ONT are deactivated if/when main power is out. Good to know.
• All demodulation occurs on the ONT. Voice, data, and TV all come straight from the ONT. Somehow I had had the impression that at least some fiber was inside the house. Not true…
• Verizon estimates that by the time all is said and done they spend $1,500 per house getting them FIOSed.  The aggregate capital investment they are making is impressive.
• A coax cable connects the ONT to the Verizon you-must-use-ours-don’t-ask-to-use-a-different-one WiFi Router device.
• If you get Verizon TV (I haven’t…. yet) then any/all splitters need to be upgraded to (a) reduce insertion loss and (b) provide this bandpass filter since the CATV cable is used as a signalling channel to the set top boxes.  This means there will be some attic work to get Verizon TV upstairs .
• There are no routing hops between the ONT and the CO (Central Office). This seems to be borne out in my traceroutes. I’m not sure why, but this is mildly surprising.
• A backhaul fiber (the fiber that returns to the CO) is provisioned for every thirty-two connected houses.
• HDTV can require 25Mbps. If you add the bandwidth requirement of a 30Mbps Internet connection and three (3) TV sets watching different HD programs you get 105Mbps. For one house. My subdivision has about 900 homes in it. That’s about 90Gbps for one neighborhood. In the aggregate the data rates are mind boggling.
• 50Mbps down/10Mbps up is in the pipeline for my subdivision.
• There are only two points in the Verizon network where TV signal is encoded into IP (one is in Illinois and the other is in Florida). This means that the rest of the Verizon network just sees “IP.” I bet they’ve figured out QoS. This isn’t your father’s Verizon.

I’ve been using this connection since October 29 (2007) and can’t imagine using anything slower.

What’s Next?

1. If I can come to terms with the idea of a set-top box for each TV (ugh) I am likely to move to Verizon TV.
2. I’d love to drop Verizon as our local exchange carrier and move to a self-configured VoIP DID for local service. I’ve had a VoIP DID in our exchange for a long time and haven’t used it. Fortunately, it only costs $3 or something per month. I tried this earlier and failed for various reasons. I am hopeful that the network characteristics of a high-speed optical internet connection will eliminate at least the technical reasons why my first foray into household VoIP failed. :^)
3. The cable operators should be afraid.