Solipsism Gradient

Posted by Rafael Fischmann:

Rainer Brockerhoff wrote:

Rafael Fischmann wrote:

Transmit!

Yes, I did check out both Transmit and CyberDuck some time ago, and just rechecked the latest versions of both. Transmit had some odd glitches while displaying the local directory, and doesn’t allow you to default to binary transfers directly; CyberDuck is, erhm, an odd duck regarding the GUI. I’m still waiting for the new FTPeel, of which I’m a registered user, thanks to the folks at Freshly Squeezed Software…

Just as I said through iChat, Transmit 3.0 is coming soon. Keep your eyes open, because Panic rocks.

Rafael Fischmann wrote:

Transmit!

Yes, I did check out both Transmit and CyberDuck some time ago, and just rechecked the latest versions of both. Transmit had some odd glitches while displaying the local directory, and doesn’t allow you to default to binary transfers directly; CyberDuck is, erhm, an odd duck regarding the GUI. I’m still waiting for the new FTPeel, of which I’m a registered user, thanks to the folks at Freshly Squeezed Software…

Posted by Rafael Fischmann:
Transmit!

After the excitement of the MacWorld announcements (especially the Mac mini), and some debugging and organizing of the new site, things are looking good. So here’s a progress report.

I hadn’t realized how much my local copy of the site had fallen out of sync with the remote copy. Part of this was due to my trying out several FTP applications and not really settling on a definite one. In the beginning (this was in the Mac OS 9 days) I’d tried Interarchy, when it still was called Anarchie, but the folder synchronizing feature was still unreliable, and when they went full commercial I decided it wasn’t worth the price. I wrote the main pages in DreamWeaver but found I had to watch and correct the HTML code all the time, and the site administration tools didn’t mesh with my style either.

So I sort of limped along, not touching the actual source files for months at a time – since most of the updates were done through the forum software – or checking out several FTP apps as they came out. In the end I stayed, mostly out of inertia, with RBrowser Lite, which is free and worked reasonably, if slowly. Editing individual files was made easy by using BBEdit‘s FTP option, which works very well.

Just how slowly RBrowser Lite was I realized only when I tested FTPeel a couple of weeks ago. There’s no comparison. Listings come up 10 to 20 times faster, and uploading a whole folder of small files has a similar ratio; it seems that RBrowser Lite simply stops for several seconds between every FTP command. On the other hand, FTPeel has several serious deficiencies; you can’t sort columns alphabetically, for instance, and uploading folders with lots of files sometimes left several files out; and the lack of sorting makes this very hard to find. Fortunately DreamHost stats are very comprehensive and after some head-banging I was able to find out which files were missing from the error reports. By the way, the FTPeel folks tell me they’re starting work on a completely recoded version which will fix my complaints; so stay tuned.

Still, in the meantime, I’m without a satisfactory FTP/site administration app, so there still may be some missing or misplaced files. Bug reports are welcome…

…and I don’t mean this one.

From Ole Eichhorn’s Critical Section comes this gem:

A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest NEW chemical element yet known to science.  The new element has been tentatively named Governmentium.

Governmentium has 1 neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.  These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.  Since Governmentium does not have electrons, it is therefore inert.  However, it normally can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.  Governmentium has a normal half-life of 4 years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.  In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since any reorganization will cause some morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.  This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration.  This hypothetical quantity is referred to as “critical morass”.

Posted by taliesin’s log:
taliesin’s log linked to this post

Amiable nonsense

“It’s Sunday, you sod!” my flatmate grey wolf protested.

The source code page is up, with version 1.0 of RBSplitView as the first item. I’ve also opened up a support forum for source code. Enjoy!