René Rebe

some-mac user$ svn ci some-file.M
svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: system(’vi svn-commit.tmp’) returned 256

I hate it, how I hate this. It just happened two times in a row, unbelievable! How the heck could Apple’s engineers think one can work with such kind of bugs in the system and/or tools?!?

For a not too distant festivity we needed some selected wines, and I asked others about their favorites. I got a nice precise list from my brother - I thought its worth sharing here:

Origin:
+ France (except Bordeaux, especially: Burgund, Rhonetal, Elsass, Provence, Sud-Ouest), Spain (especialyl Rioja, La Mancha…), Chile
- Italy, Bordeaux, Germany

Grape variety;

+Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir!, Tempranillo, Syrah (Shiraz)
- Merlot, Dornfelder (Amselfelder)

(+ recommended, - not so recommended)

While I personally found a Zinfandel (Primitivo) out of California quite recommendable.

I heard Jacques’ Wein-Depot is supposedly a nice place to taste and purchase decently priced wine in many cities in Germany.

So, iTunes 8.2.1 comes with:

iTunes 8.2.1 provides a number of important bug fixes and addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices

such as not “accidently” syncing to a Palm’s Pre. Palm’s former Apple engineers might have implemented the Apple file “upload” protocol in all fine details (as can be derived from open source iPod access libraries anyway), but there is one simple show-stopper that Apple probably added in this update that Palm can not circumvent easily:

if (idVendor != 0×05ac) return false; // (Apple Inc.)

Palm can not just change their USB Vendor (and/or Product ID), …

For the Bodum glass article I was bitten by the iPhone’s photo application’s “email photo” functionally, which scales the photo by 50%, from 1600×1200 to 800×600. Of course far from ideal when you want to mail it to your server account for publishing.

Just in this minute I spotted a nice tip on the Daring Fireball, how to get the full-res version into your email: cut’n paste it! (Note: cut’n paste is a new feature of the iPhone OS, available since OS 3.0 and up, …) Now, that cut and paste is finally available on the iPhone, probably something one better get used to :-)

For some time it always confused, annoyed me that pasted text on Mac OS X always kept the format. For example when text from the web or email is pasted vise versa or elsewhere, e.g. a text editor or word processor. After having some non-matching mess on the screen I usually used “Format -> Make Plain Text” (in Apple Mail) to get rid of all the arbitrary formating mix.

To my surprise I just found out yesterday (on some other news site - I forgot which, now in retrospect it was listed on some this week), it’s actually possible to insert without format: “Edit -> Paste and Match Style” is the innocent menu item that does it! Combined with the really hard, next to impossible to press key binding: “Option + Shift + Apple + v”!!! A combination where even as trained Emacs user my fingers get rather twisted, …

I never gave this specific menu item much attention, because it’s only available in some programs dealing with formated, attributed text and probably because for me the textual description (Paste and Match Style) did nor really ring a bell to actually stand for Without Format or Style.

Anyway, good to know it’s there. No wonder why some news and blog sites explained this week how to make it the default “Paste”, namely via the “Preference -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts” settings.

While we where looking for new interior yesterday, I accidentally spotted a new kind of glass from the company Bodum, which I had not seen yet: a kind of thermo glass with insulating double-walls. I’m not sure how much it will help to keep your coffee or tea warm, as I’m not sure if the double-wall is filled with air, or contains a vacuum and given it has no cover, and thus loosing quite some energy (heat) on the top. But nonetheless, it looks quite nice and might still help to keep your drink warm and protect your fingers.

They are said to be mouth-blown, and thus slightly differ in form and height (while I find the top border a little uneven on all of them I saw).