Message personnel : Xarro, tu as réclamé que le status soit commentable, alors commente.

Heh, Photo Booth is compatible with macam and my Logitech webcam. Well, or so I’d say if I could try it, which I obviously can’t, since the program is only available with the new iMac, which has an integrated iSight so you’d have to be out of your mind to plug a Logitech Quickcam into it.

Mhh… wonder if you can get the original image, in black and white, back from the “thermal” version. I’m afraid it’s possible, but I hope it’s far too difficult for anyone to bother. (Besides, the Quickcam image is so blurry it wouldn’t matter so much anyway.)

Hallelujah! Here’s what technical support recommends: “disable the double click assist within WACOM control panel.” Of course, nothing in the control panel really matches the description, but here’s what works:

And it works! The tablet no longer lags, and works better than my old PC tablet (it was a serial port model, so it just couldn’t keep up).

Of course, it’s a bit pathetic they’d release a driver that offers to assist double-click, and activates the functionality by default, but can’t do so without making the whole computer lag; besides, unlike the Windows version, the OS X drivers don’t allow you to define application-specific, so I can’t ask it to deactivate double-click everywhere but in the Finder. But what matters is, it’s working now, and I can draw (yes, I do plan on improving someday) and write. Hurray!

Received my Wacom tablet. Good news is, they billed me the price that was indicated at the time I ordered it, which gives me a Graphire4 Classic XL for 125 euros instead of 170. Heh.

Bad news is, an A5 tablet is a bit small for a 1680x1050 20-incher. And Inkwell is unusable because the CPU can’t keep up, making the display lag and garbling strokes. And Painter Essentials can’t keep up either, for the same reasons. And I can manage to draw a bit using SketchBook Pro, but provided I don’t move too fast, and even then the CPU is working overtime and the iMac’s fans get louder than I ever heard them.

It’s too bad, because the hardware is rather good: the removable clear plastic overlay is less pleasant to the touch than the old tablet’s soft plastic, but it’ll be much easier to replace when it’s scratched; the tablet itself is smaller, pretty, and doesn’t need external power. The only problem being that the stylus is a perfect cylinder, barrel buttons don’t stick out, so you have to look at your hand every time you need them under your fingers — and it rolls if you put it down on your desk. And the drivers are buggy, and the tablet lags, and I’m quite glad I got an involuntary discount.

Makes for a decent mouse replacement, but I’m not sure I’ll start my webcomic any time soon.

P.S. Looks like the iMac-white version only exists on Wacom’s American website. Go figure.

P.S. Thinking back, sluggishness is probably not Wacom’s fault. But that doesn’t change anything to my disappointment. If it’s not working correctly on a 2GHz G5 with 1GB of RAM…

P.S. Hallelujah !

Let’s recap the facts (not in chronological order)…

I 99%-switched to OS X — if I ever buy a video capture box for the Mac, the PC will only be left with 3DSmax (oh, and games, maybe).

OS X includes Unix, Apache and PHP, which were the reasons I needed a Linux server until now. Besides, OS X also includes Spotlight, AppleScript and other stuff that’ll fulfill my needs better than PHP could, so I probably won’t even need a local Apache server anymore (you could expect me to have one in order to test scripts for the sites I maintain, but I can’t, for various technical and totally real reasons).

And I don’t really need RAID-1; I can just rsync my main disk to a backup once a day.

So the conclusion is, a Mac file server would be much more convenient. And a Mac mini would waste less room than the Linux tower. And there were old minis on sale in Paris. And I wanted a mini, and I wanted to have a Mac for the remaining week I’d spend in Paris, and I wanted a mini, and I wanted a mini. So I bought one (rather cheap). A logical reasoning, right?

Wrong. Forgot to reconsider all the hypotheses. Here’s the thing I overlooked: I don’t need a fucking file server anymore! Since I intend to put everything on external drives, and I don’t need RAID, and all files will be on a Mac anyway… what does the mini do in the equation that two external drives^* on the iMac can’t? Well? Nothing, that’s what they do, dumbass, you bought a Mac mini for nothing, right when you’re supposed to be saving in order to move to Paris.

So what am I gonna do with a mini now? It’s not like I’ll live in so big a flat I’ll need computers in every room: there’ll only be one room!

^* : actually, two drives’s one too much, because the iMac, unlike the mini, does include a hard drive. So I only need one external drive for my daily backups. Fucking dumbass, really.

Argh, I lost my post — a small drawback of assigning Cmd-W to a trackball button. It’s four thirty in the morning, I don’t feel like writing it again.

I had never actually seen fly droppings before I got my iMac. And it looks like those creatures enjoy their toilet seats smooth, white and warm.

Pre-made preparation for chocolate pie, plus fraises tagada (candy strawberry-ish stuff that doesn’t taste like strawberry at all).

Out of the oven:

Five minutes later:

In a plate:

And, yes, it’s exactly as good as it looks. The sad part is, I knew very well it was likely to happen, but I couldn’t resist the urge to put candy into the preparation, like a kid.

If I don’t blog tomorrow, just assume diabetes made me blind. (Or made my fingers fall off. I think it can do something like that.)

Reçu l’écran… pas le bon, branchements VGA et non DVI. J’ai vraiment pas de chance avec ce que je commande, ce mois-ci.

The 2-Variable Intuition Test [via]:

You have 55% scientific intuition and 77% emotional intuition.

How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 14% on Scientific.

You scored higher than 84% on Interpersonal.

Interesting — especially the way emotional intuition is tested. I still have trouble believing question 15 is for real. Anyway, I don’t resent the results. At all. Can’t wait to know yours.

Commandé aussi un écran plat, le moins cher du catalogue, pour remplacer les quatre écrans des deux PC (dont un va être remplacé par le Mac mini, comme vous le savez puisque vous suivez attentivement) et me retrouver avec un bureau à dimension humaine. Les KVM DVI étant rares et chers, je crois que je switcherai manuellement.

Deux ventilateurs commandés (merci Christophe), vous avez intérêt à ce qu’ils conviennent. Bien sûr, ils ne sont pas en stock, donc je ne sais pas quand je les aurai. Vivre en province…

Où trouver un putain de ventilateur de deux centimètres et demi de côté, branchable en gigogne sur une connerie d’alimentation de disque dur, pour aller dans l’emplacement prévu à cet effet de mon putain de boîtier pour disque externe de bordel de merde pour que je puisse me servir du mini comme serveur de fichiers ?

As I announced two days ago, the minilog is replaced with a “status” block in the right column, with more and less details at the same time. Also available as an RSS feed, but you’d better define a custom refresh period, because the status will appear as new every time you read the feed.

And it’s also sporting a picture of me, to make Jakob Nielsen happy, but I’m not sure how long I can handle seeing my face when I proof-read my posts.

The status block uses Ajax to refresh on the home page (because it’s compiled as a static HTML page, whereas the status is recompiled every six minutes), so don’t be surprised if the information there magically changes mid-load. Using Ajax just for that is a bit heavy but, hey, I know how to do it and it works, so why not use it?

Où trouver un ventilateur de deux centimètres et demi de côté, branchable en gigogne sur une alimentation de disque dur, pour aller dans l’emplacement prévu à cet effet de mon boîtier pour disque externe ? Bordel !

Où trouver un ventilateur de deux centimètres et demi de côté, branchable en gigogne sur une alimentation de disque dur, pour aller dans l’emplacement prévu à cet effet de mon boîtier pour disque externe ?

Où trouver le ventilateur de deux centimètres et quelque, à brancher en gigogne sur une alimentation de disque dur, qui ira dans l’emplacement prévu à cet effet de mon boîtier pour disque externe ?

Got to be realistic: if I move into the kind of rat hole I kind afford, I’ll go insane in no time. But if I get roommates I’ll go insane as well.

Où trouver le ventilateur de deux centimètres et quelque, à brancher en gigogne sur une alimentation de disque dur, qui ira dans l’emplacement prévu à cet effet de mon boîtier pour disque externe ?

Okay, are they going to have my tablet in stock someday?

Depuis que les sachets de riz prêt en deux minutes au micro-ondes existent, je me demande pourquoi ils n’appliquent pas le principe aux pâtes ; maintenant c’est fait. Verdict : ça pue, mais c’est mangeable. Mais ça pue. Et ce n’est jamais très agréable de je n’ai jamais aimé manger quelque chose qui pue.

Tant que je reste reclus dans ma chambre, je peux encore oublier. C’est seulement quand je dois sortir faire des courses que je suis obligé de me souvenir que je suis à Smallville et que c’est inhumain.

C’est l’été indien, là ?

Ah ben, tiens, je pourrais poster ça, par exemple :

— Oups, j’ai failli oublier de regarder la redif de Le Set pour voir Nosfell sur le plateau

— c ki ?

— Un chanteur complètement barré, icône gay chez les ceux-qui-savent parce qu’il fait ses concerts torse nu, qu’il fait de la danse, qu’il est complètement barré, et qu’il a une tête à passer ses nuits au Dépôt

P.S. Raté… j’ai dû mal comprendre le concept de best-of hebdomadaire.

P.S. Ah, oui, le best-of hebdomadaire doit être en deux parties. Zut, j’ai autre chose à faire de mes samedis soirs.

It’s boring in here… who do I have to insult in order to get some animation?

Crap, aren’t Graphire4 tablets available yet?

After two months of holiday including more than a fortnight staying right in the center of Paris, the unreal aspect of living in Smallville is getting painfully obvious.

Musique oscillant entre passable et correcte, stars de service, pétasses squattant sans bouger en plein milieu de la piste, et tout le monde qui arrête de se sentir obligé de bouger parce que deux pauvres drag queens dançouillent sur un podium. Ambiance assez moyenne, en bref.