“Design depends largely on constraints.” — Charles Eames
Hi, I’m Mark Nottingham. I currently chair the IETF HTTPbis Working Group. I usually write here about the Web, protocol design, HTTP, and caching. Once in a while, I’ll write about economics, travel or living in Australia. Find out more.
Wednesday, 11 January 2006
It took two years, but Apple has finally taken steps to limit Safari’s content-sniffing ways; Safari now displays certain documents that have text/plain headers as plain text rather than treating them as HTML. — About the Mac OS X 10.4.4 Update Why “certain” documents, though? My trivial test is handled correctly now, but what about others? What’s the heuristic now?...
this entry’s page (1 comment)
Sunday, 8 January 2006
After hearing about how I lusted after Bob’s D100 in Japan last November, Anitra kindly splurged on a Nikon D50 for my birthday, and I was re-introduced to serious photography. After getting some lenses and figuring out the basic components of my workflow (RAW images, iPhoto for organising and Photoshop CS2 for editing), I became interested in colour management, because there was such a difference in what I saw in camera, on the various monitors, and in print. My...
this entry’s page (3 comments)
Monday, 18 July 2005
Am I just behind, or is Core Image Fun House the coolest thing ever? With Core Image, Apple has basically built Photoshop into the OS, except that all of the filters are real-time. If you’re on Tiger, install the Developer Tools (on the Tiger install DVD) and go into /Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools/. My favourite so far is the Glass Lozenge distortion filter; try combining it with Torus Lens Distortion. Wicked cool. Granted, it’s just a demo, and a number of...
this entry’s page (6 comments)
Wednesday, 30 March 2005
Just added a 512M module to the Powerbook for a total of 1G (was 768M), for a pittance — $79! — courtesy of Amazon. Everything’s much snappier, especially Eclipse; I feel more productive already. If you have an Aluminum Powerbook, now’s the time… P.S. — Virtual PC is actually usable now; not fast, mind you, but the start and shutdown times are bearable, and it’s reasonable responsive....
this entry’s page (5 comments)
Friday, 30 July 2004
Apple is making an executive summary of the 9/11 commission report and the major speeches from the Democratic National Convention available for free on the iTunes Music Store. They deserve a lot of praise for this, and I hope they continue this practice. Dissemination of information through multiple channels is all the more important as Americans’ rights are eroded; Police officers in Louisiana no longer need a search or arrest warrant to conduct a brief search of your home or...
Sunday, 18 July 2004
Timbl has talked about Web-izing databases and languages; what about operating systems? Despite Microsoft’s legal troubles brought about trying to integrate the browser into Windows, it’s a good idea. Here’s one for the LazyWeb: create a Mac OS X Contextual Menu plug-in with a very simple function — “Copy URL.” When used on a file or folder that’s served by the built-in Web server (e.g., in /Library/WebServer/Documents/ or ~/Sites), it should place the appropriate HTTP URL on the clipboard. For...
this entry’s page (2 comments)
Saturday, 3 July 2004
Surfin’ Safari hints that the next version of WebCore will be able to edit as well as render HTML. Does this mean that we’ll soon see Safari sport an “edit” button along with HTTP PUT, a la Amaya? Even better would be full WebDAV with search, ACLs, locking, versioning, etc....
Friday, 28 May 2004
Hey mac fans — I need to track changes in a lot of documents, so I’ve cobbled together a simple AppleScript that renames the Finder’s selected files with the date: Rename with Date. For example, The File.doc becomes The File (2004-05-28).doc based upon its last modification date. The script checks for naming clashes. I use it in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Finder; it should be easy to adapt it to a droplet or folder action as well, though. Enjoy!...
Wednesday, 5 May 2004
I’ve got to say that iTunes 4.5 is scary addictive. Usually, I have a problem in buying music, because by the time I get to the record shop, I forget what I want, and I’m confronted with rows and rows of albums and a lack of patience. The iTunes Music Store helped a little bit because it’s always there (as long as you’re online), but you’re still confronted with the sheer volume of potential selections. Now, in the newest rev,...
this entry’s page (3 comments)
Tuesday, 13 April 2004
Spike is a networked clipboard that allows you to easily share text, pictures and other interesting things with others near and far. The nice part is that a) it uses ZeroConf (a.k.a. Rendezvous) and b) it’s cross-platform (Windows and Mac). This is deeply cool; I have a feeling that it will be invaluable at those meetings where everybody hands little USB memory dongles around, or scrambles to find each other on IM. Now, how about a cross-platform, ZeroConf chat application...
Friday, 5 March 2004
I’ve just got back from a two-week business trip, during which my 15” Titanium Powerbook showed increasing signs of shaking off this mortal coil. Specifically, the bottom 1/3 of the screen kept on flickering white. At first, I was able to tap the screen to make it better, but as time went on, tapping became hitting, and by the end, it was unresponsive. Considering the work this machine has done, I’m not terribly displeased. On the downside, I wasn’t able...
this entry’s page (1 comment)
Monday, 9 February 2004
We’ve been playing with iChat AV, and I’ve got to say that it puts video chat in the same class as E-Mail and Web; killer app. This isn’t video chat like you’re used to; it’s fluid, has good resolution, and is easy to use (as long as the firewalls aren’t too picky, that is). With distributed family (US East coast and Australia) and work (pretty much everywhere), it makes a huge difference; this is what the pundits and hype a...
this entry’s page (2 comments)
Thursday, 8 January 2004
Rod Chavez has posted an article about running BEA WebLogic Server 8.1 on OSX to O’Reilly. It’s really, really cool that this works, and I’ve had the entire platform (including Workshop) running on my TiBook happily for several months, thanks to Sam’s efforts. One thing I’d dispute — in the comments, someone says It’s good to see that there are at least a few people within BEA with an eye on Mac OS X, as “unofficial” as it may be...
Saturday, 3 January 2004
Mail already shows you a little picture of someone when they’re in your address book. Why doesn’t it send and display X-Faces? Can somebody write a plugin to do this? (It also doesn’t display pictures in the LDAP server that I connect to at work, but that could just be its screwy, site-specific schema that Mail and Address book wouldn’t know about. Hmm, maybe those RDF people are onto something after all…) UPDATE: MailPictures does this, as well as sending...
this entry’s page (1 comment)
Monday, 15 December 2003
Small apps that make my life much, much easier: Kung-Log — Weblog writing and management, off-line (thanks, John) Shrook — RSS reader extraordinary Address Book — Yes, it comes with the OS, but I don’t think most people appreciate just how cool this app is OmniOutliner — Great if you make lists, nifty XML output and columns capability (try this instead of Stickies) OmniGraffle — If people ever find out about this, Visio’s days are numbered Romeo — Control your...
this entry’s page (7 comments)
Wednesday, 10 December 2003
mnot-laptop:~> uname -a Darwin localhost.local 7.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 7.0.0: Wed Sep 24 15:48:39 PDT 2003; root:xnu/xnu-517.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc mnot-laptop:~> echo "<a href='/'>test</a>" > ~/Sites/test.txt mnot-laptop:~> chmod a+r ~/Sites/test.txt mnot-laptop:~> curl -is http://localhost/~mnot/test.txt | grep Content-Type Content-Type: text/plain mnot-laptop:~> open http://localhost/~mnot/test.txt Please get a clue, Apple....
this entry’s page (3 comments)
Wednesday, 10 September 2003
Our problems continue. We took advantage of the $39.90 restocking fee to upgrade to the new 20G iPod; no difference at all in the battery behaviour (although the circle pad has a different design, IMHO spiffier; A doesn't like it so much). Strike one. Another attempt was to power the eMac's FireWire bus while it's asleep by connecting the iPod power adapter to the other FireWire port on the eMac, courtesy of a normal, 6-to-6 FireWire cable ($19 at the...
Monday, 25 August 2003
I got Anitra an iPod (an intensely desirable object) last week, because the new car (new to us, at least) doesn't have a CD player, and she's got a long commute. Along with an iTrip, it seemed just the ticket. First problem: Amazon advertises the iTrip "for new iPods," but still ships the old version. I'm out two-day shipping, and have to wait until it comes into stock. Second problem: Apple has, in their infinite wisdom, released a dock for...
Tuesday, 15 July 2003
I'm very happy to say that, after using Windows on the desktop for about a year, and various flavours of Unix on the desktop for about six years, I've Switched back to the Mac (which I happily used for about six years before that). Specifically, a very kind colleague (thanks, Andrew!) in the office down the hall sold me his 667Mhz 15" Powerbook G4 for a quite reasonable price (due to the hardship of getting himself a 17" Powerbook). I've...
this entry’s page (10 comments)
Sunday, 4 May 2003
Don't get me wrong - I love Apple and all things apple. But, the Genius bar at the Apple Store never fails to annoy. Every time I go in with a hardware problem, I have to wait behind an endless queue of people who seem to be there to do nothing more than have a good chat. What's up with that? Fine, Apple is a friendly company and wants to give good customer service. I can appreciate that. I can't...
this entry’s page (5 comments)
Saturday, 3 May 2003
One of the joys of moving to a mac for my personal machine is using Apple's excellent Mail.app; IMHO it's the best GUI mail client yet. However, I'm having a WEIRD problem; it seems that all drag-and-drop in Mail.app is broken. I can't drag message to mailboxes, can't even drag toolbar items in "Customize toolbar." Does anybody else have this problem? I'm using Mail.app 1.2.5 (v552) on MacOS 10.2.5. Strangely, it doesn't happen on my Anitra's eMac with the same...
this entry’s page (1 comment)
Thursday, 1 May 2003
Anybody know how to get ZeroConf working on Linux, so that I can advertise services on my server to the Macs at home?...
this entry’s page (5 comments)
Wednesday, 11 December 2002
Aaron points out the Apple Switch commercial starring Yo Yo Ma. Cool; how long before we see a Switch ad with TBL? :)...
