Lion Misery... Step by Step (Part II)

So with XCode as a Mac Store App there is no way to have multiple versions.  Currently I have both 3.2.6 and 4.0 XCode on the same machine.  I have written extensively about the misery of XCode 4 and its friends.  I expect this new Mac App model to make things even worse.

(A quick test of XCode 4.2 yields endless stupid errors on working, production software that XCode 3.2.6 happily builds error free.  Ultimately the build craps out in clang with an error 254 - what ever that is...  Thanks Apple...  Personally I think these GCC/LLVM developers have way too much time on their hands and are more worried about fixing stupid shit than makeing something that's actually useful to a real commercial developer.)

I run two independent WiFi networks in my office.  One is the "inside" version and one is the "outside."  "Inside" runs the various externally visible servers, e.g., www.lexigraph.com.  When on that network outside URL to inside sites, e.g., lexigraph, do not resolve because they are local addresses.  I could fix this by altering the host files but instead, mostly for reasons related to debugging and testing, I have a second "outside" WiFi that looks at my inside equipment as if its someone like one of my customers.  This lets me see both sides of my external company view on the internet.

Of course 10.6 Snow Leopard lets you easily switch between the two: you just select the WiFi icon in the menu bar and, if you let the mouse hover over the icon, it finds all the WiFi networks.

Not so on Lion.

Lion seems to boot to the network it saw when it was first booted and spoke with mother Apple.  It will then switch to the other network - but not switch back...  In order to switch back you have to turn off the WiFi and then restart it.

How nice is that?

I've been wanting to get rid of a bunch of old equipment I have lying around - some old G5 servers and a bunch of old FireWire drives.  The idea was to consolidate all this onto a new WiFi set of disks and onto the new laptop.  So I hook the old FireWire disks up to the mask and start copying things to the WiFi and onto the laptop.

But oh wait!  Another Lion issue.

It looks like if you start one copy from a mounted FireWire drive to somewhere it stalls a second copy (which just sits there until the first is completed).  So if the first copy is a slow one all the rest from that drive seem to hang.

So far my audio and MIDI devices seem to have Lion drivers - though I am going to guess that Logic 9 is going to have to run as 32 bits.  There are also issues with 32 versus 64 bits for Audio Units.  That will have to be sorted later.

Disk copying and time estimating (that appears under the progress bar) seems more accurate.  But that means when you first start a copy it tells you it will take days to complete - though as things speed up and get going that turns into a useful number.  I am not sure how seeing a copy will take 21 days (10 Gb over FireWire) is all that useful.  The time seems to update with each chuck of copying so grinding things down to a better estimate takes as long as the copy does.

I am still pissing with the stupid scrolling.   You use two fingers to simulate the iOS-style of moving the text under your fingers.  After a day or so of use you get the hang of having two fingers to drag stuff (the scroll bars still do work in Lion).  But at least I tend to drag them the wrong way - since I am near the top this causes nothing to happen - so there is the briefest confusion as your brain attempts to figure out why nothing is happening before it tells your fingers to move the right way...

Ugh!

The searching in the Finder window is broken again.  It always (I could never find a way to defeat this) looks for files containing the words you type in.  I always want it search for file names - not contents.  In 10.6 it would bring up a little bar under the title area and you could easily fix this.  Not so in Lion, you have to struggle to get the search by name working.

Lion also does a weird thing with changing file or folder names on local drives (like "Macintosh HD").  For 10.6 and previous if you type in a new name it just sticks in the new name immediate.  Now, Lion seems to have to think about changing the name so when your done renaming something it goes back to the old name for about one second - then suddenly the new name pops in.

Its far worse on some types of remote drives.

There's also this new, jumping copy thing.  Say I have a window open and want to drag three different files into another folder.  Prior to Lion you would do this and when the drag started the files would have the positions relative to each other they did in the starting folder.  In Lion they all jump around into a group under your cursor.

This is nothing but distracting.

More Ugh!

The developers at Apple really don't seem to understand the idea that a developer wants things consistent.  If the code compiled before it ought to compile now.  If you want more error checking in the compiler then give me the option to upgrade my compile.  Not the reverse.  To me this means that the LLVM compiler is just randomly different than GCC in a variety of unknown and untestable areas - areas I will have to visit and test - doing the compiler developers work for them.

While Lion so far is usable its full of gratuitous changes that are unnecessary.  I am sure that's to sell things to people to make money.  Not because they are good things.

This is an interesting and different model than Microsoft.

Right away MS got the idea that billions of people where using their stuff and to break things would only make their lives hell.  Apple is too arrogant - they are smart and know better than you what you want.

Well at least I've gotten all the old drives cleaned up and stuff off them and onto the new computer.

Sing Sing...

No, no, not the maximum security prison north of NYC in what is now Ossinging, NY.

Sing Sing is a dueling piano bar down in the Waterfront area of Homestead, PA under the old "Homestead high-level" bridge.

They have an open mic there on Wednesday nights (8PM - 12PM) and I went down to check it out this evening.

Its a really neat place for an open mic and well run.  There's a nice stage setup with dual grand pianos, a bar and a very nice sound system.

How often do you see that at an open mic?

It shares a kitchen with Rock Bottom - good sea food and various beers from their in-house brewery.

Karl Bailey runs it, plays piano there and runs the open mic.

I was personally surprised I had never heard of the place (its been there ten years!) until I found an add for the open mic on craigslist about a month ago.  Actually, its hard to believe the Waterfront is that old.  Last time I was down there was with my Egyptian friends (see "Single Serving") about five or six years ago...

At any rate check it out!

At some point Mrs. Wolf and I will have to go there to check out the dueling piano show (it runs Thurs through Sat and you need reservations): I am sure she can smell the seafood already...

Here I am at the Gateway Inn...

(Last Wednesday I went to an open mic out on Route 8 in Gibsonia run by Jess Sides of the Denmon Sides Project.  This runs every other Wednesday.  While not as fancy a place as Sing Sing Jess runs a good open stage as well at the Gateway Inn staring at 9 PM.  The next one should be the 9th of November.

The Gateway Inn is located at the intersection of 910 and Route 8.

You can find Jess on Facebook.

And don't forget Mike's Open Mic on Thursday's at Mike's New Moon Saloon from 8PM to 12 Midnight every week.)

The first CD review is in...

"Fall To Earth" gets "five stars" in its first review.

Details here.

Some quotes...

"This is the hallmark of a strong composer, when a song is both simple and complex, when looked at from various angles, and is accessible by audience members of different backgrounds and musical experiences."

and 

"Overall, Fall to Earth is a strong release by Kueny, and one that is sure to shine a brighter light on his engaging and interesting compositional style..."

Sharing's Downfall: Dogma

I came upon this article in the WSJ the other day.

The premise is that the new Einsteins will be born from sharing...  sharing, I guess, of scientific work, ideas, insights of one form or another.

Now this is a very interesting comment on science.

The premise is that science and mathematical problems are better solved in groups, e.g., the "polymath problem" (see this).

The basic idea is that someone picked an unsolved mathematical problem, created a blog, and after a period of weeks or months the problem solved by a disparate collection of people from high school students to professional mathematicians - all in a wonderfully collaborative manner.

I commented on this a while ago in a post on "Crowd Sourcing" I wrote.

Now in the case of specific unsolved mathematical problems the internet today offers access to a large audience of qualified folks to work on the problem.  I use the term qualified here because mathematical problems are sort of unique in this regard.  Interest in unsolved mathematical problems tend to cross a lot of boundaries and there are people out their toiling on there own approaches who are generally off the radar of professional mathematicians with the same interest but which may have something to contribute.

So qualified here means that someone understand the mathematical model of proofs, notation and so on and has developed some small or otherwise seemingly useless insight they have this is non-the-less real in the sense that it may be something no one else has figured out relative to the "big picture" of a solution.

The problem here is that many things are best not done by professionals.

An example I run into all the time are compilers - software programs that take a language humans can read and convert it into a form for machines.

Twenty years ago there were no "open source" or collaborative compilers.  Today virtually all compilers are collaboratively built save for those provided by Microsoft (.NET).

Sadly virtually all compilers today suck.

And I have to say that in terms of functionality, ease of use, correctness and reliability Microsoft is the winner hands down.

Why?

Because their software tools are written by a small group of dedicated professionals whose only job is to build compilers.

The article claims that somehow the new "Einstein" will be some collaborative deal.

But, by his very nature, Einstein took all the standard scientific dogma and turned it on its head to create his theories.

Groups, by nature, reject discarding dogma because to do so would leave the group member open to criticism and ridicule by its members.

I remember distinct about the time I was creating pdfExpress (see the linked blogs for backup on this).

Basically pdfExpress operated in a completely new way than other PDF tools (and still does today).  The whole point of its tremendous success was that it did things with PDF in a way which no other product did.  I embodied a single insight I made early on with PDFs: that the files where data as much as they were graphical.  pdfExpress manipulates PDF files as data, not as graphical entities, and therefore can do things that other products cannot.

At the time I created it and initially went about selling it I faced a lot of ridicule and "shunning" from the PDF elite who created products that followed standard PDF dogma.  It was so fast that people did not even believe that it was working - yet it did and it does.

To create it I literally when though an almost fanatical "madness" and depression.  It took about eight weeks or so of total focus to get the first version working.  I still remember sitting in my office with a guy that worked for me:

"It's done!" I said.

"Okay, let's try it," said my employee.

I typed in the command line to run a test file that took about five minutes to run as an Acrobat 3.0 plug-in.

I hit enter.

After a second the prompt came back.

"Did it work?" the employee ask.

We thought it must have crashed or failed.

We opened the output file and to our astonishment it had worked!

The "madness" I went though had paid off.  I knew that no one else in the world had made the insight I had made.  It was totally outside the standard dogma and standard PDF philosophy.

The real question here is could this have been done in a group setting?

After pondering this I have to say I think not.  My insight came from a flash I still remember some fifteen years later.  From that point on I could only attempt to get my idea to work - I believed it would work - I thought it would work - but the only way to try it out was to do it myself.

What if I had posted it on a blog for "crowd sourcing?"

Subsequent treatment by the same folks that never understood the product when it actually was commercially viable tells me that the blog post would have been ignored. 

Why would those steeped in the standard dogma embrace something that turns their world on their head?

This is the real issue facing science and "crowd sourcing."

Most of science is a facebook-like process of reaching consensus.  Just like a "crowd sourced" compiler its not as good as something done by a competent pro.

Advances from my experience require new paradigms because typically the old dogma can carry you only so far.

So in some sense this "crowd source" model requires that everyone share the comma dogma.

In general someone with a totally different perception of the problem will not necessarily be able to convince others to follow them.  I know that I could not (with those steeped in dogma).  On the other hand my solution worked so well that customers could not ignore it.

So the "proof" for me was the ability to help customers that no on else could.

I think that while the notion of a "shared Einstein" sounds wonderful in fact Einstein did what he did because he followed his own path.  Would Einsteins "sourcing" buddies recognize his insight?  What if it meant that their beliefs and perhaps life's work would be invalidated?

I believe this whole notion of "crowd source" success actually limits the amount of true insight and veers the project invariably toward one based on standard dogma.

Einstein worked alone because he knew what his peers would have had to say about his work before it was finished.

After it was completed it spoke for itself.

I have to say that my experience falls into the same category - dogmatists don't want a paradigm-shifting insight to upset their apple carts...

What if Motzart had to develop his sound in a "crowd sourced" environment?

What about Bach?

What if Einstein's peers had gotten hold of his work before it was completed?

No, I think "crowd sourcing" is generally a kind of intellectual socialism that brings true genius and insight down to the lowest common denominator.

Crowd sourcing does not take into account the participant's vested interests - good or bad.

Halloween 2011

Mrs. Wolf's new costume...

This year Mrs. Wolf and I attended various Halloween work-related functions for which costumes were required.

Mrs. Wolf is always clever about finding an interesting costumes.  This year was no exception.  The costumes she found were both unusual and fun.  The Witch costume (at the upper right) was not her usual choice but in the end it worked out.  Particularly because of the broom that came with it.  We had a little trouble working out just how to set it up but once we had that figured out it was a lot of fun.

The broom was quite well behaved and didn't cause any trouble all night.  Usually when you get hold of that sort of thing there are various worries about liability and damage.  But everything worked out quite well.

Video of the broom at home before we left:




Now clearly she has the hang of using this thing.

While we were waiting to leave Mrs. Wolf and I went off to do some evening whale watching on one of her yachts.  This time she had on her Little Red Riding Hood/Big Bad Wolf costume:

 I snapped this picture out on the boat while she was watching the whales and evening sky:

After a while she got bored and fell asleep for a while so I headed back to my office in Paris to clean up a few loose ends until the party started.  I picked up a new camera from Loot.  This will send pictures right up to youtube directly.  You just point, shoot, and upload.

Here's a test movie:





Finally we got our selves organized and out the door together.

Our friend has a mansion up on a hill overlooking the sea - it was our first stop.  There's a light house and its up on a high, rocky cliff.

She and a friend are out zooming around the outside of the house:




We met up with a number of our globe-trotting friends and had a nice time.  I got tired early and went to bed.

Mrs. Wolf was able to enjoy our friends company well into the evening.

(While this is all in fun you never know who might come across your social networking "fun" and whether or not you might become seriously involved in some business deal - see this WSJ article.)

Lion Misery - Step by Step... (Part I)

The faded circle slash says a Lion app won't run...

So I have a new laptop with Lion...

First off you have to spend an hour or so installing the automatic updates.  These include some firmware changes that get downloaded each time your run "Software Update."  The problem is that they don't take so after each successful "Software Update" you have run it again.  It took me about six (count'm six) tries before it would succeed and report that no more update are available.

These firmware updates cause the machine to make weird beeps and the "sleep" light to flash in a funny way.  A special "progress bar" (all gray) also appears during the process.

So after an hour or so at least I had the baseline of 10.7.2 (Lion) installed on this new mac.

During the install I had Lion transfer the contents of an older mac to the new one.

When I open the new mac I can see many of my apps in the task bar have a circle with a bar hash over them meaning that they are not compatible with Lion:  most of my Adobe products, various plug-ins, tools for Roland VX systems, older Office apps, Native Instruments apps, Enfocus browser, most of what I want to use.

So first off I have to re-install Logic 9 - the old machine did not have all the parts installed so I have to redo it...  Hopefully Lion won't break the installation.  This will be a several hour project.

In the mean time I have to get access to my other work laptop via screen sharing.  Fortunately this works pretty well and I am able to use the other laptop from this one almost seamlessly (the only thing that doesn't work is the sticky-note widget stuff...).  Sharing is easy to set up and it works.

Up until this point I have been able to get everything I need on a single mac - but today no more.

The new mac requires me to use the new, backwards iOS-style scrolling where the screen follows the direction of your finger moves instead of the opposite.  This is annoying though I may as well get used to it because the ghost of Steve Jobs will not let Apple go back to rational scrolling.  (This would be rational if the keyboard was also a display as with iOS.)

So I have been going through the task bar cleaning things up or removing things that won't work.  For some things they probably will never work again which means that what I use them for will eventually fail as well (for example the Roland XV-5050 stuff).  (I'll be stuck using the 1" x 4" B/W display panel after that... thanks Steve...)

Native Instruments software also fails.  I was able to get some working by checking the "run in 32-bit mode" box in the file Info dialog associated with the file.  This is what's really annoying.  Lion is supposedly 64-bit and wonderful.  Most of what I use is 32-bit I guess.  But there is no overt way to tell.

After installing CS 5.5 I tried to fire up Photoshop - after a completely clean and error free install.

First thing off it complains in needs a "Java Runtime."  Why and whatever for - who knows - but it does.  Mysteriously "Software Update" is invoked to find one.  The new PhotoShop appears to be a 64-bit one - oh oh - it will be slooooowwww...  (actually its okay so far...  not blazing but okay).

Native Instruments uses a "Service Center" software package that manages the rest of any Native Instruments packages you buy.  However, initially it seemed not to be working.  You have to go on their web site, download the latest version, go on your Mac and remove some .plist files (there is info at NE in the support area) and reinstall the Service Center.   Then when you run it you have to ask it to not try again when it fails with "Error 6."  The rest of Komplete 7 seems to work without a problem - but I have not tested it extensively (I did have to tell Kontatk 4 to run in 32-bit mode).

In the root directory ("/" or "Macintosh HD") Lion creates a folder for incompatible software (.kexts and other stuff like Parallels found its way there on my install).  So if things stop working magically I'd take a look in there to see if I could find the problem first.  Since Lion doesn't tell you this and just does it you're on your own...

I had to go to the app store for Mac to get the latest development environment (XCode).

You end up going through the BS Mac app store stuff and then it sits there.  You have no idea when its done or what it did.  After a while I had to go looking for XCode by doing a disk search.  Finally I found what I guess the latest version is in my Applications folder.  But its not an installed XCode - its an install XCode app!

I will report the adventures of my XCode xploits (no pun intended) over on the Synthodeon blog.

(More to come...)

On to Lion...

After a long debate with myself I have decided that I need to upgrade to Apple Lion.

Most of the computers I use at this point are Macs and so on the one hand upgrading to Lion would seem like a no-brainer.

But Lion is different to a large degree.

First of all it invalidates certain applications (list here).

Now, as a vendor with many customers for which I need my Mac to do certain things I feel a certain trepidation about replacing one OS with another that potentially would shut off some capability that I need to service a customer.

Now if I could somehow know what was going to break that would be one thing - but I don't.  So I cannot put myself in a position of being on a service call, needing something and suddenly and unexpectedly finding out I cannot do what I need to do.

From a developers perspective each new OS brings new features and breaks old ones at the programming level as well.  For example, I cannot use the latest XCode on a non-Lion system.  To me this is just wrong.  Why on earth does XCode require Lion.  Ditto for iOS 5 development - for some unknown reason I need Lion as well.

So at this point I have a 10.5 (Leopard), and 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and now I will have a 10.7 (Lion) laptop.

Great.

The only ones just sit around as hot backups - at least until now.

What is troubling to me is why do these systems have to be incompatible at any level?

For example, going from 32-bits to 64-bits.  Suddenly with Snow Leopard things you built in the development environment might not work on a slightly older machine - and all you get was a cryptic message on the failure.

I think that companies like Apple are still in a position of dictating to their customers.

Microsoft, on the other hand, with such a large (especially comparable to Apple) base of customers has had to bend to the "compatibility" wind and make sure that each new version of Windows within a very broad swath remains exactly backward compatible.  (Yes I know that 16-bit Windows apps no longer work outside of Windows XP but, well, what can I say...)

Today with all the VM based technology I really don't see why we don't have systems that at some level are exactly backward compatible.

Certainly Apple, with its transition from the Power PC model to Intel accomplished this with Rosetta.

And today we have things like VMWare and Parallels that give almost perfect virtual machine representations of other machine environments.

Why are we still saddled with version upgrades breaking things?

One reason is money - every new version sells more machines (as is the case with me) as well as sells software.

I think, though, that there is a developer issue here as well.  Developers only look forward - what new features can I add, what new things can my box do, and so on.

Therefore they don't look back unless the boss tells them to.

So anyway, all things considered, I have to go and get a new machine.