Monthly Archives: April 2005

Snow

It snowed briefly this afternoon. Nothing accumulating, but it’s almost May!

Snow is for the winter!

Update (May 1, 2005): It briefly snowed again today!

Textile 2.0.8 & WordPress

Since the server this is running on was upgraded to PHP 5, the old Textile 2 plugin no longer functioned.

I have updated this plugin to use version 2.0.8 of the TextilePHP class. Thanks to Adam Gessaman for the original plugin.

You can download textile2.0.8-smartypants.zip or textile2.0.8-smartypants.tar.gz.

Note: This was updated from Adam’s 2.0.3 plugin (not the more recent 2.0.5 plugin) by merging the changes in the Textile.php class into the plugin using the GNU utilities diff and patch.

Tiger: First Impressions

At first, I must admit that it doesn’t seem like there is a whole lot new. Spotlight is neat, but I already had much of that functionality with Quicksilver. Dashboard is a good idea, but I’m not sure I’ll work it into my daily routine quite yet.

Here’s a list of applications and neat additions:

  • iChat
    • Ability to choose between Away and Logging Off when using Fast User Switching… this was a huge annoyance for me in the past.
    • Multiple AIM/Jabber accounts
    • Mobile users show up with the word Mobile next to their name. This means I won’t accidentally IM Gary’s phone anymore.
  • Group support is much better! (It’s actually usable now, because they adopted a method similar to how all the other IM clients do it).
  • Safari
    • RSS: I’m not sure I’ll use this here. I’m quite used to NetNewsWire.
    • Undo in forms! (Was this is Safari 1.3?)
  • New page pops up helping you get on the internet if you lack a connection when you try to load a webpage.
  • Airport/Wireless
  • The menu bar meter seems to always show more bars… nice psycological effect.
  • iCal
    • Calendar Groups (much like Folders in iPhoto, etc). Not sure what use these have.
  • Show birthdays in iCal (no need for extra programs or plugins).
  • Mail
    • Smart mailboxes
  • Different interface (unsure about my feelings on this).
  • Dictionary
    • Very useful
    • Pretty interface/font selection
  • Looks very professional
  • Preview
    • Annotation features
  • New display options (continuous pages, book mode, etc).
  • Spotlight
  • AWESOME
  • System Preferences
  • I like the ability to search for what I’m looking for. Doesn’t always pop up with what I was thinking (e.g. a search for ‘scroll’ doesn’t highlight the Keyboard and Mouse Preference Pane).
  • Grapher
  • Cool program for plotting 2D and 3D images. It won’t replace gnuplot for making graphs for papers, but it is easier to use than say Mathematica for quickly making and manipulating a 3D graph.

Update: I just remembered I posted my inpressions on the Developer Preview last July. It’s an interesting read to compare my views… some things (like Safari and iChat) were fixed up, but other problems (Dashboard) remain.

Ankle Sprain

On Thursday I managed to sprain my ankle with some severity (Class II, most likely) while playing softball. I slid into third base, but did so too late so I hit the bag while still going pretty fast. I must have rolled my ankle right underneath me.

At the time it wasn’t very painful. I managed to limp off the field without any problems, but soon realized that my ankle felt funny… swollen (but not painful). I layed on the ground, but refused an initial offer for ice. After another minute, my ankle started swelling and was soon quite large—maybe the size of a softball.

Intramural sports had already dispensed their only ice bag for the evening, so Rachelle had to ride over to McDonald’s to get some ice for me. Stepnick graciously drove me home.

I spent Thursday night in the dorms, but quickly realized that I’d have a much better time this weekend at home with a couch and a TV to watch. My mom picked me up Friday morning, and I have been home since.

My ankle has made considerable progress in the last 48 hours. I can now walk on the ankle in a sort of unusual fashion. It doesn’t feel comfortable enough to really use very much yet. But it can load bear without any pain… a very good sign.

I should be back and walking in another day or two. Latin dance on Tuesday might be a little crazy, I might have to sit this week out.

All in all, I feel lucky that it wasn’t anything more severe. It did ruin a lot of my weekend, including missing the Gopher Spring Football Game at the Metrodome and the Drum Major Tryouts this afternoon.

I’ll post a few pictures of the injury when I get back to school tomorrow and have access to my camera again.