Archive for October, 2004
OMG! What am I to do now!
bq. The closed beta test is coming to an end. This Friday, October 29, at 3:00 PM PDT, the closed beta servers will go offline as we prepare to run another stress test. All active closed-beta accounts will remain active, and closed-beta testers will be receiving an email with instructions on what to do to continue playing in the stress test.
bq. We also want to take this opportunity to thank the closed beta testers for their months of dedicated testing and hard work. Thanks to all of your suggestions and bug reports, World of Warcraft is closer than ever to being ready for launch!
October 28th, 2004
I’ve been playing “World of Warcraft”:http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/ for six straight months, almost non-stop. I think, breath, eat, and sleep the game when I’m not playing. I am addicted.
I just don’t think I’m able to stop. Seriously. What in the heck do I do now?
October 25th, 2004
I spent a good deal of my evening last night installing DBD::mysql and DBI on Mac OS X 10.3.5 so I could upgrade Moveable Type to MySQL. Why bother? I wanted to see if it would improve the performance of MT and well, no it didn’t. While I was attempting to install DBD::mysql I kept receiving errors related to /blib/arch/auto/DBD/mysql/mysql.bundle. Googling the error returned what was I looking for after digging through several threads. I’d decided to put all that information in one spot for easy reference.
Installing DBD::mysql on Panther is no easy task if you try to do it without knowing about the bug in the Perl Config.pm shipped from Apple.
p. 1. Correct the bug included in Panther. (Still hasn’t been fixed since 10.3.5)
We recently discovered the DBD::mysql problem as well. The patch is to edit /System/Library/Perl/5.8.1/darwin-thread-multi-2level/Config.pm, replacing:
ld=’MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.3 cc’
with
ld=’env MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.3 cc’
p. *This step is critical*. If this isn’t corrected installing DBD::mysql will fail.
p. 2. Install DBI and DBD::mysql
The easy way is to use CSPAN from Terminal.app. If this is the first time running CSPAN there is a configuration step. Select the auto config option and all should be well. At the cspan> prompt enter in the install line.
sudo perl -MCPAN -eshell
install Bundle::DBD::mysql
A more complicated way to install the packages is manually. Download the latest versions of DBI and DBD::mysql from cspan.org.
At the time of this writing DBI-1.45.tar.gz and DBD-mysql-2.9004.tar.gz are the latest versions.
You’ll need to install DBI first.
sudo cp /Downloads/DBI-1.45.tar.gz /Library/Perl
sudo tar -zxvf DBI-1.45.tar.gz
cd DBI-1.45
sudo Perl Makefile.PL
sudo make
sudo make install
Next install DBD::mysql
sudo cp /Downloads/DBD-mysql-2.9004.tar.gz /Library/Perl
sudo tar -zxvf DBD-mysql-2.9004.tar.gz
cd DBD-mysql-2.9004
sudo Perl Makefile.PL
sudo make
sudo make install
I didn’t bother running make test on either of these installs. Feel free to do so however the DBD::mysql will most likely fail due to login errors.
Hopefully this will help somebody as I spent a good part of an evening figuring this out. Isn’t Google great? 
October 14th, 2004
Maybe this can help you. Let me know how it goes, I may need it myself.
October 13th, 2004
Microsoft released their “lame excuse for a music store”:http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BD5657B75-0B35-461F-9526-AEFAC1924F61%7D yesterday, dubbed the “MSN Music Store”:http://music.msn.com/.
bq. “ITunes has done a great job of helping to elevate the [digital music] market,” said Christine Andrews, lead product manager of MSN. “We’re different because Apple is a closed system. If you want Apple, you have to use the iPod. A lot of people want choice and we offer that.”
That quote there is a classic. Apple is closed and some how MSN isn’t? I attempted to buy a song using my Mac and Firefox as the browser. Sorry, you can’t do that. You must “use Windows and Internet Explorer”:http://music.msn.com/help/requirements.aspx. We’ll call this exhibit closed door number 1.
Even if I could download music from MSN on my computing platform of choice I still wouldn’t be able to play the music on my MP3 player of choice, an iPod. So, some how this is an open system music store that doesn’t support the leading MP3 player on the market? Exhibit closed door number 2.
All the music from the MSN Music Store comes in Windows Media format. WMA is a closed, proprietary format developed by Microsoft. Hmm. Exhibit closed door number 3.
I’m not saying that the iTunes Music Store is this big open ocean, it’s as closed as MSN is. What am I saying is that Microsoft is a liar. MSN lied when they stated they’re an “open” system. They are not.
Now, go download your tunes from “iTMS”:http://www.apple.com/itunes/ into your iPod or even just a simple CD and be happy.
October 13th, 2004
After 6 months of testing and playing the “World of Warcraft”:http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/, I’ve finally put up a “screenshot gallery”:http://www.snapturtle.com/fotos/thumbnails.php?album=5. No where near complete at least it’s something for those who haven’t had a chance to play yet. I’ll slowly be adding more pictures as I have the time.
Each picture has to be converted from .pdf (why oh why!) to .jpg which is a minor annoyance that is enough for me not to post a whole bunch at a time. Call me Mr. Lazy 
October 12th, 2004
Mixing cherries with apple pie just isn’t my thing, I’m sure for some of you though it could be the next best thing since sliced bread.
One of the main reasons I love Apple is not only for the wonderful OS but because the hardware just works. For those who still want to use a boring Dell can now run Mac OS X on x86 using Cherry OS [warning: this site has been slashdotted :)].
I can’t imagine why any Windows user would even care about this. If they’re using Windows, why move over to the “ugly duckling” OS for which they won’t have any applications to run under.
Of course, I’ll give it a try at some point just to say I did and it sucked.
October 12th, 2004
Hmm… I could be addicted to something other than gaming. However, I suppose you can’t sell books about “gaming addiction”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7044-2004Oct4.html unless you make it seem worse than drugs.
Whatever. Game on!
October 10th, 2004
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