I apologize for not blogging since WWDC. I’ve been busy catching up with work. There’s a lot of NDA stuff I can’t talk about, along with some secret stuff at work. I’ve also been busy with Removr. The game levels are playable & the menu screens work, but it still needs level maps & sound effects.

I’m still waiting to hear if my offer on that condo in San Leandro was accepted. I was supposed to find out yesterday, but the seller seems reluctant and is waiting to review additional offers. Keeping my fingers crossed.

I’m getting ready to leave for San Francisco this afternoon. I’m going to WWDC and I’ll be spending some time with a realtor looking at some homes there.

Via NYT > Technology:

Some Apple iPads are overheating in the sun, although its unclear if this is a widespread problem or confined to a small percentage of iPads.

This happened to me a few times when I was sitting outside in the sun with my iPad. It will suddenly shut down and show a temperature warning screen.

Via MacNN | The Macintosh News Network:

Google dealt a snub to Adobe on Friday with a tribute to the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man. Despite sharing stage time with Adobe just this week, a playable version of Pac-Man on the page works with both the iPad and iPhone — revealing that it’s not using Flash. Apple’s phones and other touchscreen devices instead use swipe gestures to steer the classic arcade game….

I’ve added a Facebook ‘like’ button both here and at MacMegasite using the like plugin.

John Gruber writes about his recent hard disk crash:

Hard drives are fragile. Read as much as you can bear to about how they work, how incredibly precisely they must operate in order to cram so many bits onto such small disks. It’s a miracle to me that they work at all. Every hard drive in the world will eventually fail. Assume that yours are all on the cusp of failure at all times. It’s good to be spooked about how long your hard drives will last.

Luckily he had good backups, which saved his butt.

Merlin Mann gives more hints on smart backup strategies:

Perform automated, redundant, and rotated backups as often as you can afford to lose every single bit of information that’s been changed or added since your last backup. Because it’s going to go away.

This is exactly why I prefer CrashPlan instead of Time Machine. CrashPlan will automatically backup to multiple destinations, which can include both a local drive and CrashPlan Central, which provides off-site backups for extra security. Unlike Time Machine, which doesn’t work well on network drives other than a Time Capsule, CrashPlan is perfectly happy backing up over the network, which is a big plus for laptops.

CrashPlan is only one part of my backup strategy. Although I use it to back up my MacBook continuously, I use Time Machine on my iMac with a FireWire drive since it stays on my desk. I also use DropBox to sync most of my critical folders between my iMac and MacBook. I also do regular full drive backups with SuperDuper.

When I got up this morning before my flight I was shocked to read this announcement at TechCrunch and Daniel’s response. Adam Jackson wrote one of the most reasoned responses with some good advice for Daniel.

I’ve known Daniel Brusilovsky for several years and I work with him as CTO of Teens In Tech Networks. I know he’s a good person and I find it hard to believe he would do this. I’ve heard several conflicting stories and I haven’t talked to Daniel yet, so I don’t know the real story. I’ve also heard from more than one source that it didn’t actually involve a MacBook Air.

I’m not a fan of Michael Arrington or TechCrunch. He loves to create drama (see the CrunchPad/JooJoo). When he has an axe to grind he’ll go out of his way to dig up unfavorable stories about a company and he usually ends up looking more like the Drudge Report than an impartial news source.

I wasn’t too thrilled when Daniel started working for TechCrunch for that reason. I was afraid he’d get caught up in some of Arrington’s drama and that’s exactly what happened.

What he allegedly did was wrong, but he’ll learn from it and move on. It’s not an isolated incident. There have been several Pay Per Post schemes which are very similar to what he supposedly did.

I’m leaving tomorrow for San Francisco to attend Teens in Tech Conference and Macworld Expo, as well as looking at some apartments in the city. I was lucky enough to get a non-stop flight from FLL to SFO (and with onboard WiFi).

My car (a 2009 Toyota Corolla) is on the recall list, so I’ll have to deal with it when I get back from the trip. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get out of the lease without too much trouble so I can get something not made by Toyota.

Please keep your shitty music to yourself, originally uploaded by mike3k.

From 6 Dollar Shirts. I need this one for the gym, where everyone blasts music on a boombox instead of using headphones.

Adam Jackson’s One Year in San Francisco series is a good guide for anyone considering a move to San Francisco.

My requirements are a bit different, though. I’d prefer to own a condo, rather than rent an apartment; and I need at least a 2 bedroom with 1000 sq. ft. or more so I can set up a home office. I’d prefer to live outside the city, but with easy access by Bart so I wouldn’t have to take my car into the city. I only took a car into San Francisco once, and I regretted it after I had to spend $20 to park.

Via CBC:

A B.C. sales representative who markets equestrian products in Canada was barred from crossing the U.S. border to attend a trade show last month by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer who accused him of trying to steal American jobs.

“He looked at me, and in a yelling voice he said, ‘You’re friggin’ stealing jobs away from American citizens,’ and I tried telling him that I wasn’t,” Joel Borsteinas told CBC News.

Borsteinas, a Canadian citizen, said he’s been in business for 15 years, acting as a middleman between U.S. and Canadian suppliers of western wear and equestrian products and Canadian retailers who want to stock the products.

He said he goes to the U.S. half a dozen times a year to attend trade shows and meet with suppliers who want him to market their products to retailers north of the border. They pay him a commission for every Canadian order he sends to them.

As an American working for a Canadian company, I find this completely outrageous. I got to Vancouver at least once a year, and lately I’ve been thinking very seriously about moving there. My job would be a lot easier if I was working on site, and I’m getting more disgusted with this country every day because of bullshit like this, despite having a president I like & respect.

• Mac OS X Internals: The Blog » Blog Archive » Crafting a Tiny Mach-O Executable
  Interesting hack illustrating MACH-O executable format.
  (tags: osx)