Reason Triumphs

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The Scopes III trial ends.

From the New York Times:

HARRISBURG, PA., Dec. 20 – A federal judge ruled today that it is unconstitutional for a Pennsylvania school district to present intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in high school biology courses because intelligent design is a religious viewpoint that advances “a particular version of Christianity.”

Thank heaven! (Pun intended.) I was beginning to think the country was regressing back to a 21st century version of the Dark Ages.

I have all kinds of respect for people’s religious beliefs. Religion is important to many people. It forms the bedrock of their personal belief systems and guides their everyday actions. But when religious beliefs contradict science, I’m on the side of science.

It doesn’t bother me to imagine that I’m the product of millions of years of evolution. It doesn’t bother me to know that one of my ancestors was a squiggly thing in the ocean and another was an ape-like creature that couldn’t stand quite upright. Science has produced all kinds of theories that make evolution feasible and there is enough evidence to satisfy me. Evidently, there’s enough evidence to satisfy a judge, too.

We should be teaching science in public schools, not religion. Religion should be taught at home and at church and at church-sponsored education, like Sunday School. Parents and religious leaders are better suited to answering questions about religion. Science teachers are better suited for answering questions about science. It makes sense.

Of course, I do have a good friend who believes that the earth is only 7,000 years old. (I think that’s his number.) It doesn’t matter that there’s all kinds of scientific evidence to prove that it’s billions of years old. My friend says 7,000 years and he truly believes it. That’s part of his religion. And who am I to tell him he’s wrong?

Not a science teacher.

Anyway, I’m not surprised that the trial ended the way it did. It makes sense to me. But Mike said tonight at dinner that he was relieved. Relieved? How could it not end on the side of reason? How could a government built upon separation of church and state settle for anything less?

The Chickens in My Garage

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A report on my 10-day-old chicks.

It’s true. I have 27 chickens in my garage.

If you’ve been following this bLog, you know that I ordered a bunch of chicks to replace my current flock. The mail order house I used decided to send me a bunch of bonus chicks. It turns out that the 18 additional chicks they sent are all males.

One of the chicks that wasn’t feeling too well last week died. Another one is sick now and I’m not sure if he’s going to make it. I hope that all the ones that die are males. I don’t have much use for more than 2 roosters. And come six months from now, my neighbors won’t, either. They’re already in their second home. Their first home, a big plastic storage box that should have lasted 12 chicks a week, lasted 18 chicks exactly two days. That was replaced with a pair of gas BBQ boxes I picked up at the local Alco store. A little work with a box cutter and some packing tape gave me a pretty good sized box. I had to buy another waterer and feeder, too.

Now I know that the above picture makes it look as if the poor chicks don’t have enough room to move around. But you have to realize that they’re all piled up on each other by choice. I don’t know why. There’s a heat lamp in there, so I know they’re not cold. I think they just like to pile up. Because when I went to take a photo a few minutes ago, they were piled up like that again. It makes for a boring picture and even more boring video.I can’t even get good video when I try. I pulled a little chickie out of the box and put it on my washing machine top, figuring that it would walk around and do cute chickie stuff. But it just stood there, breathing and blinking at me. Even when I moved the camera pretty close to its face. Maybe it’s because I just woke it up? But she is cute. Too bad they have to get big.

Well, I take that back. If you were cleaning the litter for 27 chicks every morning, you’d be pretty anxious to get them out of your garage and into the chicken coop.

Only four weeks to go. And I have the next addition to their indoor coop all ready for them.

A Podcasting Update

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Maria Speaks Episode 22: A Podcasting Update.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Maria Langer. Welcome to Episode 22 of Maria Speaks: A Podcasting Update.

I haven’t released a podcast in nearly a month and I figured I’d better put one out, just to let you all know I’m still alive and kicking. Here’s a quick update of the things I’ve been up to.

I’ve been busy, but not terribly so. I finished my QuickBooks 2006 for Macintosh book in November and got my author copy in the mail just the other day. It should be in stores within a week. If you’re looking for a book about QuickBooks for Mac, I hope you’ll look it up. I don’t think you’ll be able to look up another book on the topic — my book seems to be the only one.

I started writing my November Widget Watch piece, but got sidetracked. I’m starting to get a little bored with widgets. I hope to finish it next week and get it online as a podcast soon after that. It’ll be an enhanced podcast. Do you like those? With the screenshots and links and all?

I’ve been writing a lot of articles for Informit.com. Unfortunately, Informit doesn’t publish them as quickly as I write them. So although there are about five of them in the pipeline, I don’t expect to see the first of them for at least two weeks. Upcoming topics include Finder features, using Backup 3, and setting up an AirPort Express. I can’t remember the other topics. Heck, I can’t even remember what I had for dinner last night sometimes.

In the past, I’ve released Informit articles as podcasts and enhanced podcasts. I need to know from listeners: should I keep doing this? Do you want to hear the articles as podcasts? Or am I wasting my time and your bandwidth by creating them? You can always read the Informit articles online at the Informit.com Web site. Use the search box to search for me by author name. In case your memory is as bad as mine, the name is Maria Langer.

I’m also working on an article for Mac Addict magazine. I wrote for Mac Addict a few years ago, but I’m not the kind of person who aggressively seeks out magazine work, so I didn’t get any new assignments. (I guess they weren’t interested in seeking me out, either.) I got a call from one of the editors last week, looking for someone to write a bit about Excel for a big piece they’re doing. So I’m doing it. I like writing for Mac Addict because the magazine is fun. I assume the article will be out in the February or March issue.

I’ve begun talking to one of my editors about a brand new book that I’ll probably start writing right after the holidays. It’ll be a Mac book — that’s all I can say. And it won’t be part of any series, so I get a chance to write in a more flexible, free-form style. I love writing Visual QuickStart Guides, but they tend to keep my writing skills — such as they are — all boxed up. It’s nice to let them out for exercise once in a while.

I booked a flight and hotel room for Macworld Expo in San Francisco. I’ll be appearing in the Peachpit Press booth on the Thursday of the show, so if you’re around, I hope you’ll stop by and say hello. I’ll do a presentation about Tiger. Something interesting and fun. I’m tired of talking about productivity stuff.

I started doing video inside my helicopter while I fly. I bought a camera mount that attaches to the horizontal bar between my helicopter’s two front seats. The camera mounts about 5 inches above the bar. It faces out the front of the helicopter and the view includes the top half of my control panel, the part with the interesting gauges on it. You know — airspeed, vertical speed, artificial horizon. I’ve found that on cloudy days, the view is pretty good. Not too bright out the window to make the panel too dark to see. The best video comes during takeoff or landing or while flying in interesting places, like down canyons or alongside cliffs. The idea is to take the interesting video and turn it into a video podcast, with narration, to give people an idea of what sitting in the front seat of a helicopter is like. I need to work a bit more on the mount; the vibrations are a bit too much right now. But I hope to have a short video done soon. Is that something you want to download from Maria Speaks or should I start a separate podcast? The episode would be at least 20 MB in size. Let me know what you think. Don’t be shy.

This past week, I did the first broadcast of a live radio show. I do a lot of work for the local AM radio station here in Wickenburg, KBSZ-AM, including their Web site, Webcam, podcasts of their talk shows, and, most recently, streaming audio. That’s right — you can tune into KBSZ-AM from anywhere in the world, as long as you have a fast Internet connection. There’s a guy who listens in from Italy every single morning and when they broadcast a football game, all available connections are full. If you want to try it out, visit www.kbsz-am.com and click the Streaming Audio link. Then follow the instructions on that page to connect. I recommend weekday mornings, when Pete does his live show, as well as Saturdays, when there’s a succession of live DJs spinning disks.

Anyway, my show, Classic Rock Cuts, is on every Wednesday evening at 8 PM MST. That’s 10 PM on the east coast and 7 PM on the west coast. I did the first broadcast on Wednesday and I admit I was pretty nervous. My friend Keri — Alias Miss Holley King, the Rockabilly Queen — helped me with the tough part: dealing with the broadcasting board. We only had a handful of dead air seconds and I only played a commercial over the music once. The automatic recording of the show that I’d set up on my Web server had so much background noise that it’s worthless as a podcast, so the world will be spared from it. I think I’m ready for next week, when I feature holiday tunes from classic rock artists. I’ll use an old fashioned tape recorder to record the show and, if it isn’t too painful to listen to, release it as a podcast.

I’m looking for sponsors for the show. Peachpit Press has already signed up for a full year of one-minute spots. If you’re interested in sponsoring an entire show, e-mail me at MariaSpeaks@mac.com and I’ll get the details out to you. It’s a lot cheaper than you might think.

But the big project I’m working on is the conversion of my Panther-based, WebSTAR Web server to Mac OS X Tiger Server. I bought Tiger server because I was sick of WebSTAR’s unreliable performance and I wanted to use some of the cool features that come with Tiger Server. So at the beginning of each week, I do some installation work and spend the rest of the week debugging what I’ve done. I have a lot to learn — that’s clear. But I’m really enjoying the challenge, in a weird sort of way.

You can read more of what’s going on in my life — as well as a play-by-play of my server installation, written for the geek wannabes — in Maria’s WebLog. Visit my Home page at www.aneclecticmind.com and click the Maria’s WebLog link to find it. That’s also where you can find more about NaNoWriMo, which made me hated among novelist wannabes back in October.

Right now, I’m waiting to hear from you. What do you want to hear in these podcasts? More Mac how-to stuff? Or stories about the weird things going on in my life — like what you can find in Maria’s WebLog? Or about flying helicopters in the Arizona desert and beyond? Or all of the above? Go to the Home page for this podcast at www.aneclecticmind.com/mariaspeaks/ and use the comments link to share your thoughts.

I’m a lot more likely to churn out interesting podcasts if you tell me what you think is interesting.

That’s all for now. Thanks for listening, Bye!

Server Install Complete

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The server installation goes better than I expected.

I had to wait until after 10 AM to take down the server, wipe its hard disk clean, and install the Tiger Server software. That’s because the computer was busy recording KBSZ’s “Around the Town” show and saving it as an MP3 file so I wouldn’t have to.

The first time I tried to restart from the DVD disc, the computer defaulted back to its internal hard disk for restart. Darn CD/DVD reader problems again. I opened the side of the computer, banged on the drive a little, and shut it back up. Then restarted. It worked.

I had downloaded a “worksheet” PDF document from Apple’s Web site and filled it in in preparation for the big moment. It asked things like the IP address, administrator names and password, Ethernet configuration, disk name, and type of setup. So when the installer started asking questions, I had answers. I finally clicked the Install button and held my breath while the installer checked the DVD disk. Actually, I didn’t hold my breath for the whole time because it took about 15 minutes. Imagine my relief when it had no trouble reading the DVD and began the installation. About 15 minutes later, it was done and ready to restart.

I used my worksheet to answer a few more questions. Then, when I was finished, I got my first look at Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Server. It looked just like Mac OS X 10.4, but had a few interesting icons on the Dock and one or two extra folders in the hard disk’s root level.

I spent the next fifteen minutes or so updating the “out-of-the-box” version of Tiger server with about 500 MB of updates from Apple’s Software Update server. Thank heaven for the DSL connection. It would have taken a VERY long time if I was still using a cable modem.

My next step was to restore the software that had been running on the server that morning. Not restore from backups, mind you. Restore from original copies of the software. I did Evocam first, since that was the easiest, and had the Webcam up and running in minutes.

Next was Nicecast, for KBSZ’s Internet simulcast. Had a bit of trouble getting the audio out, but after a restart, it worked fine. Of course, I had Jo at KBSZ check it there; because of weird DNS/IP looping problems, I can’t test it from a local computer. Jo couldn’t hear it. Later, I stopped by the station and gave it a try. Someone had turned down the volume on the computer’s speakers.

FileMaker Pro and the AppleScripts and Fetch shortcuts was next. By that time, the CD/DVD drive had decided it wasn’t going to read anymore CDs. Fine. Be like that. I put the CD in my production Mac and used the network to access the CD from the server. I did the install that way and it came off without a hitch. The configuration took a while, though, and required that I rewrite a few of the scripts for the new directory structure on the server. Fix, test, repeat. I was getting used to it.

I also set up Audio Hijack Pro to record the four shows it would need to record and modified the script that would get the 8 AM news on KBSZ’s Web site each morning at 8:18 AM.

When everything appeared to be working right, I set up the computer to automatically log in with me as the user and launch the stuff it needed to launch at startup for truly automated operation. Then I crossed my fingers and restarted.

Everything started up as it should, but FileMaker Pro displayed an error message. It appears that it cannot open files unless it is the foreground application. Although I had set it up to open last, other programs were slower to open and became the foreground application, thus preventing FileMaker from doing its thing. Not acceptable. I thought about writing a script that would delay FileMaker’s launch so it would be the foreground application when it finally opened, but came up with a simpler solution: I just set up the other applications to hide after launch. That left FileMaker Pro as the only application that wasn’t hidden, thus leaving it in the foreground.

Restart. Perfect.

I set up the computer to shut down and restart each night at around midnight. This is to force FileMaker Pro to refresh its databases with current day’s information. In the future, I’ll find a utility that’ll automatically restart the FileMaker Pro databases for me.

I messed around with the FTP setup for a while and didn’t get anywhere good. I might have to rethink the directory structure. It appears that I can’t FTP into the root directory for the computer. That’s unfortunate, since I created a bunch of folders in that location that I’d like to get into. It looks as if I’ll be moving them and modifying the scripts that look for them where they currently are.

Today, I won’t be spending much time in the office. I’ll stop in to check things out, then come back later to press a CD for my radio show. This morning I need to pick up my helicopter from Prescott, where it just had its annual. And I have a charter at 2 PM. Possibly another charter sometime this afternoon, too.

Thursday morning, I’ll play around a bit with Blojsom, the blogging software that’s part of Tiger Server. I’ll be replacing wickenburg-az.com with a blog-based Web site, making it possible for a team of people to add content and to automate the formatting of pages. I have a Doctor’s appointment later in the afternoon, so I won’t be spending as much time on it as I’d like. So it looks like Friday will be my next full day working with the server.

No rush, though. Rather do it right than do it quickly.

Stalled by a Bad CD-R/DVD-R Drive

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I get ready to wipe my server clean and start installation but get hung up by bad hardware.

By Friday, I had all my Web sites moved over to GoDaddy.com. The LangerBooks.com site, which had been having problems since I initially set it up there on Monday, was not fixed by Friday. So I deleted the setup an started again. Within minutes, it was set up properly and ready to go. Over the weekend, the DNS change was propagated through the system. Just about every browser looking for one of the 18 domain names I host was pointing to the appropriate site on GoDaddy.com.

My e-mail is already hosted by GoDaddy.com. All my e-mail addresses use the theflyingm.com domain name and that domain has been hosted on GoDaddy for at least a year now. So I didn’t need to move any of my e-mail server stuff. Although it exists on my local server, nothing points to it.

There are only three things that remain hosted on my server:

(1) FileMaker Pro provides live access to searchable data. I’m running FileMaker Pro Server 6 on that machine, even though version 8 is current. I wrote all my Web-compatible routines using FileMaker’s CDML language, which is no longer supported by FileMaker Pro 8. So if I updated to the new version of the software, I might have to rewrite the Web interface. That’s not something I want to do. FileMaker also creates the static text ssi files I use on serveral sites. Those files are now put into place using AppleScripts that call Fetch into action. A cool solution, if I do say so myself. After I install the server, I’ll have to reinstall FileMaker Pro, including all the databases and CDML files that run with the Web sites. I’ll also have to reinstall Fetch and make sure the AppleScripts go in the right places. This should take about an hour.

(2) Nicecast is what gets KBSZ-AM radio on the Internet. It’s pretty much plug and play with just a few settings to tweak. I expect this to take about 20 minutes to reinstall.

(3) Evocam is what creates the Webcam image for wickenburg-az.com. It’s actually two images and a movie. It has FTP built right in. Reinstalling should be pretty straightforward.

One other piece of software runs on the server all the time. It’s called Audio Hijack Pro and its job is to automatically record and save certain broadcasts from KBSZ’s stream. For example, the 8 AM news report is available online every day after 8:20 AM. This is all automated: Audio Hijack Pro records the show and runs an AppleScript routine that uses Fetch to upload it to the appropriate directory on the KBSZ-AM Web site (now at GoDaddy.com). Likewise, Audio Hijack Pro records the daily “Around the Town” show and the first hour of the weekly “Rock-a-billy & Beyond Show.” (Starting tomorrow evening, it’ll also be recording my first radio show, “Classic Rock Cuts.” You can tune in online on Wednesday nights at 8 PM MST. I’m looking for sponsors; call KBSZ at 928/668-1250 during office hours to see how much bang you can get for $5 or $10 bucks. Make sure you tell Jo you want to advertise on my show, which will be podcast, too.)

So yesterday morning, I had a clear idea of what I needed to do and what files I needed to preserve from the server. I made copies of all the files I needed to preserve and put them in a folder that I’d use to create a CD. This would make it easy to load them all back in after I wiped the computer clean and reinstalled the software.

And that’s where I hit a brick wall. The CD burner wouldn’t work. It kept giving me error messages.

No problem. I used my network to move all the files over to my main production computer and created the CD there. Now I was all ready to install.

I put the Mac OS X 10.4 Server Unlimited Client DVD disc into my server computer and slid the drawer close. Then I waited expectantly for the disc icon to appear onscreen.

Nothing happened.

I pushed the button to slide the disc in and out and in and out. Nothing. I pulled the disc out and put in the first install CD. (It comes on one DVD or a bunch of CDs; I’d rather use the DVD so I don’t have to switch discs.) Nothing happened.

I put the DVD into my production computer. It appeared onscreen just like it should.

Shit. I had a real hardware problem.

I blew canned air into the CD drive. Lots of dust flew around. Not good.

My office can be a very dusty place. Part of the problem is that a few years ago, some idiot decided to drive a perfectly good western business — the Big Corral horse boarding/riding facility — out of its downtown home and bulldoze all the trees, shrubs, and buildings off the property. In its place, the idiot planted a “For Sale” sign and erected part of an ugly chain link fence. To this day, the land lies open and barren, baking in the sun, supplying that side of town with all the dust it can handle. In my situation it’s a bit worse. I had some work done on the floors in my unit’s kitchen and bathroom and the sanding done by the floor guy sent more fine dust into the air than I thought possible. With a big fan on the back of each of my computers sucking air in, it’s no wonder they were filled with dust.

Of course, I’d already used the canned air on that computer. Just a few days before, I’d installed 512 MB of RAM. While the machine was wide open, I’d used the canned air on it and it was pretty clean. But I hadn’t dusted the drives.

Long story short, I couldn’t get the drive to work. And I didn’t have a spare. And the nearest Apple store didn’t have one. And Apple’s telephone support people told me a replacement drive would cost $354 with tax and shipping. But while I was waiting on hold to hear this bit of news, I discovered I could buy an external Firewire drive for about $100. Sheesh.

By this time, it was after 2 PM and too late to do any installation anyway. I figured I’d bring my new 80 GB external Firewire hard drive — the one I bought t help out my PowerBook — to the office, make a disk image of the DVD onto that, and use the disk image to install the server. If that didn’t work, I’d just buy an external CD-R for the computer and use that. Of course, all this was putting me back in schedule, but I really had no reason to rush. The Web sites were enjoying their new home and were paid up for 2 months.

Of course, I had to give the CD-R/DVD-R drive one last try at repair. So I went to the local hardware shop, bought a cheap ratchet screwdriver with a bunch of heads, and removed the drive from the computer. This was no easy task because although the computer opens easily enough, the CD drive and the Jaz drive I’d bought to go with it (and used about 4 times) were really jammed in there. Then, with the computer up and running without it — no reason to keep that software offline — I removed screws and protective plates until the optical lens and drive mechanism were revealed. I had to peel back two pieces of tape that were obviously in place to prevent the average user from doing what I’d done. I blew more air on it and moved the drive mechanism back and forth with my fingers. It didn’t look screwed up. Satisfied that I’d done all I could do, I put it all back together and stuffed it back into the computer. I fired it all back up and pressed the button to slide the drawer out.

The drawer wouldn’t slide out at all anymore. I’d mounted it a tiny bit too high and it was catching on the computer case.

So I opened up the computer while it was running and did what anyone else in my position would do: I banged on the top of the CD drive to nudge it down. The drawer slid open.

I stuck the DVD in there, fully realizing that that might be the last time I ever saw it. Then I slid the drawer back in.

Would you believe it? It worked!

I couldn’t believe that it was really reading the DVD as well as it was, so I decided to test it by starting the computer from the DVD. That worked, too.

Of course, I didn’t really want to install the software then. It was after 3 PM and I didn’t feel like tackling the installation that late in the day. So I restarted from the hard drive and let all that software come up and run again.

But now I have my work ready for me today.