scott collins' journal

scott collins' journal scott collins' journal more than you want to know, less often than you want to know it wednesday, february 07, 2007 aeron i have two chairs in my office, and i switch between them. one is an indestructible 12 year old håg credo. the other is a seven year old aeron with minor issues. not too long ago, while sitting in the aeron, i heard a terrific crack! and found myself sitting several inches lower. the seat frame had cracked. i'll admit, i am a big man, but not abusive (and well within the chair's advertised user weight range). chairs at this price level shouldn't shatter. good news: herman-miller provides a 12 year factory warranty on the aeron. bad news: service for consumers at the point of purchase... which i couldn't even remember. good news: my wife remembers it was all*star desk on ford road. bad news: they've been replaced by lover's lane. good news: they have another store in michigan... and they even had my original paperwork! bad news: they are no longer herman-miller distributers, and can't help me. time passes. i decide to call a local herman-miller dealer and plead my case. i call three chairs co. because they have a downtown ann arbor location. "no problem!" they tell me. i have all*star desk fax them my original paperwork. i email them (at their suggestion) digital pictures of the chair showing the damage and the manufacturer's sticker. they call me back, "the parts are on their way directly to you." the parts arrive (even parts for the older issues), but it turns out i need two funny tools specific to the chair. i try to make do without. it's a qualified success; but not successful enough to use as a chair. time passes. i visit three chairs. "should i bring my chair to you? do you have the tools?". they don't, but they'll make a call. bam! fedex shows up at my house with the tools. within 15 minutes of their arrival, my chair is as good as new. and it didn't cost me anything, not even s/h for the tools or parts. conclusions: herman-miller's warranty is good. everybody along the path to the answer was as helpful as you could hope, and more-so than you would expect. the all*star people couldn't actually fix my chair, but they were happy to help in every way they could like looking up my paperwork and faxing it. the shining gem of the experience has to be the people at three chairs, ann arbor. they rocked (in particular, the two mikes). i wasn't even their customer, and they treated me with better customer service (for a seven year old chair) than most places treat you as you're making a new purchase. i expect to look there first when we next need furniture. posted by scott collins @ 5:42 pm   1 comments    dash as bin/sh i got a nasty surprise while, under the latest (k)ubuntu, building apache+mod_perl using the acapi mechanism. the surprise was that apache never got built, and in fact, never got a non-empty configure. the reported trouble was that my echo command was broken; but the reality was that (k)ubuntu links sh to dash instead of a shell that could configure and build apache+mod_perl via acapi. they explain their motivation for using dash in dashasbinsh on the ubuntu wiki. i quote: our default shell is currently bash, which is slow and very large as it is intended as a user login shell. while this is good for users, it is not the best shell for running shell scripts; there are far smaller and faster shells that provide posix compliance such as dash. well, that's not what happened for me. maybe the acapi build/confgure scripts aren't posix compliant; maybe they shouldn't start with #!/bin/sh. but they do. and as far as i can tell, the failure in the script is that dash's echo isn't posix compliant. so who should fix this? the guy who wrote the acapi script? (k)ubuntu by not using dash? the dash maintainers by fixing their shell? people building apache+mod_perl by relinking bin/sh to bash? i'm frustrated by the fact that their argument for using dash is supposedly to benefit me, a person running big shell scripts; and that their argued and now implemented change has exactly the opposite effect. i can't run my big important shell scripts. posted by scott collins @ 5:27 pm   0 comments    your tall ship and star to write non-trivial software, three things stand between you and the precipice that is the boundary of sanity: source code control: to find and rewind mistakes, to cooperate with others, to experiment, and to remember the journey of 'how it came to be' when the code itself only tells you what it is now; painless testing: if you can't know your code works before you commit/publish it, you live in a world of frightened guessing and random punishment; good diagnostics: your compiler (if any), your debugger, your unit tests, special instrumentation you've built into the code, expertise (if not yours, then available to you on your team) if any of these three slots are empty for you on your current project, you need to fix that immediately. don't write another line of code (except as part of fixing this problem, e.g., adding unit tests). it's not like these are unsolved problems, by the way. there are plenty of good (and even free) answers to every one of them. depending on your environment, the painless testing requirement might need some thinking. for instance, if you're working on a complicated code-and-database-driven website, where the implementation languages don't necessarily warn you of syntax problems before they are actually run... well... you need a private local installation of that website for yourself. if you're fixing javascript, perl, php, css, etc., you need a testbed where you can debug without fear. the time you put into getting sufficient tools to meet these requirements will be paid back a hundred fold; but every minute you don't have the full complement is a minute you will never get back. (key here, 'sufficient'. don't spend two years building a custom source code control system, when you can have one out of the box in 15 minutes.) i am reminded of this because i let my testing environment lapse (ok, maybe 'lapse' isn't the right word... how about "never got a completely correct local installation running in the first place, though i came close---just not close enough for qa."), and gradually my life became harder and harder. last weekend and part of monday i finally rebuilt a complete, correct, running, local installation of slashdot. now i can figure out in minutes what last week would have taken me days. the longer you wait, the more bogged down, frustrated, and panicked you'll feel. with each passing moment, there is less time for you to stop coding and install the tools you need. you're just getting further and further behind. stop! honestly you didn't need me to tell you that. you just needed to stop and breathe for a second and do the math for yourself. note: a good source code editor (and/or editing tools) fits in at least two of these categories, i think. it needs to help you make even the big changes that happen across the whole source base; it should cooperate with (or least not hinder) your source code control system; it may well participate in debugging (e.g., ides); and with syntax highlighting, it contributes some of the expertise in diagnostics---that is, understanding the code as it is. posted by scott collins @ 4:32 pm   0 comments    thursday, february 01, 2007 macros in world of warcraft first: the addon supermacro has two features that makes it indispensable: any macro that selectively casts spells or uses items based on what keys you're holding down (e.g., shift, control; or other conditions) will display the icon corresponding to the actual spell that will fire, updated in realtime as keys and conditions change; and it can display the tooltip for that spell, instead of (as wow would do without supermacro) just the name of your macro. those two features alone make macros much more rewarding. example: clicking the druid's kitty button fails if you're already in some other stance or mounted. and if you're already the cat, it pops you out, so don't click it too many times. additionally, key kitty actions like prowl and dash require their own buttons. so to become the stealthed kitty and dash, you might have to click a lot of buttons (e.g., my kodo button to dismount, then the kitty button, then back across the screen to the stealth button, and finally the dash button---and i have to start with a different button depending on my initial state). wow macros have limitations: they can really only perform one significant action per physical click, so starting from mounted, i'd need just as many clicks as i would without the macro, but they could all be on the same button: # warning: you can't really format a macro like this, see below /cast # cast the first thing with matching conditions # first, gotta be the cat... # if i'm mounted, cast gray kodo to dismount [mounted] gray kodo; # bear form? cast it again to revert to caster form [stance:1] dire bear form; # likewise if i'm the swimming thing or the cheetah [stance:2] aquatic form; [stance:4] travel form; # if i'm not in _any_ form, become the cat [nostance] cat form; # all other stances are covered now, # from this point on, i must already be the cat # i use ctrl to mean `do something special', here dash [modifier:ctrl] dash; # i use shift to mean `back out' # ...so if i'm stealthed, back out by un-stealthing [stealth,modifier:shift] prowl; # else back out by reverting out of cat form [modifier:shift] cat form; # finally, i'm the cat, and we're not backing out # so if i'm not already stealthed, do so [nostealth] prowl with this setup, i can just mash on a single button and i'll become the stealthed kitty. if i hit the button too many times, no big deal. once i'm stealthed, as long as i'm not holding down the shift key, extra clicks won't do anything. shift backs me out of stealth, or else reverts me to caster form. and once i'm the cat, stealthed or not, a control-click will make me dash. i'm pretty sure you can't actually format the macro like that. and with those comments, it excedes the length limit. here's how it really looks (the following contains no line breaks): /cast [mounted]gray kodo;[stance:1]dire bear form;[stance:2]aquatic form;[stance:4]travel form;[nostance]cat form;[modifier:ctrl]dash;[stealth,modifier:shift]prowl;[modifier:shift]cat form;[nostealth]prowl ...and because of supermacro, at each step, the macro button shows you what your next click will cast. posted by scott collins @ 11:04 am   1 comments    javascript is fun don't get me wrong, i still love c++; and i'll still be writing stuff in c++ (and python, and ruby, and perl, and lua, and java, and... well... everything---and posting on them). javascript has charm and depth, though, that make it quite satisfying. more on js technique in future posts. posted by scott collins @ 10:58 am   1 comments    caveat emptor: routers my old, fantastic, netgear router finally gave up the ghost. it was a higher-end box, vpn end-point, wireless base-station with 8 10/100 ports. i don't recall how much i paid for it originally, but probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $200. money's a little tighter now, though, so when i went for a replacement i got a $40 consumer-level `home' router / wireless base-station. i figured "if it does port-forwarding, it's probably good enough." ugh. drops the wireless connection often. promises both port-forwarding and port-triggering, but fails to deliver either (oh, the ui is there; it just doesn't seem to actually make the router forward packets). 'til now, i've never had a complaint about netgear router, but this wgr614v6 is a piece of crap. maybe i need to go out and get a linksys or something. you get what you pay for, i guess. posted by scott collins @ 10:48 am   1 comments    firebug firebug is the greatest thing since sliced bread. joe hewitt, as always, rocks. if you're developing web stuff, whether it's javascript, css, ajax, performance, or even just wanting to understand layout: firebug will help you. posted by scott collins @ 10:44 am   1 comments    slashdot i now work at slashdot. i've been there since august. (yes, i know i haven't posted in forever.) in some ways, it's a surreal environment. in other ways, it's very familiar. i work closely with chris nandor, an old friend from the days of creating the macos 9 mozilla build machinery in macperl, on which he was the single greatest external contributor (one might even be able to drop the word 'external'). in fact, he wrote the book on macperl, literally. the team is small, entirely competent, and it is an absolute pleasure to be a part of it. my focus is on client-side features, so javascript, ajax, css, and browser machinery. posted by scott collins @ 10:24 am   0 comments    polyphasic sleep: conclusion well... it's not for me. i managed to keep the schedule for, perhaps, five weeks at the outside; but it just didn't work with a family and a go-into-work job. the way i remember it, i was starting to feel good. the way my wife remembers it, i was completely out of it. someday i'd like to give it another shot. posted by scott collins @ 10:22 am   1 comments    thursday, april 06, 2006 will boot camp kill mac development? everywhere i read reaction to boot camp, i see a large fraction of comments along the lines of: now there's no reason to write for both windows and mac os x... drop your mac support and just tell your users to boot windows. i have a couple of things to say about this. dual-boot is onerous. it's worse than telling your user to go buy a windows box, it's telling them to completely give up their mac for the entire time they are using your windows-only app. i'm running seven or eight applications right now, you're asking me to stop using all of them to run your windows-only app. users complain constantly about long application launch times. let's just add the time for re-booting (twice) onto that. apple isn't officially supporting windows, and while they maintain that stance, that means windows will be a far less-than-ideal world (camera doesn't work, wireless keyboard doesn't work, sudden motion sensor doesn't work, battery life sucks, etc.). windows costs at least $150, maybe as much as $300 depending on what you need. it also costs at least 5gb of disk, and who knows how much time. mac people use macs because they like them more than they like windows. nobody made them get a mac. adobe, microsoft, blizzard, and other big developers will continue to write software that runs natively on mac os x. so developers, if you think your software is so good and so important that mac users will willingly give up their macs to use it, stop running all the other applications they would otherwise be running, live with extra minutes of launch time to get into and out of your app, spend a couple of hundred extra dollars and unknown extra time, live with your windows ui, on a machine that's using only two thirds of the hardware they paid for... and that your application is more important to them than the tools they get from microsoft, adobe, apple, blizzard, etc., and if nobody else makes a mac-native equivalent, then good luck with that. yes, some applications fit this bill, but probably not yours. perhaps, for gamers, the priorities are different (and perhaps they already have a windows box just for this purpose). yes, a lot of mac users will install windows... but a lot numerically---not a lot as a fraction. yes, this will encourage some windows users to buy macs. yes, a vmware solution (or the like) invalidates the first three or four points above. mac users will not willingly choose windows-only software. they will use it if they are forced to (gamers aside), and they will bless apple for making it possible; while cursing you for making it necessary. if you never had a mac version of your software, maybe boot camp is a little extra weight on the scale towards the side of never starting. if you have a mac version and drop it now, you're dropping all your existing mac users. maybe some developers out there will drop their mac support because boot camp eases their conscience, but it's more likely such developers never had mac support in the first place (e.g., garmin as one case that has really bugged me). i may well be wrong, but i don't see boot camp seriously cutting into mac development. posted by scott collins @ 8:37 am   4 comments    wednesday, march 29, 2006 polyphasic sleep and add i'd never heard of polyphasic sleep before, then suddenly i heard and read a handful of experiments and historical anecdotes. i read steve pavlina's blog chronicling his experiment with polyphasic sleep (still on-going after more than 5 months, as far as i can tell). something clicked. i become fascinated. my last full 8 (10?) hours of sleep was monday night. since then i had 30 minute naps at 9pm tuesday night (no sleep), 1am monday morning (no sleep), and 5am (good sleep), and i aim to continue on the 9-1-5 cycle until i learn whether it fits or not. my first goal is to make it to 14 days. so no quitting before april 11th, unless i exhibit dire symptoms. i expect to be groggy for the first week or so. at 14 days, i'll re-evaluate and either stop or set a new goal further out. if it works, i should have plenty of time to post about it here. and if i start talkin' crazy, then at least it'll be entertaining. what clicked? i don't know, it's hard to explain. i have add. if you know me in person, you already knew that. for some reason, it all knotted together in my mind... what if the bad parts of add (or some of the bad parts, anyway) are just symptoms of a wrong sleep pattern? ok, 'just' is obviously a vast over-simplification, and of course i'm not a doctor. but living with add for a lifetime has taught me that sleep and how you do it are some of the biggest factors in how add impacts you. and 4 hours is like an add `performance window'. what if the quality of sleep you get from a polyphasic schedule is significantly better than monophasic sleep? what if better sleep so close together could turn my whole day, all the way around the clock, into the kind of focus and performance i only get to see once a day (and even that only on days when i do everything just right: sleep, diet, exercise, medication)? somewhere around the fifth grade i read a science fiction story about a man struggling trying to keep up at the office and in his daily life, and always behind, always stressed, always overloaded (just like untreated add). one day, a person in a strange uniform shows up at his door and informs him: "you've been the victim of a crime. someone has been systematically stealing your time, and has been for most of your life. we (the time police) have apprehended the thief, who will be making full restitution to you." subsequently, our protagonist is never behind or stressed or even tired, since his days are something like 36 hours long. don't get me wrong: the add brain has super-powers that make me more than willing to carry the burdens. i like the way i think, and i don't want to give that up. thinking and working differently than everyone else, though, is an obstacle in life... from what i've read, sleeping differently will be too, so i guess there's no escape. if my experiment is interesting, it will be because i'm looking at polyphasic sleep specifically from the perspective of a person with add. is this worth posting about? or have we had enough reports and blogs about this already? i'm yawning my head off now, and it's a quarter to nine. time for a nap. posted by scott collins @ 7:31 am   4 comments    wednesday, march 22, 2006 macbook pro, yum macbook pro, 2.16ghz intel core duo, 2gb ram, 120gb hard disk @ 5400rpm. it arrived monday. life is good. this machine is so fast it's unbelievable. no wierd noise problem. no crazy shut down problem. my lid is not warped. there is a single un-obtrusive stuck pixel (it's red), but i really have to look for it to see it. a full build of the qt 4.1.1 libraries, debug and release, 29 minutes with -j3 (something that took, as i recall, near 2 hours on my 1.2ghz g4 ibook). little programs like subversion, screen, gpg, or some of my qt-based apps: so fast i don't even have time to get up and get a drink. i've got to checkout a full tree for mozilla/firefox and build myself a universal binary to see how long that takes. i love this machine. posted by scott collins @ 1:20 pm   6 comments    thursday, march 09, 2006 tom bihn's super ego i want to tell you about my favorite bag. i've been meaning to do this for a long time. some background i travel. for the past nine years or so, my commute has never been less than 2,500 miles. i take quick trips and long trips. i sometimes have to pack tons of crap; i sometimes get to travel light. i drive (the viggen is about to hit 100,000 miles); i fly (130,000 miles in 2005); i ride trains and buses and cabs and bikes and even boats; and i walk. over the course of the last decade, i have pretty much always had a laptop with me (the last eight agonizing weeks, a painful exception). travel like this will give you something of a luggage fetish, as the bags you pack are one of the make-or-break factors of travel happiness. near the start of my odyssey a netscape co-worker and friend, paul chen, introduced to me to a messenger bag. it was a very well crafted bag made by a local (santa cruz) guy named tom bihn. on my next visit to santa cruz, i stopped by tom's shop to look at his wares. tom turned out to be an easy-going and jovial man in an akubra hat (that he had re-shaped to fit his personality) who makes damn good bags. my mother is a seamstress, sewing teacher, and accessory designer. she raised us with these skills, and raised us to have these skills. now that my kids are too old for hand-made halloween costumes, the main consequence of this history is an annoying perfect pitch with respect to objects made by stitching things together. i can barely make myself look straight on at most clothing because it's such obvious crap. similarly backpacks, messenger bags, etc., etc. unlike just about every other bag i'd ever seen, tom's stuff was better than what i could have made for myself. that day i think i bought a messenger bag, a waist pack, and a duffel bag. when i mentioned i would probably stop for food before heading back over the hill to san jose, tom not only directed me to his favorite breakfast spot, but called them up to make sure they'd stay open for me. i don't remember how long ago that was (8 years maybe? more?), and a lot has changed since then. i've moved to ann arbor. tom moved his business to seattle. i've changed jobs. tom bihn's product line has matured and focused: that waist pack and duffel bag are no longer available; it's three generations of messenger bags later; the attachments for inner bags has evolved from snaps to clips (more about this below). the fundamentals, though, have remained the same: tom bihn still makes the best bags money can buy; and he and the people who work for him still treat you like a friend and neighbor. these bags sell themselves. just as when paul chen showed me that first bag, i happily relate the qualities of whichever bag i'm carrying at the moment to all who ask. as a consequence, many of my friends are now tom bihn devotees, and their friends, and their friends friends. i'm not evaluating these bags in a vacuum, either. i have timbuk2s and crumplers and eagle creeks and pelicans and axios. all fine bags. all at the high end of the quality spectrum. all sitting at home because the tom bihn bags are just better. the core of tom's product line, at least as i see it, is a collection of `outer' bags from which you select according to how you like to carry things e.g., backpack, messenger bag, briefcase; potentially paired with an `inner' bag that matches your computer. the inner bags work with anybody's outer bag (or can be carried alone), but securely clip into tom's. upside: you don't need a whole new collection of luggage when you change to a computer of a vastly different size, and you can carry your computer safely in whichever thing fits your schedule that day. on an overnight trip, i take the super ego (a big messenger bag). on a four day trip, i take the brain bag (a backpack). my brain cell (the inner bag) clips securely into either one. the specific combination i want to review is the super ego + brain cell. the brain cell the brain cell is the inner fortress that protects your laptop, and comprises three layers of defense. at the innermost, your laptop hangs, suspended in an 8mm-thick hammock of soft foam padding. a significant gap prevents your computer from `touching bottom'. this sling hangs from a 4mm-thick strong-as-hell corrugated plastic insert (totally hidden) that provides both structure and protection for the front, back, and bottom. the sides are then protected by a sewn in, dense, cross-linked, closed-cell, polyethylene foam. finally, the outer layer is 500 denier cordura. hopefully tom will forgive me for linking to his images. here's his cut-away view: the brain cell closes with velcro (ok, it's actually aplix, which is better than velcro, but if i don't say velcro you won't know what i mean), so no zipper or other hardware to scratch your baby. the flaps are wide, padded, and feel very secure when fastened, leaving your laptop protected on all 6 sides. the whole front is a flat but stretchy pocket big enough for your power adapter and a peripheral or two. you can carry the brain cell alone by its webbing loop handles, or attach a shoulder strap (sold separately) to the d-rings (six rows of stitching on the attachment points!). it comes in eight sizes, currently, to fit your laptop whether you're toting around the smallest vaio or the largest alienware. the smallest size weighs in around 12 ounces; the largest, a bit over a pound. a minimalist could reasonably stop here and have the perfect laptop bag. the brain cell is available in five colors at the moment. here are two of mine in crimson, the larger for the alienware, the smaller for the 12 inch ibook: if you're going to spend a significant chunk of change on a laptop, you owe it to yourself to protect your investment, and the brain cell is the best laptop protection you can carry around with you. if you're going to ship a computer, or if you want to tow it behind your canoe, spring for a pelican case with custom foam. if you are going to carry your laptop around, the brain cell is the bag that will baby it for you. the brain cell costs us$50 and it will be the smartest $50 you ever spent. the super ego for those of you, like me, who have more to carry around than just a laptop---you'll want to put that brain cell into something. for the more corporate among you, it might be something formal like the empire builder. for me, though, it's the monster messenger bag: the super ego. here's tom's picture: i'm not sure i can do this bag justice, but if i start with the features, maybe the adjectives will come of their own volition. this is a cavernous bag that can easily swallow more than you would actually want to lift. the main compartment has clips to hold a brain cell, of course, and is accessed through a uretek splash-proof zipper across the top of the bag. no flaps, buckles, or straps come between you and the central storage area. just unzip, and you're in. this is the meat and potatoes feature of a messenger bag. this main compartment has no dividers or pockets. it's all open space. without a computer, i can fit about three days worth of clothes there (and my clothes are big). with the giant alienware and brain cell in place i can fit the better part of two days worth of clothes (translation: not including pants), and (with one of those squeeze-the-air-out plastic packing bags) my winter coat. the flap covers a smaller, though still spacious, front pocket, whose back wall has dimensional slots for hand-held size things (2) and pens, pointers or other like sized objects (3), plus one sometimes-handy smaller flat pocket that happens to nicely fit a thumb drive or leatherman. a pair of small d-rings attached to the back wall just under the flap, one at each end of the big pocket, provide a handy place to clip keys or other sundries on supplied webbing clip-straps. this front flap is held down by a single central buckle. the buckle and vertical strap attaching it to the flap are replaceable. you can choose strap color and fabric, traditional buckle or seat-belt style buckle, and change to fit your mood (though swapping out is a little bit of work: the strap is held to the flap with aplix and a webbing ladder). the seat-belt buckle is a nice touch, though a little heavy. i'm currently using the standard buckle and reflective-tape strap. underneath the flap, on the front of the bag (i.e., outside the big front pocket), there are, symmetrically arranged, six more pockets. working from the center towards the edges, they are: a pair of simple slanted open pockets, not unlike the front pockets on a pair of pants; behind those, somewhat more spacious pockets that close with vertical splash-proof zippers, and finally narrow stretch-mesh slots with deep slash openings, perhaps appropriate for a cell phone. because the buckle is at the center, these pockets are all accessible just by lifting a corner of the front flap. since these slash pockets don't zip, snap, or velcro closed, i only put my phone there when i'm on foot. on a bike or other angularly-less-predictable mode of transportation, the phone goes deeper under the flap. each of those vertical zip pockets is large enough to hold at once: an airport express, the power brick for my mac, a few international adapters, and 10 meters of cat-6. when fully stuffed, though, don't expect to get much in the matching outside slot pocket that forms its front wall. other things you can reach on the outside of the bag: water-bottle pockets at each end of the bag and a large flat magazine/newspaper pocket on the back (the kind of magazines you read, not the kind you load). i've used the water bottle pockets to hold water bottles, of course, but also (one at a time) sunglasses in their case, a travel umbrella, quick access to a camera, ipod in a case, a small towel (rolled), or just as a place to put my hand. you can carry the bag like a briefcase by the nicely padded single central handle, or you can sling it over your shoulder with the attached (though removable) nicely padded shoulder strap. there's also a supplied waist strap if you want to wear it messenger-style. the bag has structure and balance so it carries well and looks good empty or full. i've been using the super ego for close to a year now. i've used it to carry a 12 inch ibook. i've used it to carry a ridiculously oversized alienware area 51m. i've used it as a simple overnight bag with no laptop. i've used it as a pillow. i've used it around town. i've used it around the world. i've used it as my only bag (often) and as my carry-on when forced to take more luggage than i would otherwise have liked. the only thing i might change is maybe to add a snap to the narrow slash-cut stretch mesh pockets so i always felt it was a good place for my phone. i didn't just get this bag and write a review because it's pretty. i've lived out of this bag and i wanted to tell you how great it was even after enough time for the `bloom to be off the rose'---and though sufficient time has passed, the bloom just doesn't seem to fade. the super ego is us$140, and no, that doesn't include a brain cell. i know that sounds like a lot compared to the bag you're using now (and it is), but this is a lot of bag compared to the bag you're using now. i have more to say about this below. summary quality: these bags are second to none. i've dragged mine all over the world and they still look, feel, and perform like brand new. they're made from the best materials, and the craftsmanship is just that: craftsmanship. in comparison, other bags are merely assembled. functionality: a good division of labor---the brain cell is designed to protect, the super ego to organize and transport. i have never seen any more trust-worthy soft-sided protection than the former, nor a smarter messenger bag than the latter. and the combination of the two is without equal. the super-ego is a great messenger bag around town, but excels at travel as well, with your laptop or without. it is airline carry-on size, even if you over stuff. customer service: everything comes with a guarantee. after seven years of dragging my brain bag (backpack) around, a little bit of stitching started to come out on the interfacing inside a pocket near a zipper. there are two rows of stitching there, so this wasn't a structural problem at that point. it was more complicated than i wanted to fix myself, and at seven years old, but still otherwise perfect condition, i didn't mind paying a little to have it fixed. not only did tom bihn not charge me for the fix (your mileage may vary), but when the bag came back, i almost couldn't tell whether it was a new bag or not (they'd disassembled some of the stitching to put in an updated tag, then re-stitched like new). in the days when my brain bag was made, the brain cell snapped in with four snaps. now a pair of clips and webbing loops do the job. when i ordered a new brain cell for my 12 inch ibook last year, they re-added the snaps for free, so it snaps into my old brain bag and clips into my new super ego. when you have questions, they have time for you on the phone. they have an online forum where tom and darcy actually post and actually read what you post. the only other company with customer service this good is anthro (they make technology furniture). price: yes, it's more than you thought you were going to spend before you knew you could buy bags this good. i hate to spout clichés, but sometimes they're true: you get what you pay for. at us$50 for the brain cell, plus us$140 for the super ego, plus shipping, you'll be spending almost $200. in my humble opinion, this is a bargain price for the value delivered. these bags are so good you will want to tell your friends about them. that's why i took the time to write this review. beware, though, once you become accustomed to tom bihn quality, you'll never be satisfied by an ordinary bag again (or as you'll learn to think of ordinary bags: "cheap pieces of crap"). alternatives: as i previously mentioned, if you're shipping your machine or need joe-vs-the-volcano floating storage: spring for the pelican cases. if you need wheeled luggage, tom bihn currently isn't for you. if your style means leather and bling, ditto. the super ego is a big bag. maybe bigger than you need. if you want something smaller, perhaps the id is for you. a less expensive one-piece solution for a 12 inch computer is the buzz sling bag. or just carry around the brain cell by itself. or use the monolith or miter in your existing backpack for a vertical carry. conclusion: i have found my perfect bag; it could be perfect for you, too. postscript over the years, i've bought for myself and my family: at least two pre-id messenger bags, the dewdrop waist pack (sorry, no longer available, and i use mine all the time), his largest duffel bag (another thing i'm sorry to say he no longer makes), the eclipse, a brain bag, a kid-sized back pack he no longer makes, the buzz, a large café computer bag, a miter, four brain cells of various sizes, a bunch of accessories like the snake charmer, a wallet, and these cool battery pockets he used to make ... and of course the super ego. tom bihn bags last forever, so when you change computers, you can end up with left-overs. i have a crimson brain cell for the 12 inch ibook, and no ibook anymore. i also have a matching miter for the same machine. both good as new. both looking for a home. posted by scott collins @ 3:18 pm   6 comments    blog format the layout of my blog is pre-packaged blogger. it's functional and pretty, but not very good for showing code. i think it's time to move to something that's easier to read. maybe now is the time, also, to consider switching from blogger to something else (if i'm making changes anyway). perhaps wordpress? i think wordpress has proved itself a good choice for the group blog i set up for the qt dev team (qdevblog). or maybe i should go all the way and turn this blog into a discussion site for programming topics. in that case, maybe drupal or the like is the way to go. what do you guys think? posted by scott collins @ 11:28 am   3 comments    tuesday, march 07, 2006 anticipation on january 17th, i ordered a macbook pro 1.83ghz. around the middle of february, i got the magical email from apple to tell me it had been upgraded to a 2.0ghz, and that i could further upgrade to 2.16ghz with a phone call (and more money). my projected ship date had been moving all over the calendar. it paused briefly on february 15th, then slipped to march 1st. after calling to upgrade all the way to 2.16ghz, it lurched sickeningly forward to march 21st. the extra factors in my situations are (1) i used my apple developer hardware discount, (2) i paid in advance by bank transfer, and (3) made a change to the hard disk at the same time they were upgrading the cpu (on their promise that this wouldn't make me lose my place in line). now, though, people who ordered their machines at the same time i just made a change to my existing order have already received their machines. compusa has macbook pros in stock. i've played with the display models. and i still won't see my machine for another 17 days! after living on powerbooks and ibooks over the last, hmmm, could it be 11 years(?), spending eight weeks so far and two and a half more to come without easy access to a computer is killing me. especially since everything i do is computer-related. kubuntu has been wonderful, but honestly, i'm jonesing so hard for my mac i've seriously entertained the thought of installing os x on my alienware so i can finally get some work done. jennifer suggests 17 days of freezy-deep-sleep. ezekiel offers to knock me out with a mallet. meanwhile, i check my order status three or four times a day hoping against hope for an unlikely change in estimated ship date. i hate to be cynical and/or paranoid, but it seems apple just isn't that interested in shipping a discounted-and-already-paid-for machine with the same alacrity they do full price purchases paid for at the time of shipment. posted by scott collins @ 10:15 pm   3 comments    about me name: scott collins location: ann arbor, michigan, us view my complete profile recent articles kate syntax highlighting for noweb fun with loops and languages a deeper look at signals and slots i love c++ exceptions qt 4 qt 4 home open source download blogs i read qt developers' blog mike pinkerton tom conrad bram cohen scott knaster planet mozilla this week in tech planet ars linux a qt blog previous posts aeron dash as bin/sh your tall ship and star macros in world of warcraft javascript is fun caveat emptor: routers firebug slashdot polyphasic sleep: conclusion will boot camp kill mac development? archives december 2004 january 2005 february 2005 april 2005 may 2005 june 2005 july 2005 august 2005 september 2005 october 2005 november 2005 december 2005 january 2006 february 2006 march 2006 april 2006 february 2007  

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