urwhatu

Parallels Beta Cannot Allocate Virtual Machine Memory

If you tried the new Parallels beta and you got the error message "cannot allocate virtual machine memory", you probably want to try their patched beta, which is discussed in this thread.

Technorati Tags: Parallels

That's a Really Big Cup of Tea

No signs of life from last.fm for at least the last eight hours.

Technorati Tags: rant

And the Award for the Server with the most 404's goes to...

http://n.nfshost.com/ (hint: it goes to 30)

Technorati Tags: puzzles

Yahoo Messenger Beta for Mac

So insanely much better. Finally. Thank you.

Update: Still great, but a few things missing:

• doesn't always remember my login/password between restarts despite turning the setting "remember your password" on
• doesn't always automatically sign you back in if you put the machine to sleep and then wake up again
• sometimes displays my avatar, sometimes doesn't
• argh, why don't i have conversation logging? every other messenger implementation on the planet does this...

Another update:

• bizarre, the standard picture I use for icons imported itself upside-down
• the growl notifications are great, but putting "your friend..." in front of every notification is wrong for a lot of reasons (a. sometimes it's not a friend, it's family, b. i have to scan past "your friend..." every time to see who it is, and c. it just doesn't add anything)
• integration with the mac's address book would be awesome ala Adium
• unbelievably fancy would be iChat-like integration into Mail.app (where the little chat status bubbles show up)

Technorati Tags: Yahoo

Charity-Supporting Search...

I and a few others loved the search-to-donate idea when we were at Looksmart a few years ago. Still do, in fact, but we couldn't get the team excited about it. For me personally, I think the mostly-extremely-positive experience I had with action-for-charity at Zeal (using thehungersite) is what drives my enthusiasm for the idea. Finally, there seem to be some alternatives: charity cafe, goodsearch, theenvironmentsite.org, though some efforts (e.g., Ask Jeeves' Katrina support site) seem to have gone offline already. It's a bummer that it's hard to tell what the efficiency of these charitable organizations is.

Technorati Tags: charity

Google Spreadsheets: A Damn Good Start

Features that are so cool they caught me off guard:

• There's no "File/Save" because EVERY change is saved
• Chat/collaborative editing with Ajaxian update between all users

Missing:

• Printing from browser
• Spellchecking
• Ability to "freeze panes"
• Ability to create "notes"
• No graphs

Would have been cool:

• Showing what other people are doing while they're doing it (thinking of SubEthaEdit)

Minor gripes:

• Deleting a sheet locked up the UI for me
• Break apart works only on the anchor of a region vs. the whole selected region

Technorati Tags: Google

MacSaber

I had a blast playing with MacSaber both at home and in the office today. Which I think helps prove the assertion that Mac users are less like the guy in the new Mac/PC commercials and more like star wars kid or the Numa Numa dance guy. Think different? Yeah, think "different" ;-).

Caltrain Peevishness

Since I started biking to the Caltrain depot everyday, I've become aware of a group of people who regularly grab the best (and often, the only) available seats on the bike car. And they're not one-timing. There's a guy in his mid-forties, half-bald, the kind of guy who looks at you over the bifocals perched on his hawkish nose...you know who I'm talking about, right? At peak traffic (the 5pm-ish baby bullet), I see this guy get on the bike car (the second time I've seen him do this), and take one of eight seats that are available for cyclists. I glare at him, then indicate my rolled-up right side pant leg. He looks back and then averts his eyes into a paperback. Thirty seconds later, one of the conductors walks by and says "folks, if you're not a cyclist, please don't use these seats." We exchange glances again. There are clearly written signs everywhere that explain why it's important - bicyclists have to stay in the car with their bikes. There are bicyclists standing on this particular car. There are only 5 bikes, but all eight seats are taken. There are two extremely overweight, well dressed girls who are also obviously not cyclists. I need to spend some time thinking about how to make life maximally uncomfortable for these people.

Technorati Tags: Caltrain, San Francisco

Why Baby Stuff is White

Been learning a lot about living with babies lately. You ever wonder why all baby stuff is white? We had no idea until we tried to put Yuna into the fancier (and much more expensive) of the two bassinets that we have. It has a striped, brightly colored bumper (for all you non-parents out there, it's a little cushion thing that goes around the inside of the bassinet to keep baby from bumping into the hard parts of the bassinet). Natsuko got this particular bumper because she doesn't want pastels to be overdone in our house. So we tried to put Yuna down in this thing and, as usual, when you lay her down, she briefly opens her eyes to check out her surroundings, making sure she's safe -- when she sees this bumper, she feels like she needs to escape from her swaddling cloth.

Lesson: buy calming colors for very young infants.

Technorati Tags: Yuna

NextCaltrain Widget

Best ever widget for bay area train commuters: NextCaltrain.

Technorati Tags: Caltrain, San Francisco