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We have sent the application form for the crossgrade to the Universal binary of FinalCut Studio 5.1 today! Not only papers though - all 4 install DVDs had to be included into the package. As I was told it will take about 5-7 business days for Appe to return us the new version. Can't wait :)

Due to pressure from the outer space I was forced to take 2 of my blog entries down for some time. :/ The entries will be back some time later if I don't forget to check that "Published" button.. :)
But hey, anyways, everybody who really wanted to read the entries already did that, right? ;) So you don't lose much I guess.

And in the other news, there's one interesting phrase I have read today in the "Getting Things Done" book (which I highly recommend for reading for everyone who needs to be on top of their projects). The phrase is:

Catch-22 of professional development: "The better you get, the better you'd better get"

Right on the money :)

I have bought Playstation 2 last week. Again. Why "again"? Because I have owned one back in Russia, several years ago, but of course sold it some time before coming to Japan.

I'm not telling about how games have been improved for the last several year. I'd rather share my experience of switching from standard PS2's composite video cable to D4 digital cable from Sony. The difference is pretty dramatic and I have took some shots (Resident Evil 4, baby!) to illustrate the difference. And no, the camera is NOT out of focus on "Analog" shots - it's just usual "analog blur".

Digital connection is not only looks good, but it's much-much better for eyes I'd say.

If you still using standard composite video cable, do yourself a favor ok? ;)
And if you don't have a digital video-in in your TV set, here's a simple comparison on available connection options for PS2:

My first (and hopefully last) .asp based project is coming to it's end at last. The web site I was making the system for is a pretty big transportation-related corporation in Japan and the CMS turned out to be pretty big (although not very complicated, but hey…)

Working on the project was extremely difficult due to attitude from the other side (the clients). Due to some security policy I couldn't get any access to internal servers, not even via encrypted connections, not even from one static IP. Not only that - in-house development was also no-go there. We had to set up the server at our side and do all the development without really connecting to the deployment server. I guess this level of security on the other side makes sense, but what doesn't make sense for me is that how they handle their web-side hosting.

Basically, they are going to run public server without admin tools directory, and have admin tools directory running on their intranet, without any access from outside, using this installation as a test server at the same time. Having test server, it is pretty expectable to have it configured the same way as the public one right? But no.. they _can't_ create any subdomains for testing (do they know how to? you can setup a record at intranet DNS server and the reroute the traffic to the virtual server inside the LAN, thus having the same configuration at the public server, down - most importantly - to the links, be them relative or absolute).
But no, they will put testing server in some /ouch/we/dont/do/tests/like/that directory, meaning we had to rework all our absolute paths, including paths inside Flash. And reworking paths inside Flash menus which are getting called from different pages on different levels is not the most exciting job one would like to do.
That's not the only thing. The public server of the company is not configured properly. For example you can connect to Google by typing either "www.google.com" or "google.com" inside your browser. Well.. you will get "domain not found" error if you forget to prepend the company's website address with "www." I dare to say that making entries for both www. and www. is a basic thing every web administrator should know.

I'm not telling the other side is not professional (they are in their own way), but I guess they do have some problems as a web-hosting company.

Anyway, I'm pretty darn happy to almost have the project finished, and will be posting update to my ASP for PHP programmers article as soon as I have some time.

If you don't know, the Windows XP SP2 was hacked to work on Intel Macs. I was really going to install it ASAP, mostly to play games (I have already got FEAR!!!!!!). But.. there are probs.. still not all the hardware is supported, and most notable, there are no working graphics drivers for X1600 yet.. So I'll wait a bit I guess

Yeah I'm a weak earthling I know I know.. Today I have created a new account with Apple's .Mac. May it burn in hell… But I need synchronization feature THAT bad. Go to hell Apple, you bloody drug dealer :/

My system threw a kernel panic at me today!

Well of course I'm running the latest beta of OS X 10.4.6 here, and well it's been a long time since the last time I've seen such screen :)
And no I wasn't playing with kernel stuff - the page just happened to be there at that moment. Coincidence? :)

Here's a short list of things I didn't like about my previous phone. In no particular order.

I was trying to build ImageMagick on my server today (ooops, forgot to built it when installing everything else the day I got my new Mac at work). Actually the compilation process is pretty easy but this time it gave my some unpleasant minutes.

The problem was that I was getting
checking if JPEG package is complete... no -- some components failed test error when running ImageMagick's configure.

Tried to reinstall jpeglib, 2 times hehe :) With no resolution. Then decided to check the Internet and found an advice to check the config.log file.

Checked it and found one interesting thing in the part where availability of jpeglib was checked. The error was that libjpeg.a library was outdated with suggestion to run ranlib on it.

And that was exactly what I have done:

#ranlib /usr/local/lib/libjpeg.a


And the problem was solved.
If you're still here with me, it means you have a future as a unix system admin, whatever it means to you :)

I bloody finally switched from the worst mobile phone I have ever touched in my life - the SonyEricsson 802V!
The new one is Sharp's 903SH. This is not the newest model at all since it was first brought to market in August, 2005. But it still rocks the world with it's great 3-megapixel camera, 3D surround sound, brilliant screen and nicely thought-out features.
Though, I found one thing which is not so good about it - it doesn't sync with Macintosh via iSync (not supported blah-blah). But there is a iSync conduit software for it, so I'll get this one as soon as I can and become an absolutely happy camper :)

Some pics of my old SE 802 and the new 903SH are below