Sci-Fi Hi-Fi

I just wanted to quickly note that I posted a new version of Cocoal.icio.us last night. This new version has lots of interface changes, mainly because I was in the mood to do some ultra nitpicky custom UI programming (note the new, iTunes-like bezels around the panes in this build) and because one of the most common complaints seemed to be about the amount of wasted space at the top of the window (I reconfigured the layout to be far more compact in the new version). I hope people like the new look, though I’m sure the anti-metal hardliners will remain unmoved.

Other changes include:

• Modified extended search so it can now be used to search for tag intersections (thanks to Allen Hutchison for his feedback on this).
• Enabled primitive caching and conditional HTTP requests to the API, to hopefully avoid unnecessary downloads of data (at least once support for this scheme is implemented on the API side).
• Switching tag views now causes the current search to be cleared (thanks to Michael Williams for his feedback about this and many other important things I haven’t gotten to yet).
• Fixed a bug that caused & and ? characters to be improperly percent escaped in post text.
• Temporarily disabled tag renaming feature until problems on the API side are sorted out.
• Shortened date display format.

As usual, feedback is most welcome—just be advised that I probably won’t have much time to work on Cocoal.icio.us in the next few weeks.

Last weekend, The Summer of Buzz™ continued apace with another trip out to Yosemite. This time, though, some friends and I took things up a notch with an ascent of one Yosemite’s most famous landmarks: Half Dome.

The hike we did, which covered about 16 miles with an elevation gain of approximately 4800 feet, was without a doubt one of most difficult walks I have ever done. The difficulty wasn’t so much in the length of the hike (though at approximately 10 hours that shouldn’t be understimated) as much as in the constant uphill march and the seemingly endless series of knee-punishing stone steps we had to surmount to reach even the foot of the granite dome. Once we were there (after about 4-and-a-half hours of walking), we still had to climb the steep, curved back of the formation via some fixed cables, which was no picnic either.

Even despite all that exertion, though, it’s rather surprising just how many people seem to make the trip (or maybe it’s not, and I’m just a complete wuss—your call). Yosemite is so heavily touristed that you really do see all kinds on the trail: purse carrying Paris Hilton-types (with boyfriends hauling gear), obese midwesterners wearing “All I Need to Know I Learned From Star Trek” shirts, European parents taking their kids out for their August holiday. A few people from our group even claim to have spotted a guy in slacks and a pristene white shirt preparing for the final ascent (this despite my own shirt having been thoroughly soaked to the point of salt buildup)!

I held up fairly well until the last couple of miles, when my knees really started getting the better of me and I began to develop a seething animosity toward anyone slowing my progress toward the end of the trail. At a certain point, I actually found it less taxing on my knees to simply run down the inclines than to plod painfully along at the pace set by the average tourist on the John Muir Trail. Thankfully, I drank loads of water and wore a stylish cowboy hat and lots of sunscreen, so my only other problem had to do with a bout of horrible nauseau back at camp, which someone diagnosed as low blood sugar (that’s what I get for not Powersaucing my way to the summit), and which a tall glass of lemonade and a nice shower seemed to fix handily.

So was it all worth it? I would say yes, primarily for the sense of accomplishment it provided me. Though I might not have said so during the last two miles, it was also a lot of fun and a bit of an adventure, and it had the lovely side effect of making the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we ate at the summit taste like the best food ever created by human hands. The view, for the record, was definitely beautiful, but I don’t think it was really significantly better than the view of the valley from Sentinel Dome (where Bobby and I hiked a month ago), which requires about a tenth of the effort to reach.

As proof of having summited, I offer the following photographic evidence…

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Though I was way too busy to mention it, last Wednesday marked my one year anniversary at Apple. It seems like just yesterday that I was saying goodbye to Denver, embarking on my own odyssey through the American West, and getting my first taste of life in Silicon Valley and at Apple. Though, as a confirmed Silicon Valley and Bay Area skeptic, I had a lot of trepidation about leaving my home of two-and-a-half decades, I have to say it’s been one of the better decisions I’ve ever made. One year later, I’m an order of magnitude more active (I even started learning to snowboard last winter—something I never did my entire time in Colorado), 20-odd pounds lighter, significantly more engaged socially, infinitely more fulfilled professionally, and a whole lot happier. I’m told California often has this effect on people.

I still find myself missing Colorado often, but I guess I might just have to stick around out here for awhile…

Good news reached my inbox yesterday: my employer has finally granted me permission to release that Cocoa app I alluded to a few months ago! Since it’s a freeware app, and since I have limited free time to work on it, I’ve decided that the best policy would be to release it early and do lots of little updates as I get free time, rather than holding out until it is more feature-complete. So, today I’m making an early version of my Cocoa Del.icio.us Client publicly available for download.