Subtle Coolness

Here is another photograph in my (now) ongoing series called “pipes”:

The photograph was taken on 23 April 2008, outside Welch Painter Hall on the University of Texas campus. I used my Nokia 6126.

Somewhere deep down inside I want to be a photographer. I’m not sure where the desire came from. Perhaps it was because my dad used to have an awesome old 35mm camera that didn’t automatically focus or advance that he would bring out for every birthday in our house? Maybe it was all the time I spent scanning images from my father’s collection of old slides? Could it be because I read some blogs that talk about photography fairly regularly?

Whatever it is, I probably suck at photography right now. Here is a photo I took:

These are some pipes outside one of the School of Architecture buildings at the University of Texas. I took this with a Nokia 6126. Wait, what? That’s right, I took this picture with my cell phone camera. I guess it looks alright, for a cell phone camera.

I like Gmail, and I like that I can read my email in Apple Mail using IMAP. But I don’t like that the chat transcripts don’t download with the rest of my email. Does anyone know how to make that happen?

A few months ago I purchased a computer. For the first time in my life. It is a new-to-me Apple PowerBook G4 I bought off the son of a coworker of Rebecca. I have used Apple’s Mac OS X quite a bit at school and always preferred it to my Windows XP (and my Linux!), but Apple computers are expensive. So I got a good deal, and bought it, and have experienced no remorse whatsoever.

Now with my job I have been supporting some Apple computers rather closely, and learning so much more about the operating system, specifically how I can configure just about anything with the Terminal. You know, type type type? Text-only? UNIX? It really is great.

In a way, learning and using Linux (i.e. UNIX (i.e. POSIX)) for my server has prepared me for Mac OS X and helped me to appreciate it more.

Also, there is remote administration. I can see the computers without leaving my desk. I can control them, even if someone else is logged in and using them. That would probably be a bit freaky: you’re mousing around when suddenly, the mouse is moving on its own and there is nothing you can do about it.

I haven’t tried that on anyone yet.

Here is the problem I ran into, however: I want to change a setting, but to do so I need to take control of the computer and open System Preferences, &c. I don’t want to interrupt the user to do it. I was considering this, when I remembered all the times I read tips online for configuring Mac OS X before I actually owned such a computer, and I remembered that the tip-giver would almost always give a Terminal command to effect the change, and said Terminal command would almost always begin with defaults.

So, I did some digging and learned about the defaults command, and, long story short (“Too late!”), I came up with these magic words:

defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow PowerOffDisabled

This command shows the Restart and Shutdown buttons on the login window (so you can turn off the computer without logging in first). Having a Terminal command to do this is great because I can run such commands on the computers I administer without interrupting the current user. All behind the scenes. It is very clever.

I got married. My wife and I started a new blog together. The address is http://acciojacksons.blogspot.com/.

The blog is protected, so if you want to read it you will have to email me.

Also, I am doing very well.