Mike Cohen

links for 2009-05-14

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  • » Creating a nice glass buttons
    (tags: iphonedev cocoa)
  • EasyWP Install (Beta)
    Traditionally to install WordPress you would have to download the archive, extract it to your computer, upload over 600 files to your website, and then set up your databases, etc.

    EasyWP takes all this pain an complexity out of installing WordPress by automating the whole process.

    Easy WP is a single php file that automatically downloads the latest version of WordPress to your server, extracts the archive (on your server), and takes you to the built in WordPress setup process.

    (tags: wordpress)
  • Whither Sockets? – ACM Queue
    HIGH BANDWIDTH, LOW LATENCY, AND MULTIHOMING CHALLENGE THE SOCKETS API
    (tags: programming api networking unix)

California vs. Florida real estate

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I’m taking a trip to San Francisco at the end of this month to look at some homes. I’ve already been talking to a realtor and browsing the MLS listings. What I’ve seen isn’t very encouraging.

I currently own a 3 bedroom 2 bath 1130 square foot condo, which I paid $95,000 for in 2003 (which was below market value at the time). At the heights of the real estate boom, it would have sold easily for $230,000. Now I’d be lucky if it sells for $170,000. Although there aren’t many foreclosures in my complex, the one next to me has almost 50% foreclosures, with many of them selling for $45,000 or less. Of course that brings down prices for the entire area.

In most parts of Broward County I can easily buy a nice 2 or 3 bedroom condo for a lot less than $300,000, but in the San Francisco bay area, I’m lucky if I can even get a small 1 bedroom unit for that price.

The Hit List vs. Things

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I own both Things and The Hit List (which I purchased as part of MacHeist 3), but I’ve been using The Hit List exclusively. With the release of Things 1.1.2 today I decided to take another look at it. After a short time I went back to The Hit List.

Things has two major advantages over The Hit List: it’s available for the iPhone and can sync with it, and it lets you add other team members to share task lists with.

The Hit List is a lot more attractive and just feels generally nicer. It has several features I use heavily which are missing from Things, including subtasks, time estimates, folders, and the ability to create new tasks by dragging an email or URL to a list. Hopefully there will be an iPhone version soon.

Mother's day

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Mother’s day still feels very weird without my mom, even 4 years later. When she was alive, I sometimes took her for granted, now I feel like a part of me is missing. I miss being able to have a talk with her, and I wish she was here to see some of the great things that have happened since she’s gone, like Obama getting elected.

RIP Evelyn Cohen, 1919-2005

Photomatix plugin for Aperture

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I have been using Hydra’s aperture plugin to create HDR images from 3 bracketed photos. It’s pretty basic but produces fairly good results without a lot of tweaking. Now HDR Software’s Photomatix is also available as an Aperture plugin. It offers many more options than Hydra, but takes a bit of tweaking to produce a more natural-looking image. It seems to give much better detail, especially in dark areas.

DSC_5236 Hydra HDR
Created with Hydra		 DSC_5234 Photomatix HDR
Created with Photomatix

Big Moves

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When I live in a city for 10-12 years, I always start to become disgusted with it and I feel the need to move elsewhere. That has always made it difficult for me to settle down.

I’ve made several big moves in my life. My first was from New York City to Los Angeles, when I left my parent’s house and lived in my own apartment for the first time. Since I don’t enjoy driving, I was never really happy there.

During my time there, I had started a Macintosh consulting business. Eventually my business partner got the idea to move to Casper, WY. I never liked it there in the first place so I only lasted a little more than a year before I wanted to leave.

At that time, my mother got sick, so I moved to Florida, where she moved after my father died, to be closer to her. Now I’m starting to get disgusted with Florida.

I feel completely out of place here as the only computer geek, and I find Florida politics especially vile. I really hate one of my neighbors in particular, often known as “big bird”.

This time my move is complicated by the fact that I own my condo and I’ve accumulated too much stuff. I also have two cats now, which I didn’t during my previous moves. Luckily I bought my condo at a good time, so it’s still worth more than I paid for it and much more than I own on my mortgage. Since my car is leased, I’m not sure what my options are with it, and whether I can return it in a different state.

I don’t think I’ll be able to move again after this one, so where I move this time is probably where I’ll spend the rest of my life.

I’ve been browsing a few places in San Francisco and I’m planning a trip there around the end of this month to look at them and maybe find a place I can buy.