So I've once again changed my work patterns. I'm still not working much, but now I'm trying to do three days when I just do work and two days when I goof off and take care of my personal stuff (like prepping for Star Trek or writing a CRS skit). Probably spending too much time on non-work itmes, so maybe I can get that down to one day, which I can't really imagine getting lower than that unless I just stop doing things in my personal life...

Nikon announced the Coolpix 995, which will be available for $900 this June. The improvements include 4x optical zoom (instead of 3x), up to ISO 800 (used to be ISO 400), CompactFlash Type II support (now you can use IBM Microdrives with it), and a pop-up flash (for less chance of red-eye). Negatives are that it is now a sturdy hard plastic case instead of a mostly metal case and it uses this weird battery format (you can only use the Nikon rechargeable battery pack or 2CR5 one-use lithium batteries -- about the size of two AAs).

The only feature I wanted was better ISO than the Coolpix 990. ISO 400 is sufficient but grainy on the 990, so if the 995 takes good pictures at ISO 400 and grainy at ISO 800 then I'll be happy. The extra zoom is nice and I can still use my 128 MB CF-1 card, though there goes my rechargeable AAs (though I do use them to power other devices). You should get 110 minutes continuous usage with the included rechargeables and if you don't use the LCD you should be able to shot for a long time, so it's not that bad. Ooh, I want this camera...

Not much in the way of techie news lately. Here's one: the xMach project has a new core team. Not extremely exciting, except for them mentioning in their Slashdot announcement that one of their major goals (making the code GPL-free) is accomplished. I thought "boy, that's not going to go well with /.ers (who are apparently too lazy to type out Slashdotters." And that little statement did spark a bit of a flame war. I'll say again that I favor the BSD license over GPL, not least of which is that it was started at Berkeley (the license, that is, as well as the code)...

Thales got hacked, so says Dave. Hmm, maybe I shouldn't upgrade Jennifer to Mac OS X, since I don't have time to keep it secure. Meanwhile, since I have not booted into Mac OS 9.0 in a few days, my backup scripts haven't run so the web site hasn't been updated. My script won't work in Mac OS X so I need another no-monetary-cost solution. And I turn to NetFinder, which under Mac OS X is very unstable, but the mirroring option does work. I can run it manually to update the remote site and it seems to do the job. Comparing file dates doesn't work because files copied over have the current time rather than the file time (hmm, I should try doing binhex transfers). But it can do synching based on file name and size, which is sufficient for most of my purposes...

Other Mac OS X things. Epson has no Mac OS X drivers except for some of their current USB printers and no Mac OS X scanner drivers to speak of. Same for HP, no driver for their older printers, though they're working on it. Meanwhile, I can use the generic Apple LaserWriter driver to use the HP printers at work. I still can't get both ethernet and modem working at the same time. The modem does connect, but then everything still seems to go through the ethernet interface. I was thinking maybe gNAT would help (it allows multiple computers to share the Internet by configuring the Mac OS X NAT layer), but I couldn't get that to work either...

What I still need to get, besides the Epson drivers and getting ethernet/ Ricochet working at the same time, are an audio recorder (haven't found a free one), an image editor (GIMP fits the bill, once there is an installer for it), and something that can manage desktop pictures (the Finder's desktop picture support is too primitive and I haven't found any alternatives). Then there's Apache, sendmail, and dns; though if I'm not upgrading Jennifer there's no point in researching those. And of course taking another stab at my development environment.