Keeping Up To Date

I read this a while back about automatic software updates, and thought yeah, yeah... big deal. But then I encounter a real annoying computer problem, in that I couldn't preview certain audio files (wave files). This being a problem, because I work with wave files all the time. I write more than you'd ever care to read about it here.

I think my problem is some software incompatibilities. I was out of date with Apple software, and I easily used Software Update to download their software... but I have no idea where to begin with all my digidesign software. I would love a program that tracked all the software I have and let me automatically update it like I can with my system software. It would also report the changes made between versions, and it could reference my other apps to warn about any possible conflicts. I think users should be able to comment on updates as well, and flag possible problems (similar to MacFixIt). I know there is an API to allow programmers to design in an auto-update feature to their applications, but I want something that could update everything in one step (and possibly be able to update all computers over a network).

This actually is really reasonable. System Profiler has a list of all my application along with their version. MacUpdate or VersionTracker has a list of pretty much all software upgrades and downloads. Most applications either use the default Installer utility, their own installer program, or can be installed by dropping the program directly into the Applications folder (this can be easily scripted with AppleScript).

I'm always relieved when I find a program already made instead of having to hobble together something myself, so I'm going to try some of the options people suggested on the original website, but if that doesn't work I'm going to attempt to create this utility myself. If you're interested in working on the project with me, shoot me an e-mail at updater@swiftstudios.net.

A Post about Posting, Not the Cereal Company

I first thought having a webpage was cool, and I was writing things in Netscape and FTPing them to the 10 megabytes I had through the ISP. (such a nerd!) I'm still not sure what the real difference between that and a blog except we now have a more polished system for publishing. I then had a blog, while friends used LiveJournal. Thinking I'd get more readers, I switched as well. And like so many of my friends, in college, posting languished.

And now, many college buddies keep each other up to date through Blogger. One of the old LiveJournalers switched to Blogger. I admit, I found that quite amusing. It's as if LiveJournal is for emo high schoolers, and Blogger is for recent professionals who having recently lost their college email, became Gmailers. Instead, we find the same blogs–and sometimes the same posting habits–as before.

So now I feel I need an explanation of sorts (not that anyone is asking). I would like a professional blog about theatre on my website. But there's a lot of personal content on my LiveJournal. When John started teaching, his solution was to make his journal private. I think I'm going to try to avoid boring you here with personal tidbits, and keep them where people are interested in that sort of thing can find them–for those of you out there... yes I know I haven't updated that in years, which perhaps makes this whole thing a bit more silly than it already is.