An excerpt:

More generally, there are several layers of natural human group size that increase with a ratio of approximately three: 5, 15, 50, 150, 500, and 1500 — although, really, the numbers aren’t as precise as all that, and groups that are less focused on survival tend to be smaller. The layers relate to both the intensity and intimacy of relationship and the frequency of contact.

The smallest, three to five, is a “clique”: the number of people from whom you would seek help in times of severe emotional distress. The twelve to 20 group is the “sympathy group”: people with which you have special ties. After that, 30 to 50 is the typical size of hunter-gatherer overnight camps, generally drawn from the same pool of 150 people. No matter what size company you work for, there are only about 150 people you consider to be “co-workers.” (In small companies, Alice and Bob handle accounting. In larger companies, it’s the accounting department — and maybe you know someone there personally.) The 500-person group is the “megaband,” and the 1,500-person group is the “tribe.” Fifteen hundred is roughly the number of faces we can put names to, and the typical size of a hunter-gatherer society.

An excerpt:

I have always travelled a great deal, for both business and pleasure, and — like other seasoned travellers — soon found that the lighter my burden, the more pleasant my journey. Consequently (and unsurprisingly, given my background as both an engineer and scientist), I have thought a lot about the subject, read extensively on the issues, even attended seminars on packing techniques. Most important, though, is that I’ve actually tried all this stuff out, experimenting with a variety of solutions in many cases. This Web site affords me an opportunity to share the resulting opinions…

As such, it fits right in what I am striving for, optimizing the world around me. Traveling is a small, but important part. Every time I travelled in the past I have been striving to pack more efficiently. Whenever possible I only bring a carry-on. But that is very difficult; and oh so pleasant when accomplished.

1. Install X-Code from the OSX CD. I only installed the “Developer Tools Essentials” and the “System Tools”. Alternatively, install the “iPhone SDK.mpkg”. The actual iPhone packages will not get installed in this step.
2. Open the iPhone SDK disk image and go to the Packages folder. Install all 8 packages that start with iPhone, in particular:
• iPhoneDocumentation.pkg
• iPhoneHostSideTools.pkg
• iPhoneSDK2_0.pkg
• iPhoneSDK2_1.pkg
• iPhoneSDK2_2.pkg
• iPhoneSDKHeadersAndLibs.pkg
• iPhoneSimulatorPlatform.pkg
• iPhoneSystemComponents.pkg
3. This will create three folders and an “About iPhone SDK.pdf” file in the root folder of you “Macintosh HD”, namely
• Platforms
• Documentation
• Examples
4. Move the “About iPhone SDK.pdf” into your “Macintosh HD/Developer” folder and the contents of these folders into the corresponding folders in your “Macintosh HD/Developer” folder. For this and the next step you need admin rights.
5. Next, drill down into: “/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/
   Library/Xcode/Specifications/”. In this directory, you will find a file called “iPhone Simulator Architectures.xcspec”. Make a backup of it and replace it with this file.
6. After relaunching Xcode, iPhone application templates will be available from the New Project template chooser. Pick any, hit “Build and Go” and the App should start up in the iPhone simulator

For free application programming lessons, go to this website (Stanford University) to download lecture notes and other information for “CS193P iPhone App Programming”. There you will also find links to the free video podcasts.

Enjoy!

2009-06-20 Update: Today I tried to upgrade my Xcode installation from 3.1.2 to 3.1.3. After the upgrade install, Xcode would not start, but rather choose to crash every time I tried to start it. Not knowing where the problem might lie, I uninstalled everything, then reinstalled Xcode 3.1.3, and then reinstalled iPhone SDK as described above.

Alas, it still crashes. I found the answer here:

Warning: Xcode 3.1 3 works only with the iPhone SDK packages delivered with the iPhone 3.0 SDK. If you have installed previous releases of the iPhone SDK, you must upgrade to the current release of the iPhone SDK when upgrading to Xcode 3.1.3. You can still develop for iPhone OS 2.0 through 2.2.1 as well as 3.0 using the iPhone 3.0 SDK.

2009-06-21 Update: I am afraid to have to report that the same approach does not work for iPhone SDK 3.0 and Xcode 3.1.3. While I can install and run Xcode, an open a template iPhone app, it will compile with an error and I have not been able to figure out how to get it to work. So I am reverting back to Xcode 3.1.2 and iPhone SDK 2.x. This comment says, it is not possible.

An icon on the taskbar doesn’t necessarily mean that a program is running; programs can be pinned to the taskbar so that their icon is persistent. Clicking the icon starts the program (if it’s not running) or switches to it (if it is).

…featured since March 2001 in Mac OS X as presented in this Ars Technica Article: Direct Link.

Rather use File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to publish to a different hosting service? With the built-in FTP support in iWeb, you can do that, too.

I am curious to see if this works as seamlessly as syncing via .Mac or MobileMe…

Apple’s or Google’s websites offered no help, so it took some google searches to reveal how to do this (comment 3 here).

Basically, you have to drop a pin and tap it. If street view is available at that location, there will be a small red circle with a white person on the left hand side of the pin’s label. This also works with pins from search results.

Tap that icon and the screen will rotate into street view. A small circle indicates the street location and cone of view. It doubles as the exit from street view, which is cute, but not very intuitive.

Unfortunately, there appears to be no way of knowing where street view is available as there is in google maps on a computer. All you can do is drop a pin, tap it, and see if street view is offered. This can be misleading if you are at the border of a street view covered area, where just a small distance over it may or may not work.

Having been a 1st Gen iPod Nano user for three years, I surely was expecting the iPhone to support folders for my playlists. I still remember my excitement when iTunes started supporting folders, yet to this day no iPod supports them.

What is the point of creating an intricate folder structure for my classical music if that means that I end up with 20 playlists on my iPod/iPhone all called “Symphony No. 1″?

To make matters worse, there is no easy way to scroll to a particular playlist via a quick-jump alphabet on the right hand side. No, you have to flick through dozens and dozens of screens to get to the bottom playlists. The same applies to genres.

Why can’t we get a consistent UI with alphabet quick access for all lists? Why can’t we get folders, at least as an option for those people who care. I always thought of the iPhone more of being a computer than an iPod. In that case, folders should be standard.

Because I don’t have time to rename hundreds of playlists (nor do i feel like adding redundant information) I will probably continue listening to Pandora most of the time. This is a shame because I bought the 16 gig model with the iPod in mind, and in hindsight I may not be needing all this memory.

In the past I argued that they also make it less safe for drivers of such vehicles, but I was only speculating about that.

No more, I had the pleasure of a Jeep Grand Cherokee rental car for the last week and drove it at night several times.

All windows except the driver, passenger, and front are tinted. And not even as dark as some cars you see on the road these days.

Rear vision at night on the street is noticeably impaired. Looking over my shoulder when changing lanes on the highway all I see is black. And trying to backup in a dark parking lot I might as well close my eyes, I’d see not much less.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to have my side windows tinted. I cannot understand why this is legal. Now having driven myself with tinted windows I am shocked that lawmakes allow such a gross impairment to everybody’s road safety.

These files are buried inside installer packages as well as in receipts of already installed programs. To find it, right click the installer package, and select “Show Package Contents” and find the .bom file. Usually there’s more than one. Unfortunately, these are binary files, so there’s one more step to view its content.

To view the content of a bom file, use the lsbom command. Here’s the ADC lsbom man page, or type man lsbom in the terminal.

While showing the contents of a package is educational, it is not actually required to use the lsbom command. For that, just go to Terminal and navigate to the folder containing the package installer. To show the package content simple change the directory to the package name, i.e., type cd installer.pgk. You will then see the package’s content. That’s because packages really are just directories in disguise.

If after installing some software you like know where files were copied, you first need to find the receipt. Receipts of all installed applications are store in Macintosh HD/Library/Receipts. The procedure for finding them bob files is exactly the same as described above.