The MacDeskBlog

This morning’s announcement missed one of today’s pictures. I suspect the database backup may have been running at the time, but I’m not certain. The unannounced picture has been up all day. I re-ran the announcements after I got home from work.

DreamHost Status » Blog Archive » Planned network outage July 11

On July 11, 2008 starting at 10pm we will have a brief network outage to restructure our routing tables. We are planning two hours to deal with any quirks that may come up, however our Cisco network engineer estimates the total downtime to be under 30 minutes.

Netflix: Requests and Suggestions

Hey,

My wife and I share a queue and we frequently have problems where we’ll get three of my movies at home and none of hers. It can really gum up our queue. Sometimes, I have to send one or more of the movies back and put it BACK INTO OUR QUEUE for another chance to watch it. Other times, when we’re trying to catch up on TV series, we’ll end up receiving the discs out of order (blame the USPS) when we’d really rather have our next movie arrive in lieu of having two discs from the TV show at the same time.

It would be really great if you provided a way for us to have separate queues. That way, we’d always be assured of having something to watch when one of us is out of town, and we’d never get frustrated by looking at Disc 4 when Disc 3 is still en route.

Oh, and related to this, when you combine my love of serious anime like Akira and Princess Mononoke with my wife’s love of Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell comedies, you end up making horrible movie recommendations which neither of us like, such as Pokemon and Paddington Bear. I really think you’d give us better recommendations if you tracked us separately.

I’m really hope that you implement this. It would eliminate all of the frustrations which we currently have with Netflix and keep us from switching to Amazon Unbox, Comcast PPV, or iTunes movie store.

Thanks for your consideration,

Ryan

MacDesktops is 10 years old today. In 1998, I bought a new 20″ monitor. It was huge. It had a massive 1280×1024 resolution. I searched the web high and low for desktop pictures to fit it, but nobody provided pictures that huge. So, I generated a few desktops and shared them. I was pleasantly surprised that the site generated a couple thousand hits that month, and a few more in May. By June though, interest was trailing off. So, I decided to start posting new pictures weekly. Eventually, weekly became daily. MacDesktops joined MacNN for a couple of years. MacNN’s servers crashed and MacDesktops went offline for a few months. I unhitched from MacNN and relaunched the site independently where it has stayed ever since and weathered two more extended downtimes due to server outages.

In 1998, you’ll notice several Power Computing desktops, as Apple was ending its clone phase. Apple was fighting for survival with market share dwindling below 3%. MacDesktops’ pro-Mac pictures helped bolster the confidence of Mac users under siege. Apple’s combative advertising compared Intel processors to snails and lit the Intel “Bunny Suits” on fire. Apple encouraged everyone to Think Different by buying a Mac. Then came the iPod and iMac, each of which increased Apple’s standing and decreased pressure on Mac users everywhere. Apple had some great advertising campaigns when they returned to Chiat-Day, and they have produced some terrific products since 1998. When the two have converged, MacDesktops has benefitted from the excitement and buzz with tremendous submissions of Apple product desktops.

In 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq under false pretenses and I took a subtle stance here. This pissed off some people and encouraged others. When I posted Movie picture #146, I pissed off some more people. Such is life. I put a lot of effort into building this little soap box and there are times when I must stand on it and speak rationally to whomever will pause and listen.

During these past ten years, my own interest in the site has waxed and waned several times. Sometimes generating and posting pictures is a joy. At other times, it is a burden. I felt bad for contributors when the submission queue was 8-12 months long. And I feel worried now when it is less than 2 months. I rely more and more upon consistent contributors to fill up the queue when I would like to provide a wider variety of content. My huge 1280×1024 monitor from 1998 is now tiny. Creating original artwork for 30″ Cinema Displays takes more effort than making something for a 15″ monitor. In 1998, digital cameras were expensive while capturing low resolution images. Today, most of the desktops come from inexpensive, high resolution digital cameras.

How has your Mac experience changed over these past ten years?

By request, I upgraded Television, and University and College Campuses from searchable keywords to categories. Of course, the real intent of the request was for more submissions in those categories, as well as more Family Guy, more Cars/Autos, more Logos, more Music, more Humor, and more Multiple Monitor Sets.

One of my high school friends just highlighted this article over at CSO online. Yeah, I’ve never heard of them either. But the article is really good. Really long, but really good. It’s about putting risk into perspective because the media makes every little risk seem huge. Like one of my favorite whipping boys, Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Are you more scared of being attacked by a shark or of developing skin cancer? C’mon, sharks? Really? Sorry, stop worrying about it.

Read the article, and stop worrying.

Lead paint in toys. Brain-eating amoeba. Identity theft. Drowning in sand. We know more than ever about the risks all around us. Do we know what disclosing them all is doing to us?

A little bit of trouble before we got to the party tonight.

Be general. Be specific. Be public. Reply in the blog with your requests. Perhaps you will inspire someone to send in your heart’s desire.

The picture queue is down to two months now. That may sound like a lot, but it’s really quite small. Please keep sending in your beautiful compositions. Photographs are great, and original artwork, product compositions, portraits, movie, animation (all of those non-Flora, non-Landscape categories) are even better. If you send in something which will be less poignant in two months, please remember to add “Time Sensitive” to the subject line.

Sorry folks. It has been a crazy week, and I fell behind a bit this week. My wife had her ACL reconstructed last Friday. Her recovery is going extremely well. I’ve been home all week to help her, which includes trips to the doctor, trips to the pharmacy, trips to the DMV, i.e. driving around. And I did manage to get over to MacWorld for about two hours yesterday evening. In hindsight, I should have been one of those hours putting up pictures for today and this weekend, but it slipped my mind. Plus, I’m still working full time, albeit from home. Anyway, I’m not complaining. This has been a very fulfilling week in which generating and posting pictures required more time and effort than I was about to allocate. My little stumble with Chris Bassett’s picture on Tuesday was a precursor to today’s gap in service.

I will try to catch up (which means get ahead) tonight and over the weekend. I could use some help in the form of some MacBook Air, Time Capsule, iPod Touch, iPhone, Mac Pro, and Apple Logo submissions. High resolution product photos are provided by Apple PR. I didn’t get any good pictures from the show yesterday, but if you got something desktop-worthy, please send it in. Remember to add “Time Sensitive” to the subject line of your product and MacWorld desktops.