My iDevice was running the least-outdated version of iOS 4 and not being too bothered about these things I never got round to updating it. Also, I was a bit leery about installing a new major release until the early adopters had suffered through the kinks. The release of the Google map app, which requires iOS 5.something or later was enough reason to finally upgrade.

My first Mac was a PPC G4 iBook which worked fine for all kinds of web development and working with various C/C++-based open source projects. For me at least, any subtle incompatibilities were due to the differing OS, not the underlying architecture, and that hasn't changed with the move to Intel.

However, although now I'm on my 2nd Intel MacBook, with the way things are going I can see a day when OS X gets too dumbed down/walled off to be useable for me and I'll become a very ex-Apple customer.

Apollo 13, We Have a Solution

So, I reached out to Bob, a developer evangelist that I met at the Hackathon at the Museum of Science.

Bob? Microsoft Bob? You met Microsoft Bob in a science museum? I think we might be on to something here...

Seconded... I've corralled the company's system into something approaching sanity, but no time for any kind of documentation apart from the odd comment in the code (usually starting with "FIXME!"). There's also a plethora of sub-systems I have trouble managing even though I wrote them myself - mainly due to having to throw them together at short notice while working on something else at the same time.

Who on earth came up with that headline?

I'm talking about the physical act of someone running a single command (or for the Winlazy, pressing a button) then walking away.

Walking away? From a release in progress? Do you worship at the Shrine of Murphy or something?

Mind you I am the sole IT employee of a small company, so the entire process is under my control. FWIW It's a data-driven B2B web app kind of thing.

I prefer to split up change requests - including configuration changes - into individual numbered releases, which are tagged in SVN and documented on the login page visible to internal users, so the evolution of the app - and my contribution - is visible, especially for the people who wouldn't otherwise see what I'm doing.

Clearly samzenpus has never had the pleasure of using a Japanese vending machine, which 99.99% of the time Just Workâ. Some even happily accept 10,000 yen notes (roughly equivalent to US$100) and give you the correct change.

My IT history:

Pre-1990: ZX Spectrum, CP/M
1990 or so: DOS
1992: Windows 3.1
1996 ~ 2000: Windows 95/98 (NT at work)
2000 ~ 2007: Linux (SuSE), FreeBSD (6 months or so), Ubuntu
2007 ~ : primarily OS X

I use Windows maybe once or twice a month, mainly to fix colleagues' issues or do something that absolutely requires Windows-only software. I was happy with Linux as a desktop/laptop environment (KDE 3) for a long time, but drifted over to OS X. I do have a Linux PC under my desk, but haven't used it for a few months... (it kind of works fine with Xubuntu, but after 10 years there's still so much which is a PITA). I do mainly DB-driven web app development, so any reasonably sane UNIXy environment suits me fine, and don't game much at all so no problems in that respect. On the other hand I am increasingly annoyed at the iOS-ification of OS X, and generally disillusioned with computing in general. FFS, Ubuntu was cool - this post is coming to you routed through a netbook running Xubuntu 8.04 (it runs fine as a router), but all this Unity crap makes me want to beat my head against the nearest wall.

Time to take up sheep farming, maybe...

Also, most of them are happening offshore, which limits the effects. Now, if a M6+ earthquake went off directly under Tokyo, things would be a little more dramatic.

Now, this is what woke me up the other day (at 5pm local time - jetlag!), a mere 6.2 but much closer to Tokyo than the one in the article, and it was so unremarkable I'd forgotten all about it until now.