Greg In The Desert

• jfleck at inkstain » What a Housing Bubble Looks Like – Here’s what a housing bubble looks like. Housing prices. Red is Arizona, green is Nevada, blue is us here in New Mexico. The three states track together since the 1970s (off to the left of what’s displayed in this graph). Prices in Arizona and Nevada shoot up beginning around 2004, then collapse pretty dramatically. Click through for larger image. Data from St. Louis Fed.
• Little Tikes Cozy Coupe Tops U.S. Car Sales – Auto – FOXNews.com – The Cozy Coupe sold 457,000 units in 2008, topping the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord. In the '90s, it outsold both the Accord and Ford Taurus.
• Lightyear Sunken Bath Episode 6 – Storage from Nothing – Most Arizona houses are slab on grade. This means that changing plumbing is challenging or expensive. Slab on Grade houses are laid out, and the plumbing, both waste and supply lines are buried in the ground before the slab is poured. You see some interesting bottom plates here. On the remodeling end, this means that you either get creative or you get to spend really large amounts of money time and noise to move things around. (Nothing screams remodeling to the neighbors like someone with a concrete slab saw in your bathroom.)
• The Official Site of Rio Rancho, NM – June 20th: Hazardous Waste – Saturday, June 20, 2009 Keep Rio Rancho Beautiful will hold a Pharmaceutical Take Back and Household Hazardous Waste Collection from 9am to 2pm at at the Santa Ana Star Event Center upper west parking lot. This event is for Rio Rancho Residents only, please remember to bring proof of residency, such as a drivers license with Rio Rancho address!
• Oprah responds to Newsweek cover story | TV, movie and music news | Current Affairs | EW.com – In a statement today, Oprah Winfrey responded to a Newsweek cover story which suggested that some of the non-traditional medical advice advocated on her show poses a danger to her legions of viewers
• Final release of Safari 4 tweaks interface from beta version | E-mail and Internet | MacUser | Macworld – The most controversial new feature of Safari 4 was the placement of tabs on the top of the Safari browser window instead of below the bookmarks bar. At first, I was against this new UI quirk, but the more I used the Safari 4 Beta the more I liked the placement of the tabs on top of the window. Sadly, in the shipping version of Safari 4 tabs have returned to their traditional place
• Wild horses victims of recession, too – The Denver Post – Wild horses are feeling the effects of recession, as federal authorities find fewer horse owners willing to take on extra animals.
  At a wild horse auction run by the Bureau of Land Management in Eagle Saturday, only 10 of 39 horses were adopted. Most went for the minimum bid of $125.
• McCullough-Price House – This 1938 Pueblo Revival style home was donated to the City by the Price-Propstra family, renovated and opened to the public in 2007. It is home to the Chandler Visitors Center and includes gallery, office and meeting spaces, plus a catering kitchen. The facility can be rented for intimate weddings and receptions, luncheons and banquets, meetings and seminars.
• Chandler cuts access to historic ‘38 home – Doors will be locked at Chandler's historic McCullough-Price House after June 30.

  The move comes two years after the city spent $850,000 to renovate the 1938 pueblo revival-style home near Chandler Fashion Center to open it to the public as a visitors center and museum.

  The building at 300 S. Chandler Village Drive will remain available for special events, tours and private-party rentals, city officials said. It didn't attract enough visitors to justify 40-hour-a-week staffing in tough economic times.

• Review: NeatDesk and NeatWorks for Mac | Unclutterer – A few weeks ago, the Neat company sent me their new NeatDesk for Mac scanner and its NeatWorks software to review. I have been a Fujitsu ScanSnap loyalist for the past two years, so I wasn’t super excited about doing the NeatDesk review. In fact, I tested one of their mobile scanners a year ago and was so disappointed with it that I didn’t even post the review to the site (why clutter up your time with an awful review?).

  To my surprise, however, I liked the NeatDesk for Mac. Specifically, I really liked the NeatWorks software. (If you buy the scanner, the software comes with it. The software also sells as a stand-alone product.)

Indigo, my Home Automation application of choice, has hit 2.0 after a (long) beta period.

Indigo 2.0 has been officially released and is no longer beta! Version 2.0 can now be purchased at a special introductory price ($20 off retail). Although v2.0 has a higher retail price than v1.8, all existing 1.8 customers can receive a $90 discount towards their purchase of v2.0. 2.0 Download and Trial http://www.perceptiveautomation.com/indigo/download.html After you download Indigo 2.0 and register for the 30 day free trial, join us on our new 2.0 discussion forum. Important The location of Indigo settings and database files has changed. Read the ReadMe included in the download DMG for detailed information about migrating from Indigo 1.x to 2.0. Indigo Client/Server Design 2.0 has been redesigned as a client/server application to allow remote control and configuration from anywhere. The server can run headless (no UI) in the background on your Mac while consuming minimal CPU resources. The GUI client can be run on the same machine or on a remote machine while still providing the same level of control and configuration. Web Based Control Pages In addition to now having a built-in HTTP web server, Indigo now supports graphical Control Pages allowing quick and powerful creation of Web controllable home interfaces. These Control Pages update in real time as device and variable states change. Here is an example floor plan Control Page that is included with the 2.0 Sample House file: http://goprism.com:8000/controlpage?name=1st_floor (this is a live example — try clicking on various devices and buttons) And here is an example of an iTunes controller that allows remote control of iTunes, as well as continuous updating to reflect changes to tracks, albums, artists, and volume: http://goprism.com:8000/controlpage?name=itunes_controller (this is a live example — you are controlling what songs are being played on a Mac in a data center in Las Vegas) Both of these examples were quickly created in Indigo by using the graphical Control Page editor. Live WYSIWYG browser previewing of Control Page editing is also possible (try the Browser Preview button in the Control Page editor). And here are some example pages of text-only based web pages which can be viewed on lower end hardware (like mobile phones and some PDAs): http://goprism.com:8000/basicpage http://goprism.com:8000/basicpage?miniUI=1 Native Sprinkler Support Powerful new UI and actions for controlling irrigation via the EZRain, Rain8, and IrrMaster controllers. Universal Binary Indigo (client and server) run native on both PPC and Intel Macs. Indigo UI Makeover

• The entire UI (all windows, dialogs, panels) has been redone for 2.0. In addition to providing a better appearance (note the brushed metal appearance is a preference in case you are antagonistic towards brushed metal), several other improvements have been added:
• Live searching of Devices, Trigger Actions, Time/Date Actions, Action Groups, Control Pages, and Variables.
• Embedded AppleScript compiling, error reporting, and syntax coloring.
• Table column width adjustment via dragging.
• Live window resizing.
• Dialog window resizing.
• Main dialogs are no longer modal.
• Scroll wheel/ball support.
• Improved text rendering.
• Improved Upload Settings dialog.

Improved POP3 and SMTP Clients The POP3 and SMTP clients have been replaced. Authentication and SSL/TLS are now supported. You can even use a Google GMail account now for scanning Triggers and sending notification emails. New Time/Date Action Options

• Day-of-month.
• Start and end date limits.
• Sunset/sunrise limits.
• Repeating intervals (year, month, week).
• And more!

New INSTEON and X10 Trigger Types

• Trigger on “any” command.
• Trigger on command from “any device.”
• Multiple Actions (without having to create Action Groups)
• Trigger Actions, Time/Date Actions, and Control Page element click actions can now have multiple actions without having to create a named Action Group.

AppleScript

• Added AppleScript device property type to correspond to the device type class: x10 or insteon. Previous type property has been renamed to model.
• Added AppleScript device properties: supports all lights on and off, supports all off, supports status request.
• Added AppleScript application properties: current time date action name, current trigger action name, current action group name.
• Added AppleScript verbs: status request.

Miscellaneous

• Added Trigger Action and Time/Date Action suppress logging option.
• Added Reset Interface Connections action. Use this to force Indigo to attempt a reconnect to the interfaces.
• Added log error message if system date/time becomes invalid.
• Changed log files to use UNIX friendly line endings.
• Increased Event Log window buffer size.
• Main Window progress area can now show if multiple interfaces (X10 and RF) are connected.
• Improved idle and busy CPU utilization.
• Improved infinite loop detection.
• Improved device sorting by type.
• Improved reliability of communication with CM11 interface when power is interrupted and restored to the CM11.
• Improved robustness when communication with interface fails (USB to serial adapter unplugged, PowerLinc USB unplugged, etc.).
• Improved robustness of preference changes (preference file is now periodically auto-saved).

And more!