I am pleased to announce that Relationship Completer v1.1.0 has been released.

The changes made in this latest version are:

• Improved name matching algorithm
  Now supports matching names based on a single name
  Now supports matching names that contain prefixes and/or suffixes
• Now Checks for existing relationship before adding a duplicate entry
• Added support for Mac OS X 10.3.9+
• Fixed various crashes and memory leaks
• Added German translation (thanks to Dr. Uwe Werner)

I’ve started designing possible icons for Relationship Completer. I know an Address Book plug-in doesn’t exactly need an icon but I enjoy messing around with graphic design from time to time. Here are a few of the front runners:

At the moment they all look a little too back-and-white or bland for my taste. I’m sure I’ll come up with something I find suitable soon. Any comments would be appreciated.

For those of you who are interested, I used the open-source vector graphics editor Inkscape to create these icons. Although the UI is very clunky (and doesn’t fit well in Mac OS X) it is still a great tool for creating simple vector icons like these. I’ve never used any of the commercial editors out there so I have nothing to compare it with but it seems to fill my needs without any problems.

Today my Buffalo LinkStation Pro ™ arrived. The first thing I did after opening up the box was install Debian on it. This was a pretty straightforward experience thanks to the guys at the LinkStationWiki. I followed the instructions here and didn’t have any problems at all.

I’m hoping this will make a nice, little, cheap (I got my 250 GB model for $170), and quiet version control and defect tracking server (among other things – it’s running linux afterall). A couple of years ago I ditched my linux desktop machine in favor of an iMac G5. I wouldn’t ever dream of switching back since the Mac is a dream but it is nice to have a linux machine at home again.

This Address Book plugin was inspired by my previous rant. It is the first of hopefully many plugins and scripts to realize my vision (and make Address Book more useful).

Let’s say you have the two Address Book entries: “John Doe” and “Jane Doe”. If John and Jane are married, you may set the appropriate “Related Name” fields in Address Book to denote this fact. To completely realize the relationship you will need to add a spouse relationship to both John and Jane’s entry – each pointing to the other. This violates my first law of data entry duplication: don’t do it.

That’s where Relationship Completer comes in. It will add a new menu item for “Related Names” that allows you to automatically complete the relationship by creating the complementary related name entry. Now all you need to do is create one of the spouse entries and have the other one created automatically.

You can find more information and download Relationship Completer from the Software page.

When my work’s CVS server went down earlier this week (due to a hardware failure) I quickly learned how dependent on CVS I really am. This is not a bad thing; in fact I think it’s a Good Thing ™. The server was down for less than 24 hours but I was definitely going through withdrawals.

I have officially added CVS (or whatever source control software I happen to be using) to my list of “things I can’t imagine living without”. This is an ever growing list which already contains: my car, my cell phone, my iPod, and my wife.

CVS related links:

• TortoiseCVS – my favorite Windows CVS client
• Pragmatic Version Control Using CVS – a good book on using and managing CVS
• Official CVS web page

One of the things I really dislike in life is duplication; duplication of data and duplication of effort. I find that it usually pays off in the long run to automate a task rather than justifying not to because the task is so simple/small. I’ve been known to utter the phrase “but what if there where one thousand of them” to coworkers more times than I am willing to admit. Recently I have been frustrated by the Mac Address Book application because is requires me to duplicate both data and effort to organize my contacts the way I would like.

The Problem
Many contacts in my address book share some common data with other contacts. For example a husband and wife share a common home telephone number, home address, anniversary, email, etc. Whereas a group of roommates may share a home phone number and address. Each person requires a separate entry in my address book because they have sufficient amount of information that is different (cell phone, work phone, personal email, work email, work address, birthday, etc.). This causes a problem of data duplication. If I want each member of a relationship to contain the common information I must manually duplicate the information in each entry. Of course, if they move or change their phone number I must be diligent to update the entry for each member of the relationship.

Furthermore, it comes in handy to have an entry for the group (which I call a composite entry) as well has an entry for each individual. The composite entry is used when printing address labels for letters, invitations, etc. It also gives me a place to store information such as children names and birthdays (they usually belong to the couple – not the individuals).

My Current Solution
To reduce my frustration I have been following these simple rules:

• Create an entry for each individual
• Create a composite entry for the group.
• Store all person information in the individual’s entry.
• Store all shared common information in the composite entry.

Following these rules keeps me from duplicating any information manually (and protects me from stale information if something changes and I don’t remember to update all the different places the information is stored). However, this solution is definitely not perfect. The biggest problem is that the shared common information is only one place – in the composite entry. If I want to find the home address of a friend of mine, Mr. Smith, who is married I must look it up in the Mr. and Mrs. Smith entry (not the Mr. Smith entry.) Also this technique only works if I follow the rules I defined earlier.

My Ideal Solution
Ideally, I should be able to go into the Address Book application, select any number of entries and then create a composite entry based on that selection. This would be similar to the current “group” feature of Address Book with the added ability to assign the common information to the composite group. After the composite entry is setup I should be able to Add/Remove members and edit the current members. The common information, of course, should be displayed in the composite entry as well as each of the individual member entries. If I edit the common information in an individual memeber entry it should remind me that this will affect each member of the composite. At that point I should have the option of updating the composite entry with the changes or removing the edited entry from the composite. Of course, I can live with slight variations to this behavior.

What’s Next?
My options are:

• Continue using my rules and move on
• Wait for Apple (or someone else) to fix this
• Fix this myself

I think at this point I will do so more research. I would hate to fix this problem myself only to find out someone else already has a perfectly good solution (see the intro paragraph). I will also research how I might write a program to interface with Address Book to add my desired features. In the meantime if Apple (or someone else) comes out with a solution I will glady use it.