October 30, 2003

Predicament

So, the time to decide exactly what Powerbook to buy is getting closer. My boss’ house is refinanced, so I’m guessing we will actually order something in the next few weeks, end of November at the latest (I’m hoping!). He has been known to take a while to do things sometimes though, so hopefully this won’t be one of them.

I was originally planning to go with the top model 15” PB, since it had a much roomier screen than the 12”, Firewire 800, lighted keyboard, faster processor, etc. However after hearing a lot about their bad screens, bad hinges, display problems, etc. I am pretty worried about getting one. MacWorld recently posted a review of it and said 3 out of 6 of the ones they received had to be sent back because they were defective. That does not reassure me at all. I’ve always heard Apple’s first model of something new is usually troublesome, but I had no idea it was that bad. The question is, are they already resolving the problem, or will it not be fixed until the RevB Powerbook? I can’t wait until they revise the model, assuming it will be another couple of months. I’ll die if I have to wait that long. :)

So now I basically have a couple of options… I could see if my boss would pay for the 17”, which matches the 15” as far as features and speed goes, but is enormous and expensive..

Or I could take my chances with the 15” and hope I get a good one. Which from what I’ve been reading, doesn’t sound like a very good chance. Plus the Macworld review said it is only a 13% to 20% speed increase over the 12”, which doesn’t seem like that much.

Or I could get the 12” with Superdrive, add airport extreme, 60 or 80gb hard drive, etc. Then buy a 512 or 1gb RAM chip to max out the ram. This may be the best deal because it would still be much cheaper than the 15”, but would have 1.5 times more ram. And I doubt I will be using firewire 800 or the PC Card slot anytime soon if I did get the 15”, it would just be nice to have if I needed it.

And though the 12” screen is tiny, when using my friend Ryan’s this weekend, it didn’t bother me until I thought about trying to use Photoshop or a coding applicaiton on it. And the only time I will be doing that is at home or work, where I can hook it up to a second monitor.

Plus, I’d still probably have enough money left over to get one of these, assuming my boss would pay for it even though it isn’t really “work related”. :)

So, I think I have talked myself into the 12”, unless anyone else has any experienced advice on the subject.

Basically this is going to be my first Mac, and my primary machine both at home (web design, email/web/chat, occasional game) and work (Corel Draw, Photoshop, email/web/chat, bookkeeping, postage printing, etc.). Will the 12” be sufficient for me?

October 22, 2003

G4 iBooks

WOW! Apple is really on a roll all of the sudden! I don’t think anyone saw this coming, I don’t even know if any of the rumor sites caught it…

Apple just announced all new G4 iBooks, now completely abandoning their older G3 processor.

You can now get an 800mhz G4 iBook with a 12” screen for only $1099.00! Wow! That is incredible.

There is a 933mhz model with 14” display for $1299.00, and a 1ghz with a 14” for $1499.00. All models have a slot-loading combo drive, 256mb of RAM, and an ATI Radeon Mobility 9200 video card. They also now support Airport Extreme, and Bluetooth.

If you go to the education store there is a special iBook setup with only a CD-Rom drive for $949.00 and $100 discounts on the other models.

Wow… Apple laptops just got a whole lot more competitive as far as prices go.

www.apple.com

OneWord: Commotion

Dictionary.com says a synonym for commotion is hubbub. I didn’t know that was a real word… It reminds me of Daffy Duck. I remember a cartoon with him in it from when I was little where he said “What’s all the hubbub, bub?”. Or maybe he said that all the time. I don’t remember. I like Looney Tunes though… I used to have some on tape and would watch the same ones over and over and over, and I can still remember most of them to this day.

OneWord

iTunes Music Store

Just about everyone on the internet has already covered the new iTunes Music Store for Windows topic, but I’ve been busy and haven’t been able to write about it, so I’m going to now even if it is a week and a half late. :)

To sum up all of my feelings in a word, I’ll have to go with “HOOOORAAAAAYYYYY!!!”.

On the day of the announcement I had Opera open with a tab on a Mac forum that was doing live updates, the live update page on MacRumours, the live update page on MacNewsNetwork, the announcement thread on YayHooray, and of course the iTunes page on the Apple web site, with it set to automatically refresh every 15 seconds. I came in early that day so I could take a longer lunch break and be there for the whole event, which I was. I was probably one of the first people to download it… I’m guessing I started my download less than 30 seconds after the new page hit the server. :)

I installed it here at work and everything went flawlessly. The download was fast, the installer was nice and helpful. Then I finally fired up iTunes on my very own computer!

I figured it would be very close to the Mac version, but without a doubt, it is identical to the Mac version in nearly every way, which is of course a very, very good thing.

The overall appearance of the program is identical to the Mac, with the exception of the sexy anti-aliased fonts that the Mac version has. But all of the animations and visualizations are the same.

It asked for the location of my MP3’s during installation, and they were all there when I started it up for the first time. Only 200 at work, but it found about 1200 at home and imported them all quickly and easily, even on my P3 866mhz at home.

After listening to some of my own MP3’s for a while I tried the radio stations, which I had not had a chance to try on the Mac version yet. There is a large selection of everything from rock to classical to jazz, and they are all high quality. I clicked on a Rock station (Radiostorm Alternative, if anyone cares) and it started playing immediately, just as fast as an MP3 on my own computer. The quality is just about as good too. I’ve had a few skips and “buffering” messages, but overall I am amazed at the quality of the streaming radio.

When I got home I started ripping CD’s with iTunes, and everything went perfectly. I just put the CD in and clicked on Import, and iTunes took care of the rest, downloading the track names from an online database like most rippers do and automatically adding it to my library. It even started playing the song as it was ripping it, which still impresseses me. :)

After I ripped a few CD’s I plugged in my new iPod. It immediately came up on my iTunes screen, where I could see all of the songs that were currently on it. I then pressed Sync and it synced all of my new files over. Completely seamless. 5,000 times better than doing it with MusicMatch.

I’ve browsed around the iTMS quite a bit, but haven’t purchased anything yet. I’ll probably buy an album the next time something new comes out that I want to hear, rather than re-buying an older album. But I love the iTMS anyway. The 30 second previews are awesome, the navigation is great, and I really like how the featured artists pages look, with all the information, music videos, etc. It really makes it feel like an upscale CD store or something.

My boss installed iTunes on his laptop the night that iTunes came out, after hearing me rave about it all afternoon. Then he plugged it in to the network yesterday morning, and as soon as he started iTunes my music library came up on his screen. “What? It was that easy? Just turn the thing on and open iTunes? Yup.”. I then went into his preferences and set his library to share, and immediately all of his MP3’s came up on my iTunes screen. I was just amazed. Why can’t anything else on Windows work this seamlessly and easily and automatically?

I mean seriously, if Apple can create an application that is so well integrated and easy to use on Windows, why can’t Microsoft get it right? Stupid Windows… I’ve probably said that phrase a couple of hundred times in the past few weeks as my Windows frustrations continue to grow. I swear if I don’t get a Mac soon I’m going to have a heart attack… :)

Anyway, if you are reading this on a computer, GO DOWNLOAD ITUNES AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

www.itunes.com

Mozilla.org Redesign Beta

While I’m talking about web site redesigns I may as well post my thoughts on the new Mozilla beta site which was redesigned by Dave Shea of Mezzoblue.

Overall I think it is terrific. Finally they’ll have a site that is good looking and easy to use for the user, rather than having the whole thing focused on the developers. There are now clearly labeled download links, support links, and products links. Along with one link for developers, which takes you to all the nerdy information you could ever want. Now if they could just get rid of any mention of nightly builds and all that crap off the front page they would be doing pretty good.

It would also be nice to see an installer for Firebird and Thunderbird soon, since right now you just have to unzip the files to a directory somewhere which is not the way you normally install something on Windows and probably confuses quite a few people. The default home page on Firebird is also really bad. The last time I installed it it brought up a page saying “HEY! You’re using a build of Mozilla that is older than 6 weeks” or something like that, and told me to upgrade. First of all don’t say “HEY!” to someone that just downloaded your product, even if you aren’t getting paid for it. Second, don’t tell me to upgrade after I just downloaded and installed your product. The homepage should just point to Yahoo or something and get rid of all this technical stuff altogether. The technical people know how to find the technical information, but the newbie computers users don’t care about it, and don’t need to know about it. They just need to know that they can use this browser just like IE, only without all the pop-ups, security flaws, and completely stagnant feature set.

New A List Apart

A List Apart has completely redesigned, front and back-end they tell us. I have mixed feelings on it though…

Good things…

It doesn’t have that terrible orange/green color scheme anymore. Hooray! Seriously, Zeldman is a very smart guy, I just really don’t know what his deal is with orange…

The discussion portions of each article are nice, giving people a way to post feedback and further tips on a particular technique.

Bad things…

They use a bunch of catchy phrases to name parts of the site instead of just using clear, usable labels. Like “Up Front” instead of just saying “Home”. And “Departments” to lable the contact, credits, permissions part of the navbar. I wouldn’t call that Departments personally. Though at the moment I can’t think of anything better. I probably wouldn’t have labeled it at all actually. Another one is “Hot Topics” instead of just labeling it “Articles” or something to that effect.

The entire “about ala” page is filled with little catchy phrases that make no sense at all…

“Who made the salad?
Like Soylent Green, ALA is people. Visit the Credits page to find out about them.”

What? Soylent Green? What the fuck are you talking about?

Overall the site just looks like a blog now. Before it had more of a magazine feel to it, but now it just screams blog, while also trying to be a magazine.

And like someone on YayHooray said, the whole ISSN thing is just about the most pretentious thing I’ve seen on a web page… I mean, sure, put it on the about page or something, but plastering it all over the front page, everywhere the title of the site is mentioned, and beneath every article is way too much. To me it makes the site look less professional. Like it has to hold a big sign in your face “Look at me! Look at me! I’m a legitimate magazine! See!? I have an ISSN number just like real magazines you see in the grocery store! We are legit! Still don’t believe me? Then scroll to the bottom of the page and see that our whole site validates in XHTML, CSS and Section 508!! Aren’t we awesome????”

It’s also kind of funny how they say they spent a long time redesigning their custom CMS back-end, when it ends up looking exactly like a blog in the end. They could have just used MovableType and saved themselves a ton of time and trouble. But Zeldman still hand codes his own personal blog for some reason, so I guess it was to be expected.

I know all of this sounds pretty negative, but to be honest I was a little disappointed. I just thought it would be something new and interesting, not just another blog.

But all of those minor complaints aside, the new articles are great. Extremely well written and helpful articles about CSS navbars, random image replacement, etc. Be sure to give them a thorough read.

October 16, 2003

Gamepad Companion

Word on the street is that some people are having trouble getting their gamepads to work with certain emulators on MacOSX. So I did a little searching and found GamePad Companion for OSX which allows you to map your gamepad to keyboard or mouse buttons, and even control the mouse cursor with the D-Pad on a gamepad. Cool! This should actually give you even more flexibility than just using a normal gamepad with the software because it’s fully customizable. For instance I would imagine if you are using VisualBoy Advance, you could set four buttons on the controller to do normal game functions, then have an extra one setup as the shortcut to save or load, or maybe take a screenshot. Awesome!

I can’t wait to try VisualBoy Advance on MacOSX… I just found out about it yesterday and downloaded it for the PC. It’s amazing! It emulates the GameBoy Advance, letting you play pretty much any GBA game right on your computer. Click on the picture to the right to see a screenshot of it running while I was writing this post! You can even set it to record a DivX movie of you playing and everything. It has a ton of options. Very impressive. I hope it is as good on the Mac as it is on the PC.

Update
It looks like USB OverDrive could also be used to fix the gamepad problem on OSX for emulators. And some people recommend using it anyway, as a replacement for the sometimes less-than-good drivers some companies use for OSX.

October 11, 2003

PUSA is coming back!

According to this article, one of my favorite bands of all time, the Presidents of the United States of America, is back together and will be releasing new material next year. Hooray! It said they will be re-releasing their self titled album on president’s day of 2004, and then releasing new material after that. I hope it is more like that first album. They released one after “II” that I wasn’t too crazy about. Anyway it would be awesome to have a chance to see them on tour, maybe they’d play some old stuff.

October 08, 2003

AppRocket

AppRocket is basically a Windows copy of MacOSX’s LaunchBar. It is an application launcher, that you control with the keyboard.

You just hit Alt+Spacebar, which makes the AppRocket interface slide down from the top of the screen. Then you enter the abbreviation for the program, bookmark, song, or file you want to open, and press enter. It learns as you use it, so you can pretty much make up your own abbreviations for things. For example I typed MSN and it originally thought I wanted to go to MSN Shopping, but I didn’t want to go there so I pressed the down arrow until I found MSN Messenger, which is what I wanted to launch. Now whenever I hit Alt+Space, then type MSN and press enter, MSN Messenger launches. I can also type AOL for AOL instant messenger, PS for Photoshop, CD for Corel Draw, NZ for NewzCrawler, etc.

The app itself is tiny and fast, with only a 700k download. The only quite major drawback to this application is that it requires the .NET framework to be installed, as well as Windows XP Service Pack 1. The .NET framework is a 25mb download, and I don’t even know how big Service Pack 1 is. Needless to say this makes what could have been a painless, fast, easy installation turn into a pretty huge undertaking if you don’t already have .NET and SP1 installed, which I would imagine most people don’t. After you install .NET and SP1, installing AppRocket itself is very easy, and one of the quickest and nicest installs I’ve seen in a while. It’s just a whole lot to ask for people to download .NET and SP1 just to use their application, and I would imagine it will keep a lot of people from using it that normally would if it installed like every other application.

OneWord: Stretch

Stretching is quite an enjoyable experience. A good stretch in the morning before you get out of bed in the morning is always a good way to start the day. And maybe one before you go to sleep. It’s also important to stretch before and after exercising, though it seems like I’ve heard stretching afterwards is especially important.

Yes, stretching is good and everything, but no man should be able to stretch like this guy, it’s just not right:

October 05, 2003

Apple iPod

8 days ago, while shopping for a few things at Target, I bought an iPod, hooray! I have of course wanted one since the day they were announced, but finally just went out and bought one last week. I took it to my work, ‘cause I thought that computer had a Firewire port, but it didn’t. And I knew mine didn’t, since it is around 3 years old. So I had to make a trip to Best Buy to buy a Firewire card for my computer as well.

I opened it up in the car on the way to work, and was extremely impressed with just the packaging of it, let alone the actual iPod. The packaging was perfect, every little detail was planned out and fit perfectly. For example, the AC power adapter was embedded down inside the styrofoam, and normally you would have to dig it out with your finger nails, or turn the whole box upside-down to get it out. But Apple put a little plastic tab on, so you could just grab that and easily pull it right out of the box, amazing! All of the other plastic wrappers and things were easy to open, not need to get out scissors or anything to try to break into the wrappings. There were a couple of vaccuum sealed packages for the earphones, etc, but they had notches in them to help you easily tear them open.

The iPod itself is tiny. Smaller than a deck of cards or pack of cigarettes, easily. It’s very “solid” and feels really sturdy and well-made. The buttons on the front are amazing, none of them move at all, they are all touch-sensitive, including the circular scroll wheel that you use to navigate through the on-screen menus with.

I got the 10gb model, which does not include a case, dock, or wired remote like the next model up, the 20gb. The 20gb model is probably a better deal, since those accessories alone add up to another hundred dollars, not to mention doubling the storage space, but it was a stretch to be able to afford even this model so I am quite happy with it.

The backlight on the screen is really bright, and the menu buttons light up as well, allowing you to very easily see the screen in any lighting conditions.

The interface is perfect, and really easy to use. I’ve had several people try to use it that have never even heard of an iPod before, and they had no trouble immediately figuring out how to use it like a pro. The only thing that isn’t immediately apparent is to hit the “Menu” button to go back a screen in the menus, but when you figure that out, everything else is extremely intuitive and natural.

Unfortunately I still have to connect it to my old Windows PC using the included MusicMatch Jukebox software, rather than iTunes on the Mac. The MusicMatch software isn’t too terrible though, and is pretty easy to use as well. You just create a library in MusicMatch by importing existing songs on your computer, or by ripping new ones from CDs onto it. Then you just hit the Sync button, and it copies all of the songs to the iPod that were in your library. When you delete a song from the library on your PC and Sync, it is automatically deleted from the iPod as well.

Right now I have 1,048 songs on the iPod, and I haven’t even filled it up half-way yet. Wow! Also, most of those are encoded at 192kbps, rather than the more standard 128kbps. The higher bit rate gives a better quality sound, but also increases the file size quite a bit.

My car MP3 CD player has a MP3-in port on the front of it, so I have been plugging my iPod into that, and playing it directly through my car stereo, which is incredibly cool. It only plays on the left speakers though, and I haven’t figured out why yet. I hope it isn’t just a mono in port or something. That would be inconvenient.

Click the read more link to see a few pictures of my new iPod!

Here you can see me pulling off the plastic packaging around the AC adapter. This is how the little tab was attached to help you easily pull the adapter out of the styrofoam packaging.

This is a wider shot showing me and my work area at work. It’s a huge mess, we aren’t the most organized people in the world, as you can see… You can also see the crappy Compaq I have to use all day! Hopefully this will be replaced with a 12” PowerBook soon. :)

After removing the outer cardboard “sheath”, you are presented with this lovely black box. It it cut in half, and folds out. One half contains the iPod and AC adapter, the other has the wires, manuals, software disc, etc.

Here is the iPod case when it is opened, with the iPod on the right and other stuff on the left.

Here you see the star of the show, the iPod itself! The outer plastic packaging says “Don’t Steal Music.” in several different languages. The great thing is, that is basically the only thing stopping you from copying music. There are basically no restrictions on the iPod, unlike most MP3 players.

The back of the iPod, showing you how to do basic things like turn it on, play music, etc., for people that don’t read instruction manuals.

Me reading the manual and holding the iPod. You can get an idea for how small it is, see it in my hand.

Me reading the manual still. You can see the iPod there on my Wacom Tablet, as well as some of the packaging.

Still reading the manual - my wife took these pictures like 10 seconds apart, that’s why it looks like I’m reading the manual for so long, it’s really not that hard to use! You can also see the iPod there compared to my mouse, very small!

This is one side of the outermost packaging, showing the iPod with the backlight glowing, as well as the buttons. It really does glow that strongly!

Check out Apple’s iPod site for more pictures and info on the greatest MP3 player in the world!

Through the eyes of a Mac Browser

Here’s a thing called Through the eyes of a Mac Browser that allows you to enter a page and see how it looks in Safari, Netscape, IE, and Lynx on the Mac. And apparently it is free, as opposed to the $40 a month BrowserCam. Hopefully it will stay free!

October 02, 2003

Derek Rose - Handyman

I am now, at least in my mind, an official member of the handyman’s club.

One, maybe two of you might remember my post about our water leak from a couple of days ago. We finally got a few estimates, which ranged from $900 to $200 (if we bought the supplies and rented a ditch witch), which all seemed pretty darn expensive to me. Then we got some advice from friends and family, and we figured that if we were renting the ditch witch and buying all of the supplies anyway, we may as well just fix the thing ourselves. So we did. Not completely by ourselves though. My grandpa and grandma were kind enough to make the trip down from Nashville to help me, since I was kind of afraid of the ditch witch, and didn’t really know where to dig or what to do.

Anyway, we got started on Sunday morning and dug a few holes, by hand, trying to find some wet ground or some indication of where the leak might be. We dug some holes about 3 1/2’ deep, and finally found the line. But the ground was dry so we kept digging. Eventually we were pretty confident of where the leak was, or at least where it wasn’t, and decided to try out the ditch witch. It was a walk behind one, and was pretty cool to use. It’s like a giant chainsaw for the ground.

We cut up most of the yard, and decided to just replace the pipe from just outside the house, to about midway down the yard, since we figured the leak was between those two points. After some more ditch witching, getting the ditch witch stuck, getting it unstuck, doing a lot of digging by hand, making a few trips to Lowe’s, etc., we finally got the trench dug. After that it was a relatively simple process to replace the pipe. Just cut it, stick the little joiner piece in each end, jam them together and tie them tight with a couple of clamps. We tested it, and no leaks! Hooray!

What was originally going to cost us up to $900, ended up costing $140 to rent the ditch witch for the weekend and about $20 for supplies. Doing it yourself really is cheaper!

I really must thank my grandpa a lot though, he was a big help and I couldn’t have done it without him. He also bought a bunch of tools that I didn’t have, to make the process a little easier. My grandma also did a good job of documenting the event with her camera, and supervising from the porch. And of course I can’t forget to mention my wife, who dug a few shovel fulls before saying she was tired. ;) Oh, and Rye, our dog, who tried her hardest to understand what we were doing, and even tried to do some of the digging herself. It was a nice thought, even though she sometimes dug the wrong way and started filling the hole back up instead of emptying it. I’ll probably post some pictures when my grandma sends them to me.

Babble

Babble is a fun little word hunt game that I saw linked from Signals vs Noise. Each day it displays a new puzzle, and you can play it throughout the day, adding words to your list as you find them. The one with the highest amount of points at the end of the day is the winner.

I didn’t understand how to play at first, but once you get the hang of it, it is fun and easy.

Basically you just look at the letters to try to find a word. As long as the letters are touching, they are valid choices.

Here is a diagram showing how I found the word “EASTER”.

You can only use the same letter once per word, but you can use the letters over again with another word. For instance in my example, your next word could be “EAST” using the same letters as before, without the “ER” on the end.

As you find words, enter them into the text box at the bottom, and they will be added to your score, on the right. You can also see each word you have already found, the number of letters in that word, and the amount of points you scored. Plus click on the question mark to look up that word on dictionary.com to see the definition of it.

The design of the site is really nice too. Very minimal and simple, no big flashing banners anywhere, just a couple of well placed ads for Boggle games on the right. It actually looks like something that 37Signals themselves could have designed.

My nickname on the game is “Deker”, so you can compare your score with mine. :)