How to fly like an aero with Mac?

Just wanted to point out a wicked piece of software for the Mac that lets you do the "Aero Snap" feature found in Windows 7.

It's called "Cinch" and it's available from Irradiated Software (an independent software developer named Steve).

Well worth the -- appropriately priced -- 7 bucks. And I say that as a cheap bastard who'd rather buy pickled beets than buy software.

Cheers.

And we're back

Sorry for the delay between posts. That's the last time I fly Air Canada anywhere.

Lots of tech to talk about since my last post. Lots. Google's new software and hardware forays, Apple's resurgence with a murderer's row of fantastic product releases -- Apple TV excepted -- and Microsoft's continuing decline into irrelevance.

Let's start with the iPad, since that's actually a fairly recent product.

I don't want one.

Sure, it's slick looking and futuristic. But I don't see a place for it in my life. I have a laptop (my 2008 MacBook Pro still going strong) that comes most places with me, but my 32 GB iPod Touch does all the really mobile stuff, with a few exceptions. There's really not a lot of room in there for a device in between, despite what Steve Jobs insists.

I have given this some thought. If I decide I need a light mobile platform, my future looks like this:

Dell 10v Mini

A Dell 10v Mini system hacked to run OS X, aka a "Hackintosh". You get all the mobility of the iPad, but with the option of running all the OS X software I've already bought (especially OmniFocus for productivity management and Scrivener for authoring), along with specifying my own ways of consuming all the media that the iPad keeps wrapped up in their own DRM (digital rights management). 

Lots of digital ink has been spilled covering Apple's decision to hold ownership of media content in their hands, rather than letting users own the media they've paid for. I'm not here to debate that, but it irks me and I'd rather go in a different direction.

It's also cheaper. The 10v is $299, plus an extra $30 for a Snow Leopard installation disk. The cheapest iPad is $499 in Canada. 

I will admit, I don't have 3G connectivity with the Dell. And it's a pound heavier. And, well, it's not nearly as sexy. But I get a camera, a bigger display, 160 GB of storage. And I can plug USB devices directly into the damn thing without an extra acce$$sory. And it's a real computer, not a glorified ebook reader.

I'm looking forward to making this happen. Just gotta root under the couch cushions for that $350. I'll let you know how things go.

Testing out ScribeFire

Let's see if having an integrated blog update function in my Firefox browser will help me write more frequent blog posts.

iTunes 8

I was just listening to some background ambient music (Groove Salad on Soma FM FTW!) and since I'm not actually typing on the computer for once, I turned on the new iTunes 8 visualizer for kicks.

Wow.

Fantastic graphics. Just jaw droppingly cool. Think exploding black holes surrounded by suns and stars and cosmic plasma explosions. Yeah, and that really doesn't do it justice.

And well synced to the music. I've seen some visualizers that seem to have no relation to the music syncopations that are occurring, but this is right on the money.

Everyone is talking about the new 'Genius' functions of iTunes 8. They should be hyping this visualizer too. I just watched it for like 5 minutes with my mind just completely captivated (yeah, that sounds kinda pathetic, but I'm also sleep deprived).

UPDATE: added this graphic, which totally does not do it justice:


UPDATE 2: Lifehacker.com has posted some undocumented keyboard shortcuts that make the visualizer EVEN MORE COOL. How is that possible? Check it out:

lifehacker.com/

Perseverance in IT

Here's a great story about a couple of student interns at Apple (back in the 'dark times') who took it upon themselves to complete a project and get it delivered, after it was AXED.

This, my friends, is commitment to the cause:

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The Graphing Calculator Story

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Next gear: Netbook

I'm thinking about getting a netbook sometime this year, mainly for quick writing, couch-based web-surfing and for use at things like my son's soccer games. My only real requirements are: less than 2lbs, $300-ish, and a usable keyboard. I tried out the ASUS eee 701 at my local retailer and came away unimpressed by the keyboard, which kind of defeats the purpose of having this thing -- otherwise, I'd just ask for a great big touchpad and type things in that way. (Hmm.... iPod Touch, anyone?) My two frontrunners at this point are the currently unreleased Dell E:


and Lenovo S9 ideaPad:


Which one should I get? Post your thoughts or alternate suggestions in the comments

The 44th post

If I'd been paying a little more attention, this post would be much more relevant:

Check out 43folders.com for some great productivity tips.

(Does spending time reading about productivity mean that you're procrastinating or being productive?)

Keeping things on track - Update

I made a couple of mistakes in my cron job list that kept this from working properly. I didn't need the user component of the command, and "5 pm" is actually hour "17", so the two commands should read:

# # Move to the restrictive hosts to keep users off waste sites for the workday
0 9 * * 1-5 cp /etc/hosts.work /etc/hosts
# After 5:00 p.m., return the free "home" hosts file:
# Move the hosts file back to full access at the end of the workday
0 17 * * 1-5 cp /etc/hosts.home /etc/hosts

However, one not so nice thing about OS X's implementation of cron is that it won't work if the computer is in Sleep mode. On most Linux systems, this problem is dodged by using 'anacron' which will execute any cron jobs missed while the computer was off or asleep, but apparently OS X doesn't include anacron. The workaround is to modify the times to reflect accurately when I will have the system up and running, so now my crontab listing becomes:

# # Move to the restrictive hosts to keep users off waste sites for the workday
0 10 * * 1-5 root cp /etc/hosts.work /etc/hosts
# After 5:00 p.m., return the free "home" hosts file:
# Move the hosts file back to full access at the end of the workday
30 16 * * 1-5 root cp /etc/hosts.home /etc/hosts

I'll let you know how it pans out over the next week.

Keeping things on track

Quick hit for today: I unfortunately find myself spending a little tiny bit too long surfing some pretty useless websites during the hours when I am supposed to be "enhancing shareholder value". I have a personality that is best controlled when the bad options are simply taken away from me, and the temptation is non-existent.

To that end, here is what I've done to keep my surfing time minimized (this is for my Mac, mind you. Doing this on Windows is certainly possible, but you'll need to use the Task Scheduler in place of the cron job).

1. Switch to full root user mode with sudo su -. This just means less keystrokes. You are now in full-on root mode here though, so if you don't know what you're doing, skip this step and put "sudo" in front of all the subsequent commands.
   
2. Copy the existing /etc/hosts file twice:
   cp /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.work
   cp /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.home
   The 'hosts.work' file will be the 'restricted' file that will keep you from visiting bad sites.
   
3. Open the /etc/hosts.work file in a text editor and add in a line for each of the websites you want to restrict access to like this:
   127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
   
4. Create (or modify) the root cron file using crontab -e. Cron is a task scheduler that is always running, and will execute whatever you add into it. In this case, we're going to swap the hosts file for the length of the workday.
   
5. At 9:00 a.m. from Monday to Friday, copy the restrictive "work" hosts file in:
   # Move to the restrictive hosts to keep users off waste sites for the workday
   0 9 * * 1-5 root cp /etc/hosts.work /etc/hosts
   
6. After 5:00 p.m., return the free "home" hosts file:
   # Move the hosts file back to full access at the end of the workday
   0 5 * * 1-5 root cp /etc/hosts.home /etc/hosts
   

That's it -- just like magic, any requests between 9-5 on Mon-Fri made to one of your 'restricted' sites will return a 'page load error', making sure that you and I stay on track.

A Thank You

To my less security conscious neighbours, who provided unprotected wireless access points to use during the past week while I was waiting for mine to be set up:

Thanks for the bandwidth!

Twitter me this

Yeah, I'm on this now too. Follow me at:

http://twitter.com//ianhakes

Library up, cowboy!

This post has been working in my head for literally weeks, touched off in large part by a comment that 'z' added to my software roundup post. I've been rewriting it over and over in my head, but I can't come to a perfect solution, so I'll just brain-dump it here, and maybe I can come back to it later.

First off, let me dive back into the mists of time a little. When I first started seriously looking at Apple's product line again, round about when they released OS X, I came across an applications called Delicious Library.

I fell in love with it immediately.

Keep track of all my DVDs, CDs and books? Check. View all my stuff on virtual "bookshelves", using the album/movie/book covers downloaded from Amazon? Check. Keep track of who's got my stuff on loan? Check. Input my collection by scanning the ISBN or UPC code, rather than typing them in by hand? Double Check. (My favourite feature, considering my library is well over 2000+ CDs, DVDs, and books). All-in-all, an absolutely fantastic application, well-designed and thought out, and a KEY selling point for my Mac purchase.

From that moment on, getting a Mac meant buying Delicious Library for it. Then, when I got my MacBook Pro in October of '07, I went to their site with my still-warm credit card in hand, ready to buy. But I hit a common problem for the modern day software shopper: upgrade-itis.

Delicious Library version 1.6 was out, and available for $40 US; but the developers were promising Version 2.0 (cue bells and whistles) ANY DAY NOW. So I held off. Why spend my money on a product that will be obsolete almost immediately? I could upgrade later, but that would be another $20.

Days, then weeks passed with no 2.0 release.

In December, Delicious Monster (the umbrella company -- of 3 coders -- that makes Delicious Library) finally relented to their public and said, "Buy version 1.6 now, and you'll get the 2.0 upgrade for free!" Still I held off. Why learn the 1.6 interface, and import all my books and DVDs, when I can just start fresh with 2.0 when it comes out.

Then the ALPHA(!) release of Delicious Library 2.0 even won a 2007 Apple Design Award for best Leopard application (in my mind, a product should be shipping in order to be award-eligible). More hype and promises of imminent product release.

Then, last month, reviews of 2.0 started coming. AppleInsider. The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW). I pored over these reviews and news items like epistles from on high. Is 2.0 worth the wait? Is it vaporware? Will someone please give me a GD release date??!!!

Both articles mentioned a March release date. Well, guess what? It's now April 1st. (Happy Birthday to me, BTW!). Still no 2.0 release. Still nothing on the Delicious Monster team blog about this release or even a date.

So maybe you'll soon see a review of Delicious Library 2.0 here on 3 o'clock blog. And then again, maybe you won't. I honestly hope that in 2 months, I'll look back on this post and laugh at how over-wrought I was about this product. I really hope.

Mac check-in: software

It's been (about) 4 months since I got my MacBook Pro, and here's a quick rundown on the software I've found, and even in some cases paid real money for, since then.

Adium chat client - accesses my MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk, and most importantly for me, Lotus Sametime chat lists. Full featured and robust with good notifications
Scrivener writing application - ties research, notes, ideas and writing all together. Time to dust off my novel drafts and get them back on track [props to Ryan Chase for passing this one along]
Apple mail client - the integration with Gmail's IMAP capability has made this my main mail client (outside of work, where -- shudder -- Lotus Notes is mandatory).
Alphababy - this locks out your keyboard and trackpad, and turns every key into a letter/shape generator for kids. Awesome fun for those under 5.
Unisudoku - Gets my Sudoku fix fixed. I even paid money for this, so you know it's gotta be good.

That's enough for today. I'll post more another day.

Where Julie meets a Tiger

My last post mentioned my technology resolutions for the year. 18 days in and I can cross one off the list:

Upgrade Julie's G3 laptop to 768 MB of RAM, and push the OS from Panther to Tiger

Upgrading the RAM was fairly painless. I bought a 512 MB stick from the good folks at canadaram.com (this older type of RAM is hard to find, so a big thumbs up to the CanadaRAM crew for having it on hand). Installation was also aided by the step-by-step instructions at ifixit.com. After a reboot, 768 MB shows up on the system info screen. Awesome.

Part two was a lot more complicated. I was originally inspired by this article at lifehacker.com, which suggested using an older iPod as a installation drive for Leopard (I presumed Tiger would follow the same process). As I have a 20 GB model handy, I naively expected this to work perfectly. My first sticking point was that my copy of Tiger (the one that came with my MacBook Pro) was tied to the hardware, and could not be used to install on Julie's G3 iBook laptop, or anything else that wasn't a Macbook Pro.

I managed to track down a retail copy of the Tiger (10.4) installation DVD, but one of the key problems is that Julie's iBook doesn't have a DVD drive. The lifehacker article shows you how to get around this problem by creating an image of the DVD (on my MacBook), then erasing the iPod and copying that image to the iPod so that the iBook can use it just like a DVD drive. This worked great, except that the older 10.2 version of OS X on the iBook didn't have the "Disk Utility" to allow me to define which disk (the iBook hard drive or the iPod) should be used as the start-up boot drive.

The solution was to start up the iBook (with the iPod plugged in) while holding down the Apple and c keys. This made the iBook boot off an external device and showed me the Tiger installation menu. From there, I was able to install Tiger directly on the laptop in about 30 minutes.

Julie seems to be really happy with the new OS and the responsiveness that an extra 512 MB of RAM brings to her laptop. One resolution down, many more to go.

Technical Resolutions

Every year at this time, we all make resolutions for the coming year. Things we'd like to improve, parts of ourselves we'd like to change, etc. I'm no exception to this, as I like to use this time to take stock of what I like about myself and what I could work on this year.

As a bonus for all my 3 o'clock blog readers, I'm going to post some of the technological improvements I'd like to make, and keep you up to date on how things are going.

Here's my list so far:

* Upgrade Julie's G3 laptop to 768 MB of RAM, and push the OS from Panther to Tiger
* Move all my work-based applications onto my MacBook Pro (i.e. stop the dual-system dilemma)
* Reduce my technological footprint - by this, I mean that I want to significantly simplify the amounts of similar tech that I have. For God's sake, I have 4 printers in my office - how did that happen?
* Blog more regularly. Less complex posts means more frequency. I'll try to document steps taken for bigger projects, but expect more brief hits with lesser detail.

Hope to see more of you in 2008!

No joy in Mudville

A few of you may know that I like to partake of the kingly sport of betting on NFL football. This week I decided to put in a slightly larger stake, with the goal of putting together the significant portion of the cost of a new ASUS Eee computer. My potential take was $377.68, about $20 less than the cost of a new eee system.

Bottom line: Every bet came through. Except the (5-6) Broncos, who had won the last 5 matchups against their arch-rival (3-8) Raiders, and wound up committing 4 turnovers, leading to 24 Oakland points, thus not only failing to cover, but actually losing outright; I wound up with a net loss of $15. No new computer this week.

Two Mac quickies

Just a short post today. Wanted to share two cool OSX Leopard hacks that I've found today that are definitely on the useful side.

1. Add "beautifying" icons to the default Stacks. I have the Applications, Documents and Downloads stacks in my dock, and they show the first item in the stack as a miniature icon. Not especially useful, or good to look at, especially because my first document is an all black picture (called black_169.tif).
   This hack from LifeHacker shows you how to add nice "drawer" icons to the top of these stacks, helping you to clearly differentiate them from application icons, and make the entire Stack much better looking.
   
2. Add a "Recent" and "Favorites" dock icon. This hack, again over at LifeHacker, creates a cool icon that allows you to access 5 things:
   
   • Recent applications
   • Recent documents
   • Recent servers
   • Favorite volumes
   • Favorite items
   All right from the dock. Very slick
   

Wither RSS?

People always come up to me at parties, on the street, or during laps in my F1 racecar*, and compliment me on my blogs here, here and here.

"But, Ian," they ask, "what blogs do you read? What catches your fancy during the downtime between skydiving naked and snorkeling off the Great Barrier Reef?"*

Well, kiddos, here today is my listing of the blog feeds I read on a daily basis:

Technology
Ars Technica - Reviews and news on a more techincal bent
Autoblog - The best of what's in automobiles
Boing Boing - The old granddaddy of the internet tech blogs; news and views you can use
Digital Home - Canadian technology news. Brief but occasionally informative
Download Squad - lots of cool software news and trials. Most of the software I've blogged about has come to my attention courtesy of DS
Engadget - Gadgetry, computers, cool tech; winner of best technology blog for the last 4 years
Engadget HD - a sister site to Engadget, dealing primarily with High Definition TV and DVD news
Planet DB2 - DB2 coverage; keeps me up to date on my day job
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) - Coverage of all things Mac; one of my favourite resources

Personal improvement
Lifehacker - lots of quick ideas to help make your work and home life more productive and enjoyable
zen habits - a blog of self-improvement advice and assistance. I don't read it all very often, as I'm too lazy, but I'm sure I'll get around to it

Entertainment (News, Movies, Sports, Shopping, Gossip)
Edmonton Journal - News - My local Edmonton news site

ESPN Feed: Bill Simmons - ESPN's The Sports Guy
From the Pressbox - Elliot Freedman's blog, he works for the CBC and covers NHL hockey, CFL football and a few other lesser sports.
Melt Your Face-Off - A hockey blog
With Leather - Sports news and gossip with more than adequate amounts of scorn; an absolute favourite

Cinematical - Keeps me up to date on the happenings of Hollywood.
My Boring Ass Life - Filmmaker Kevin Smith's personal blog
Pajiba - Hollywood news with equal servings of wit and sarcasm
What Would Tyler Durden Do? - Celeb gossip with a helping of attitude
WWdN: In Exile - Former ensign Wesley Crusher's fantastic personal writings, covering technology, entertainment and his personal doings

seems Artless - A photo blog from my friend David Sky

RedFlagDeals.com - Latest Deals - Deals for Canadian shoppers; my bank account and wife hate me reading this site

Penny Arcade - A fantastic web comic

There you have it gang -- get out and explore my world so you can be just like me.

(*activities depicted may or may not actually have occurred)

Dvorak, when the walls fell

I'd heard of the Dvorak keyboarding method years and years ago, but I never really got a handle on it or why it was better for me. Then last week, I came across this post on boingboing linking to a very informative e-comic that outlined exactly why I should switch.

So I hitched up my pants, spat into the brass spittoon and said "Y'all know me. Know how I earn a livin'. I'll catch this bird for you, but it ain't gonna be easy."[1] Metaphorically, of course.

Literally though, I set up the Dvorak keyboard on my Thinkpad (it's included as a option in the Regional Settings portion of the Control Panel), took an old keyboard apart and reassembled it Dvorak-style -- for referral purposes only, you don't need a new keyboard to learn Dvorak -- and went online to find some typing tutorial software that would help me learn. I eventually went with Ten Thumbs and their cool viking cartoon helpers.

I dug in with both hands (ha!) and began to see why Dvorak can be such a blessing for touch typists. All the main letters (s,t,n,a,d,o,e,i) are on the main "home" row. A lot less finger movement means more efficient and presumably faster typing.

Then I started to run into the problems:

1. O.M.G. was I slow. I'm a pretty fast touch typist on QWERTY, roughly around 75-90 WPM when I really get it going. With Dvorak, I went back down to 18-25 WPM and I could not stand it. Emails, chats, writing technical documentation -- I do a lot of writing in a day, and I literally kept forgetting what I was trying to type because it was taking me so long to type it. I know that it's idiotic to think that I would be as fast a typist right away, and I certainly was improving after only a few days, but it was giving me headaches to try and rewire my brain like this.
   
2. Copy/Paste - on your normal computer keyboard, CRTL+C and CTRL+V are the copy and paste shortcuts. But in Dvorak land, C and V aren't beside each other anymore (for the record C goes in the "I" position and V is in the ">" position, QWERTY-wise). I wound up losing efficiency with my keyboard shortcuts.
   
3. Multiplicity - I work with a lot of computers. A lot. I have 5 systems in my office, plus my wife's iBook, and literally dozens and dozens of other virtual machines both here at home and remotely at work. That's just too much pain to set each and every one of those up with the Dvorak layout (not to mention that my wife was having none of this madness, so there'd have to be both layouts on several systems to support both of us).
   
4. Keyboards - I mentioned that I took apart a keyboard and set the keys up in Dvorak layout, but most keyboards today are "formed" to a physical design and you can't just move keys from one location to another on the keyboard and have it look normal. The alternative is to paint or tape over the letters and put the Dvorak keys in place. Way too much hassle.
   

So in the end, I pulled the plug on the Dvorak experiment. I think for someone just learning to touch type, or someone who only has one computer, it's definitely a great choice, and I admire all the proponents who swim against the stream to keep this alternative alive. But I've got deadlines to keep and miles of documents to write before I sleep.

[Those of you wondering about this post's title: see here]

A post to talk about no posts

I know your all waiting for the follow-up to the gmail post, and it's coming, but I've also started learning Dvorak typing, so I'm too slow right now to do a long post.