Here is a quick shot of my mac hard at work helping me create a desktop wallpaper:
You can click the image for a closer view.
The site is http://wallpapers.x3studios.com/
Showing posts with label mac. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mac. Show all posts
Saturday, October 24, 2009
desktop wallpaper creation site
I thought I would share this interesting site where people can create a share wallpaper designs using the tools provided by the site. It's a fairly cool site with a number of interesting tools for layering these stamp-style illustrated graphics, sharing your designs and downloading them for use on your computer.
Here is a quick shot of my mac hard at work helping me create a desktop wallpaper:
You can click the image for a closer view.
The site is http://wallpapers.x3studios.com/
Here is a quick shot of my mac hard at work helping me create a desktop wallpaper:
You can click the image for a closer view.
The site is http://wallpapers.x3studios.com/
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Breakfast Cappucino No Sleep Book Signing
Lately, due to some personal life schedule changes and morning tiredness I have been driving to work. This affords me the convenience of making a Starbucks run so I can grab a grande caramel cappuccino (non-fat and wet) and one of those small protein breakfast kits that consist of a grapes, boiled egg, a mini bagel and slice of cheese, along with apple slices and a peanut butter packet. I can’t tell you how much I look forward to the peanut butter and apple slices. What a combo.
For the last couple of days I have had trouble sleeping in. Basically, this amounts to waking up somewhere around 3am to use the bathroom and then having a difficult time forcing myself back to sleep. I think I have too much running through my head and as a result my brain will not relax. Creativity seems to be compatible with sleep; analysis, not so much. You would think this getting up early would make me more awake when the real morning rolls around... think again.
My job requires that I do a lot of programming and problem solving. Be it balancing creative resources for web work or just flat out figuring out the best approach to building some Flash or JavaScript widget I need for an e-learning project, I am employed to be systematic and analytical (not necessarily in that order.) Some days I feel like I am in the middle of five speed-chess games and I have only two arms and one brain!
At 3am, if I turn on the light in bathroom my brain seems to say, “time to make the donuts” and before I can lay my head back down it is off to the races problem-solving that days agenda. This is where my Kindle comes in.
Currently I am reading the newest book by Nick Hornby. For the uninitiated, Nick Hornby has written a number of books which have been turned into movies: High Fidelity, Fever Pitch, and About a Boy. My personal favs are: How to Be Good, A Long Way Down and Slam. His latest book is entitled Juliet, Naked which is about a woman who’s boyfriend is obsessed with a musician-turned-hermit. It is more complicated than this but Mr. Hornby is an amazing writer. The pages just fly. In his books he often references the music culture namely because he began his career as a columnist reviewing and writing about music. Reading his writing on music makes listening a far better experience.
For me, reading fiction is like a laxative for sleep. I don’t mean to say that it puts me to sleep. I think it just helps me to dream rather than problem-solve.
Today I have fallen succumb to my early rising habit and while I can now put myself back to sleep for a few more hours I seem to be able to rest until at least 5:30am. So, to save a few bucks I have broken out the old Italian stove-top cappuccino maker and having recently purchased some apples and Omega-3 fortified Jif peanut butter… mmmm.
I figure if I bought a grande caramel cap + protein kit every morning from Starbuck, five days a week, but replaced it with this little 5am treat, I will save nearly $20 per week… waking up early has its benefits.
So, now I sit and read the Washington Times e-edition on the iMac, watch a few interesting videos on YouTube, and read some Nick Hornby on the Kindle all while gobble and slurp my breakfast. It works for me.
As a final note, as I was writing this I made a visit to Nick Hornby’s websites where I just learned that he is on his book tour right now for the book I am reading and will be at a signing tonight here in DC! That couldn’t have worked out any better! Now, how do I get him to sign my Kindle?
For the last couple of days I have had trouble sleeping in. Basically, this amounts to waking up somewhere around 3am to use the bathroom and then having a difficult time forcing myself back to sleep. I think I have too much running through my head and as a result my brain will not relax. Creativity seems to be compatible with sleep; analysis, not so much. You would think this getting up early would make me more awake when the real morning rolls around... think again.
My job requires that I do a lot of programming and problem solving. Be it balancing creative resources for web work or just flat out figuring out the best approach to building some Flash or JavaScript widget I need for an e-learning project, I am employed to be systematic and analytical (not necessarily in that order.) Some days I feel like I am in the middle of five speed-chess games and I have only two arms and one brain!
At 3am, if I turn on the light in bathroom my brain seems to say, “time to make the donuts” and before I can lay my head back down it is off to the races problem-solving that days agenda. This is where my Kindle comes in.
Currently I am reading the newest book by Nick Hornby. For the uninitiated, Nick Hornby has written a number of books which have been turned into movies: High Fidelity, Fever Pitch, and About a Boy. My personal favs are: How to Be Good, A Long Way Down and Slam. His latest book is entitled Juliet, Naked which is about a woman who’s boyfriend is obsessed with a musician-turned-hermit. It is more complicated than this but Mr. Hornby is an amazing writer. The pages just fly. In his books he often references the music culture namely because he began his career as a columnist reviewing and writing about music. Reading his writing on music makes listening a far better experience.
For me, reading fiction is like a laxative for sleep. I don’t mean to say that it puts me to sleep. I think it just helps me to dream rather than problem-solve.
Today I have fallen succumb to my early rising habit and while I can now put myself back to sleep for a few more hours I seem to be able to rest until at least 5:30am. So, to save a few bucks I have broken out the old Italian stove-top cappuccino maker and having recently purchased some apples and Omega-3 fortified Jif peanut butter… mmmm.
I figure if I bought a grande caramel cap + protein kit every morning from Starbuck, five days a week, but replaced it with this little 5am treat, I will save nearly $20 per week… waking up early has its benefits.
So, now I sit and read the Washington Times e-edition on the iMac, watch a few interesting videos on YouTube, and read some Nick Hornby on the Kindle all while gobble and slurp my breakfast. It works for me.
As a final note, as I was writing this I made a visit to Nick Hornby’s websites where I just learned that he is on his book tour right now for the book I am reading and will be at a signing tonight here in DC! That couldn’t have worked out any better! Now, how do I get him to sign my Kindle?
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Mac OSX Snow Leopard having a bit of a Vista moment
In my mac world I tend to live in a couple major applications:
At the moment Apple is really pushing anyone with a Mactel (Mac computer running on the Intel architecture) to upgrade to OSX 10.6 a.k.a Snow Leopard. How are they pushing? Like a drug dealer with blowout pricing. If you've recently purchased your mac, you can upgrade for $10. And if you didn't recently purchased it, then the upgrade costs $30. For me, that would mean $30 for my Macbook Pro and another $10 for the iMac.
But here comes the Vista moment (or maybe it isn't Vista as much as it is an old-mac-moment.) Snow Leopard made a number of core changes to how stuff works in the system but boasted that any of the current apps that we running fine under OSX 10.5.x should run fine in Snow Leopard. Unfortunately, that isn't proving out to be true. People like myself who live in the CS4 applications are currently encountering so many blowups that the forums are in flames. If you are running CS3 then you might as well boot up your old Windows XP machine, because if you upgraded to Snow Leopard then it is going to be a while before Adobe gets around to helping you out.
Adobe has been saying that they tested CS4 and it is good to go, but that Adobe CS3, while important to the company, isn't getting the priority at the moment. People still using CS3 got a little heated about that and started accusing Adobe of abandoning CS3 as a result, but Adobe assured them that it is just a prioritization issue and they will be getting around to ensuring CS3 works on Snow Leopard soon enough. Little did we all know that the reality about CS4 compatibility with Snow Leopard was more of an issue than Adobe was letting on. In fact, it now appears that Adobe new there were issues and the reason they weren't focusing on getting CS3 up to speed on Snow Leopard had everything to do with the fact that they can't yet get CS4 running smoothly on Snow Leopard.
But it isn't just Adobe products. There seem to be reports of intermittent issues doing regular stuff like "opening" or "saving" file. Hello!? What else does one do on a computer?
Rest assured, I am certain Adobe and Apple will resolve this current nightmare full-stop, but in the mean time I am waiting for some funny counter-strike style Microsoft commercials that mock Snow Leopard's buggieness. "Hello, I'm a PC. And I'm a ma... Hello, I'm a ma... and I'm a...I'm sorry but a number of system plugins are not responding. Please, visit help > system to view the... hello, and I'm a mac."
I will not be upgrading too quickly. I am sure I will upgrade, but just not as fast as the gotta-have-it mac-fan-boys across the interweb that were quick to regurgitate the Apple marketing on Snow Leopard even though Apple seems to have been less open than ever in allowing news firms to get access to Snow Leopard for pre-launch reviews.
- Firefox
- Thunderbird
- Mamp
- Flash CS4
- PhotoShop CS4
- Dreamweaver CS4
- MS Word 2008 (for Windows in Parallels)
- and OpenOffice
At the moment Apple is really pushing anyone with a Mactel (Mac computer running on the Intel architecture) to upgrade to OSX 10.6 a.k.a Snow Leopard. How are they pushing? Like a drug dealer with blowout pricing. If you've recently purchased your mac, you can upgrade for $10. And if you didn't recently purchased it, then the upgrade costs $30. For me, that would mean $30 for my Macbook Pro and another $10 for the iMac.
But here comes the Vista moment (or maybe it isn't Vista as much as it is an old-mac-moment.) Snow Leopard made a number of core changes to how stuff works in the system but boasted that any of the current apps that we running fine under OSX 10.5.x should run fine in Snow Leopard. Unfortunately, that isn't proving out to be true. People like myself who live in the CS4 applications are currently encountering so many blowups that the forums are in flames. If you are running CS3 then you might as well boot up your old Windows XP machine, because if you upgraded to Snow Leopard then it is going to be a while before Adobe gets around to helping you out.
Adobe has been saying that they tested CS4 and it is good to go, but that Adobe CS3, while important to the company, isn't getting the priority at the moment. People still using CS3 got a little heated about that and started accusing Adobe of abandoning CS3 as a result, but Adobe assured them that it is just a prioritization issue and they will be getting around to ensuring CS3 works on Snow Leopard soon enough. Little did we all know that the reality about CS4 compatibility with Snow Leopard was more of an issue than Adobe was letting on. In fact, it now appears that Adobe new there were issues and the reason they weren't focusing on getting CS3 up to speed on Snow Leopard had everything to do with the fact that they can't yet get CS4 running smoothly on Snow Leopard.
But it isn't just Adobe products. There seem to be reports of intermittent issues doing regular stuff like "opening" or "saving" file. Hello!? What else does one do on a computer?
Rest assured, I am certain Adobe and Apple will resolve this current nightmare full-stop, but in the mean time I am waiting for some funny counter-strike style Microsoft commercials that mock Snow Leopard's buggieness. "Hello, I'm a PC. And I'm a ma... Hello, I'm a ma... and I'm a...I'm sorry but a number of system plugins are not responding. Please, visit help > system to view the... hello, and I'm a mac."
I will not be upgrading too quickly. I am sure I will upgrade, but just not as fast as the gotta-have-it mac-fan-boys across the interweb that were quick to regurgitate the Apple marketing on Snow Leopard even though Apple seems to have been less open than ever in allowing news firms to get access to Snow Leopard for pre-launch reviews.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Windows 7, You Make Me Glad I Bought A Mac
I really hope someone from Microsoft reads this blog post.
Last year I invested in my first mac ever. It was a macbook pro laptop and after much deliberation I finally got the guts up and pulled the trigger and forked over the bucks for a mac. They are a bit more expensive and I was worried about the cost of converting my software over to mac but I was ready. Here is why I went mac and how looking at Windows 7 made me fall in love with Apple all over again.
About every year I blow at least a week of my life formatting my PCs. Many people do this and they do it for a number of reasons: they like to start anew with a fresh system; they need their Windows system to perform well again and Windows performance seems to degrade over time; their computer crashes and they have to start all over. Now, I am a computer programmer and while you might imagine that means I tinker with my computer and tweak it to death causing it to die annually, I don't actually do that. I try to keep it very clean and yet each year Windows just seems to take a fatal nose-dive and I have to reinstall the operating system and all of my software again.
This whole effort of reinstalling means I lose time and as we all know time is money. In 2008 I had to reformat my system twice! Before you start thinking I own some sad old machine that should be retired, it is an HP AMD64 dual core machine with 6 GB of RAM and about 1 TB of hard drive space with dual digital monitors and nearly 1GB of video RAM, so I should be good to go. Needless to say I started doing the math. If the rumors were true about Apple computers being fairly maintenance free then I would save enough time each year to nearly purchase a new Mac computer annually rather than invest that time/money into fixing Microsoft Windows. So, starting with a laptop seemed to be the right next move toward a switch.
After co-existing with Windows Vista for over a year and having the Mac book pro laptop as long, the crash happened again. At this point I didn't need to do the math again. The main computer took the final crash and I was ready to go all-mac-all-the-time. So I bought a 24” iMac and never looked back... until the new buzz about Windows 7 came out!?
Windows 7: it loads quickly, no more Vista crashes, no more constant warning message interruptions, easier user interface, tons of usability enhancements... did I go to the iMac too quickly? Should I have been more patient?
Then I hear about the free Windows 7 Release Candidate downloadable from Microsoft. It is at this time that I fall in love with my Mac all over again.
Like Charlie Brown depending on Lucy to hold the football one more time in hopes that she won't pull it away YET AGAIN just before he kicks it, I decide to waste some bandwidth and download Windows 7.
First off, you can't easily download Windows 7 in anything but Windows Internet Explorer. The Windows 7 download crashes Firefox. Next up, I have to load up my Windows Vista in Parallels on my Mac just so I can fire-up IE and download Windows 7. 3 hours later I have Windows 7 on a DVD and I am read to install.
Here is where my investment in Apple pays off and vindicates me. After three attempts to install Windows 7 which is interrupted 3 times with the installer crashing my computer, I finally couldn't boot the machine anymore. Just so you don't panic, I am not attempting to install Windows 7 on my Mac. I am installing Windows 7 on my crashed Vista computer. It was even a completely fresh installation, new partition on the hard drive and everything! To no avail could I get Windows 7 installed and running. What a piece of... crap!
Needless to say I decided immediately to sit down on my Mac and write out this blog. Ah, my beautiful, flawless and painless Mac. It runs, it plays, it works... alas it does not crash!
So Windows is no more. On the upside, I happened to burn the Windows 7 installer on a reWritable DVD so I didn't even waste the DVD. I am now about to install Kubuntu Linux on that PC and be done with it. Never again I tell you. Never again!
Last year I invested in my first mac ever. It was a macbook pro laptop and after much deliberation I finally got the guts up and pulled the trigger and forked over the bucks for a mac. They are a bit more expensive and I was worried about the cost of converting my software over to mac but I was ready. Here is why I went mac and how looking at Windows 7 made me fall in love with Apple all over again.
About every year I blow at least a week of my life formatting my PCs. Many people do this and they do it for a number of reasons: they like to start anew with a fresh system; they need their Windows system to perform well again and Windows performance seems to degrade over time; their computer crashes and they have to start all over. Now, I am a computer programmer and while you might imagine that means I tinker with my computer and tweak it to death causing it to die annually, I don't actually do that. I try to keep it very clean and yet each year Windows just seems to take a fatal nose-dive and I have to reinstall the operating system and all of my software again.
This whole effort of reinstalling means I lose time and as we all know time is money. In 2008 I had to reformat my system twice! Before you start thinking I own some sad old machine that should be retired, it is an HP AMD64 dual core machine with 6 GB of RAM and about 1 TB of hard drive space with dual digital monitors and nearly 1GB of video RAM, so I should be good to go. Needless to say I started doing the math. If the rumors were true about Apple computers being fairly maintenance free then I would save enough time each year to nearly purchase a new Mac computer annually rather than invest that time/money into fixing Microsoft Windows. So, starting with a laptop seemed to be the right next move toward a switch.
After co-existing with Windows Vista for over a year and having the Mac book pro laptop as long, the crash happened again. At this point I didn't need to do the math again. The main computer took the final crash and I was ready to go all-mac-all-the-time. So I bought a 24” iMac and never looked back... until the new buzz about Windows 7 came out!?
Windows 7: it loads quickly, no more Vista crashes, no more constant warning message interruptions, easier user interface, tons of usability enhancements... did I go to the iMac too quickly? Should I have been more patient?
Then I hear about the free Windows 7 Release Candidate downloadable from Microsoft. It is at this time that I fall in love with my Mac all over again.
Like Charlie Brown depending on Lucy to hold the football one more time in hopes that she won't pull it away YET AGAIN just before he kicks it, I decide to waste some bandwidth and download Windows 7.
First off, you can't easily download Windows 7 in anything but Windows Internet Explorer. The Windows 7 download crashes Firefox. Next up, I have to load up my Windows Vista in Parallels on my Mac just so I can fire-up IE and download Windows 7. 3 hours later I have Windows 7 on a DVD and I am read to install.
Here is where my investment in Apple pays off and vindicates me. After three attempts to install Windows 7 which is interrupted 3 times with the installer crashing my computer, I finally couldn't boot the machine anymore. Just so you don't panic, I am not attempting to install Windows 7 on my Mac. I am installing Windows 7 on my crashed Vista computer. It was even a completely fresh installation, new partition on the hard drive and everything! To no avail could I get Windows 7 installed and running. What a piece of... crap!
Needless to say I decided immediately to sit down on my Mac and write out this blog. Ah, my beautiful, flawless and painless Mac. It runs, it plays, it works... alas it does not crash!
So Windows is no more. On the upside, I happened to burn the Windows 7 installer on a reWritable DVD so I didn't even waste the DVD. I am now about to install Kubuntu Linux on that PC and be done with it. Never again I tell you. Never again!
Monday, October 6, 2008
My mac can fix anything
So as many of you may now know, I am recent convert from the Windows world to the mac world and so far so good. I have loaded it up with quite a bit of software and as well with parallels so I can run Vista inside OS X, and this seems to be working for me quite well. At this point I am having less of an excuse to even boot up my other computers since the mac seems to out-perform my other equipment (even though my other equipment is equal to it in power, and in some cases, like ram, is more equipt than the mac.)Even with all of these wonderful suprises, recently I came across a feature on the mac that completely floored me! I was checking my email and fiddling with the settings of the email list view to see what other sorting columns I could display and lo-and-behold there was the command to end all other commands. The Barack Obama of commands!
"Restore Natural Order"!
Never once under my Windows email solution did it offer to fix the state of the universe. I really need to get a hold of Congress and tell them that my mac can fix this whole economy thing. In a single click I can boost the paychecks of teachers, bring peace to the Middle East, put parents back in charge of their homes, reduce the influence of Hollywood on society and ensure that politicians be held to their word (or at least to the earliest version of their word.)
I am affraid to press the the command, because with great power comes great responsibility, and I am not sure that all of that change all at once would actually be well-received or even comfortable. But sometimes you have to do your duty and click that thing to make things right again. I've made up my mind. I am going to go ahead and press. Here we go!?
...ah....
I don't think anything changed. A few things got moved around a little bit, but my email is still in disarray, not to mention the economy and the Middle East. Actually, it "fixed" a bunch of stuff that wasn't really broken. Man! What a mess. I guess it ends up that this, like Obama, isn't the answer to these problems. Oh well. Ends up I will have to personally get involved if I want to straighten out the economy, the Middle East, or my email. What a disappointment. I thought for sure, if I just selected this option, stuff would be better. Hmmm?
Maybe I am wrong. Add a comment and tell me if your world got a whole lot better when I clicked the command?
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