Category: Computer

.Mac web galleries

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I’ve been playing with the new computer, and it’s pretty cool and all; but I was looking forward to playing with the new iLife apps just as much. Here’s a few quick albums I threw together, including some sentimental favorites from a trip to Sanibel Island (FL) ten years ago.

http://gallery.mac.com/johnkauffman#gallery
Sanibel Sunset

I’m just getting started, but I’d really like to find a simple way to embed individual web gallery images in a WordPress blog. Maybe I should save a little fun for next weekend.

Decisions

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The first think I thought when I saw the new iMacs was, “oh that looks cool.” The second thing I thought was, “that keyboard might take some getting used to.”

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Think calculator with large buttons. There’s not a lot of travel to the keys, and they’re pretty sensitive, so your fingers can really glide over the keys with little effort. However, I already miss contoured keys. I think I rely on the feedback the touch of a contoured key gives when my fingers don’t strike the center. Even the keys on my iBook and PowerBook keyboards aren’t flat like the iMac keys. It’s not bad, but the real test will be when I do some work with it. Maybe I’ll try plugging it into the Dell at the office and give it a work out for the day. (This kind of thing qualifies as fun around here.)

As someone who’s never discarded an old computer (or its peripherals), I’ve got plenty of keyboards to choose from if this one doesn’t pan out. I’ve got a cordless Logitech keyboard that’s itching for more use.

The time is now

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The new iMac

Friends, have I got news for you. A “girl’s shopping day” turned out in my favor, due to the efforts a friend of Cheryl’s. After a fair bit of arm twisting, Cheryl was convinced to surprise me with a new 20 inch iMac and iPod Nano yesterday evening. (My birthday is right around the corner.) It was quite a surprise… when I received the email from the Apple Store containing the receipt… three hours before they got home.

I thought I might feign surprise when Cheryl got home, but I’m a terrible actor. Then she asked me straight up: “are you surprised?” The correct answer would have been an enthusiastic “yes,” but I couldn’t bring myself to lie under direct examination. Now I feel like a heel… albeit one with a great new computer.

Love is in the air.

Apples everywhere

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I am not a zealot. Really. I recognize there’s such a thing as personal preference. There was even one time when I recommended a Windows PC (over a Mac) to someone. As it happens, that person has regretted taking my advice ever since, but I digress. Trapped in an office filled with Michael Dell’s evil spawn, I kid with my office mates about our choice of computers, but it’s all good natured. The guy next door threatened to stick an apple sticker on my (office) door, and I excitedly asked him if he had two (one for my car). To this day I’ve got that same, tacky red apple sticker on my door… my badge of honor.

I don’t want to convert the world to the Mac OS, but sometimes I buy into a little of the doom and gloom… the stories of Apple’s demise. I wouldn’t mind if more people shared my affinity for Apple and their wares, if for no other reason that it makes it more likely they’ll stay in business, and keep making the products I like. As I’ve noted before, my dad had one of the original Macs, and still has that first issue of Macworld magazine (he was a subscriber until the mid 90’s, when the internet became a better source). I only mention this because I’ve been around during times of feast and famine. And yes, I owned a Performa.

Even though Apple has put those dark days far behind them, the news I read on my feed reader still took me by surprise:

Apple laptops grab 17.6% share – Mac – Macworld UK

According to NPD, Apple’s retail laptop market share for June 2007 was 17.6 per cent, a 2.2 per cent increase over the same period last year when Apple posted a 15.4 per cent market share.

I spent my impressionable years during that time when Apple’s market share (in terms of sales, not installed user base) was doing really well to be above 3 percent. Seventeen percent of the laptop market blows my mind.

My blogging past

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What’s more exciting that a new software release? Well… o.k., lots of things are. Still, a good time can be had on a Sunday morning, cradling a cup of coffee, with a software install running on your favorite Mac. Imagine the Sunday news shows on in the background, the kids playing in the family room with the makeshift tent you helped them build out of linens, pillows and seat cushions; and all the while looking forward to seeing what new features are waiting to be unpacked from their cocoon of zeros and ones.

Today (darn near tomorrow already) I saw that Movable Type v4 was released. For about 15 minutes… right up to when I typed that third period a few keystrokes back, I felt a twinge of regret for shutting down the home web server. Yeah, those were the days. I can still hear the old iBook churning away under the desk in the family room (hiding it’s broken hinge in shame). I spent a fair chunk of my discretionary time on server stuff.

I guess I’m not immune to the lure of romanticizing the past. I’m using WordPress now precisely because of all that time I spent trying to get MySQL configured for a previous Movable Type upgrade.

Yep, I’m over it now.

A browser for the weekend

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I’ve been playing around with Shiira this weekend, a Mac browser with a few interesting features. As an alternative to tabs, you can have what looks like a drawer of screen previews at the bottom of the page. You can also have a floating, black, partially transparent bookmarks window, which is pretty cool on a widescreen setup.

I’m not sure any browser is close to unseating Safari as my primary, but Shiira may fit right in with Firefox as one of my “mood browsers.”

Tech check

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For a writer wanna-be, I’m hopelessly tethered to random infusions of rhyme, alliteration, and odd word pairings. But that’s not really what I wanted to say today; I distracted myself with a bout of whimsy following the title conception phase of this entry.

It was another fit of whimsy which prompted my fingers to grace the keyboard of the TAM this morning (I hear you, enough with the TAM already!). I was holding in my hands a piece of technological marvel: a 2 GB SD card, stamped out in mass quantities, and sold for 20 bucks on the open market. That’s just ridiculous… indistinguishable from magic just 18 years ago… when I was tooling around with my mark-one Mac at UF (which came with less RAM than a floppy and no hard drive). Now a 2 GB SD card serves to double the size of the TAM’s hard drive – an uber portable mechanism to transfer files between the home iTunes library and the TAM.

It’s important to note that OS9, and the versions of iTunes that will run on my little piece of Apple history, are not compatible with my mark-four iPod… thus the SD card and USB card reader – which I use anyway for my Palm T/X and my LG cell phone.

Damn I need me an iPhone.

I’m sure there are those of you out there who’ve probably worked on home computers (the predecessor to the mid-90’s “personal computer”) with much less processing punch than my old Mac. Heck, I remember my dad showing me some basic… well, BASIC… on our state of the art TRS-80 (of Tandy / Radio Shack fame). That was way back before even “home computers,” when we just had “microcomputers” (“micro” because they didn’t take up a room).

Sometimes I think I’m just easily impressed.

When your computer really is out to get you, too…

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I don’t mean to make you jealous, but I have to talk about the TAM again (Twentieth Anniversary Mac). Take comfort, dear readers… this brief spell of apparent gloating will soon be tempered…

The wife and kids are taking a vacation from me. Well, that’s not really true (not completely anyway). We were supposed to take a grand tour of New England… our ancestral & childhood home… about a month ago. These plans were of course thwarted by my bout of cellular rebellion (be sure to think biology, not telephone).

Now I’m back at work, well on my way to recovery, and more than able to take care of myself… see where this is leading? Last night I made a point of spending every last moment I could with the kids… saving up every little bit of love, like a squirrel gathering nuts for winter. This morning I woke up the kids before leaving for work to say goodbye for a week.

This is where the TAM comes in.

My daily work routine involves a little refrigeration for the perishables, powering up my collection of electronics (my work issued Dell – the Dark Knight of Computing), and the TAM (it’s dark beige bearing a passing resemblance to Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi), and getting jiggy with my iTunes collection.

(Can you spot me some slack in my attempt for urban hip?)

The first song that came up on random play was “Walking in My Shoes,” by Depeche Mode… a college era favorite… and not terribly helpful for my current state of mind. The second song was “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” by U2… not a lot better, but not any worse. I heard a familiar sound clip next, and before the first note was played I knew what was coming: “Wish You Were Here,” by Pink Floyd. Good grief, how long was this going to keep up? Apparently at least one song longer… “With or Without You,” by U2, was next. I wondered if the TAM was going to become animate and strangle me with the keyboard cord.

As I began to type this entry, I knew the TAM just plain didn’t like me this morning… “American Idiot” (Green Day) came up next.

I know this question has been answered, but why does commercially successful art so often deal with pain? I can understand why a lot of art deals with pain… it’s a way for the artist to deal with it. But successful art? I thought we were a bunch of sappy, good for nothing, “Hollywood ending” types with the emotional depth of a gerbil on speed. (That last part may not make a lot of sense, but it was fun to write.)

That last paragraph is just beging me to go on, but I’ve got nothing more to say about that.

Good Taste

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I just wanted to close out this first evening in the hospital by congratulating a number of you on your exceedingly good taste in computers. The picture of my 20th Anniversary Mac got more views on Flickr in the first week than any of my other pictures.

Given the poorly concealed looks of contempt from our Windows network administrator at work, it’s nice to see some evidence that there are those out there who share my appreciation of Apple and their wares.