days of the week

J: Why is Sunday called Sunday? Is it because we worship Jesus, and he's the Son of God?

J: Then why is Monday the first day of the week?

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lyrically understood

T: (singing, loudly)

with my mou-----------th

will I make kno----------wn

I face the mess, I face the mess!

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cool...

well, with my new Core2Duo MacBook Pro, at least Flock sure is a lot zippier. I haven't really tested anything serious out yet, just been doing basic setting up, transferring of files and installing applications. I installed Lightroom but I haven't set up my library yet, so there's no pictures to play with. I'll be doing some work with Nuendo/Cubase SX soon, so I'll let you know how that goes. And yes, I installed Windows XP so I could work with Nuendo... I've been busy, no time to play, I guess.

Back to Flock. Flock used to take a good 10 seconds to open a new window, which was really annoying when you clicked on a link and nothing happened for 10 seconds. Now it opens a new window in under a second. Much more useable! :) I love Flock for blogging, because it gives me a nice offline blog editor, and works with blogger and wordpress.

I thought I'd share a bunch of applications that I downloaded in the course of setting up my new computer. Maybe you'll find some of them usefull. They are in no particular order, but are mostly web tools or media tools, or just cool stuff. Go searching for them at macupdate.com, they have tons of stuff. I like it better than VersionTracker. It's just nicer. I dunno.

• Adium
• Books 3.0
  
• Bootcamp
• bpmWidget
• Carbon Copy Cloner
• Cyberduck
• flock
• FontExplorerX
  
• Google Earth
• Growl
• iSquint
• iStat pro
• MediaFork
• MenuMeters
• OnyX
• Quicksilver
• SilverKeeper from LaCIe
• Skype
• Shades
  
• TextWrangler
• Vienna
• VLC
• Flip4Mac Windows Media Components

I'm using Shades right now, actually, because it's late and I'm typing in bed, and N is asleep. It keeps the brightness of the screen down to a more comfortable level. And cool, my keys are backlit! woo hoo! :)

technorati tags:Macbook, Pro, software, free, Mac, OSX, flock, fast

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surprise! new toy!

well, I gone an done it now. I went out and bought a MacBook Pro. Kudos to Coach for getting me a nice deal... :) I justify it to myself by saying that I have a new contract coming up for steady work, and it will cover the cost... and I NEED it for the job, so... yeah... ok, honey?

The first thing I did? After signing in and choosing my username, I shut it down and put on my protective film from www.bestskinsever.com. Thanks megs for the tip. I thought, well, this is as fingerprint and dust free as it's ever going to be, so I should just stay up late and put the skins on. It's kind of like putting on automotive window tinting, if you've ever done that. You get the film wet with soapy water, apply it, and then squeeze out any air bubbles until it's nice and smooth. Then you let it dry. I was a little apprehensive about putting something wet on my computer, but it's only a thin film and it dries pretty quick. I had a couple of towels around just in case to quickly dry up any excess liquid. I did the palm rest and the bottom. I'm not sure if I'm going to do the top, because I have a feeling that the apple will cause unsightly bubbles (it's slightly raised). I know, I'm anal.

There remains a few pieces for the battery, the battery latch area, and the trackpad button. There's a piece for the trackpad too, but I don't think you're supposed to use it. It would be hard to slide your finger along the trackpad with plastic film over it, don't you think?

Anyway, here we go again with new toy setup addiction. Maybe I can do some fiddling with it while I'm at work tomorrow... hmmm.... :)

T and trains

one of the things I love

... about Mac is the ability to make multiple users. Now I know, Windows can do this too, I'm not here to bash XP today. But with my recent iBook failure (I got the data off, but it won't boot up now, even with the Heinz bottle...) I moved to a temporary Powerbook graciously lent to me by N & E while they are away on vacation. So I simply set up a new user account, set up my .Mac information, synced my address book and calendar, and I had all the information I needed right there on this new computer. I'm so glad I turned on .Mac sync on the iBook set to "Daily". I realize that I rely on my address book and iCal a lot, so it only makes sense to keep it synced to the main .Mac server. Hey, I'm paying for this service, I might as well use it as much as possible, right? If it saves my bacon in case of a hardware failure, then at least the pain of migrating to a new machine is lessened somewhat. If you don't have .Mac, a lot of this kind of functionality could be achieved by Google Calendar, Contacts, and so forth. I've always been an advocate of a web based email address, rather than one provided by your ISP, since I'm always changing ISP's, but tired of changing emails. What I like about offline email tools and offline calendars is that, well, they can be used offline.

This is becoming less and less of an issue, at least in major urban centres. There's internet access pretty much everywhere. Anyone used the Toronto Hydro One Zone yet? It's still free for a few more months. Just enough time to get used to it, and then miss it enough to sign on when it's no longer free. What a great business model! Make yourself indispensable. I still haven't gotten used to Toronto Hydro being a telecom company. My dad worked for Ontario Hydro before it became Ontario Power Generation, or Hydro One, or whatever it is now... :) Aren't these companies in the business of electricity? When did they start dipping into fiber optics and networks? Ah well, it's all the same thing now, isn't it.

Wow, this was my most rambling post ever, I think.

breakfast table conversations

J: Why did Jesus die?

E: Just a minute.

J: What?

E: I'm writing an email, just a minute.

J: O-kay. It'll just be a second.

J: (answering her own question) To save us from our sins?

E: Right, to save us from our sin.

J: Not only Jesus died, in the story, two other people died with him. Two robbers.

E: Yes. But they died because they had done something wrong, they were robbers. But Jesus died not because he did anything wrong.

J: He died to save us from our sin.

E: Right, and if we believe in him, and follow him, we are saved.

J: Does he have to die again?

E: No just once, for all time.

J: I think he died because he knew we didn't want to die.

E: Yeah, if we believe in him and follow him, we are saved, right? And we go to heaven.

J: Right.

J: Dad?

E: Mmmm?

J: I don't want any more toast. I'm full.

what does it mean

If your child is writing words in mirror writing, ie. backwards and reversed, what does that mean? J will do this occasionally, without noticing. When you ask her, she'll go, "Oh yeah. Oops." and kind of laugh and shrug. Today at a friend's house she arranged alphabet magnets into her name, but again, in mirror mode. Save for the J, it's possible because the capital letters that make up her name will be in mirror mode if you rotate them 180°. (Try it, you'll see what I mean.)

Should I be worried about dyslexia? Or is this just an active mind at work?

i succumbed ...

... to the power of social networking. I joined VIRB, the latest social network to come along after myspace and facebook. It just came out of beta last week, so I signed up.

So far it's been cool. Today Chris Tomlin added me as a friend... how bizarre!

Anyway, check out my profile!

technorati tags:social, network, virb

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my tale of woe

My iBook died yesterday. It was working fine, we set it down, came back to it, and the screen was black. Tried to restart it, and it came on with the fan running full blast, and no startup chime. Uh oh. Tried a few basic diagnostics, but nothing worked. Everything ended up with about 20 seconds of working time, and then poof! Black screen.

Being Saturday, I didn't have much time to figure it out until the evening. It turns out it's the infamous iBook G4 logic board "issue", which involves a loose connector on the graphics processor. You can get the machine to work by applying pressure on the case, just under the 'option' key, on the palm rest. Here's what I used to keep the pressure on while I did an emergency backup of all the data... good ol' Heinz!

giddy, positively giddy

I'm such a geek, but I just discovered I can send contacts from Address Book to my cell phone via Bluetooth. This is awesome. Now I don't have to enter people's phone numbers and names using the phone... I wish I had figured this out sooner! :) w00t! Happy nonetheless!

week 1 of my new phone odyssey

There's nothing like spending a little time with something (or someone) to really get to know their personality and little quirks.

Quirks about my phone:

• picky about memory cards - apparently, only Kingston and some other brand work with my phone. I only discovered this after I bought one of the non-working brands and found that, surprise, it doesn't work. A quick Google search would have saved me the hassle, but who would have thought that it would be so fussy?
• features locked - Telus has kindly locked out the ability to set your own mp3, AAC and midi files as ringtones or alerts. Try to do it and it will give you a warning. So you can play the files, so I can listen to music and podcasts, but I can't set Diana Krall or Chris Tomlin as a ringtone unless I buy it from the Telus store. Nice. (There's a workaround involving a USB connector and some hacking software called Diego, but it's only for PC and I can't be bothered... yet...)

I'm really excited about bluetooth, though. I'm looking for a handsfree headset thing now... I think it really sad what it says about me, but one of the factors in getting a bluetooth headset is that I won't have to touch the phone as much, and so it won't get scratched or fingerprints all over it... oh no... i've turned into one of THOSE people... aaaaaaaaaaaah!!

does anyone who designs cell phones...

... actually work in a professional environment? Because if they did, they'd realize that a billion musical ringtones and only ONE NORMAL RING doesn't cut it!! Fiesta? Nocturnal? Espionage? Come on...

Seriously, I just want my cell phone to ring like a phone. Call me old fashioned. Call me grumpy. Call me "concerned with maintaining a certain level of professionalism". On my new phone (Nokia 6265i) there's only one "real" ringtone, condescendingly called "Agency", and while it's a real ring, I don't care for it.

This is a call... for help!

day 2 with my new phone

So I've had a day to play with my new phone and so far, i like it.

• The screen is big, bright, and has a wide viewing angle.
• the UI is pretty easy to use, and resonably customizable
• 'meeting' mode is genius: beep once when a call comes in, and that's all
• the sliding keypad is cool (when J saw it she said, "Ooooh, cool!")

Some things that I could live without:

• the form factor makes it difficult for me to hold the phone one-handed and punch the numbers with my thumb. Not impossible, just a little awkward.
• fingerprints...
• putting my finger over the camera lens part
• having to buy an adapter to utilize the MP3 feature

This last 'gotcha' is kind of annoying. I was hoping to use the phone as a MP3 player, but it seems I can't just plug in a pair of headphones and start listening to tunes and podcasts. I have to buy another plug in accessory in order to enable this function. It's something they don't tell you when you read the description on the box.

Anyway, I will have to go find an audio adapter at Pac Mall, maybe. And get some miniSD memory too, since it's practically the only way you can get MP3's on the phone. Definitely NOT ready to go out of the box. Very much unlike what the iPhone experience will be, I'm sure... :)

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