Strange title, I know. That’s pretty much the events that surround this weekend — first the big release of Apple’s new operating system, the “Leopard” brand of OS X; and secondly an update about our house.

Leopard

Along with a few other blokes, I picked up the new release of Leopard this past Friday and went through the mostly uneventful upgrade. Although the DVD verification step took forever — long enough to shave my head, take a shower, and do a few other things around the house [and yes, I really did do those things while waiting for the DVD to verify itself] — the process of upgrading wasn’t painful at all…at least at the start of things.

The features that Apple boasted about — Spaces, Time Machine, the new Finder, and a number of other features — are pretty nice. I do have to say, that with all the hype that has been going on apple.com over the past several months, I just wasn’t as impressed as I thought I might be.

Cover Flow
I’ve given Cover Flow a try and have to say that for photos, it’s nice. It’s a nice way to breeze through a voluminous array of photos to find the right one — probably the same for some other files as well. But what kinda trips me up about it is the file navigation below it. It’s the typical expand/contract, accordion-style directory structure browsing. Personally, I’ve come to like the paned method of sifting through deep layers of folders. It just seems to work quicker for me. I’d love to see them give you options of customizing the Cover Flow directory browsing. Give me more options. I like options.

In addition, Quick Look (a feature that allows you to browse your documents) ought to have a feature that allows you to “quick look” through a folder in Cover Flow. Currently it doesn’t offer that sort of feature.

The Desktop
…is pretty nice, but nothing dramatic has changed. I don’t really care for the fanned out display, especially when you have a ton of things to fan through — and you can’t. What’d be slick is being able to scroll through that fan with your mouse scroller ball. Can we say “feature request?”

Time Machine
Haven’t used it. Can’t imagine using it until it’s too late. But it’s enabled anyway.

Mail
I tried it in tandem with Gmail’s IMAP capability that they just announced and hated it. It labeled my deleted item instead of just deleting them or throwing them into the trash folder. Plus, I’ve become accustomed to doing things directly within Gmail and its way of displaying things. I can’t say that I’ll ever go back to using a traditional mail application since I’ve started using Gmail.

Because I have volumes of mail in my inbox (over 2000 messages), it was a burden to have Mail sync up with all that mail. Not to mention I just didn’t care for the interface within the conversation view of things. I much prefer Gmail’s way of formatting conversations, allowing me to expand and contract instances in a conversation, rather than having to do all this double-clicking nonsense. Sorry Mail lovers…I just have no love for it.

iChat
Ewww. After having used Adium for the past several months, I can’t imagine using iChat instead. The bubble formatting of discussions is annoying, and the interface isn’t all that customizable. I do like that they support Gtalk now, but until they open it up to Yahoo and MSN protocols AND give me some chat formatting options OTHER than the annoying bubbles, I’m sticking with Adium.

Spaces
A nice idea, and I’m glad they integrated it. However (why am I starting to sound like I didn’t care for the Leopard upgrade?), if I’m working in one space and I have an IM notification in another, I can’t get notified in any of my spaces except the one that has the IM client running in it. A small detail, I know, but a big enough deal. But the ease of customizing your various spaces is nice. I’ll give them props for that. But for now, I’m just not THAT big of a multi-tasker yet to justify the need for more than one desktop space…yet.

Safari
One word…Firefox. I use it and only use Safari if I have to.

I haven’t used Boot Camp or the parental controls yet, so I can’t speak to those things.

On the whole, Leopard’s nice and has a few nice features and changes, but I’m just not so sure that I’m going to rush right out the next time Apple comes out with an upgrade to the OS. Leopard is worth waiting for the next update release.

OH…and I’ll have you know that you have to re-set up your printers, and my M-Audio MIDIMAN USB MIDI device doesn’t work now for whatever reason. I tried the latest drivers and it’s not working.

House stuff

Just a quick update on our house situation…we’re taking it off the market because it just hasn’t been getting any action; and we want to pay off our 20% mortgage before buying again. The irony is that this weekend we’ve had three requests for showings… even AFTER telling the real estate company that we want to pull our house off the market.

Filed under: All Things Apple, Applications, General, Home Ownership
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Careerbuilder.com has a new website out there (er, it’s probably been out for awhile) that allows you to send people “monk-e-mails” — customizing a monkey with some various audio capabilities, including text-to-speech.

Of course the messages are not private (Careerbuilder says so), so any snooping with the ID value gives you other messages people threw together.

To make my poking around a bit more productive (without having to type in ID numbers), I put together a little page that does the magic for me. Introducing: MonkeySnoop!

Filed under: General, JavaScript, Websites
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Last Thursday I was watching “The Office” and the lead character Michael walks into his office and yells out “I.. Declare…. BANKRUPTCY!” One of his subordinates pulls him aside and says, “Michael, you can’t just say ‘I declare bankruptcy’ and suddenly you’re bankrupt.”

Of course I had a moment when I thought, “ya know, Michael needs Dave Ramsey”…and then I thought… wait, how did Dave Ramsey make his way into my mindscape during TV time. So I had to tell Dave Ramsey that.

…and my e-mail was read on the air…

Funny.

Filed under: Uncategorized
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It was definitely a strange Sunday. I slept in with Natalie until around 11:45 and just had to get up at that point — she still slept on from her long night shift. I got up for awhile, but then a killer headache, nausea, and small fever came on and rendered me useless for nearly five hours or so — even haven taken four Excedrin. But by about 8:00 I was feeling a bit better (and doped up with caffeine from the Excedrin).

Armed with a donation of new instruments from a good friend, I decided to spend a little time with GarageBand this evening and try out some of the instruments. And because I don’t have the capacity to put an expression pedal on my cheap-bought-off-craigslist-for-$25-Yamaha keyboard, I know that some of the instruments are invariably going to be difficult to play without them sounding like they came from a keyboard. But I digress.

I am a sucker for emotional [I can't believe it, but I almost typed "e-motional"... I think I should trademark that.], orchestral tunes, especially when you bring in the organ for dramatic effect. It really has a way of lifting up my spirits sometimes — inspirational.

So I started out with GarageBand’s Orchestral Romantic Organ and slowly built on various instruments to build some different colors along the way. Download tonight’s little experiment. (5.5 MB, 3:58, 192 kbps)

With the tune I developed this evening, it’s lit a flame inside to try and assemble the liturgically-influenced album I’ve been thinking about inside. I’m not sure if it will be an instrumental or with words (I’m leaning towards a little bit of both in it), but since I’m not really tied into any church at the moment (and am a bit “hungry” from my isolation from the Orthodox), so this may be my temporary means of communing with God — through writing a few songs of inspiration and reflection in remembrance of Him.

Which this leads to a whole different topic that I wrestle with.

(more…)

Filed under: Music, Orthodoxy, Recording, Spirituality
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Minesweeper: the movie

Filed under: Gaming, General
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Hey kids. I’ve got a few software titles (for PC), some pro audio hardware, and a fully automatic 35mm SLR up for auction on eBay. Have a look.

Filed under: General
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I realize that heading could lead virtually anywhere if you let your imagination run amok. In this case, if your imagination ran even just a tiny bit, you probably wouldn’t be that far off — anatomically speaking.

This was the nature of my conversation with my friend Jeff and Jamison after lunch, er moreso with Jeff. I think Jamison sorta tuned this one out watching the passing cars on Selby Avenue. The subject? Squatting. It was toilet talk at its, uh, best — discussing the reality and requirements of rest room relief.

While most of us in North America and Europe have the luxury of flushing toilets and toilet paper, much of the rest of the world is stuck with a porcelain hole in the floor, a bowl of water with a cup, and your left hand. To the inexperienced globe trekker, being confronted with such circumstances could be quite intimidating. I know it’d be so for me. Even when I’ve gone back-packing or traveled to remote areas in eastern Europe, I brought toilet paper with me. But I’ve never done the hand thing.

Well Jamison enlightened me with this straight-talking article on how to use a squat toilet. The language is pretty frank, so if you’ve a delicate veneer between you and the real world, you may want to consider sticking to your life of blissful ignorance and stay within the confines of your toilet-using community. But seriously, it’s pretty insightful and does dispel some of the fears that one might have with wiping your bum with your hand — namely the cleanliness aspect. Quite to the contrary, if you do it the way they outline, your bum actually ends up being cleaner.

The stuff we talk about at lunch sometimes.

For further reading, you could always pick up the book How to Shit Around the World by Jane Wilson-Howarth. I find it funny, though, that the web URL has the text “How-Shit-Around-World-Travelers.” That made me laugh!

Filed under: General
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