Dilemma

Ah the dilemma: Gaming has been part of my entertainment since I first saw a computer in the early 80's. Perhaps i'm too old for video games, but are they worse than the junk on TV? I watch NO TV, Games are my entertainment. But i'm an OSX user, so how does that fit? A few games (like World Of Warcraft) run great on OSX, but most generally arent made for it. So I have a number of options:

1) Dual Boot -- thanks to the intel macs and decent graphics support, this is now an option, but still Laptops arent going to keep up with the technology needed for the latest games

2) Console -- XBOX360/PS3 are appealing, but i've been using Keyboard/Mouse for more than a decade and some game types like the MMORPGs arent supported. The ability to sell back games once you're done is nice and some game types arent available or as good on the PC (arcade racing etc)

3) Windows XP/Vista game machine -- this is what I have now. Its in the basement which is cold, but when used solely as a game machine its been ok. The HW is a couple years old now (Athlon 64, 6800GT card, 1GB memory) so it could use a refresh. It also needs to come upstairs, its just too cold down there. But then you have to do the normal windows system admin stuff that is just a pain. On OSX you spend maybe 5% of your time doing admin stuff, on Windows its more like 50% in my experience (i'm a tweaker so that doesnt help, but in OSX there's just no need).

So which way do I go? For now i'll keep the Windows thing limping along (perhaps with some hand-me-down upgrades) and we'll see what the ps3 looks like in the fall. The consoles are now in the PC price range and you can do a very nice upgrade to a PC for the cost of either leading console...

VZ Navigator

Ok, finally the apps are catching up with the technology. Verizon has
an App I just latched onto called VZ Navigator, works on my RazR V3c.
Its a handheld GPS. Fully featured, voice directions, maps, lookup
points of interest etc. And its always on you and in your pocket. Why
pay $2,000 to the car vendors for the option when this exists? It
works, the maps are good, the response is good. Its only a matter of
time before they give it more accuracy with cell phone tower
triangulation etc. Forget the privacy concerns, i'm no longer LOST!

Mac gripe

Don't get me wrong, I love the mac. But for a mutli-media computer
aimed at artists etc there is no sound recording app included with
OSX and the ones out there on the net are not free. Even Microsoft
provides a free audio (microphone is what I was looking for) capture
tool -- sure its crappy but for the basics it works. I just wanted to
send an audio note to my 7 year old and couldnt do it on the mac. At
least not for free...

Google Earth

Ok, if you haven't seen Google Earth yet (http://earth.google.com/)
you need to. Its one of the coolest things i've seen in a long time.

Traveling

Did I mention that I hate traveling?

Song Recognition

A while back someone told me about this service called 411Song
(411song.com). You dial 1-866-411-7664 from a cell phone, hold your
phone up to a speaker, and it figures out what the name of the song
is and who sings it and it text messages you back. Very cool.

The first one is free, the next ones are $0.99 each. Sort of
expensive when you can BUY the song for $0.99. They should team up
with iTunes and do a combined recognize/buy -- all for $0.99 -- after
all it will drive more sales anyway.

Worked flawlessly for the 2 I tried. But i'm cheap so I don't know if
i'll pay for more...

Games

Ok, so since I quit World of Warcraft I played FEAR and Call of Duty
2. At $50 each and about a week of play time (even with a busy life)
you begin to see the value of the MMORPGs. The only problem with them
is they don't evolve fast enough, they quickly get too big for the
companies to manage and you end up getting bored with them.

Another nice thing about World of Warcraft was that it supported the
Mac. The other ones out (top ones being Eve and Guild Wars right now)
don't support OSX. Hopefully with the intel macs things like that
will change. No reason to suffer a lousy OS just to play a good game...

For the record

For the record http://maps.google.com/ is cool. Especially the hybrid
mapping mode -- satellite pictures mixed with route information.

Slow mail on Mac

A possible fix for a slow Mail.app:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006013009291731

Not sure it made things faster but it did seem to rebuild the index
fine.

iPod Video

I got an iPod Video (60GB, white) for my birthday back in November.
The screen on it is awesome (but does scratch easy). I've been using
it to watch movies while on the exercise machine in the mornings at
the Gym. There's a good tutorial for ripping DVDs to the iPod for the
mac at: http://howto.diveintomark.org/ipod-dvd-ripping-guide/. Since
I never have time otherwise to watch movies and it takes my mind off
the pain it works well for me. It also helps that it stores ALL my
music etc.

Bye bye World of Warcraft

So I finally had enough of the Chinese Farmers and poor response by
the World of Warcraft (WoW) support people and nuked my account. I
had a level 60 pally with an Epic mount and a level 39 mage before I
called it quits. The final straw was a wait queue of 400 (51 minutes
esimated) before I could even login. WoW's response was "they've
optimized the number of servers for the number of subscribers they
have". Yeah right. You do the math: $14.95/month, 5 Million
subscribers. I think they could afford a few more computers and
someone who knows how to program a load balancing algorithm.

It was a huge time sink anyway. So whats been going on on this planet
in the last year??

Lexus Navigation hack

I have a 2003 RX300 and its annoyed me since I got it that I cant do
some operations on the NAV system while moving. It seems like a
random set of features are disabled but its not like they turned off
enough to make it totally non-distracting. And add that to having a
passenger that wants to use it in a totally safe way, the feature is
dumb. I'm looking into hardware hacks but in the meantime there's a
cool non-intrusive way to shut off that "safety feature":

When not moving, press menu, system option, then press top left
corner of the screen, bottom left corner, top left corner again,
bottom left corner again, then bottom right corner. This brings up a
special diag menu, press the override button and until you shut off
the car everything will always be enabled whether you're moving or
not. Sounds long but once you get used to it it goes fast. Seems to
work on most models of Lexus.

Its annoying that this hack can only be done when you're initially
not moving (i.e. if you start a long drive and then remember you want
to use it you have to stop first) but at least once you've done it
its good for the rest of the drive.

Spam

Its amazing, i'm even getting spam in my blog comments....

Hotspots

I can't wait for the day for the free wifi hotspots. Starbucks is a
good example, $4 coffees AND you have to pay for wireless access.
What a joke. The answer is a good cell phone (motorola v710 for me)
and a data connection through that.

Traveling with a Mac

Its a great machine for traveling with. iTunes on the plane,
bluetooth data connections via the cell phone (Motorola v710 on
Verizon), and the Etymotic Research ER6i Isolator headphones which
are nice and small and block the plane noise.

Street Atlas USA for the Mac?

Evidently Mac people dont like maps:

" Thank you for your interest in DeLorme and for your email. In
the past we supported the Macintosh platform, for nearly 3 years, but
the development costs exceeded the purchase habits of Mac users, and we
were forced to discontinue the program. It was a difficult business
decision that we had to make, but we are not a non-profit organization
and Mac sales were flat over that three year period.

If you have any further questions please call our Customer Service
team at 1-800-511-2459 and we will be happy to assist you. Thank you
again for your interest, and have a nice day!

Randy
DeLorme Customer Service
1-800-511-2459"

Wonder if they'll change their mind as the Mac popularity continues
to increase?

More Mac stuff

Another peeve on the mac is that there are some apps I like that don't exist (or poorly exist) for the mac:

1) MS Project -- I need this for work and nothing decent exists on the mac. There are a couple open source initiatives but they're far from capable for what I need. So i've resorted to Virtual PC and running it under there. Virtual PC is good if you need it, but i'd rather not have it at all.

2) I used to love Street Atlas USA on the PC, but it doesn't exist on the mac. While you can use MapQuest it requires you to be online and can be sluggish and doesn't have as many options. I liked being able to pull it up while on the road, do research etc and do it all at decent speeds. On the mac the only thing I found so far has been Route 66 USA which is a poor product. The speed is horrible and the UI is very cumbersome. I'd rather use a real atlas. While I did buy Route 66 USA, i've regretted it ever since.

Mac Issues

So now that thats through, here's a few nits on OSX right now:

1) Cisco VPN -- don't use the latest, use 4.6.04.0061. And then periodically that wont work, you need to do a:

 sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart

To get it to come alive again

2) Mighty Mouse -- I like the mouse but the buttons stop working which requires a reboot of the mac. After lots of googling and searching the Apple Tech Support forums I found that others are having the same issue. The answer appears to be shutting off the side buttons via the mouse preferences. Of course that sort of disables part of the reason you paid $50 for a $5 mouse (and USB at that).

3) Sleep/Display issues -- I use a PowerBook 15" and at work I use a Dell 19" monitor and at home I use an Apple 21" Cinema display. I've found that unless I unplug the monitors before putting the mac to sleep then when the mac comes back out of sleep it hangs with the spinning ball and only a reboot will get the mac back. Seems to be a driver bug, but just unplugging the monitor and letting the mac adjust before I close the lid works around this.

4) Quickbooks Pro 6 R2 -- When you enter new items in the checkbook register the "record" button doesnt light up. The workaround is to press "command-c" which will then light the record button. Would be nice if they fixed this BASIC problem. Seems Tiger caused it for them. Perhaps they're holding off on fixing it to force people to QuickBooks Pro 2005...

5) Xcode -- While Apple seems to imply that Xcode works for Java development (and i'm admittedly a novice Java developer) I spent hours trying to do something basic in Xcode -- I had 3 Java classes I wrote and wanted to use the Jakarta Commons CLI classes with my code and for the life of me I couldnt figure out how to do it. In the end I gave up and downloaded Eclipse and had it going in 5 mins literally. Apple needs to get real about Java development on the Mac or just point people to Eclipse.

a Mac Fan

In case you haven't guessed yet, i'm a Mac fan. I started using Apples back in 1980 with the original Apple II. My first view of a Mac was a Lisa when I worked at American Express Bank. I bought an original Mac 128 when they came out (still have it, signatures inside the case and all), and got a PowerMac when they came out around 1989 or so. Later on in my career I went over to the dark side when work started giving me free PC's at home. It saved on upgrades for many years and the Mac really wasnt a business machine to me at that point. After a dark 10 years I finally made it back to the Mac when my Unix/Linux work merged with my Management needs for Office apps. OSX was the perfect answer and i'm now using a work-provided PowerBook G4 15" which I love (although I like the format/size of my wifes PB G4 12" better...). One machine for home and work. Everything from playing World of Warcraft (Level 59 dwarf Paladin) to MS Office Apps, Virtual PC, Eclipse Java development etc.

Blogging client search update

Ok, so I found there's a number of ways to blog for free in OSX:

1) Email - my favorite. Blogger supports this via Settings->email->mail-to-blogger address.

2) Application - MacJournal -- freeware blog client that can post to Blogger

3) Dashboard Widget - Its basic but its easy to access and out of the way when you dont need it. 

And blogger is cool, it supports RSS feeds too: 

feed://themace.blogspot.com/atom.xml

So now i'm all setup for easy blogging.