Playing with the Dashboard
May 26, 2008 by David Alison
Filed under Parallel Desktops
Up to this point in time I've kind of avoided the Dashboard on my Mac. Having had bad memories of the Active Desktop in previous versions of Windows I've just avoided the genre. I played around with Mac's Dashboard a little last night and found it to be pretty cool though, making me rethink whether or not this is something I want to make part of my daily routine.
The number of widgets available from Apple for the Mac Dashboard is simply staggering. Since the widgets can be built really easily using Dashcode, Apple's development tool for these widgets, it's just painfully simple to create a Dashboard widget. The cool part is that you don't even need to use Dashcode to create a nice little Dashboard widget - you can just grab what you want directly from Safari.
Up in the Safari toolbar is the little scissors icon that allows you to select a chunk of your current web page and simply make a Dashboard control out of it. I've only just started playing with it but any site you visit frequently that has an RSS feed would be a good candidate for a Dashboard widget. It's so simple it's ridiculous.
So this morning as I was writing up this entry and I fired up Dashcode (needs to be installed from your original Mac OS X CDs or downloaded from Apple). I started playing around and before I knew it I had created a Dashboard Widget for my blog. You can check it out here: David Alison's Blog Widget. It's not much but also took me all of about 20 minutes to produce, and that was from fumbling around trying to figure out the UI for Dashcode.
Here's what the actual widget looks like:
It really is that easy. If you find yourself looking to express yourself on the Dashboard try out Dashcode - I have a feeling it's going to contribute to how I deliver my next product.
So here's a question for all of you: Do you use the Dashboard? If so, is there a "gotta have" widget you really use all the time?
When Spotlight stops spotting files
May 26, 2008 by David Alison
Filed under Parallel Desktops
I have become a Spotlight addict ever since my friend Dylan recommended that I use it. So it was with some dismay that I fired it up on my MacBook and suddenly it could not find some of my key applications.
I tried searching the interwebs and all I could come up with was several recommendations that I try removing and re-adding folders from Spotlight. None of that seemed to work for me.
In the end I decided to do a full reindex of Spotlight, which can take quite a while. In the case of my MacBook with a 320G drive (197G in use) it takes nearly an hour. The machine is perfectly useable during that time, except that you can't use Spotlight until it's complete.
If you need to do the reindex simple open a terminal window and plug in the following command:
sudo mdutil -E /
Once that kicks off (you'll need the administrator's password) you can close the terminal window and continue working, though the CPU on my MacBook was pretty busy for a while.
When it finally did come back Spotlight could again find everything. If you get the situation where Spotlight can't find some files try these suggestions first. If that fails then ensuring you have all of your Spotlight folders properly selected (Preferences / Spotlight) and then performing the reindex above will likely fix the problem.
You can also see the progress of the indexing by placing your mouse over the Spotlight icon to get a reading of the percent complete on the indexing. Thanks to MacWorld for highlighting that little gem.
Desktop Theatre Sc 13: Conga Line
May 26, 2008 by Bradley W. Lewis
Filed under Desktop Theatre
The Tao of I. T. Al # 17
May 23, 2008 by Aikido Al
Filed under The Tao of I. T. Al
Optimizing the dual monitor environment for the Mac Pro
May 23, 2008 by David Alison
Filed under Parallel Desktops
Now that I've had the Mac Pro for a little over two full days I'm finding it a joy to work with. It's very fast and quiet and amplifies the Mac experience that started for me on the little MacBook. I have VMware Fusion up and running on it and most of my development environment in there and spent a big part of yesterday in Visual Studio writing code. Here's is what appears to work best for me:
Even with the dual monitors and an effective 3200x1200 resolution I still love using Spaces. Activating that through either the mouse or keyboard and swiftly navigating between spaces is now second nature to me. In Windows I always used Alt-Tab to switch between applications; while I occasionally use Command-Tab to do that on my Mac it's usually only to toggle back and forth between two applications quickly.
If you look at the image above you'll see that I've got 6 spaces to work with. I'm still tweaking that but I had a tendency on the MacBook to keep specific apps in certain Spaces and I'm continuing to do that with the Mac Pro.
Setting up VMware Fusion and Windows XP
At the bottom left is the Space I have dedicated to VMware Fusion and Windows XP. Fusion allows you to operate in one of three modes: Full Screen, Unity and in a window. The window view places your XP instance into a resizable window that lets XP think it's in a monitor of that size, which means if you resize the window to 640x480 then XP thinks it's operating on a 640x480 sized display.
Unity mode, which is really interesting, places the applications from your Windows XP instance directly into your Mac environment. I tried playing with it and didn't care for it as much as I thought I would. There are a couple of little UI artifacts on the applications I tried running and it just seems odd having older Windows XP style windows sitting in OS X. It feels like being in a brand new car but looking down at the stereo controls and finding something that came out of a 6 year old car. Well, maybe not quite like that but it does feel odd.
I decided that Full Screen worked best for me. The only problem with it is that when you switch to that mode your Mac menu quickly auto-hides up to the top of the window. I like having my Mac's menu visible because that's where my iStat monitors are and I like to occasionally scan the CPU to see what's up. Since Full Screen mode for VMware Fusion only takes up one screen I decided to try placing VMWare Fusion in the second monitor. Here's what it looks like:
Now I still have access to my Mac's menu bar even though I'm in Windows XP in full screen mode, making iStat visible at all times. I'm still spending time tweaking this but it's starting to settle into this configuration.
One Quick Question for Everyone
My friend Bradley is a heavy duty Quicken user and has been really disappointed with the Quicken version for Mac. He is down to only a couple of applications that he continues to depend on Windows for and Quicken is one of them. Can anyone recommend a decent replacement for it that is native to Mac? I'd personally like to find something as well, ideally one that interfaces well with my bank and credit card providers. I've spent zero time looking but have gotten such great tips from people here I'm hoping someone has a good recommendation.
Bagua9.com
May 22, 2008 by madBADcat
Filed under Graphics, The Not-So-Daily Edition, Workflow
Bagua9.com is a retail store in Miami.
At this writing this site is still under development. Delaying the launch because of lack of content didn’t seem right- the initial purpose of the site is to direct their customers to their new location. Inspired by Theme Shaper’s Launch Pad Theme, I created a splash page by taking advantage of Wordpress’ option to choose what displays as the front page. Read more
A Mac Pro is a Force to be reckoned with
May 22, 2008 by David Alison
Filed under Parallel Desktops
For those that follow this blog regularly you know that yesterday I went out and bought a Mac Pro to compliment the MacBook that started my adventures into the Mac world after spending the last 24 years in the DOS/Windows camp.
I won't go into too much detail here because my first day post with the MacBook and subsequent posts leading up to this one make it pretty clear that I have been impressed enough to actually switch to Mac. But didn't I switch to Mac back when I bought my MacBook? No, not really. I was still actively using my Windows machine on a daily basis because it's where my development work gets done. I just constantly found myself wanting to spend time on my MacBook. It was new and interesting and even though I've had a couple of stumbling blocks early on I was just drawn to the machine. OS X is a deceptively powerful OS, one that combines a nice simple interface for novice users with incredible flexibility for people that want to dig in just a little. It seemed like every day I found some cool new feature within OS X which is why writing this blog has actually been pretty darn easy.
There were just a couple of things that frustrated me with my MacBook - and they were simply because I was trying to make a small, highly portable machine perform heavy duty desktop tasks. Working with the screen on the MacBook just didn't provide the kind of real estate I needed; even with a 320GB hard drive added in I was limited in disk space and I really need more than just 2 USB ports if this is going to be my primary machine. I love it as a travel system though - I was just ready to replace my Windows desktop with a Mac and really make the switch.
My earlier experiments with VMware Fusion had gone really well and I was confident that I could actually switch completely to Mac now and simply run Windows inside a VM for my development work. I considered the iMac but ultimately decided on a Mac Pro. I already had some beautiful monitors in the dual Samsung SyncMaster 204Bs and I love the idea of running Fusion on an 8 core system. The price of the Mac Pro seemed a bit steep but in reality I ended up paying less than I did for my state of the art XP rig just over a year ago.
Buying Refurbished
I had mentioned on this blog several times that I was ready to go "all in" and get a Mac Pro and several folks recommended that I should consider buying refurbished directly from Apple instead of buying new. The comments I received were that the refurbished machines were just like buying new except that they 1) cannot be customized from Apple and 2) come in rather plain looking cardboard boxes.
Here's what mine looked like when it arrived yesterday:
Sure, it wasn't the pristine packaging you get with a new Apple system. Ok, that was a non-issue for me. According to Apple they take in machines that are returned for a variety of different reasons and then go through an exhaustive set of tests to recondition the product for resale. What I found inside the box was what appeared to be a brand new machine. The only flaw I could find was a tiny little nick at the top edge of the keyboard. That was it. Going this route saved me $400.
The Mac Pro Main System
When you buy a Mac Pro you are buying a nearly complete system; the only thing you really need to purchase is a monitor, though external speakers are also recommended. When I pulled out the Mac Pro I promptly placed it on a towel on my hardwood floor and opened the case. The fit and finish of the aluminum case is fantastic. No tweaking or pushing to align pins so the case cover fits.
Inside is the cleanest looking interior I have ever seen on a desktop PC. My Windows XP machine is a jumble of interior cables and wires. Even using tie straps (which I do) you can only do so much cable management inside a custom built PC. The Mac Pro interior is stunningly clean. Installing the drives and memory took me minutes. Adding the new drive in went so fast that I pulled it back out, set up my little Canon SD1100 in video record mode and shot a video of it. I was that impressed.
Adding to the memory was also very simple. There are two risers in the lower portion of the system that slide out by tugging on the two large holes at the end of the card. The DIMMs are inserted into the cards and they are placed back in - pretty basic. The memory itself must be matched up to like memory - RTFM on this one. I had 2 1GB sticks that came with the machine, 2 1GB sticks that my friend Dr. Michael Roach at Digital Apple Juice sent me since they were extras after he bought his Mac Pro and then I ordered 4 2GB sticks from OWC. This gave me a total of 12GB of memory - plenty to do everything I need for the foreseeable future.
Initial System Performance
Once I had fished all of the external cables and had the Mac Pro sitting in the primary location I went through the startup process. The Mac Pro came to life quickly and before too long I was in OS X and ready to go. It recognized that I had two new drives in the system and prompted me to run Disk Utility on them. I simply created two full size partitions using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) on each drive. It took all of a couple of minutes before both drives were ready. So much better than the hours it would have taken than the default Windows option to partition and format those drives for NTFS on a Windows machine.
The system itself is extremely fast, as I expected it to be. The first thing I did was install VMware Fusion and move my Windows XP image from the MacBook over. It took a little configuring and reactivating Windows XP but very quickly my VM was up an running. Once is was up it ran Windows and my entire development environment perfectly. I could run it in full screen mode if I felt nostalgic, keep it in a window or even run it in Unity mode, which VMware supports. My development environment just appears as a "Windows" looking window on OS X.
On of the first applications I installed was iStat menus so that I could keep an eye on the system as I was installing and working with applications for the first time. Displaying the logical CPUs in the menu is almost comical since I now have 8 little graphs showing CPU. The only task that seemed to make the machine work hard was when I imported 20K + pictures into iPhoto.
I'm still going through and trying to figure out which of the many applications I've been playing with on the MacBook will make it over to the new machine. My photo and video collection are already on it, my complete iTunes library is now there and I have just a few more key pieces that were on the Windows machine that will now be on the Mac Pro.
Peripheral Hardware - the Mighty Mouse and Keyboard
My Mac Pro came with a full size thin aluminum keyboard. While it has the same key spacing and feel that my beloved MacBook does, it is not as comfortable to type on as I hoped it would be. I have to arch my wrists a bit more than I am used to and lose my place on the "home" keys pretty easily.
This is in part because I am coming from using the split keyboards from Microsoft for so many years. I am going to keep trying to get used to the Mac's native keyboard for a little longer but may end up either moving the Microsoft keyboard over to the Mac Pro or try to find a split key model that is specific to Mac.
Unlike the keyboard, which I may be able to tolerate, I could not get used to the Might Mouse. While I love the little track ball that serves as the scroll wheel, the buttons on it just feel odd. When I use my mouse I have a tendency to rest my palm on it and I felt as though I was activating the mouse all the time. I also really struggled to get the right clicking to work.
Fortunately I have a Logitech mx510 gaming mouse that has drivers for OS X. This mouse works fantastic and with the additional buttons I am able to activate Spaces, use the forward and back buttons, etc. quite easily.
A Name for the Mac Pro
After much debate - basically me talking to myself yet again - I decided to name the new Mac Pro "Force" as in the Force from Star Wars. Thanks to Roger for being the first to suggest that one when I asked for a little help.
The Force is strong within this one.
First impression of the new Mac Pro
May 21, 2008 by David Alison
Filed under Parallel Desktops
Comments Off
I just finished setting up the machine and will post a little more shortly but I was really impressed with how easy it is to set up and configure the Mac Pro. I needed to add two additional drives and 10GB of extra memory (now totaling 12GB). Having come from the Windows world where I manually built my previous machines the construction and design for the Mac Pro is just excellent. I'll put it into perspective:
Time to install an additional hard drive: less than one minute
Time to install 10 GB of memory (6 DIMMs): less than two minutes
Time to partition and format 2TB of disk space: less than one minute (total)
I grabbed my little Canon SD1100 and shot a really quick video on how to install an additional hard drive in a Mac Pro so you get an idea of how incredibly simple this is:
The machine that I pulled out of the carton looked brand new. I could not detect anything wrong with it at all. The only slight thing I found was a tiny little nick on the edge of the keyboard; and that was because I was looking really closely for any kind of damage at all.
The Mac Pro is extremely quiet - I really can't hear it at all below the desk.
I've already decided that the Mighty Mouse has to go - the Logitech Mx510, one of which I also use on my MacBook, is already attached. I'm going to give the keyboard a little time, though coming from a large Microsoft ergonomic keyboard this may take some getting used to. I may be shopping around for a decent ergonomic keyboard replacement soon.
The other item on my shopping list will be a decent web cam so that I can do video chats and ideally use the microphone for dubbing over videos. I'll throw in another post as soon as I have my key software loaded on the machine but so far so good!
I'll also have some pictures for the next post.
Desktop Theatre, Sc. 12: Respecting The Classics
May 21, 2008 by Bradley W. Lewis
Filed under Desktop Theatre
2 Days to A Better Website.
May 21, 2008 by madBADcat
Filed under Commerce, Digital Lifestyles, Editor's Choice, The Not-So-Daily Edition, Workflow
When I first got out of school it was still common to run around with your portfolio containing tear sheets and photographs. It was always a pain to collects these, the few copies in hand were precious and almost irreplaceable. I cannot count the times I lost my portfolio. More often than not, I wouldn’t bother to replace the evidence of the work. Oh, the drama. I would end up losing gigs because I didn’t have the tearsheet for this or that. 20 people lined up for a gig, the last thing an art director wanted was to call to verify you had actually done a job like "that". Read more
