I was recently asked (in a comment on this post how to change the image that appears when a Mac boots up. I was wondering this recently myself, and I came across the absolutely excellent BootXChanger app. You give it a .PNG file of the image you want, press ‘Apply’, and it swaps the image for you. You can even customize the color of the background around the image. Next time you turn on the computer, you’ll see your image instead of the Apple logo.
“But Zib,” you ask, “what are you using for your boot image?”
A bunch of my friends are got Macs for college, so I figured I’d write up a list of my favorite apps and tips and pass it along.
Important stuff is in bold!
Sorry I’m too lazy to go out and find links for all of these, a simple Google search should find them. If not, let me know and I can send it to you.
System things:
Growl (global app notifications) is a must, as is Quicksilver (app launcher).
Dock Dodger and Dockless both let you hide an application from appearing on the Dock entirely.
For controlling iTunes, CoverSutra and Bowtie are awesome.
Caffeine.app can prevent your computer from falling asleep.
GrandPerspective shows you what’s taking up space on your computer.
Google Notifier lets you know when you have new Gmail messages.
Fan Control System Preferences Pane lets you change when your computer turns up its fans. This is really good if you find your computer gets too hot!
To access hidden system preferences (including goodies like using screensavers as wallpaper!) and keep your computer healthy, get OnyX.
Productivity:
Evernote is godly for note-taking.
OpenOffice.org is a free alternative to MS Office.
The Gimp and Acorn are free alternatives to Photoshop.
Inkscape is a free alternative to Illutsrator.
Audactiy is better than Garageband for straight audio editing.
(Those are all available on Windows as well, by the way!)
Aesthetics:
CandyBar is the best way to change icons & the dock.
Find themes, wallpapers, icons, etc at http://macthemes.net/forum/viewforum.php?id=2
Entertainment:
Steam lets you play a lot of popular games on Mac.
LiquidMac is very fun, as is MacSaber.
Quicktime X and iMovie 09 are nice, but I like the older versions a lot more (more features, more reliable!). If you want them, I can hook you up.
Connectivity:
Twitterrific is the best Twitter client.
Adium is the best AIM/YIM/Facebook IM/Gtalk/Whatever client.
Transmission and µTorrent are the best BitTorrent clients (though Azureus isn’t bad, either).
In most applications that are on both Windows and OS X, the same hotkeys work, just replace Ctrl with Cmd. (Cmd+Z, Cmd+S, etc) Here’s a list of the more Mac-specific hotkeys:
Cmd+comma will open preferences in almost any application.
Cmd+D will take you to the Desktop in any open/save file selector box.
Cmd+D will duplicate the selected file in Finder.
Cmd+shift+D will bring you to the Desktop in Finder.
Cmd+shift+A will bring you to your Applications folder in Finder.
Cmd+shift+U will bring you to the Utilities folder in Finder.
Cmd+shift+3 will take a full-screen screenshot.
Cmd+shift+4 will let you drag a box to capture a screenshot of that area.
Cmd+shift+4 and then Space will let you capture a screenshot of a window you select.
Cmd+L will take you to the currently playing song in iTunes.
Cmd+option+D hides or shows the Dock.
Ctrl+option+cmd+8 inverts the screen.
Ctrl+scroll zooms in or out.
Gestures are your friends!
Two fingers on the trackpad scrolls in the direction you move them (or rotates images, if you rotate your fingers)
Three fingers left or right is the same as Back/Forward (Only on the latest Macs).
Four fingers up or down is Exposé (show all the open windows = down, show the desktop = up).
Stuff people don’t use that they should:
Spaces – Virtual desktops! Spaces is really cool. Enable it in System Preferences, and it makes it so easy to organize your open windows.
Use the preferences in iSync to change what happens when you plug in a camera (Why is this hidden in here? No idea!)
Time Machine is a great way to make backups, so buy a big external hard drive and MAKE BACKUPS, DAMMIT.
The green traffic light button at the top left of every window behaves differently depending on the application, it isn’t the same as the “Maximize” button in Windows. It’s supposed to resize the window to be the optimal size on the first click, and go back to how it was before on the second, but apps usually resize to whatever size they want. In short, don’t trust that button. Try it in Calculator, for example!
Well, that’s all I can think of for now. I’m sure there’s more. If you have specific questions about any of these, I’d be happy to help!
One of the most popular posts on my site is How to run Uru:CC on a Mac. You may have also heard that Uru Live is back, under the new name “Myst Online: Uru Live Again”. Unfortunately, this version of Uru is PC-only by default.
However, it’s very easy to set it up to run on a Mac! Here’s how to do it:
Download and install Xcode. This will take a very long time to download, unfortunately. It’s also an optional install on the CD that came with your Mac. If you don’t mind having a slightly out-of-date version (which shouldn’t matter for this), you can insert that CD and find the Xcode installer on there instead of downloading it.
Reboot. (Might not be necessary, but I’d always recommend it)
Go to Applications>Utilities in Finder, and launch Terminal.app.
Type in the following:sudo port install mystonline-cider
It will ask for your password, type in the same password you use to log in to your computer.
When it’s all done downloading/installing, you can find Uru in /Applications/MacPorts/Myst Online (Cider).app
And that’s all it takes! Keep in mind that this is the “bare-bones” installer, so it’s going to download all of the meat of the game (the ages, sound effects, everything) the first time you start it up. That means it will most likely take a very long time to get past the loading section. It will eventually get there, though, so don’t worry that it’s crashed.
I don’t take any credit for discovering this method, I got it from “rainbow” on the Myst Online forums.
Well, I got another shipment today (well, it arrived on Friday, I haven’t been home in a while). Ripping open the Shapeways box, I discovered the beautiful second half of my Riven Dagger Order: the steel and gold-plated daggers.
They’re gorgeous. The level of detail is amazing, even the tiny little loop I put on the top (for necklace-wearing!) is preserved.
My goal for the gold-plated dagger is to get some form of tiny gold chain, and wear it as a pendant. The steel one is just an awesome thing to add to my collection.
Unfortunately, the edges are a little more wobbly-looking than I would like, but I did violate the recommended minimum thickness to make them, so I was expecting it. It’s not really enough to even see unless you inspect very closely. The other problem is the bumpiness, which is very prominent, giving the daggers a rough texture. They feel like they had cheesecloth pressed into them when they were still ‘wet’. I know this isn’t at all how the process of printing them works, but it’s what goes on in my head.
That being said, I am extremely happy with these. The rough texture makes them feel a lot more authentic, actually, considering that the Moiety were the ones making these, and I’m guessing they didn’t have the technology to really smooth out their metal. Again, I’m not putting them up for sale, but if you’re interested in acquiring one of your own send me a message.
Also yes, I appreciate the irony of a Moiety dagger made out of gold, Gehn’s material of choice.
I recently discovered an absolutely awesome website, www.shapeways.com. Upload a 3d model, give them some money, and they will send you a printed out, real-life version of your object. The best part is that you can print in a number of materials, including plastic, sandstone, steel, gold-plated steel, and even glass. You can then open a shop and sell your models for a markup, and actually make money.
There’s some pretty impressive stuff on the site. Check out the impressive models (some mathematical, some just interesting) by Bathsheba Sculpture, some awesome D&D dice sets, and a thriving puzzle-building community. The opportunities afforded by a service like Shapeways are virtually limitless. Custom figurines for board games, inexpensive prototyping, you name it. It’s true democratization of the manufacturing industry, and it’s only going to get better over time (as the costs of production drop, as they always do).
Finding out about this service, I immediately did what any respectable Myst-head would do, and launched Blender. After about 3 hours of work (and a somewhat frustrating cycle of uploading, being told there were problems with the model, fixing the problems, and re-uploading), I got a respectable-looking model of my prize, and had managed to get the price down to under $15. I placed my order.
Now, about 2 weeks later, I finally received part 1 of my shipment! Take a look:
As you maybe can tell from looking at the photos, the resolution at which the models are printed is extremely high. You can see places where faces differed in height by a fraction of a millimeter, and the the outside of the ring is clearly segmented into faces. Additionally, the model has a very rough texture, and feels somewhat fragile at the tip of the blade (where a bit actually broke off in shipment, as I expected to happen).
The dagger isn’t going to be put up for public sale, due to copyright issues, but if you’re interested in acquiring one for yourself, send me an e-mail and I’ll see what I can do.
That being said, I am so happy with this model. It came out really, really, well, and I anticipate many bills from Shapeways in my future.
When I first heard about the iPhone, back in 2007, one of my biggest gripes (and I think many can relate with me here) was its lack of flash support. Even back then, Flash Lite was available on various phones (granted, most of them in Japan, but Verizon had a couple), and it seemed ridiculous to me that the iPhone, with all its power and capabilities, couldn’t run even that. This quickly took a backseat to the complaints about lack of native apps, then multitasking, app store rejections, etc. (I never cared that much about copy/paste support, to this day I’ve only ever used it once, but I concede that this was also a pretty popular complaint at one point)
Well, one by one, all most of those problems were solved (ahem, app store). The biggest remaining problem now is simply the lack of Flash support on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the larger iPod Touch iPad (another rant for another time).
As we probably all know, there has been a war waging between Apple and Adobe for some time. This is a pointless and stupid war, because the two companies should really work together to make computing more enjoyable for everyone. Then again, media industries should embrace piracy and it should rain chocolate every Thursday, some things just aren’t going to happen. In the past, the two companies kept their conflict somewhat private, as the two relied on each other for a large portion of their profits. Apple had (successfully) built up an image of the Mac as the absolute best computer for creatives. Creatives use Adobe products practically exclusively. If Adobe dropped support for Macs, they would lose a huge number of customers, and Mac sales would drop drastically. Neither company could afford this, so they made their peace and lived with the status quo.
Since 2007, however, Apple has had a new bargaining chip. With the launch of the iPhone, Apple’s largest source of income is no longer its computers. They would suffer if they somehow lost their computer business, but it isn’t anywhere close to something that could be considered a ‘large’ portion of their revenue. Adobe is in the same position it always was. Apple now has the upper hand, and can begin to act against Adobe. Hence the lack of iPhone Flash support.
It boils down to this: Apple and Adobe hate each other, despite past appearances. Adobe has no leverage on Apple anymore, thus Apple can do what it wants, thus no iPhone Flash. Ever.
Now the thing about this, is that it isn’t as bad as everybody makes it out to be. While yes, it would be nice to have access to so much of the content out there on the internet that’s made in Flash, but let’s face it: Flash really sucks.
Apple outlined this in Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Flash” letter, but I’ll reiterate. What it basically comes down to is this:
Flash is a closed system. As widely used as Flash is, it is still a proprietary plugin made by a single company. Adobe called Jobs a hypocrite for making this point, with the App Store being the walled garden that it is, but I feel that the difference is that there’s still Cydia and the jailbroken apps. Apple can’t stop the jailbreaking of their devices, and thus anybody not happy with the restrictions that Apple imposes on the App Store has an alternative (of course, if Apple had its way, we would not have this alternative, and then I’d have to re-evaluate all of this). Adobe is in control of Flash, and they can use it to serve their own purposes.
Flash is clunky, old, and slow. While I recognize that Steve Jobs is bullshitting to some extent when he claims that most of the crashes that happen on a Mac are due to Flash, I also know that Flash, historically, is just really slow. The new Gala release (which takes advantage of GPU acceleration on Macs) is somewhat better, but it isn’t fixed yet. I still hear my fans spin up during long Hulu or Youtube videos. Flash is not something I want to be dependent on, not until Adobe makes it much more enjoyable to use, on a Mac and elsewhere.
We are addicted to Flash. While I’m sure it wouldn’t be that hard to support Flash on the iPhone (hey, Android is doing it now), Apple is choosing not to. They have chosen to cut us off from the massive amount of content made in Flash on the Internet. While this might seem like a bad thing, look at the previous two points again. Flash sucks. While the number of Flash movies, games, and apps that exist on the Internet is huge, there are much better options out there, and we need to start breaking our reliance on Flash. That starts by quitting cold-turkey.
So there you have it. I’m siding with Apple on this one, for a change. Flash sucks, and we need to stop using it until Adobe makes it better. Hence, I’m not pissed at Apple for refusing to support it on their devices. There are better alternatives out there, such as HTML5 (cue angelic choir), which are supported on the iPhone OS devices. Youtube has been converting their videos from flv to h.264 since the launch of the iPhone, and we’re starting to see a lot more of that kind of media now (This, unfortunately, isn’t a great solution either, as the h.264 is a proprietary format as well, and companies must pay a licensing fee to use it. Something else like Ogg Theora would be even better, but it is still really inefficient. Oh well, another rant for another time).
And for those of you who think that HTML5 is only revolutionary for video, but Flash is still required for all of those wonderful games, I would tell you to take a look at Google’s Native Client SDK (NaCl for short – ha!): (Skip to 4:30 for an example, if you aren’t interested in the geeky aspects of NaCl)
NaCl allows programmers to run regular old code in a web browser. This means that you can write a program in C or C++, in the same manner you would if you were writing a desktop app, but then run it as a web app, in an HTML5-compliant browser. It lets you make great-looking, fast apps, using 2D or 3D graphics, that are instantly cross-platform to iPhone OS, OS X, Windows, and Linux. Plus, it’s open-source. Basically, it does everything Flash does, but better. It’s already built into your iPhone, Android Phone, Laptop, Desktop, and even some HDTVs.
HTML5 is the warrior we need to defeat the old, cantankerous dragon that is Flash. The iPhone supports it, something it will never do for Flash. Flash is dead, long live HTML5.
I watched the latest Doctor Who episode yesterday, Victory of The Daleks, which took place in World War Two-era Britain. The Daleks had managed to infiltrate the British army, and were posing as a ‘secret weapon’ against the Nazi menace. Winston Churchill was extremely happy to use the alien tech to win the war, but of course, The Doctor knew that the xenophobic cyborgs had to have some ulterior motive. That’s all I’ll say about the plot for now, but a basic review of the episode was that it was awesome.
Anyway, about halfway through the episode Churchill shows The Doctor an early draft of a propaganda poster based on the Dalek secret weapon. It looks like this:
Well, I took that poster, and made a wallpaper out of it. Check it out:
Update: For those so inclined, I made an iPhone version as well. Click the image:
Today, Cyan Worlds announced the return of Uru Live, now called Myst Online: Uru Live Again. It’s like MO:UL was, except that it’s being run by Cyan, and it’s now donationware (meaning totally free, but donations are encouraged).
You can set up an account and download the installer from the official site. The servers are being beaten into a pulp at the moment, but you should get in eventually.
MO:ULA is currently Windows-only, but initial tests seem to point to it being completely compatible with Crossover on Mac OS, as Uru:CC was. More on that in a later post.
Update: Yes indeed, the game runs smoothly in Crossover. Besides the obvious network lag present in all versions of the game, I didn’t encounter any sort of slow-down while playing last night. The one problem is that the audio doesn’t appear to work all the time, ambient noises end up as small buzzing noises and such.
Setup couldn’t be simpler though. Open the installer file with Crossover Games, and let it do its thing. Even the PhysX install goes smoothly.
Update: I’m hosting a mirror of the installer files on my server here to help Cyan out a bit.
I saw Where The Wild Things Are (one of the movies on my anticipation list) yesterday, and I loved it.
Where The Wild Things Are, based on the beloved picturebook of the same title, by Maurice Sendak, tells the story of a young boy named Max who escapes from his home after getting in trouble with his mom, and takes a boat to a land full of huge monsters. He befriends said monsters, and becomes their king. Max is free to do whatever he wants as king, but soon realizes that it’s very difficult to keep everybody happy when you’re in charge. With this in mind, Max returns home.
A couple of things differ between the book and the movie, but the new adaption is startlingly loyal to the original story. The only things that were really changed were the fashion in which Max leaves his home, and the fact that all of the monsters were given unique personalities and stories. In the book, Max is sent to his room without supper after creating mischief in his house. His room transforms into a forest, and in this forest he finds the boat to take him to the land of wild things. The movie, however, takes a much more realistic (and frightening) approach, having Max run away from home after being yelled at by his mother. He makes his way into the woods near his house, where he finds the boat.
The movie’s approach is much more mature than that of the book, of course, and the same is true for many elements of the story. The original book, being a children’s book, doesn’t have enough pages to really explore the ideas of love and parenthood beyond Max simply smelling his dinner from the far off land, and being reminded of his parents’ love. The movie, on the other hand, draws many obvious parallels between the monsters and Max’s predicament with his mother. The monsters, in making Max their king, put him in the same position as his mother, and he soon understands how she must have felt when threw his tantrum.
The cinematography of the film was amazing. I think that if I had directed it, I would not change a single shot. The camera angles used inspired the audience to see from Max’s point of view, the point of view of a child, and imbued the movie with a sense of wonder. The scene in Max’s room, where the camera pans across details in his decorations, and the scene in Carol’s model room both particularly impressed me with their attention to detail.
The special effects in the movie were impressive, because the monsters themselves were (apart from their faces) actually people in costumes, not CGI. This meant that they were not entirely lifelike (for example, the way they jump is somewhat obviously wire-rigged, and their heads cannot turn independently of their bodies), but I think that for this movie, that definitely works. The monsters are, after all, figments of Max’s imagination, so it makes sense for them to be somewhat bizarre and unbelievable in appearance. At the same time, the faces were incredibly realistic. I was able to easily accept them as real creatures whenever they spoke or showed an emotion. The thin layer of fur on their noses, the eyes, the lips…I was seriously impressed. See below or the title image for examples.
My one complaint about the movie is the soundtrack. For the most part, the music was great, and fit the movie pretty well, but there were a couple of songs that were just distracting. For example, when Max runs away from home, the song in the background has a chorus of “animal! animal! animal!” which I felt detracted from the scene. This scene would otherwise be a very emotional one.
But apart from a couple of songs on the soundtrack, I really liked this movie. I was chuckling for a lot of it, and very close to tears a couple of times, too. I would recommend it to anybody who wants their childlike sense of wonder restored for a few hours.
