Fear of change
Posted by on October 14, 2011
So, iCloud, huh?
I finally applied the software update to Lion this morning, which came in as one undifferentiated package, and I found once I restarted that I had the new iCloud thing, as well as an upgraded iTunes. I didn’t expect individual software to be upgraded without being warned, but I guess that’s the Mac way, huh?
Anyway, now that’s done on the MBP (Ariadne) I should probably upgrade the iTouch (Arthur), and perhaps the iPhone 3G (Eames) to iOS5? I’m a little scared of losing apps and/or data, as some have reported losing.
I’m not scared to lose purchased data (music, video, apps) because I’ve never yet paid for anything on the iTunes Store – I’m planning to buy a couple of apps soon, but yeah, so far, nothing.
I do fear the big iTunes transfer, though. Remember how I hadn’t decided if the PC was going to remain the ‘master’ to the iDevices, and that one iTunes my main music/podcast DB? Well I’m not completely sure yet but I think I want the Mac to be the hub. Except that means moving my iTunes library across (not the files, that’s easy, they’re on en external drive) – and I am *terrified* it won’t work.
I don’t want to lose all my play counts and smart playlists and all that. Anyone knows how to move an iTunes Library wholesale from a PC to a Mac? Please, please chime in. I haven’t gotten a move on this because I’m basically paralyzed by fear. That’s not a good state to be in.
Looking forward to: TaskPaper & Scrivener
Posted by on October 9, 2011
I’m having kind of a frazzled day where I know I have enough energy to get things done but I can’t settle down and focus on one thing.
Which led me to retool my todo lists and reminded me that I have yet to tell you how much I’m drooling over TaskPaper. It doesn’t do automatically-recurring tasks (and won’t, the FAQ says so), and it’s not on the web, though it does cloud-syncing to iOS devices (but nothing says I can’t make my own HTML from the txt files if I want to roll out my own web thing) – but apart from that I think it does pretty much everything I need, want and even crave from a todo application.
I know there are tons of them, and the geeky procrastinator part of me wants to check a dozen others out before settling, all while the anxious part of me is reluctant to start yet another trial with yet another tool that’s going to cost money soon – but I’m all ♥____♥ at it anyway.
Do any of you use it? I’d love to hear your comments!
Remembering
Posted by on October 6, 2011
I was expecting beach ball references/metaphors for Steve Jobs’s death and was a little surprised when I saw none yesterday in the first hours (I admit I wasn’t scouring the internet for them either) – but, lo, all is as it should, XKCD drew pretty much exactly what I had imagined.
chr0me said on twitter: “The first program I ever wrote was in BASIC on an Apple in the 80s, and I’m typing this on my Mac: Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs.”
That made me think.
The first computer Dad brought home was an Apple II (maybe a IIgs?), probably in ’82, and when he started his tiny ‘computer club’ to teach his adult friends computing basics, including, well, BASIC, I was there with bells on, the youngest (10) member at the Tuesday night gatherings. I used to play games on that machine, mostly a game of snake that I remember vividly though I don’t know what it was called – maybe Serpentine? I’m sure it wasn’t Snake itself, the screenshots look nothing like my memories. For a while there I had a ritual of playing a few rounds every morning right after breakfast, before it was time for the bus to school.
There are Apple II emulators our there of course, like Sweet16 for example. I’ve half a mind to install a few and hunt down that snake game. I always sucked at it (I still suck at snake games – at very many video games, to be honest), but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be fun.
Anyway, I digress. There was that Apple II, first.
And then in August 2011, just now, I got this amazing, amazing birthday present of a Macbook Pro.
In between, I spent… well, thirty years using Windows, from 3.11 (I have really fond memories on Word in DOS, you guys) to Vista without, thank fuck, having to suffer through Me. I remember reinstalling 95 every three months, and 98 every year, and cursing all the bosses who didn’t allow me to keep trucking on with NT, much more stable despite its inherent steam-engine crankiness. *g*
Anyway – I’ve had iPods since the turn of the century, or what feels like it (2002 maybe?) – still have them all even the bricked ones: a 3rd gen 40gb (dead) & a 4th gen 40gb (on its death bed), before they were called ‘classic’, a button-less 4gb shuffle & a 4th gen Touch – so it’s not that Jobs’ genius didn’t impact me personally as well as, like everybody, peripherally…
But with all that PC-using history of mine, all my Windows proficiency… I was really, REALLY surprised to be able to say this:
The first program I ever wrote was in BASIC on an Apple in the 80s, and I’m typing this on my Mac: rest in peace, Steve Jobs.
Firefox Add-ons
Posted by on October 4, 2011
So thanks to a commenter on Aja’s LJ I discovered Ghostery, a Firefox add-on to increase your privacy by controlling tons of ‘invisible web’ scripts and trackers.
I installed it, and it reminded me I’ve often also wanted to post about LOS cookies, and the add-on Better Privacy, which enables you to wipe them out.
Then I thought I should make a list of the other FF add-ons I use, because, why not? I’m not going to put the links in, but google will find them for you in a jiff.
This list is from my install of FF 7 on the Mac, ie the cleanest/smallest list of all my FF installs. I still mourn Wordcount+ and Aardvark something fierce, and I haven’t (yet?) installed Scrapbook on Ariadne.
- Adblock Plus
- Boomerang for Gmail (haven’t yet used it, though)
- Diigo toolbar (will probably uninstall in the next 6 months)
- Evernote Web Clipper
- Greasemonkey (daily use for LJ, Pinboard, Dinosaur Comics etc)
- NoScript (lifesaver)
- Pinboard
- Read It Later
- Session Manager (lifesaver)
- Tab Mix Plus (lifesaver)
- Xmarks (browser bookmarks sync across platforms/browsers/machines)
Nesting
Posted by on September 21, 2011
Let’s put this on the table right away: I haven’t yet solved the big questions.
* Which iTunes becomes the “master” iTunes for my iDevices (staying as is, with the PC as my main computer, or bestowing that privilege to the Mac?)
* How do I rejig my storage and backup strategies to include the Mac in the plans?
These remain unanswered for now.
Now, what’s been going on…
° I still have these two blog posts open in tabs, trying to make a decision:
- John Gruber on getting rid of Flash & cheating w/ Chrome
- Lex Friedman on reinstalling it
° I found Fluid, a wrapper to allow you to make any web-app into a ‘standalone’ app.
° It is with relief and not a small amount of joy that I installed Firefox & my trusted/necessary extensions, as well as my favorite download manager, jDownloader. Even though for a mysterious (non-mac) reason, I haven’t managed to “connect” the FlashGot FF add-on to jDownloader like I have on the PC (which allows me to select a link on a page and automatically trigger a download for it), I’m still pleased to have my usual tools at my fingertips. :)
° I’m still pining for a text editor I like, but since I haven’t tried anything but the pre-installed TextEdit I can’t honestly say I haven’t found anything – I just haven’t dealt with the issue. In the meantime it means I’m doing my blog-post writing either inside the WordPress editor (for this blog) or on the PC (for my other blogs / my journals / fic beta-reading, etc unless I edit in WordPress and then CP out of there, which has happened). This can’t continue very long. note to self: get yourself a proper text editor.
° I’ve started using Evernote on the iTouch a little more, which makes me think I need to install the Mac version and see how I like it.
° Not mac-specific: I’ve discovered and starting using ifttt.com, which I’m a little too addled at the moment to describe – the domain name stands for ‘if this then that’ and their tagline is ‘put internet to work for you’. You should read the about page, which has a lovely, direct URL: http://ifttt.com/wtf
° I’ve been doing recording and sound-editing on the Mac and I am floored every time anew by the quality of the built-in mic for voicework, as well as the pleasure and ease I experience doing editing with my fingers on the trackpad. Plus now my new Snowball mic arrived, whee! There is a LOT of podfic work in my future. <3
That’s it for today, I think.
Boomerang, podcasts, & links.
Posted by on September 8, 2011
So I’ve started using Mailplane. So far, so good. I really like that it allows me to double click to log in and out of MANY gmail accounts, not just 3 as with Google’s easy-account switching solution. I will probably be faster with it when I learn to use kb shortcuts more (but then I have failed to learn using them in gmail all along, too, so nobody hold their breath).
Then while watching the demo videos for it, I stumbled onto Boomerang, a gmail plugin (pre-existing Mailplane, and compatible with it) that allows you to bounce things out of your inbox temporarily and have them come back at you (boomerang) at a later date. It also does a few other things, all great/handy. (There are also things you can do with apps script to snooze an email in gmail, apparently.)
HOW AWESOME IS THIS AND WHY DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT IT? *installllllllls* :D
I suspect I am the wrong person to use this, since I will probably send EVERYTHING boomeranging across the ether, like I tend to send everything to Read It Later (and only read a very tiny fraction of the things, later). But nevertheless I am ENCHANTED to have found this and thought others might be interested in it too.
By the way, here’s a link to the MacPowerUsers podcast I’m listening to at the moment (I started with the first Merlin Mann Workflow episode because that’s how I heard about them, but I downloaded many of the past episodes), and here’s the Back to Work podcast where Merlin officiates weekly. The show notes for many past episodes (of both podcasts) are teeming with good links, whether you choose to listen or not. They make interesting lists to peruse.
What else? More apps-related things, with links / thoughts.
Today’s adventures
Posted by on September 7, 2011
I spent part of the afternoon moving / re-plugging the very old desktop PC that serves as a “guest” machine, and which was lying around in pieces after I moved it off to appropriate its ex-location for my new standing desk.
It’s a very, very slow machine running XP (family/home edition). I have this project of making it run a lightweight Linux version sometime in the future, but not until I’m sure I can run the &$@#!*@#% printer/scanner from MY desktop PC.
Setting up house
Posted by on September 5, 2011
So, here we are.
It’s been exactly one week since the day of The Unboxing of my shiny Macbook Pro, which was the amazingly generous surprise birthday gift from a bunch of family and friends. The machine now has a name (Ariadne – yes, I’m in an Inception-fandom phase), two user profiles (one with admin privileges and one without), a desktop wallpaper, and some new software installed.
I still don’t really have a handle on it, though, and particularly, I’m still not operational for editing/publishing text, editing/indexing pictures, password management & other logistical issues, and even, to my great dismay, browsing.
This might be because I’ve made the mistake of trying to start anew completely, from scratch, and have thus scorned a Firefox installation (I’m a long time Firefox user, the sort with many favorite extensions) in favor of a clean start with Safari.
I’m starting to realize that Safari, and my inefficience at it, is driving me bonkers. So that might change soon.
Soon to come to a post near you: lists of problems encoutered, flaily questions I asked Twitter, soft I downloaded but I’m not sure I want to install, soft I installed but I’m not sure I want to keep, and deep existential writhing about the necessity (or lack thereof) of installing Quicksilver.
But first, let me see how this plugin handles the crossposting to Dreamwith. :)