Geek / Apple Stuff

I got [Disco](http://www.discoapp.com/) as part of the [macheist](http://macheist.com/) end bundle. I like it for its simplicity. Anyway, the other day it bugged out while burning an audio cd…

Not sure what caused it but it seemed to lose its window texture. Letting it go and restarting after the burn finished seemed to fix the problem… weird.

*NOTE: Cool text added with Skitch

I got my invite to the [Skitch](http://plasq.com/skitch) beta last week.
First impressions:

* The UI is refreshing. Although non-standard, it is [plasq](http://plasq.com/) goodness, much like [ComicLife](http://plasq.com/comiclife/) was when it was released.
* Very responsive
* Extremely fun to use
* Very useful for anyone who posts images to any kind of online environment

I’ll play with it some more over the coming weeks, but at this stage it looks definitely like an app that I would pay money for and use quite often.

You can check out my ‘skitches’ at [http://myskitch.com/brettbrooks/](http://myskitch.com/brettbrooks/)

Last week I bit the bullet and ordered an iMac. I’ve been following the latest iMac update rumours for some time now, the ones reporting that a new iMac will be released with a brand new enclosure and what-not. After numerous rumour deadlines came and went I got sick of waiting and decided to just jump right in and order it.

I’ve been using a PC as my desktop computer for what seems ages. Always having a mac laptop was good enough for me to work and develop on and the PC allowed me to play whatever games I wanted and have access to other PC related software. In recent years though I’ve found that I’ve been using my PC less and less for actual programs, and mainly just for games, a bit silly really.

So, after all these years, I’m moving back to the world of Apple desktop computers. I’m looking forward to it, and looking forward to having less to do with windows.

The model I ordered is as follows:

* 24inch iMac
* 3gig ram
* 750gig hard drive
* NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB video card

Should run fairly decently.

Currently ETA is sometime next week *hopefully*, so in the meantime I’ve been busy cleaning off my old PC. Sorting out all the documents and stuff I have on it ready to transfer it over to the iMac.

Can’t wait for it to arrive, although the 24inch widescreen is going to look huge compared to the screen I have sitting on the table now.

I’ve been working on an app that has a few NSComboBoxes. I wanted the NSComboBoxes to work as expected, allowing the user to choose an item from the drop down list or enter a new item directly into the text field. I ran into a few problems using bindings in this situation and found that just setting the bindings up in interface builder was not enough as it didn’t seem to automatically add any new items typed in to the associated NSArrayController.

(more…)

I’ve spoken about [Adium](http://www.adiumx.com/) in the past ([1](http://www.geeklane.com/blog/2006/12/17/indispensable-mac-apps/),[2](http://www.geeklane.com/blog/2006/12/04/adium-i-want-to-like-you/)), both times I have both praised and also bagged it due to an [annoying bug](http://trac.adiumx.com/ticket/1583) involving multiple group chat conversations. Basically, If you had multiple group chat conversations going, all the text would get displayed in the first conversations window. This of course made it almost impossible to have multiple group conversations.

Thankfully, via a [comment](http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5776832&postID=1812221075554604629&isPopup=true) I left on the main adium blog, one of the lead developers – Evan Schoenberg took a quick look at the bug and whacked together a quick fix. Apparently it was rather basic and was caused by group conversations all using the same group chat ID and not unique ID’s. Anyway, as of Adium 1.04, the multiple group chat bug is fixed!

The seemingly simple fix actually motivated me to download the source code and take a look at it. I wouldn’t mind trying to fix some other bugs or maybe make some features better.

Evan’s quote in the comments of the bug say it all really:

>>Sigh. We really need someone interested in Adium development who actually uses MSN. This took about 30 minutes to create what I believe is a fix, and it has been a major flaw in our MSN implementation for 2 years.

The adium source code is huge, way bigger then any other source / project I’ve ever been involved in. I have a feeling it’s going to take some time to figure out how it all works.

So yeah, I now use Adium for my MSN messaging needs. It beats the pants off the clunky default MSN messenger app.

I’ve had a .mac account now for some time. I basically only use it for the iChat account (which you can get without continuing to pay) and the email address.

I never use the webspace, and occasionally use backup, which I guess justifies the cost for me in some way.

It seems that these days, you can get comparable free services which in some cases are much better. I kind of hope Apple are working on some kind of updates for .mac to make it seem a bit more worthy of the yearly subscription fee.

My Melanie is so cool! She got me a subscription to [New Scientist!](http://www.newscientist.com/) I blogged recently about buying a few magazines to read while travelling and enjoying them. They have some really interesting articles in them that I find enjoyable to read.

Anyway, apparently at the moment they have a deal going where you get a discount on the subscription and also get a free bag! Melanie, as thoughtful as she is, went ahead and subscribed me. It was a nice surprise to get an email telling me my New Scientist subscription had started and I could access all the ‘member only’ stuff on the website. I had no idea what was going on, I actually thought it was some kind of mistake except for the fact that the password was something I would have chosen

I have been reading the [RSS feeds](http://www.newscientist.com/feeds.ns;jsessionid=GBAGLLH) and also visiting the site regularly to read the huge amount of articles. My first printed copy came in the mail yesterday and apparently my bag is on the way.

My Melanie is so thoughtful!

Well the [Wii](http://wii.nintendo.com/) was certainly a hit over xmas. Pretty much everyone who visited had a go, even those who who would never play a video game in their lives. WiiSports is the reason it is so popular. Tennis seems to be the most played game, followed closely by bowling. boxing and golf would come in next with baseball coming in at the ‘least popular’ position.

Boxing has really grown on me. It seems there is more to it then just randomly swinging the controllers as fast as you can (even though this strategy seems to work ok, up until around 400-500 skill level). I only recently got to pro status (> 1000 skill) in boxing and it seems to just get better and better. The higher you go, the more you have to defend and dodge and time your punches. It’s a lot of fun. I’m currently stuck on the ‘Matt’ computer opponent around 1600 skill level. No matter what I do, he seems to always do some insane combo which knocks me senseless. More research needed I think.

Through all the fun there has been a few incidents:

1 broken controller – mum playing tennis, running across the room and swinging into the wall. Motion sensor wouldn’t work. Could still point and click buttons, but no tilt sensing.

1 scratched controller – dad, tennis, swing and hit the light above his head.

1 house light fuse – same incident as above, hitting the light blew the fuse for some reason.

Overall it has been a lot of fun. [Nintendo](http://www.nintendo.com/) have done well with this system, bringing computer gaming to the masses.

According to [engadget](http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/27/aacs-drm-cracked-by-backuphddvd-tool/), the encryption scheme used on the relatively new HD-DVD format has already been cracked.

All the money that must be spent on new copy protection schemes just seems wasted to me. It takes someone a relatively small amount of time to find some way around it. Why don’t they spend the money on research as to WHY people copy media, instead of just throwing money at the bottomless pit that is ‘new copy protection schemes’.

As far as I’m concerned, It’s all bits (1′s and 0′s). No copy protection scheme is unbreakable.

Posting from my Wii. Internet channel was released today and it works pretty well.
Typing with the Wiimote is pretty slow though

I’m almost certain I did up a list of my favourite ‘must have’ mac apps on this blog, but for the life of me I cannot find it. I guess it doesn’t matter though since it would be old now and definitely needs updating.

So here it is, my list of ‘must have’ mac apps. Apps I use everyday and love using. Listed in no particular order.

[AppZapper](http://www.appzapper.com/)
I don’t know how I went without this app for so long. Drag an app you no longer want installed onto the AppZapper window and it will scan for all those annoying preference, cache, library files that are usually left behind when simply dragging the app to the trash.
Select the items in the list, and hit the ‘zap’ button to remove all of them in one hit. No more left over preference files!

[TextMate](http://macromates.com/)
I’m a text editor junky, or rather, I was. I’ve tried a heap of them, [BBEdit](http://www.barebones.com/), [TextWrangler](http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/), [Smultron](http://smultron.sourceforge.net/), [SubEthaEdit](http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/), yet none of them appeal to me as much as TextMate. I think the main thing that sets it apart from the others is the bundle support and it seems to have an awesome community behind it. Now it is my text editor of choice.

[XCode](http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/xcode/) + [Interface Builder](http://developer.apple.com/tools/interfacebuilder.html)
I like programming on the mac, therefore I use the dev tools. Simple as that really. XCode and Interface builder are nice to use as well.

[Mail](http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/mail/)
I like Mail. It’s simple and easy to use and supports everything I so far have needed to do with it. Things like [MailTags](http://www.indev.ca/MailTags.html) and [MailAct-On](http://www.indev.ca/MailActOn.html) only add to Mail to make it a pretty cool app. On a side note, if you like mail you gotta check out [Hawk Wings](http://www.hawkwings.net/). It’s a Mail lovers dream site with heaps of awesome tips and add-on info.

[Adium](http://www.adiumx.com/)
Probably the most popular multi-client instant messaging app for the mac. It’s a very slick program and sits nicely in my dock. I use it whenever I am not expecting multiple group chats at the same time. Unfortunately it has a nasty bug with multiple group conversations that causes all messages from all group chats to display in a single chat window. Making it impossible to use. It is a known bug, but is not planned to be fixed until 1.5. With 1.0 the current milestone in development, I’m not holding my breath for a fix anytime soon.

[MSN messenger](http://www.microsoft.com/mac/DOWNLOAD/MISC/msn_messenger3.asp)
I hate its interface. I hate how it randomly ‘fails to deliver’ messages. I hate how it randomly disconnects due to ‘network issues’ but seems to be able to reconnect again straight away just fine. I hate how it is so far behind in features compared to the windows version. I hate pretty much everything about the ‘official’ MSN client for mac except for one small thing, It supports multiple group chats better then Adium. That is the only reason it is still on my mac.

[PhotoStickies](http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/photostickies/)
Only a new entry in my list. I got it as part of a [MacZot](http://maczot.com/) bundle. It basically lets you display images on your desktop above the standard wallpaper. You can choose the image, then scale it or add a filter to it and a lot of other things. I like it because I tend to get sick of my standard wallpaper quite frequently and with this I can have a wallpaper and also a bunch of other photos of family and stuff as well. I like it a lot.

[Google Notifier](http://mail.google.com/mail/help/notifier/)
A little menu extra that lets you know when you have new mail in your [gmail](http://gmail.google.com/) account. Also hooks into [google calendar](http://www.google.com/calendar) as well, but I’ve never used that part of it. I wish they would release a version that supports multiple gmail accounts. If you use gmail, you need this.

[Colloquy](http://colloquy.info/)
A free cocoa irc client. Nothing fancy, but handles the basics extremely well. I’ve tried other clients but none have the nice and simple UI that colloquy has.

[MenuCalendarClock](http://www.objectpark.net/mcc.html)
Another [MacZot](http://maczot.com/) bundle app. It displays a little day calendar in the menu that when clicked displays a month calendar. The neat thing is that it integrates with iCal and by hovering over the day you can see appointments and to-do items for that day. Great for quickly seeing what you have in ical without having to actually launch ical itself. The little month calendar comes in handy as well.

[NetNewsWire](http://www.newsgator.com/NGOLProduct.aspx?ProdID=NetNewsWire)
In my opinion, the best RSS feed aggregator for OS X. It has everything you could want in an RSS reader and more. [NewsFire](http://www.newsfirerss.com/) apparently gives it a run for its money, but with the few times I’ve tried it I’ve had crashes and general trouble with it. NetNewsWire all the way.

[Transmit](http://www.panic.com/transmit/) My FTP client of choice. It looks nice and works nice. Does the job and does it well. I only use it for basic uploading and downloading but it has oodles of other features that make it an awesome FTP client.

[VLC](http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html)
The ‘play all’ solution for media files on OS X. You get the odd file every now and then that doesn’t play properly but overall VLC will generally play pretty much anything you throw at it.

That finishes off my current ‘must have mac app’ list. I use most of these apps daily, and the rest weekly. They make the mac user experience even better.

EDIT:

Holy crap! How could I forget [Yojimbo](http://www.barebones.com/products/yojimbo/index.shtml)?
Looking at my list again and it is actually on there, I just forgot to blog about it. oops.
So yeah, [Yojimbo](http://www.barebones.com/products/yojimbo/index.shtml) is definitely on my list as well. I tried it back when it was first released and loved it, but for some reason I stopped using it until recently when [Luke](http://www.ldaley.com) mentioned that he was using it.
It suits my ‘write ideas in seperate text document’ organisational strategy really well, and makes it so easy to find what you are looking for. The recent addition of tag support makes it even better. It now contains all my notes and web-site logins and serial numbers that i had previously stored in my ‘~/Stuff/Misc text pdf’ and ‘In progress’ folders. Awesome app!

I pre-ordered my [Wii](http://wii.nintendo.com.au/) from [Target](http://www.target.com.au/) thinking it would be a rather painless process. The $600 of added coupons also helped in my decision.

I guess I should have known that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

(more…)

Melanie pitched in and helped me get a [Nintendo Wii](http://wii.nintendo.com/) as a late birthday / early xmas present. I pre-ordered from [Target](http://www.target.com.au/) in Rockhampton and after a bit of bungling on their behalf I was able to pick it up on release day.

It’s a lot of fun. The new controller makes the games really interactive. WiiSports is an awesome example of how gameplay > graphics, something SONY and Microsoft should really take notice of.

WiiSports is the most fun so far. It’s pretty amazing how well the controller responds. I find I’m better at tennis and bowling over golf, baseball and boxing.

Zelda seems like it should be pretty good as well.

What’s the deal with the default [MSN Messenger](http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx?pid=msnmessenger) client for the Mac? I could rave on and on about this, so I decided that I will just write it all down in point form.

• No tabbed chat interface.
• Clunky / large UI.
• No web-cam, game, extended compatibility with windows client (could be seen as a good thing).
• Lagging behind features of the windows client.
• The “One or more messages could not be sent” message that shows up 5-10 min’s after you have just typed a lot of stuff. Giving no real indication what was, and what wasn’t, sent properly.
• Preferences aren’t saved per messenger user-name. If I change the colour on my MSN user-name, someone else who logs in (using my OS X account) gets the same colour.
• Rarely updated, and when it is new features are very /yawn.

These are just a few things off the top of my head. I could add more if I sat and thought about it. In summary, why does the official MSN messenger client for Mac suck so much?

**Note: It handles multiple group conversations very well.

I really like [Adium](http://www.adiumx.com/). Its an awesome multi service chat client and looks a heck of a lot better than many of the ‘standard / default’ clients. I have it in my dock and I use it maybe once every few weeks, which really bugs me. The reason I can’t use it as my default client on OS X is because of [this](http://trac.adiumx.com/ticket/1583) little bug.

Basically, you cannot have multiple group conversations running in Adium. When i say ‘group conversation’, I’m talking about conversations with more than one person. ‘Multiple group conversations’ means having more than one group conversation. i.e. I want to have a group conversation with contact 1, 3 and 5 but at the same time I also want to be chatting to contact 2, 6 and 4 in another group chat.

Adium doesn’t like this, and ends up sending all messages from both group conversations to the same window. Sure, this may sound fine. I mean you can still see all the messages right? Well yes, but at the same time you don’t really have any idea where the messages you type are going and it’s really confusing.

I would have thought this would be a ‘basic’ feature of any instant message client. If you follow the link to the bug report, you will see that this bug is set to be looked at around version 1.5. Adium is currently in heavy development for a 1.0 release, who knows when the 1.5 release will come around. So in the meantime, I have to make do with the default mac MSN client, which is close to THE worst instant messaging client out there, but that’s a totally other post I need to type up.

I know, I know… Adium is open source, why don’t I get off my lazy butt and help out? Simple answer, I’m too busy trying to get my own apps working. I shouldn’t really complain. Adium (even with its bugs) is an awesome piece of free software and I’d be using it every single day if only it handled multiple group conversations.

As mentioned in the previous post, I use [Launchbar](http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/) for all my app launching, web searching, etc needs. I really like the app and I’ve had no worries with it at all.

I am kind of concerned though at the lack of updates recently. Not just updates to the app itself, but actual updates to the webpage.

On October 31, I emailed support with the following email:

>*I am just curious if LaunchBar is still in development or has progress*
>*on it been halted? The last word about it seems to have been April*
>*2006 when version 4.1 was released and since then i have not seen or*
>*heard anything else about its development or likelihood for updates.*

>*Is there some kind of Launchbar development blog that indicates any*
>*progress that is happening to the application?*

>*As a registered user i am just curious whether i should be starting to*
>*look for a LaunchBar equivalent which is getting more development.*

The same day, I received the following reply:

>*No need to worry, LaunchBar development is very alive, and there are*
>*lots of new features in the queue. LaunchBar 4.2 is planned to be*
>*released shortly.*

It’s good to see that someone is still there and email’s get answered quickly, but since then there hasn’t been any further updates. I’d really like to see some kind of blog or something on the site to indicate that things are actually happening.

I guess I really shouldn’t complain, because it is an awesome app. I just wonder if i shouldn’t be looking elsewhere for a replacement which is getting more apparent development i.e. [Quicksilver](http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/)

EDIT: Typical, right after I post this I go and browse the Launchbar forums and find [this](http://forums.obdev.at/viewtopic.php?t=13) thread. Seems it is still in development as of 9th November, with plans for versions ‘very soon’ and also past the release of Leopard. Wait and see i guess.

It occurred to me today during lunch that i very rarely use [Spotlight](http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/spotlight/) in OS X. When I say rarely I mean pretty much never. I think the last thing I used it for was to find a phone number that I knew I had written down somewhere but couldn’t remember where (turns out it was in an email). I guess this is the kind of thing spotlight is meant to be used for, but I wonder if I’m not getting the full benefit out of it.

I use [Launchbar](http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/) for all my app launching, web searching, file browsing, etc needs since spotlight just seems too slow to be an app launcher.

I have no need to use it to search for documents, as I tend to file things away in correctly named folders and sub-folders and I can find pretty much find any document I could need using launchbar.

I guess the only real thing I use it for is for searching inside files for particular things (i.e. the phone number which i now know was in an email). I guess this is where spotlight really ‘shines’ for me, because its really good at that.

But yeah, my use of spotlight is very limited. Its good to know it’s there if/when I need it.

Just found this [Spotlight Tips](http://www.apple.com/macosx/tips/spotlight.html) page from apple. Has some interesting things. I guess I could start using Spotlight more by actually adding in keywords for photos / files / documents.

I’m working on a new cocoa app. It has the working title of “Bonsai” which will more then likely change if the app ever sees the light of day.

It’s still in early stages of development. I’ve fleshed out a requirements list for the 1.0 version and have got the basic app working. It’s a matter of fleshing it out now and making it cool. I’ve also got some pretty cool idea’s for it after 1.0, so I’m keen to actually get this app out in the wild.

I’ll post more as progress is made.

*Note: No, this isn’t the icon for the app, i didn’t even make this image. Its from an icon collection i downloaded. I just really like it and thought it would look cool with this post.

Edit: The author of the icon is actually [Jonas Rask](http://www.jonas.seph.ws/). He does some nice work.

Ive decided to make a conscious decision to start using the services menu in OS X. Its been sitting in the application menu since OS X came out yet ive never really utilised it to its full extent.

I figure this is mainly due to forgetting its there when i could use it and i end up just doing the task some other way.

I browsed through the whole list tonight to get some idea on what exactly is in there and i was quite surprised at what atcually lives in there. Heaps of shortcuts for common things i do.

So yeah, my goal is to start using the Services menu a lot more.

On a side note, there’s lots of little things in OS X that are there to make common things easier. I really need to start finding quicker ways to do common tasks. Launchbar is a good example… i own a license for it and use it for application launching but that’s it, yet its so much more powerful than that.

Finished reading iWoz, written by Steve Wozniak last night. I picked the book up a few days before i left Rocky to come home to Inverell.

The book starts out pretty slow but does come through with the goods. Ive always known Woz was involved with Apple from the start, but i never really realised what exactly he did do. Reading about how he created the Apple I, Apple II, the floppy drive, etc amazed me. The guy must be one smart cookie thats for sure.

The second part of the book is a lot more interesting then the first in my opinion and the last 2 chapters close the book off well.

Well worth the read for Apple fans. Non Apple fans might not be as interested, but i would encourage them to at least give it a try… Woz did pioneer the personal computer as we know it.