Macgasm

If you’re sadistic, and you love block games then Blockoban is for you. It’s a little difficult to explain, so bare with me while I try. Essentially the game consists of a bunch of tiles that have a couple of different attribute, some of which include a spot where a block of a similar colour has to end up in order to win. So if you have a flow tile that’s blue, yellow, and red, then the block that’s blue, yellow, and red has to sit on the associated floor tile.

Simple Concept. Hard game.

It’s a thinking game, so if you don’t like analyzing the situation, you might want to go try something like penguin curling with Arctic Shuffle. If you’re up for the challenge, things will ramp up in difficulty very quickly. You’ll have to deal with mazes, blocks that are linked together, trying to make sure our blocks don’t fly off the playing board. It’s pretty crazy, but it really works the brain. I highly recommend trying it out.

Just in case none of this makes any sense at all, I’ve attached a video of some game play footage.

January is the month of fresh starts, new beginnings, out with the old and in with the new. But, if you didn’t get a shiny new Macbook Pro for Christmas, here are my top tips for detoxing your overindulged Mac.

Disk Space

Just like de-cluttering my wardrobe, I often find my laptop is full of little bits floating around that I either never use because they’re so out of date or I had no idea they existed in the first place. So to solve the problem of a computer full of crap (e.g. that Coldplay album I downloaded, got lost in iTunes and eventually got forgotten about) taking up valuable space, there are plenty of apps about to do all the dirty work for you. Disk Inventory X uses what they call ‘treemaps’ to show you visually what your computer has been chomping on, and allows you to see where all the unwanted files and folders are lurking so you can quickly ban them to the trash. You still have to do a lot of sifting about with this app, making it a bit of a jumble sale at times, but the handy selection list lets you see all files of a specific kind, so you can work out if there’s too many files in a certain area doing the clogging. The best thing about this app is that it’s completely free, but of course you can donate via paypal to say thanks for their hard work.

If you’re looking for a one-click type of solution to tech spring cleaning, CleanMyMac is a two-click helper (almost…) with no sorting or sifting of numerous files, making it the perfect solution for the type of Mac user who simply wants everything done for them. Much like having your own maid to dust around your chair whilst you sit watching comedy show re-runs (admit it, we all want that), CleanMyMac is a welcome helper whose easy interface makes it super-easy to dump all those files you never even knew you had. For 6 months cleaning, you pay $14.95 and for a lifetime commitment (you’ve gotta make one someday) it’s $29.95. Not bad for something that does everything for you.

The cutest of all disk cleaners is DaisyDisk, an app promising to find and delete big, useless files. By far the easiest visualization of your computer, DaisyDisk shows you your files in a sunburst map where segments are proportionate to the file’s size.This way you can click on an individual segment, reveal in finder, and trash away. A truly mesmerizing interface greets you upon opening and the flash of colours gets you straight in the mood for cleaning once the scan is over. If DaisyDisk were a pinup, she’d be Bettie Page for sure. At $19.95 for a download, it’s a bargain but if you want the CD version, you’ll have to cough up an extra $14.95 for the priviledge.

Another fantastic app for getting rid of unwanted files is App Zapper, which Josh wrote about recently. Read his great post here.

Icons and Backgrounds

After the upgrade to Snow Leopard my macbook began to look a little lacklustre due to the losing of my saved background. This still hasn’t changed, but the best way to perk up a dull desktop is to whack an interesting picture on it. I usually use one of my own photographs, or I trawl through Flickr for a seasonal picture. Sometimes opening my laptop to be greeted by the smiling faces of my family can be the best pickup, and can start conversation in a cafe. Plus, it looks a hell of a lot better than Aurora!

The best app I’ve found so far for icons is Candybar, which allows you to customise and organise all your icons in one easy programme as well as your dock. Some great free icons can be found at InterfaceLIFT, and are all generally well designed with the most simple black and white packages being quite popular. I’m a fan of the crisp and clean look, not too many colours or garish animals peeking out, but liked customizing my hard drive icon with a love heart. Main folders, namely my CV folder and Portfolio, were appropriately twinned with love heart icons to make them stand out instantly. If you’re not too keen on the love hearts, there are plenty of less-girly icons for you to choose from! CandyBar can be bought from the site for $29, or you can download a free trial and register to use the services later.

The Outside

One of the best bits about owning a laptop is being able to customise it, not only on the inside but on the outside too. With the white macbooks, you’ll often find a quick clean with wipes and spray restores grey smudges to their original bright whiteness, and then you’re free to add anything you like. People often go for stickers of their favourite social sites or brands, but there’s also the option to invest in some real art to show off with. Urbanretro and Etsy sell some great vinyl skins including this Little Big Planet and exploding dog art. If you’re like me and know you’ll get bored easily with one-use only stickers, you can go for the hard case option, giving you a variety of colours to pick and choose from. And, if you have a bit more money than sense and aren’t afraid to show it, there’s always Colorware to give your Macbook or iMac a full makeover paint job.

[Download This Episode]

In this episode, we talk about Handbrake 0.9.4.

[02.1 MB] [00:06:00] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

I have been complaining for a long time about the Finder’s lack of tabbed browsing. Apple still hasn’t gotten around to implementing that yet, but a third party developer has taken the initiative!

TotalFinder is a SIMBL plug-in that modifies the Finder to work with tabs. This implementation was taken directly from Google’s open source project Chromium.

Right now, the software is free in its alpha stage. Later on, this will be for-pay software, but I think that this is very much worth a good chunk of change. It really makes my life so much easier!

Make sure to take some time to read the developer’s blog post about TotalFinder. He describes how he developed the software as well as where he plans to take it. This is exactly the creative stuff that makes our little community the best in the world!

Photo Credit: jonrawlinson

Okay, I’m a Mac guy. That should be fairly obvious, but my family is strictly Windows-only. My father is a network administrator, so he is very comfortable with that world. Despite my protestations, I doubt he will ever buy a Mac. He wanted to put a computer in his kitchen, so he bought a “Nettop” PC. Let me break down the specs for a second:

• Intel Atom 1.6 Ghz Dual Core Processor
• 2 GB of RAM
• Windows 7 Ultimate
• Intel Integrated Graphics
• 64 GB solid-state harddrive
• DVI, VGA, USB, and FireWire ports

The processor seems to be fine. I keep my eye on the system monitor, and the Atom is rarely a bottle neck. Lag is usually due to displaying video.

Two gigs of RAM really is plenty for light users. It flies in the face of the tech community and marketeers who are constantly forcing the top of the line onto non-nerds. Checking your Gmail account and creeping about Facebook DOES NOT require eight gigabytes of RAM. Let’s relax a little bit, fellow nerds.

Windows 7 is not vomit-inducing. It is perfectly acceptable. However, there are small things that will trip up Mac users. Most glaringly, you cannot scroll in background windows. If you want to scroll, you have to have that window in focus. Small things like that make me twitch whenever I use Windows.

This is a black box approximately the size of a Mac Mini. It won’t be running Photoshop or 3D video games, but it is decent for browsing the web and watching DVDs. It is able to run Aero and drive a 23″ monitor at 1920×1080 despite the lackluster graphics chip.

I really don’t notice any speed difference with the solid state drive. I use 7200 RPM SATA drives in my Mac, so I use that as a comparison. I’m sure there is a difference if you look at the benchmarks, but it is not really noticeable to your average user.

Surprisingly, it has a ton of USB ports. I counted at least five visible ports, but there are hidden flaps all over the place. Who knows if there are any more skulking about?

In sum, “Nettop” PCs are perfectly acceptable computers for light users. You probably aren’t going to get the best performance for your dollar, but the total cost will be less than your standard desktop computer.

Photo Credit: DRB62

Some people are in full out panic mode as Stephane Richard, deputy chief executive of France Telecom/Orange, seemed to imply that the tablet might be partnering with telecommunication companies to provide 3G access on the device.

It should be noted that at no point does Richard talk in specifics, and in a roundabout way he alludes to network capabilities to handle transmitted “images in real time.” He also talks specifically about the device having a webcam built into it.

So, he’s either speculating himself, or dropping some concrete evidence that the Tablet is on the way, that it’ll include 3G, and that it has a webcam.

Take it for what it is: The Video Evidence (In French)

Waxing Philosophical about data plans

If Apple’s teamed up with mobile carriers to provide 3G access to the Tablet, I won’t buy it. It’d be a little more inciting if 3G access was optional, which seems a little less likely. Forking over the cash for the device would be a lot easier if Telcos allowed customers to use their existing dataplans on the device, but that seems highly unlikely.

It’s not that the idea of an internet-everywhere tablet isn’t ideal. It’s the fact that everything to do with every misstep we’ve seen with Telcos, 3G, and Apple. There’s not one thing Apple can tell us that would make having to sign a new contract or pay for yet another dataplan, a welcomed bit of news.

The way things currently sit with cellphone providers, any 3G device currently requires its own contract for a dataplan. If you’re lucky the company will discount the price of the hardware for you, but in some countries you’re stuck paying the full price of the device plus data fees. It makes complete sense for the telco’s to do it. Heck, if I was in their shoes I’d probably do the same.

The problem arises when people stop buying devices because they can’t afford to pay data plans. Some will likely have to choose between an iPhone or a Tablet if the rumours hold true, and that’s not a good approach for Apple, who’ve argued over the years that they’re in the business of selling hardware. A lot of people, in todays market economy, can’t afford an additional 50 to 100.00 per month in bills. A lot of people could probably squeeze the expense into their budget, but, if they do, they’ll be spending quite a hefty chunk of change on internet ready devices. Think about it for a second. Internet at home, Internet on the Phone, Internet on the tablet. In Canada that’s 45.00 per month, plus 30.00 per month, plus 30.00 per month. Excluding device rental fees, cellphone fees, and all those other access fees that seem like a scam. If we add those into the mix, we’re talking half of a paycheck per month (if you’re getting paid weekly).

If speculation holds true, some people might find themselves having to make some hard decisions. Either they buy an iPhone or they buy a Tablet, because dropping that much coin on internet devices is starting to become a little bit too steep for most consumers.

It’s a real pain to bulk edit file names. Some people use automator, which is as drag and drop as these things get, but Renamer is an alternative that I’m preferring these days. Sure, it’s not as in depth as automator’s options, but it certainly gets the job done in a smidgen of the time.

I put it to the test, and used it to renamed 200 podcast segments that Grant and I have recorded over the last couple of months. We both separately record our own ends of the podcast, then Grant mixes them together. This means that we end up with three files. My audio, Grants audio, and the mixed audio. Having mg-201.aac three times gets a little daunting. I decided to put a -josh on the end of each episode number so that I can archive all these episodes.

Renamer was up to the task, and made it painfully simple. I even managed to rename the files across the network. My files are stored on my Mac Pro, and I’m running Renamer from my MacBook Pro.

How simple is it?

All you have to do is select the files you want to rename, click the plus in the right windowpane, determine if you want to remove, insert, or overwrite text, write up the text you want to insert, then pick where you want it inserted. Click apply, and you’re off to the races.

Sure beats creating custom automator scripts.

The application also lets you strip whitespace in your files, convert to MS-Dos compatible names, or ensure that theta file names are ASCII. Pretty simple stuff.

The application isn’t cheap, it comes in at 31.70CAD (30.80 USD according to XE.com). If you have to do one job or two it might be a bit steep, but if you’re renaming your television show downloads and files as much as I am, this application is a must. I spend a lot less time figuring out how to batch script these things, and a lot more time actually creating some more content. There’s a free trial, so you can try it out yourself.

As you likely know, I’ve been using my iPod touch for tracking my son’s development. At 7.5 months old, now, I’m looking for ways to entertain him. (He is most enthralled by my wires and none of his toys.) I have downloaded a fair share of games for his enjoyment but fell in love with a suite of games by zinc Roe. The three games I tried are called Sound Shaker, Count Caddy, and Sort Slider.

The game illustrated above is Sound Shaker, which is the closest one for my son’s age. The idea behind this game is that you choose one of the above six “sounds” and touch the screen and sounds are made. This teaches children and babies what noises to expect. The little balls of items roll across the screen so there’s an added element of fun. Anyone can play this game, and as my son simply moved his hands across the screen, he was able to hear the accompanying noises.

We’re starting to teach my son how to count, but Count Caddy was tried for good measure. The idea behind this game is that you drag little balls of yarn into the center piece and count the number of balls that have been collected. My son didn’t understand this but he definitely will in due time!

Sort Slider is a cute little matching game where you either drag an item to its match or you tilt the screen to let the item fall on its match. This is probably the farthest off for my son, but I can see it having utility in the future for any young child.

zinc Roe has a lot of great games and babies and toddlers and even older children will certainly benefit. They’re probably going to want to do something with your phone when they’re older, so you might as well be sure you’re equipped with entertainment for them when the time comes!