White Wizard

It happened again!

So, I tried to log in to my blog today to write about something, but I couldn’t remember my password! Arghh! I think I need to blog more.

Mac App: Mozilla Firefox

I think Mozilla Firefox is a must. I know, I know, Safari is a great browser. In fact, safari is my default browser. But there are some pages still that safari chokes on AND safari doesn’t handle more than 5-6 tabs very well.

So head on over to mozilla.com and get firefox today!  (Besides, you can download a gazillion extensions).

Mac App: Adium X (chat client)

App: Multi-service Chat Client for Mac

URL: http://www.adiumx.com/

This is a great app for talking to ALL your friends.  It connects with MSN, AIM, Google Talk, etc., etc.  It doesn’t have talking capabilities (that I am aware of), but nonetheless, it is still pretty cool.

Mac App: Remote Desktop Client

App: Remote Desktop Client for Mac

URL: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=remotedesktopclient

You’ll want to pick this one up if you have to connect to windows boxes.

Mac App: Stuffit Expander

App: Stuffit Expander

URL: http://www.stuffit.com/mac/expander/

What it does: stuff it will extract .bin and .hqx files. You’ll need this if you want to install windows media player.

Mac App: How to Install Stuff

Okay, on a mac there are usually two ways to install something:

1. Double click the executable/installer
2. Drag and drop the executable into your Applications folder (or some other folder of your choosing)

How do you tell which is which? Well, read the readme file that came with the app. If it doesn’t have a readme file, you can always try to double click the file. If it opens and starts running, you know that you need to perform Option 2 (the drag and drop method). If it starts installing and asks for a place to install, you know that you are using an installer.

Setting up a new mac

Okay, so you just got your new mac, right? Now what? Well, I thought I should post about some of the apps that I use and how to set them up.

I’ll post things under the mac category when I get them set up.

Google Calendar

I’ve been playing with Google Calendar and I found out that I like it, a lot. At work I have a Microsoft Exchange account, and that is nice and all. But I never figured out how to easily update and share my schedule besides exporting it to html, constantly.

With Google Calendar, I can now just update everything in one place. It also does a pretty good job of letting me decide what to share and who to share it with. In fact, I even created a Marriott School of Management Graduation calendar to help those people that are graduating and can’t remember everything that is going on (that link is in ical format).

Furthermore, I’ve created a “Given Family” calendar to keep track of everything we are doing and all the plane flight information (right now, there are 6 plane flights we have to keep track of for this upcoming summer). I think it is great to be able to track and access all of this information online.

Mac Apps: wget for Mac OS X (intel Based)

So, I’m a true geek at heart: I love command line tools. So when I found out “wget” didn’t come pre-installed on my intel mac, I set out to figure out how to install it and get it to work. Here is what I came up with:

1. Install the xCode stuff from your Mac Installation Disk (this will install some compilers and stuff)
2. Download wget (just get the latest version)
3. Untar it (just double click it on your mac)
4. Open up a terminal and go to the new directory that was created (most likely somewhere desktop)
5. Type these commands:
1. ./configure
2. make
3. sudo make install
6. That’s it! wget is now in /usr/local/bin

You have to install it as super user so that is why you use the “sudo” (super user do) command. Also, if you want wget to be in your path, you’ll need to add the following lines to your .bash_profile located in your user directory:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin

Have fun!

Pandora

So, Kurt Kirkham told me about pandora.com. It is a music site that acts like a radio station, except ituses the Music Genome Project to tailor music to your tastes. It takes into account tones, singing, background music, a whole lot of stuff.

So far, some of the songs it played for me were really dumb. However, I simply gave those songs the “Thumbs Down”, pandora then takes the aspects of that song into account when it plays songs in the future. Quite a neat system actually.