Mac Net Journal

Jeff Carlson writes in today's Seattle Times about a smart way to get rid of old Mac hardware, and to repurpose those old Macs that you cannot quite get rid of just yet: When it's time for a purge, do a smart purge.

Watching Bill Moyers indictment of the run up to war
Wednesday, April 25, 2007, 9:40 PM

A lot of others are writing today about the Bill Moyers show on the run up to the launch of the war in Iraq. While it is an indictment of the manipulation of the American people leading up to the war, that is very old news. It provides an interesting timeline, nonetheless. But even more so it provides a damning indictment of the New York Times and the other mainstream media for their responsibility in helping the administration fool the American people, Congress, the British and a handful of others who joined or were forced to support the coalition effort that kicked off the war. There are a lot of lessons here, and hopefully reporters now will feel that they can employ some critical thinking before they help the administration launch another war.

One of the interesting points is that all it took to spread the newspeak was to help repeat the same inaccurate information over and over until it was believed that, since everyone was saying it, it must be true. It will be intriguing to see how history portrays this time in America, where perfectly intelligent people turned over their judgement in the interest of going with the flow.

In the end, history will likely judge that George was right...not George W. Bush, but George Orwell.

A nearly one year old MacBook Pro rejuvenated
Wednesday, April 25, 2007, 9:33 PM

There may be a method to my recent upgrade of my nearly one-year-old MacBook Pro with another 1 GB of RAM. Suddenly the machine is running a little faster, not quite so loud, and just generally feeling like a newer machine than it really is. The most notable difference is the speed with which I can launch Parallels Desktop running Windows XP. It is a huge time saving, and where it used to slow my machine to a crawl while running my normal suite of Mac OS X applications along with Parallels, now it just makes my processors run a little harder and hotter.

It turns out this is good timing. For the price of less than $100, my computer feels like it has had a serious upgrade in performance. Excellent!

Gonzales...you've got to be kidding me
Thursday, April 19, 2007, 10:46 PM

How is it that America - the same country that once had Bobby Kennedy as our attorney general - has fallen so far that we have someone like Alberto Gonzales as our current attorney general? Judging from his hearing before the Senate judiciary committee today, this guy could barely protect himself shadow boxing. It's a shame that someone this inept could rise to such heights. And it's clear that this age of mental underachievers cannot end soon enough.

Speaking of software that is coming along - Nisus Writer Pro beta
Thursday, April 12, 2007, 10:06 PM

I am downloading the new public beta version of Nisus Writer Pro tonight. Not quite sure why, since all of my writing is being done in Tinderbox and NeoOffice. There is just a certain appeal to a new version of one of the most advanced Mac word processors from the Mac OS 9.x days. I'll mention the highlights in future posts on MNJ.

So Leopard is delayed? So what?
Thursday, April 12, 2007, 9:54 PM

The way that some people are whining about Apple's announcement that Leopard won't be released until October, you would think they were using Windows. Really, it's going to be OK. Now get to work.

Ted Leung's useful list of Mac hardware & software
Wednesday, April 11, 2007, 10:20 PM

Ted Leung has compiled a list of useful Mac hardware and software that reminds me a lot of my way-out-of-date software list I maintained back in the days when I was working from home.

A major bummer - the death of Kurt Vonnegut
Wednesday, April 11, 2007, 10:02 PM

It's a sad night to hear that Kurt Vonnegut has died. He is one of the few major writers that I have taken the time to see in a major lecture series, and his last book, "A Man Without a Country," was one of my favorite reads in the last couple of years. CNN and Boing Boing have articles about Vonnegut, his life and his works.

Apparently it's Mac backup day
Wednesday, April 4, 2007, 10:02 PM

Both Lifehacker and Macworld write about backup tools for Mac OS X today. Both are worthwhile reads, and both served as a good reminder to me to run a quick incremental backup using SuperDuper.

Multi-Mac backup server (Macworld)
Geek to Live: Complete, free Mac backup (Lifehacker)

Controlling e-mail using Gmail and Thunderbird
Wednesday, April 4, 2007, 9:16 PM

Over the last month I have finally started experimenting with a new way of managing my e-mail. In the past I managed my e-mail in applications that lived on my computer, such as PowerMail. This fit my life at the time. I lived on my own computer and I wanted to carry my data with me. But now, even though I carry my MacBook Pro to work and back nearly every day, I live on multiple computers using a number of different operating systems. I want to be able to access my data from anywhere.

Along comes Gmail. After shaking off my paranoia that someone may steal my data, I started experimenting with Gmail last month. Due to the message threading and useful search tools built into Gmail, now I keep all of my incoming mail in one big in-box, rather than sorting everything out to topical message folders. And best of all, I don't bother making sure that all of my mail is even read every day. No more worry about seeing the number of unread messages.

The shortcoming of Gmail is that if you need to find a particular message when you don't have an Internet connection, you're out of luck. This is where Thunderbird comes into the mix. Every day or two I download all of my messages from my Gmail account into Thunderbird, so I can access that bird sighting information about a hard-to-find place in the middle of Eastern Washington when I am on the road and dozens of miles from the nearest wi-fi.

This still isn't the perfect solution. Right now my Gmail account is downloading my mail from my long-time POP account, and it is removing the mail from the pop server. This makes it easier to manage all of my mail within Gmail, but it also means that if I can't access Gmail for some reason and the account keeps automatically downloading and removing mail from my POP account, my e-mail would be inaccessible. I can get around this by leaving a copy of the mail on my POP server for X-days, but this can push the limits of my e-mail account size.

I'll keep tweaking my system, but for now I feel like I am managing my e-mail, rather than my e-mail managing me.

Are you using QuickSilver?
Monday, April 2, 2007, 10:57 PM

If you aren't already using QuickSilver, the beginner's guide to QuickSilver posted last week by Adam Pash may be just the inspiration you need to give the program a try. Even if you only scratch the surface of its features, like I do, it is a worthwhile addition to any Mac. And as Adam notes in his article, this is one of those programs that clearly sets the Mac apart from its Windows and Linux counterparts.

A running setback
Monday, April 2, 2007, 9:57 PM

My marathon training took a turn the other day, when a nagging groin muscle injury flaired up enough that I had to stop running. That was last Friday. The injury has been bothering me for two weeks, but it was only really hurting me after each run rather than during the run. Over the weekend I had to stop and decide to do the only thing you can really do with a groin injury - rest and be patient.

I'll try a short run tomorrow night or Wednesday. Meanwhile, I wait and hope that I can get back in the groove. I am 12 weeks into an 18-week training regime.