PanaGeek

Testing new blogging software, nothing to see… yet.

This is a great deal! It’s a chance to buy SubEthaEdit from CodingMonkeys at a huge discount. Take a look at BLOGZOT 2.0 on MacZOT.com for more info!

For those of you (either of you) who haven’t heard about SubEthaEdit, it is a collaborative editor. This means that a group of people can work on the same document at the same time. While I rarely use it for collaboration, it is a great editor in and of itself. If you don’t feel like buying it today, there is a free download version which works well too!

What BlogZot all about? Well, here is the info from their site:

What is BlogZOT!?

BlogZOT! uses the power of blogs to create value for all Mac users. In today’s example: Each qualified blog entry reduces the price of SubEthaEdit from $30.00 to $0.00 by $0.05 per entry. For each entry, that’s $166+ given back to the Mac community. What is macZOT!

As I post this, the price is down to $4.95 – just a few more bloggers need to post about it to make it a free app!

UPDATE: We did it! 624 sites posted comments about MacZOT and SubEthaEdit, so I should be getting my free registration code tomorrow!

UPDATE to the UPDATE: I got the code, and now have an up-to-date version of SubEthaEdit. I suppose I’ll start checking MacZOT every day to see what’s on sale…

I wasn’t able to figure out how to restore my old posts from Panalaska.org (maybe CZ can help me there), so I resubmitted the old posts from MacJournal. One of the downsides of this is that some of the posts were in an earlier version that didn’t handle links and stuff the same way it does now. So, the posts with links all look horrible. Maybe I’ll go back and fix them, maybe I won’t…

<title>iGo, iGo, it’s off to write a review I go…</title> A couple of weeks ago, I bought an <a href=“http://www.igo.com”>iGo</a>, which is a kind of universal power adapter. I liked the idea of having a backup charger, and the idea of having a way to charge several devices at once is appealing with the upcoming move. At first I was a little skeptical – this thing has all kinds of wires, and wraps up into a pretty big bundle, just the opposite of what I wanted for traveling. Well, it proved its usefulness last week, when I thought that the movers had packed the charger to my cell phone. Instead of having to get a $20 – $25 replacement charger, I bought the correct tip for the iGo for $10. Add in the fact that I can now also charge my cell phone in the car and the iGo is looking pretty good, albeit in a geeky sort of way.

<title>I am …</title> <a href=”http://www.blifaloo.com/quizzes/trek/trekquizstart.php”><img src=”http://www.blifaloo.com/quizzes/trek/kirk.gif” width=”150″ height=”200″ border=”0″ /></a> <br /> <a href=”http://www.blifaloo.com/quizzes/trek/trekquizstart.php”>Take the Star Trek Quiz</a>

This is a <a href=“http://www.blifaloo.com/quizzes/trek/trekquizstart.php”>great quiz</a> (based on my results, at least).

<title>As usual, a knife-wielding maniac has shown us the way</title> Thanks to Bart Simpson for that inspirational title. However, it is a <a href=“http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000601.html”>Drunken Batman</a> who is showing us the way. DBM’s post on the sad state of the Mac, particularly Tiger, strikes a real chord with me. I <a href=“http://panalaska.org/blog/?p=6>got Tiger</a> as soon as it came out, and have been nonplussed by all of its supposed greatness. I disabled spotlight (which led to a problem with 10.4.2) and turned Dashboard off because it is a resource hog on my iBook. I have tried Automator, but haven’t found it useful except in extremely rare circumstances. Mail is OK, now that I have <a href=”http://www.andrewescobar.com/mailstamps“>gotten rid of</a> the ugly icon things, and Safari 2.0 renders pages pretty well (but I had to disable that RSS function – its incessant request for keychain access drove me nuts). In all, Tiger is OK, but not nearly the advance that I saw with Panther.

I feel better now.

Today, <a href=“http://www.apple.com>Apple</a> introduced the <a href=”http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/“>Mighty Mouse</a>. While I’m sure it will receive glowing reviews, I see a couple of things wrong with it:
1. It has a wire! Come on Apple, a bluetooth mouse would be the way to go – almost all new Macs have built-in bluetooth capability, so why not use it? 2. It requires 10.3.8 as a minimum. Why can I buy any 3rd party mouse and expect it to work right out of the box, but Apple’s own mouse requires a driver disk? 3. You can squeeze the mouse and it lights up some how. Why? I think a mouse is poorly designed if you have to look at it to use it, so I can’t really see a reason to have it light up. Of course, my opinion may change after I try one out – hopefully this Saturday at the new Apple store.

<title>For new Mac owners</title> Well, all of my Mac evangelization has resulted in a second friend looking to buy a Mac, so I think I need to giver them a few links to help them on the way from new Mac owner to Mac power user.

The first site is <a href=“http://macslash.org”>MacSlash</a>. It is similar in function to <a href=“http://slashdot.org”>SlashDot</a>, except that it focuses on Mac news. There are a lot of Mac news sites, but I like this one, particularly the reader interaction. I may or may not have posted my thoughts there from time to time.

Next, <a href=“http://www.macosxhints.com”>Mac OS X Hints</a> is pretty much what the title says. It is a great source for ways to improve your Mac experience. The reader feedback is a great way of validating the quality of the hint – dumb hints are rapidly exposed, and good ideas are often improved upon.

Continuing in this vein, I recommend using <a href=“http://discussions.info.apple.com/”>Apple Support discussion boards</a> when you are stumped by a problem. Since I “tweak” my preferences I occasionally run into a problem that I can’t resolve on my own. The last problem I had was after the upgrade to 10.4.2 when about half my menu bar icons wouldn’t show up. It turned out that a file that I had deleted under 10.4.1 had caused a conflict after upgrade, so I posted the symptoms and had a response in less than a day.

New computers call (scream) for applications. My favorite for OS X apps is <a href=“http://www.versiontracker.com”>Version Tracker</a>. There are several others out there, usually with the exact same stuff, so this a good enough for a start.

Now, one of the great features of OS X is that is a *nix – a unix clone, more or less. What this means to me, the individual user, is that I can also use tons of software that was written for Linux, FreeeBSD, or just about any other *nix. The place to start looking for these apps is <a href=“http://sourceforge.net”>SourceForge</a>. Its a great site, and I maintain my CoCalc calculator distribution there.

Well, that’s it for starters. Based on your feedback, I will keep this thread going.

<title>First Mac Apps</title> I just received an E-mail from my friend Chuck who just bought an iMac. So, I figured I’d write a quick list of apps that a new Mac user should install. So, here they are in no particular order:

X11 – no link here, it comes on the install DVD. This is important to have, and is worth an “archive and install” cycle.

<a href=”http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/”>QuickSilver</a>. This is my favorite tool for navigating in OS X. Dump the lousy “Spotlight” (as a hotkey at least) and try this.

<a href=”www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/”>Menu Meters</a>. A great way to visualize what’s going on with your Mac.

<a href=”http://homepage.mac.com/dschimpf/”>MacJournal</a>. You may have seen me mention this app before. I really like it as a data storage/blogging app. You can still get a fully functional (no expiration) version at Dan’s site.

<a href=”http://www.caminobrowser.org/”>Camino</a>. This is <b>the</a> OS X version of Mozilla. I have tried several different browsers, but keep coming back to Camino. And I’m not the only <a href=”http://chunaezoh.org”>one.</a>

Finally, there is <a href=”http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/index.shtml”>Text Wrangler</a>. This is a free version of <a href=”http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/index.shtml”>BBEdit</a>. BBEdit is overkill for me, but Text Wrangler has enough to make it one of the best editors out there.

Well, that’s it for tonight. I’m hoping that others will add to this post. Maybe I will have a few topic centric app posts in the future (something like a browser post, a text editor post, or a security post).

<title>My iBook is doing better</title> Well, I took my iBook in to the local <a href=”http://www.akmacstore.com/”>Mac Store</a> and the tech prescribed a new battery. So, I’m currently charging the new battery (no pun intended – yeah right). While it is too early to say conclusively, my iBook trouble may be over.