Category Archives: TECH

Apple, Computers, TECH

Mac and Me – iTunes

I had initially tried iTunes a few years ago, and I have to admit, it is one of the few pieces of software that I can honestly say pissed me off.

I like having my music files organized by artist, and then by album.   Apparently that wasn’t good enough for iTunes, after asking it to find my music, it then went ahead and REARRANGED MY MUSIC FILES.

Everything worked fine in iTunes, but when I went to open my music files in other programs, I could not find a damn thing.  My meticulously organized files were all over the place.  I immediately uninstalled iTunes and swore to never use it again.  Instead, I used Windows Media Player to rip my CDs and purchased individual MP3s from Amazon.com.

I recently bought a DSi, and it comes with a music player, which is pretty cool, BUT it only works with AAC encoded files, i.e. the ones that iTunes also uses.  As far as it is concerned, I have about 9GB of useless MP3s on my PC’s old hard drive.  Thus, any music I wanted to use on my DSi I would have to re-rip using iTunes.

Well, fark.

I started iTunes, grabbed some CDs from my collection (AC/DC, might as well start from the top) and popped one into the iMac.  iTunes pretty much looked the same way it did on that fateful day so many years ago (I had to reset my iTunes store password, yeah it had been THAT long) and things went as expected, which was fine.  I then decided to check and see where iTunes had placed the files, and sure enough, there they were, organized by artist, and then album.

I guess it isn’t going to be so bad after all, but I’ll hold my breath and see what happens when I put some MP3 files I had bought from Amazon.com on there.  iTunes didn’t find the album covers for “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” and “Who Made Who,” which was somewhat disappointing.

I guess the folks at Apple aren’t AC/DC fans.

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Apple, Computers, TECH

Mac and Me – iPhoto and Safari

To get the full Mac experience, I have resolved to try and do things “the Mac way” first before falling back on old habits.  This came to light when I finished setting up and wanted to transfer the unboxing pictures from my camera to the Mac.

When I was using Windows, I would remove the memory card from my camera, pop it into my PC’s card reader, create a new directory within My Photos under My Documents, and copy the pictures to the new folder.

We’re going to try doing things the Mac way, so instead of reaching for my SD card reader, I decided to plug in my camera (using the convenient USB plug built into the keyboard)  to see what would happen.

I got a prompt asking me if I want to use iPhoto, so I clicked yes.  The pictures that were on my camera then appeared in iPhoto.  I also had pictures from the family reunion I went to this past weekend on the camera as well.  They weren’t on the Mac yet, I had to type in an “Event Name”  I typed “Family Reunion,” selected all of those pictures (out of habit, I used the Shift key, but much to my surprise, it worked) and a minute or so later, there they were!

I repeated the process with my “New iMac” pictures, and so far, I am pretty impressed.  Despite my outdated 3.1 MP camera, the pictures looked pretty good.  I saw a “slideshow” option at the bottom of the window, and upon clicking it, was greeted with a slideshow set to Randy Newman’s “You’ve Got A  Friend In Me.”

That was cool, but now I want to watch Toy Story.  I was finished with the camera, but I wasn’t sure if there was anything special I need to do…you know, like in Windows.  I didn’t see anything obvious, so I just unplugged it, held my breath, and…nothing happened.  I guess that’s it…

I then opened Safari in order to upload the pictures I took during the unboxing to my Flickr account.  My initial impression was good; pages popped up fairly quickly, and I logged into my Flickr account in order to upload the 22 pics I had chosen to document the start of my Mac journey.

About 16 pics in, Safari crapped out on me.  I didn’t get a “blue screen” or even the “swirly ball of doom” I’d heard of.  Instead, Safari just sat there waiting for either me or the Flickr server to do something.  I closed the window, and uploaded the rest of the pics.  Okay, no biggie, browsers are picky things.

I then thought I would upload a pic to this site (the one where I’m giving a thumbs-up with a goofy smile) and WordPress just did not like Safari.  WordPress provides two ways to upload pics, and Safari failed both ways.

My next stop was to Mozilla.org in order to download Firefox.

Firefox handled everything just fine, but I’m not terribly dissapointed, after all, I rarely use Internet Explorer either.

Overall, I like working on the Mac, it is responsive, and the videos that Apple provides on their website do a good job of introducing PC slobs like myself to this new world of computing.

The only real learning curve I’ve experienced so far has been with the keyboard.  Typing is not a problem, but Mac keyboards don’t have the Page Up/Down or Home/End keys that have gotten so used to, so I have to re-learn many of the typing shortcuts I have gotten used to, like hitting “END” to reach the end of a line (now its command+right arrow) or doing CTRL+left to back up a word at a time (now its option+left arrow).

I think I’ll give iTunes a shot next, my PC experience with it was less than ideal (I removed it that same day) but that story’s for next time!

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Apple, TECH

Mac and Me – The Unboxing (and cleaning!)

Check out the purdy pictures

Technolust is a scary thing.  It can make (somewhat) normal men go to Gamestop in the middle of the night to pick up a new video game or game system (I’ve done both).  It also just made me buy a 24-inch iMac instead of the 20-incher I had initially planned on.

*checks budget* yeah, I should be okay there…

Setting up the iMac wasn’t too big a deal, but for the picture-taking.  Now, cleaning up my cluttered desk to make room for it was a job in itself.  I need to either dust more frequently or stop buying black furniture.

Observations:

  • Ooh, the screen sure is purdy, I can see myself!
  • Keyboard cord is almost too short
  • Same for the power cable, grr
  • I’m not hearing the PC fan jet-engine noise…is this thing even ON?
  • That’s alot of updates to download…just like Windows, I guess *shrug*
  • Woo-hoo!  Let’s do some computery stuff, now!
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Computers, TECH

Mac and Me – Intro

I have decided to buy a Mac.

After thinking it over for about a week, considering the alternatives, and crunching the numbers, I will be going to Best Buy, and will return with a 20-inch iMac.  It was not an easy decision to come to, particularly given that I am buying a new computer because I need one, following the early death of my Gateway (for what its worth, it was a pretty good machine up to that point).

I am one of those guys that defended Windows (and by association, Microsoft) with gusto, deriding Apple users as rabid fanboys lying prostate at the feet of Jobs and throwing him money for what on the surface appear to be incremental updates to OS X.  On the surface, it does seem screwy, after all, who else who pays for a DECIMAL upgrade?

I won’t be fogoing the world of Windows anytime soon, though.  After all, I have no intention of abandoning my netbook (which runs XP, and allowed me to maintain a semblance of sanity this last desktop-free week) and of course my cell phone runs Windows Mobile, which is deserving of a good tongue-lashing once I have time to get it all down on paper.  I will also probably install XP on my Mac as well, there are a few things (particularly old programs) that I don’t think will have a Mac equivalent.

It is time to find out how the “other side” lives.

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Computers, TECH

Lilliputing

So my desktop went kerplotz this past Sunday; the lousy Gateway junkheap didn’t even make it three years.  I’m trying to figure out what to get next.  I’m leaning toward Mac, but I’ll have to save up a few paychecks to float the cost.  I could get another Windows machine (and still might) but for the time being, I’m getting by with a little help from my netbook.

I must say, I’m pretty impressed with my HP Mini 1000 so far.  It gets a little pokey every so often because of the slow SSD drive, but it gets the job done.  I kicked up the memory to 2GB and the storage to 8GB.  Granted, I’m not certain I’m going to need all that, but its nice to know its there.  🙂

I took it to my parents’ house for Easter, and everyone was quite impressed.  I used my T-Mobile Dash to connect it to the tubes (folks are on dial-up, gak) and it worked quite well.  No more being “off the grid” for me or using my brother’s old crappy PC.

Its somewhat fortuitous that I have my netbook to tide me over until I get a new desktop…otherwise I may have done something CRAZY like put an iMac on my Mastercard.

Hmmm.

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TECH, Video

Tangled Up In Blu

Someday, I will buy a PlayStation 3.  I’m not sure when that day will be, but once there are enough good games to justify the purchase, I will go out and buy one.  It would be nice if Sony would drop the price on the blasted thing, though, because with $400 I could buy a netbook and have cash left over.

Hmm, now I’m contemplating a netbook.  Anyways…

The impending PS3 purchase has me in a bit of a bind where buying movies is concerned.  Blu-ray looks pretty good on those nice shiny displays at the stores, and I imagine they’d also look pretty good on my 32-inch Sony LCD (its a placeholder, I’m reserving getting the real TV for after I buy a house).

When a new movie I like comes out on video now, I have to decide whether I should buy it on DVD, or wait until I get that Playstation 3 and can watch it in glorious high-definition via Blu-Ray.  The decision isn’t quite so cut-and-dry, though.

On the one hand, DVDs are relatively inexpensive, and while they have to be “stretched” to fill a widescreen, they still look good.  The pretty picture of Blu-Ray, on the other hand, comes at a cost: the difference in price between Blu-Ray and DVD versions of the same movie can be from five to twenty bucks!

Next time you are at a store that sells movies, browse through the Blu-Ray section and look at the prices.  I promise you that at some point you will say to yourself: “No way I would pay THAT much for <insert crappy movie name here>”  Its so ridiculous, you might even say that about a movie you like.

The other consideration is that there are some movies and  TV shows that don’t really need to be seen in high-definition.  Movies like The Matrix would rock in high def, as would anything by Pixar.  In contrast, I could watch Chris Rock or Futurama on a crappy old black-and-white TV and they wouldn’t be any less funny.

So thus we have the question:  “DVD now, or Blu-Ray later?”

The answer?

Well, lets just say I haven’t bought any new movies in months.

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