Do you know about Dropbox? I’ve heard rave reviews of the service through my tech sources. Over the weekend, I installed Dropbox on both my Mac Mini desktop and Ubuntu Linux laptop. On each computer, a Dropbox folder was created in my user folder. All files dropped into the folder are automatically synced between your computers. You treat Dropbox just like any other folder on your computer. I’m very pleased. It’s file sharing made easy. All users get 2 GB of storage for free, and it is available on all platforms. Amazing!
One of my favorite podcasts is a show called No Agenda, starring “crackpot” Adam Curry and “buzzkill” John C. Dvorak. Together, they poke fun at the mainstream media and offer interesting insights into what is going on in the world. They are a hoot to listen to “in the morning.” The show is recorded twice weekly on Thursday and Sunday.
Some of Adam’s theories truly live up to his crackpot title. I certainly don’t subscribe to all of them. I admit that I don’t always agree with all of their political leanings, but the dynamic of these two guys is fun to listen to. I enjoy it when they tear into the propaganda embedded in a lot of commercials and TV dramas that air today, as well as all of the celebrity media “distractions” that are thrown at the public.
John C. Dvorak is my favorite of the two, and his pet peeve of the day is always amusing. Together, their laid back, unscripted conversation-style show combined with their refusal to spoil it with sponsors makes for enjoyable listen. Check it out.
Over the years, I have jumped from program to program for managing my checkbook and finances. Back in the day, I used Quicken exclusively. When I bought my Mac in 2007, I immediately bought Quicken 2007 for Mac. That particular program turned out to be an ugly beast. It wasn’t made for the Intel chipset, it was slow, and not intuitive at all.
Since dumping Quicken 2007 in search for a better alternative, I have experimented with numerous other programs. Those include Moneydance, Moneywell, iBank, Cha-Ching and others. I have never been completely satisfied with my experience with any of them. I believe Moneywell is the best program I’ve used, but lately I’ve grown frustrated with a few issues that I believe must be software bugs.
A wider question is whether to use money management software at all these days. A lot of people don’t bother. I can think of three alternatives to not using said software: 1) Not keep track of your money at all, 2) Use an online solution like Mint. I am not interested in using an online service to house my banking information, so that option can be tossed out immediately. 3) Track your finances using a spreadsheet.
Quicken has been promising a new Mac version for a couple of years now. It has been delayed time and time again. In fact, some in the tech press have called it vaporware. However, it seems that they are finally about to release it. I received an email from Intuit saying that the new version will be released by the end of this month. It is called Quicken Essentials for Mac. The screenshots look attractive, but is it worth it for me to spend any more money on software to help manage my money? After all, I find something that I dislike in all of them.
My needs in money management are pretty simple. I manually enter the data and I just want to know the bottom line to avoid possible overdrafts. With that in mind, I’m now trying a new approach to managing my checkbook. I’ve created an Excel spreadsheet that will house my transaction data. I tried a few iterations of my own, but I’ve taken a liking to the attractive Excel 2008 checkbook template that Microsoft offers for download on their Mactopia website.
So far, I like the complete control over the fields and information that I can store using Excel over a money application. Over time, I’ll see if tweaking the spreadsheet will be enough to satisfy my needs. If not, perhaps I’ll test drive Quicken’s new offering. Maybe they’ll get it right this time.
I signed up at Twitter in August of 2008. At the time, I wasn’t sure how much I’d use the service. Over the last year and a half, it has become one of my primary Internet destinations. I usually check my Twitter feed before I visit Facebook. To date, I’ve posted over 1,500 tweets to my Twitter account. I can’t say that all of my tweets have been very interesting, but I enjoy myself.
Of more than a hundred iPhone apps installed on my iPod Touch, Tweetie2 has become my favorite. It’s often the first app I click when I turn it on. I often take the iPod in the bathroom (ha) or in the bed to scroll through the latest tweets and trending topics. Tweetie2 is a fantastic Twitter client and I recommend it above the competition.
I post at least one tweet to Twitter every day. That much is easy. I’ve been try to post daily to this blog. Due to the long form format, it takes time, and I won’t be able to continue it indefinitely. Often times when I see a great movie or find out about something amazing, I’ll tweet about it, versus hammering out an essay on the topic. I suppose that I’ve become lazy by the 140 character limit of Twitter.
Twitter is valuable. Over time, I have carefully managed the list of people that I follow. Today, I follow 175 people and companies, and I read their messages daily. I find out about things the instant they happen. With Twitter, I feel completely plugged in. This is especially true for tech news, which I am very fond of.
If you aren’t using it, I don’t know why. Everyone can sign up, and nobody forces you to post messages of your own. The value in crafting a list to follow of people who are important to you is immeasurable. In fact, I have exchanged direct messages with people such as the editor of MacWorld magazine, and others. It’s quite a community. I foresee using it for a very long time.
My latest Twitter updates are on display in the right sidebar of this blog. You can follow me @blitzcraig.
Seemingly out of nowhere, I am going to write about the worst meal I have ever eaten. In order to tell this story, I have to cast my mind back over ten years ago to a day when me and a co-worker stopped for hotdogs on our lunch break.
The eatery is called Goodberrys and only has locations in Raleigh, Durham, or Cary North Carolina. Goodberrys has a good reputation in the Triangle for their ice cream and frozen custard. I don’t particularly have a problem with their desserts, but I can say first hand that their hotdogs are a complete abomination. They are so bad, I imagine that eating one could possibly take a year or more off of your life.
I remember the meal like it was yesterday. We each ordered hotdogs from the location in Cary and ate them on our way back to work. I have to say that the Goodberrys in Cary is historically the worst of them all. Neither of us could choke down an entire hotdog that day. My teeth simply could not separate the internals. I liken it to biting into a rubber, steel-belted garden hose. To this very day, it remains the single grossest thing I have ever eaten from a restaurant in my life.
Hilariously, Laura has had the same experience. She told me that her encounter with a Goodberrys hotdog happened almost fifteen years ago. She said the hotdog had the consistency of a rubber stick with a bone in the middle. Disgusted, she threw the rest of her half-eaten hotdog to the stray cats that had made themselves a home around her house. The stray cats would not touch it! That says it all.
I realize that it has been over a decade since I ordered food from Goodberrys, which isn’t really fair to complain about now, but it may as well have been yesterday. It continues to haunt me as the most terrible meal I have ever consumed.
To summarize, if you are in the Raleigh area, for heaven’s sake, do not order a hotdog from Goodberrys. Trust me, they are absolutely dreadful. I seriously have my doubts that what they are serving even legally qualifies as food. You’re likely to get more flavor and nourishment from ingesting a dead cat on the side of the freeway.
I am an avid follower of tech news. It seems that as of late, the Adobe Flash Player has been taking a lot of hits in the tech press. I’m now writing to defend it.
Criticism of Flash reached a head last week when Apple announced their new iPad. As everyone knows, the iPhone OS does not support the Flash Player. Apple’s lack of support for Flash on their mobile devices is quite deliberate. The general consensus is that Apple hates Flash and wants to use the iPhone and iPad as weapons to try to kill it. This irks me.
The exclusion of Flash on the iPhone and iPod Touch is understandable, but I believe that the lack of Flash support on the iPad is a huge mistake. I don’t want to buy the iPad, but if I were interested, the lack of Flash would be a deal breaker for me. Far too many websites rely on the richness that Flash provides. Sure, YouTube videos play on the iPhone and iPad via H.264 video support in a dedicated app. However, web video isn’t the only area where Flash is popular.
Websites for musicians and restaurants are two areas where web designers lean heavily on Flash. One can complain about that fact all they want, but it is a reality. I personally have no problem with it whatsoever.
In addition, most all of the web-based games on the Internet are played within the Flash Player. Think of the gaming destinations Pogo, Kongregate, Farmville, etc. People enjoy playing these games. To simply not include them in a product that is designed to browse the web is totally unacceptable.
Flash has been a standard on the web for a very long time. More than a decade ago, it brought static web pages to life with animation, sound, and interactivity. I’m tired of hearing the growing calls for the format to be abandoned.
The anti-Flash camp contends that the Flash Player is a slow, buggy resource hog, often hitting 100% CPU usage and crashing web browsers. I have never noticed this on any of my computers. I can stream Flash video and multitask on my aging machine without issue. In fact, I have a decade old IBM Thinkpad that sports a Pentium-III processor with 512 MB of memory. That Thinkpad plays Flash perfectly fine, without struggle, overheating, or 100% CPU usage. When you consider that modern computers have dual and quad-core processors, what difference does it make if Flash is heavy on system resources?
To conclude, I have no problem with the Flash Player. I’ve never noticed it slowing down my computer or crashing my web browser, even once. In my opinion, Macromedia and Adobe have historically done a pretty good job at maintaining the Flash Player across all platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris. It is ubiquitous, and it just plain works. So I say this to everyone who is bitching and moaning about the Flash Player: Get over it. If you don’t like it, uninstall it. See how great your web experience is after you do that.
In my city of Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, there are a couple of lame traditions that I have to call out as being stupid. Here goes.
Every New Years Eve, while the partygoers in New York City are living it up in Times Square waiting for the ball to drop, another copycat tradition is underway in downtown Raleigh. In Raleigh, we have the acorn drop. Yes, you heard right. It is a large acorn on a pole that they lower at midnight to celebrate the new year. Lame. What is the point of this? New York is in our time zone and people who actually have a life can celebrate the real ball dropping, in real-time.
Even more stupid is the fact that the acorn is dropped early every year at 8:00 PM so that families and small children can witness the drop, chiming in an hour that is absolutely meaningless to all parties involved. To artificially celebrate the new year before midnight is a complete disgrace. Let’s just do away with this. I’m embarrassed.
Today is Groundhog Day. Up in the city of Punxsutawney, PA, the famous groundhog comes out to see his shadow. Don’t get me started on how silly the tradition is. If you look at the historical records, you’ll find that ole’ Phil sees his shadow like 95% of the time. But I digress on Phil. My real complaint is that Raleigh, NC has to copy this tradition as well. We have our own groundhog celebration, except our groundhog bears the eye-rolling name “Sir Walter Wally.” Give me a break.
I’m curious if other cities and states have similar events to those I’ve listed above. All I can do is shake my head at what a complete waste of time and resources all this crap is.
Rabbit Rabbit! Today is February 1st, 2010. A few months ago, my longtime good friend Chad made a Facebook fan page for the act of saying “Rabbit Rabbit” on the first day of every month. I’ve posted on this topic before. To date, we have 14 Facebook fans on the page. Both Chad and I are the two page administrators. Become a fan and receive good luck. Hehe!
Most of central North Carolina experienced significant snow and ice over the weekend. We got a good covering in Clayton. We got a few inches of snow that fell Friday night, then a layer of sleet and freezing rain on top of that which fell all day Saturday. The snow fall was nothing close to what was predicted, I have to say. I heard numbers in the 10″-12″ range when I was at work Friday. I knew better. Still, we got enough white stuff, and the scenery has been beautiful.
Over the weekend, I have deployed a new visual theme for this website. I may tweak the theme slightly over time as I get everything in place. I love the new look. My new theme is called Vigilance and is a theme from The Theme Foundry (formally called Jestro Themes). I am a Pro member. Enjoy the new look!
Check out this awesome font that will save you money on costly printer ink. It’s called the Ecofont. It prints small empty holes in the outline of each character to save ink. You can download the font for free.
On January 27th, Apple announced the iPad. I watched in amusement the flood of hype and rumors that led up to this announcement. As a Mac user, I’m always interested when Apple announces a new product. I just have no interest in owning a tablet computer, or an e-book reader. I wasn’t going to buy one regardless of what Apple unveiled two days ago, but I enjoyed following the coverage.
The problem I have is that this isn’t a tablet computer. It is basically a giant iPod Touch. I already own an iPod Touch, and I don’t need a larger one. The iPad runs the iPhone OS. I want to see a tablet that runs full-blown Mac OS X and is a fully functional computer, complete with USB ports. I thought an Apple tablet would have Mac OS X at its core. After all, Apple invested a lot of time in writing Snow Leopard (10.6) to use less space and system resources. I figured all of that work would have coincided with developing a product like the iPad.
The iPhone OS, as it exists in version 3.x, does not allow multitasking (beyond the iPod feature and push notifications). That seems very limiting on such a large and capable device as the iPad. In addition, there is no Adobe Flash for the iPhone OS. Steve Jobs said that the iPad delivers the “best” web experience. How can that be true if it doesn’t have Flash? What about all of the Flash-heavy websites out there, not to mention all of the fun Flash games on the web? Also, the majority of online video streaming today requires the Flash Player. The only videos you’ll end up watching on the iPad are those you rip into iTunes yourself, YouTube videos, and those you rent or purchase from the iTunes Store. Of course, I am aware that the future HTML5 is going to eventually provide video streaming without Flash, but that isn’t quite reality as it exists today.
As for the rest, I can say that the iPad looks pretty. I do think there is too much bezel around the frame, however. I’d like to see the screen reach all the way to the edge. This device would be great for college textbooks. Little was said about that during the product announcement, however. The iPad should have a camera for video conferencing, and the lack of one is a little puzzling. I imagine that the next version of the device will add a camera. I’m also surprised that we didn’t see a 128 GB version of the iPad.
On another note, I was also disappointed that while doing their iPad product announcement, Apple did not announce the rumored multiple carrier support for the iPhone, or any mention iPhone OS 4.0.
It will be interesting to see all of the apps that will be developed for the iPad. I believe the product will be a success for Apple, but it falls short of a game-changing announcement, in my opinion.
