Category: Apple

I just downloaded two amazing freeware games for the mac. Both of them are shooters, fast and have great soundtracks. For Gunroar make sure you select the mouse as your targeting tool and then use the letters W A S D to move around. Both games are easy to pick up on and have a nice retro look to them so have fun.

Gunroar
Torus Trooper

Flickr Backup is a utility that allows you to download the pictures you have uploaded to Flickr back down to your computer for personal backup or restore. [Link]

Google Video have stopped using VLC and now use Flash to play the movies. This means I can finally check it out using my Mac! [Link]

A guy in the office got four iPod Nano’s, 3 black and 1 white. It has attracted a large crowd here in the office and everyone is ooohing and wowing. It looks extremely tiny in person, it’s very cool. Definetly going to reorder this now instead of the Sony Walkman Bean which I found out today you have to use a special Sony software to copy music onto the walkman and the software doesn’t work with Macs.

Update: Ok, I am just confusing myself to much. I just decided that I am going to hold out till the next generation iPod gets updated so then I can carry all my MP3s with me. I don’t need super tiny MP3 player. Will use the Shuffle till the new iPods come out.

The iPod Nano problems seem to have hit the main stream media. Today Gizmodo, Engadget and iLounge reported on the issue. It will be interesting to see Apple reaction to all this. [Link]

Seems a lot of people have been having problems with their Nano. The surface of the device scratches very easily and its upsetting lots of people. I checked out some of the pictures and it got me really worried. Luckily my Nano hadn’t shipped yet from Amazon so I just canceled my order. Will wait and see how serious of an issue this is and if Apple will fix it. [Link]

I have a lot of CDs, Videogames and Books and it has always been a dream of mine that I could organize them in some sort of catalog so I could keep track of what I have. I believe I finally found what I have been looking for all my life, Delicious Library.

Delicious Library is a software for the Mac that allows you to organize your stuff very easily. There are various ways you could add stuff to the library, at the moment I am entering the bar code numbers manually and the software automatically searches various sources online and then returns with a whole bunch of info on the product I just entered. Current prices, reviews, ratings, album cover, and a ton more info just by entering the bar code. If you have iSight or any other firewire camera you don’t even have to manually type the bar code numbers, just take the bar code and place it in front of the camera and it will automatically scan it just like the supermarket people use the bar code scanners. If you are lucky enough to have a bar code scanner (cuecat owners click here) you could also use it to input information into Delicious Library. You could even add stuff by typing in the CD or book titles, for example I typed in Blind Melon Soup and it returned 2 results, I clicked on the right one and thats it, its automatically added into my library.

After you add all your items to the catalog you can then search for songs, artists, authors, publishers etc.. you can even have it print out the whole catalog for you with all your items listed. You can add notes under each item also for example the name of the person you lent the item to and even find items similar to one you have highlighted.

Delicious Library isn’t free though, it costs $40 but its worth it. So make sure you check it out. [Link]

Note: If you are interested in a cuecat modified to read barcodes, you can find them on Amazon for only $9.99. [Link]

Note 2: If you are a PC user there is a software called Readerware that supposedly does the same thing except not as pretty looking. [Link]

Tivo-Guy just purchased a new machine Intel machine to run OS X and he installed and ran Xbench and here are the results:

My Mac at Work
G5 Powermac
CPU Speed: Dual G5 2.0GHZ
L2 Cache: 512KB
Bus Speed: 1GHZ
1GB RAM
Score: 97.06

Tivo-Guy
Intel Computer
CPU Speed: Pentium 4 3Ghz
L2 Cache: 2MB
Bus Speed: 800Mhz
1GB RAM
Score: 47.63

My Mac at Home
Digital Audio PowerMac
Dual G4 1.6ghz (GigaDesigns)
L2 Cache: 512KB
Bus Speed: 133Mhz
1.25GB RAM
Score: 44.86 46.16

Tivo-Guy’s Mac mini
mac mini
CPU Speed: G4 1.4ghz
L2 Cache: 512KB
Bus Speed: 167mhz
1GB RAM
Score: 37.04

Ripping Fabric
12″ PowerBook
CPU Speed: G4 1.33ghz
L2 Cache: 512KB
Bus Speed: 167mhz
512MB RAM

Score: 29.18

Nat
12″ PowerBook
CPU Speed: G4 867mhz
L2 Cache: 256KB
Bus Speed: 134mhz
640MB RAM
Score: 25.13

I was expecting Tivo-Guy to get a much higher score then mine but surprisingly we are pretty close. My brothers (Ripping Fabric) and Nats Powerbooks were the slowest but thats expected. Although again I was expecting my brothers Powerbook to be a lot faster then Nats.

Update: I added a Mac mini and G5 Powermac to the list above.

Update 2: I rearranged my hard drives and somehow I now score a 46 instead of a 44 bringing me 1 point difference between my Mac and Tivo-Guys Intelmac.

Sounds reasonable. [Link]

Makes me worry a bit, still won’t cancel my order though. [Link]

Update: Definetly not worried now, check out these nano stress tests performed by Ars Technica. [Link]

This is a cool mac app I just downloaded. The application is called Comic Life and allows you to easily create comics using your pictures and text. Its VERY EASY to use and has numerous options for a variety of layouts and balloons. I was easily able to create a stupid but really cool looking comic in like less then a minute since it automatically loaded up my iPhoto pictures automatically in the sidebar and allowed me to just drag and drop images into the layout. You can download it and try it and its only 4MB. [Link]

OK since Nibaq did his I figured I should also do mine. This is a list of my favorite and most used Mac Apps:

1) Firefox: I used to be a big fan of Camino until I started using the extensions in Firefox and since then I haven’t turned back. No other browser on the Mac gives me this much flexibility and upgrade-ablity like Firefox.

2) Butler: Used to be Quicksilver until a few days ago when Nibaq told me about Butler. Butler works like Quicksilver except its about twice as fast.

3) Xbench: Takes a benchmark of my Macs speed and then uploads it online. Been using it for a few years and I keep track on how fast or slow my Mac has become over time.

4) JBidWatcher: This free software has helped me win a lot of bids on eBay.

5) Zippist: Free and simple. Drag a file to the app and it Zips it.

6) Stuffit Deluxe: Probably the most used software on my Mac right after Firefox.

7) TextEdit: Loved NotePad on Windows, Love TextEdit on the Mac.

8) RadioLover: Don’t usually pay for software but paid for this. Its like Tivo for internet radio streams. Even goes as far separating each song the station plays as a separate MP3 file with full ID3 tags.

9) Data Rescue: Saved my ass twice so far. This software helps me recover deleted files.

10) SharePoints: Allows me to share my folders on the Mac with PCs on the network.

11) JunkMatcher: Best mail.app junk mail filter out there.

12) Serial Box: Ummm.. for research purposes…

13) Tomato Torrent: Stopped going to the movies because of this.

14) Extensis Suitcase: With all these fonts I have there is no better font manager available.

15) Acquisition: Finally, this is the only P2P software I use. I actually wanted to buy this but they only take paypal. Its that good.

For those of you who don’t realize how tiny the iPod nano is, here it the 30 second iPod nano TV commercial. [Video 1.5MB]

OK, this post is connected to yesterdays Hot Hot Hot post. Here are pictures of the inside of my Mac so you guys can understand my problem. As you can see the interior of a Mac is laid out different from PC’s and so cooling devices that work with PC’s wont work on Macs. Currently air is being brought in using the fan over the hard drive and coming out from the top from the power supply.

Here are the pictures:
Inside my Mac 1
Inside my Mac 2
Inside my Mac 3
Inside my Mac 4

Suggestions to my cooling issues are welcomed. I have 4 hard drives inside by the way, 2 side by side and 2 on top of each other on the far right.

Two days ago I posted about my PowerMac finally being upgraded, well I have run into a minor problem that requires more upgrading. Basically you can currently bake a cake inside my Mac because of the heat. I had one hard drive reporting a tempreture of 65 degrees celcius which is around 20 degrees hotter then usual. I don’t even know how hot my CPU is running but I am also guessing pretty fucking hot since you would burn your finger if you touched the CPU’s heatsink.

I am now trying to find ways to cool the interior of my case. Since its a Mac its not easy since the interior of the case isn’t standard by any means. I have found PCI slot fans but I can’t find one that will blow air in, most blow air out of the case which at the moment is not a priority. It is always better to over pressure the interior of the case then to underpressure. I also need to find a way to cool the hard drives, a way that doesn’t require screws since there is no place to screw anything in. Until this heat issue is solved my Mac won’t be on 24 hours a day, I will have to turn it on when I need to use it and off when I am done.