This has to be the best thing I have seen in a long time. If the person who made this could sell them...
For those who have been living under a rock for a few weeks... This is the special Weighted Companion Cube that you have to carry around with you in one of the levels in Portal. The new game from VALVe, the makers of Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and Team Fortress 2 as well as many other great games available on Steam.
OK, I know this isn't really Mac related. But I felt like I had to say something.
This is the second time the Redsox have won the World Series in 3 years. Now, any other team (except the Yankee's) I would say that this is quite an accomplishment.
However, both times, they played teams that either just didn't have their hearts in the game (St. Louis Cardinals) or this time where the National League was destined to loose no matter who they played. By the way, I'm a Cardinals fan, and I say what I said about them because they played like crap back in 2004 when attempting to win the Series against the Redsox. At least they were able to win in 2006 against Detroit and win well.
This season, the National League were just terrible. Oh sure, the Rockies won 22 out of 23 games before the Series. They looked like they couldn't loose. Problem was, they were playing teams that were worse than they were. Or at least close to that. When they faced the Boston, they were facing a team way out of their league. They actually did pretty well in one game against them, but the rest were pretty worthless.
Don't get me wrong completely here. They did have to get past some pretty tough compatition to get to the Series. Cleveland put up quite a fight up until the last few games when they seemed to loose interest too. Their games against Boston were nothing but magical. Then they got to 3-1 and seemed to fall apart. No idea why, except that they were mostly wet behind the ears. Most of the team had never seen a World Series or post season for that matter. They played very well for that fact. I suspect next time, if they keep their key players, they are going to be quite a team.
So, congratulations Boston. You now have two easy wins of the World Series. Lets hope the next time you have a chance to win, you actually have to play a team that has a chance too.
So I'm surfing around Apple's "Hot News" RSS feed looking at reviews of Leopard that Apple saw fit to highlight.
I was rather amused to see the following:
"The bad: Leopard was afflicted in some cases by installation woes and application failures; some new features, such as geotagging, aren't obvious to find; users with older Macs can't run Leopard."
What a truly bizarre statement to make. Of course older Mac's won't be able to run Leopard. Older Windows boxes are not able to run Microsoft Windows Vista. It's a fact of life. When new software is released, older machines will suffer. That's why God made Linux. 
Of course this could be taken in a good light. The only thing wrong with Leopard is that older Mac's can't run it.
Sure. OK. Whatever.
(Via Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Reviews. Macintosh OS Reviews by CNET..)
So here I am, I've been using Leopard for about 24 hours now. Here are some initial impressions...
First, I had problems with my desktop computer. However, I have had problems with it before upgrading. So, I wound up backing up my files and wiping my main drive so that I could do a clean install. It's working great now. I just couldn't see my Windows systems before so that I could connect my printer. I had other small problems too. So...
The upgrade went pretty quickly, about an hour on my MacBook. The clean install only took about 30 minutes. The backup prior to the clean install took over 6 hours. 
Speedy: This thing is definitely faster than Tiger. Mail is way faster, Safari feels faster, Dashboard also seems faster.
Finder: I have to say that the finder with it's iTunes sideboard is way better than Tiger's finder. I really love the breadcrumbs at the bottom of the window (turned on via the View menu). I don't really see the point of Cover Flow in the finder. I know everyone says how nice it is to look through documents in Cover Flow, but I find it a little clumsy compared to Icon view with 128pixel icons that are previews of the documents. That and QuickView makes scanning documents really easy.
Time Machine: Absolutely a dream come true for me. I finally have a backup system that will store more than a day's worth of backups. Although I did just recently find out that ChronoSync also will allow you to do incremental backups. I wasn't aware of that in the past. The interface is pretty cool, although you need a pretty high resolution screen in order for it to be useful. Otherwise the window is shrunk down way to small to be useful.
Stacks: I so love stacks! I don't really use it for application launching, but I love it for keeping files I want to use frequently at a clicks distance.
Back to My Mac and Screen Sharing: Man, this has to be the killer app of Leopard. The tricks they use to get screen data sent across the net at ISP speeds is really great. I'm not waiting minutes for windows to animate the way I did before.
Dock: I'm not a big fan of the new Dock. I have switched it to the 2D look for now. My Dock is more of a "what is running" tool than a here are applications you might want to run.
Mail: I'm missing my MailTags big time. I haven't used mail that much other than what I normally use it for. I haven't played a lot with Todo's and Notes yet. I just want my MailTags back.
iCal: The improvements they made there are both great and weird. Editing events in iCal are really weird. But they have really improved the look of it. It's definitely going to take some getting used to.
Safari: I really like the "Open this page in Dashboard" feature where you can create a Dashboard widget of any webpage element. It's really easy to make dashboard widgets of comics now. Other than that, eh.
Help: The help system is pretty different now. I'm not sure it's better, but if you find hits talking about menu items, it points out where they are.
Overall, a pretty nice change. I'm not disappointed.
Usually, the Mac blogs and news sites I read fill up pretty quickly. I'm used to seeing about 50-75 posts a day from where I read.
Today, I have only seen about 15 or so posts.
My guess is that everyone is installing and playing around with their pre-ordered Leopard installations that were shipped FedEx Overnight like mine.
Heck, I would be too if I were actually at home right now.
I just received an email from Apple telling me that my pre-order of Leopard Family Pack has just shipped:
This doesn't surprise me, what does surprise me is that it was shipped FedEx overnight! I didn't select this when I ordered it. I just figured that I would wait the few extra days it takes to ship normally and I would get it near the end of next week.
To my surprise, it's going to arrive tomorrow (10/26). Even before folks can go in person to the brink and morter Apple stores and wait in line to pick up a copy in person. (Assuming that there really will be lines)
Thanks a bunch Apple! I really didn't expect this and it's a very welcome surprise. You guys rock!
Apple posted a video on their site recently that demonstrates a lot of the new visible features of Leopard. The video is about 40 minutes and covers pretty much all the things covered during Steve Job's keynotes at World Wide Developers Conference last year (2006) and this year (2007).
The video does go into a bit more depth on the features and is probably work a peek if you are planning on upgrading to Leopard when it's released on the 26th. There is also a section at the end that goes over the actual upgrade process. Pretty darn simple looking. It does sound like it's going to take a bit of time to install. They narrator tells us that the upgrade could take between an hour to 2 hours.
Personally, I can't wait to get my hands on it. The features I am looking forward to the most are, in order: Time Machine, Stacks, Spaces and XCode.
(Via Apple.)
ScreenCastsOnline has a great screencast discussing getting ready for Leopard.
The show covers:
I have found ScreenCastsOnline to be a great resource for learning how to use programs that I haven't started using yet. They put out a free screencast every other week. The other weeks are for members. Membership is pretty inexpensive at $45. $25 for 6 months of membership and $20 for access to the entire back catalog which is quite extensive now.
Check out the site, the Leopard screencast and while your there, the other screencasts available.
(Via ScreenCastsOnline.)
OK, I have to admit, not having comments in posts on other sites is just annoying. It's up to the author and I fully support what they want, but it sure doesn't lend itself well to discussions.
So I ahve restored comments here. Posts that didn't have comments on will probably stay that way since it's difficult to change the settings on the posts. It's not impossible, but I would have to find them and change them. Not really worth it.
I do have comments set so that I have to approve them before they are displayed. I just want to make sure that they clean and not spam. Akismet is a great comment spam blocker and it does an excellent job of catching them. I just want to make perfectly sure.
So, enjoy and make yourselves known!
.
(52)
(7)
(6)
(6)
(3)
Twitter
Jaiku
Pownce
