Category Archives: Personal

Macworld 2010: a Letdown?

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Well, of course I went to Macworld. This is the first Macworld without Apple, and my first Macworld myself.

I went and as I found, I couldn’t see anything that was interesting AND affordable, making it quite boring for me. Sure, there was MacDictate but lets go through the list:

#1: Would it benefit to my lifestyle?

#2: Is it affordable?

Well, MacDictate; I don’t need it, therefore it wouldn’t benefit to my lifestyle. Plus, it is how many hundreds of dollars?

Lets see…

Scoche Earbuds. Would it benefit to my lifestyle? No, I already have a great pair of earbuds. Nope.

And so on.

To guage that this was in fact NOT USUAL for it to be so boring was my good friend Spencer Schoeben (netspencer.com), who I came across and assured me that Macworld isn’t usually like so.

In fact, I came back with absolutely NO VIDEO at all. And I won’t be coming back tomorrow.

But I did pick up a Gelaskin at half price, because it was so cool and of course it was at half price, review coming soon.

What did you think of the Macworld Expo (if you went)?

Spewing Star: 4X6 Print giveaway

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I’ve decided to do a free giveaway of a signed 4X6 print of Spewing Star (click here).

I will give it away to the fifth person to send an email to art@goodmorninggeek.com.

If you win I’ll reply requesting your address and soon this 4X6 glossy print of Spewing Star will be yours!

Just to let you know, there is a small smudgy type thing on the left side towards the bottom. Everything comes at a price :-).

I’ve done my best to get it off, but if it is going in a frame, then you should be fine.

5th person! art@goodmorninggeek.com!

My thoughts on the new iPad

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The iPad was THE BIG announcement on 1/27. It is the once-rumored tablet was awaited for months, and it’s finally here. the wall street journal said, “the last time I saw this much excitement about a tablet it had some commandments written on it.” Well, here it is with positive and negative opinion, but here are my thoughts:

Many of the negative opinions state that the iPad is just “an oversized iPod Touch”, which I don’t disagree with. But it’s so much better. Between the amazing redesign taking advantage of the bigger screen Also, the keyboard is now almost full-sized. Plus you can get the keyboard dock for it to use a physical keyboard, or if you already have the apple wireless keyboard you can connect that through bluetooth as well. I completely forgive the keyboard for these two things.

Another amazing thing is the iBookstore, the store of iBooks. I find it quite awesome, but the prices NOT so awesome….

The iPad has a custom built silicone chip called the A4, built by apple’s hardware team in constant with the software team, which gives an amazing level of performance. this is absent in the iPod touch and iPhone. I assume you have heard of the game DoodleJump, #1 in the App Store. Now imagine playing that on a ten inch screen. who can’t call that awesome?

10 Hours of battery life? Wow….. That’s a lot…. The movie watching experience is so amazing due to the LED backlit display, which also has IPS allowing you to view the iPad from 178º with a completely clear contrast of color etc.they have also redesigned the iWork suite for the iPad. Now I’m sold. Yet only a few more months….. Did I mention they are coming out with a 3G version? Check this out: for 250MB per month, you only have to pay $15. Even better, for UNLIMITED 3G data you can pay a monthly fee for only $30!! Also, there is NOO contract, and you can cancel anytime. There is still one HUUUGEE flaw in well not exactly the device, but the network the 3G plan is on: AT&T SUCKS!!! I might be okay If I didn’t have any dropped calls but all of the dropped calls and lack of service AT MY HOUSE made me switch…. I have had 1 dropped call since I’ve had Verizon, and that doesn’t mean the 3G data coverage would be any better….

But I must say my favorite feature is the price. Everybody was so sure that it would be $999, which apple mentioned was predicted at the announcements. But the price for the lowest end 16GB WiFi only model is……. $499!!!!!!1 WOOHOO!!!! For 32 to 64, you need to add a hundred bucks more…. worth it? I dunno… Also, the same applies for the WiFi +3G version, but it all costs an extra $130 for the 3G radio… Overall, my opinion concludes to….

OMG I WANT ONE

My Top 5 favorite things about Mac

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I love my Mac.

I actually was a PC fan for multiple years. Up until the summer of 2008, I loved PCs. I felt bad for all of the people who had tiger machines and I had absolutely no I dea what mac products were out there.

But in the summer of 2008 I went to a computer summer camp called DMA where I took a class on web design. At DMa EVERYTHING was Mac. The game design classes were using Windows (The main gaming platform after all) on bootcamp.

My instructor loved Macs. And the thing was, I had really never used a Mac and I was fine using it. I knew how to get around, it all simply made sense. And finally after one week of class, I wanted a Mac.

AnI love the simplicity, but here is a list of the top 5 things I love about my Mac.

5. The Menubar

Having the File, Edit, View etc. menus at the very top o the screen has proven to be easy and I like it. Why? I don’t really know…

4. The Dock

Instead of having application shortcuts cluttering my desktop or “Quick Launch” icons, The applications are right there in my Dock. And after launching an application instead of each window that appears of the application showing up in the menubar all of the windows are part of the one running application which is indicated in the dock. And when a new application is launched it shows up to the right of all the others. Also, when you minimize a window it goes to the right of the divider. With a cool animation! And then Stacks. Stacks is AWESOME! I love how I can move a folder there and instead of opening a new window to see what is inside of it a cool little fan or grid springs out to give me easy access. And having the trash bin right there? It just all makes sense and saves a lot of space compared to the windows menubar.

3. Mounted drives on desktop

When plug in a USB disk or DVD or whatever, instead of going into My Computer, It’s just right there on my desktop. And when I unplug it, it’s gone. Once again, it just all makes sense.

2. Built in printer drivers

My old HP printer stopped working, so I needed to connect to a printer downstairs (Oy). The printer was being shared through windows on a computer downstairs. If I was using a PC, it would be driver mania. On my Mac? It al makes sense. Open System Preferences (another of my favorite things instead of control panel), go to Print&Fax, Click the obvious +, Select windows, and select the computer downstairs, and select the printer connected to it. I want the Gutenprint, I click done and tada, I can print to it. So simple, no CDs or finding drivers on the web needed! YAY!

1. Spotlight

I have no idea what I would do without spotlight. I need to open an application. I can do it in 4 clicks, a ew scrolls, and some hard searching through alphabetized names. Or, I can find it in 5-* keystrokes, which will take much less time if you consider how much moving around the mouse you need and how fast you type. Just press Command>space and type the name of the file, application, iCal event, address book card, email, or even past visied webpage and press the return key to open it. No Start, All Programs, Etc. involved! Say I want to open system preferences. Instead of going and opening finder, going into Applications, scrolling until I find it, opening it, and closing the Finder window, I just press Command>space, type Syst and press return. System PReferences opens and the spotlight search dissappears and when you reopen it and it will have cleared the search for you. There is Google Desktop for PC users, but that takes up quite a lot if CPU. Spotlight is awesome!

Welcome to the new Good Morning Geek

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Welcome to the new Good Morning Geek! Here are some of the new features:

•Now with WordPress, enabling me to post from mobile
•New cleaner interface
•Categories in the sidebar
•New and improved search
•New Header
•Hover over external links to get a snaphot preview

Hope you enjoy the new clean and feature rich Good Morning Geek!

Good Afternoon Geek

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Introducing…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1kKL87Q3a0&hl=en&fs=1&]
(Actually, it’s hard to see here, so just click on this link. Watch in HD as well!!!(
Good Afternoon Geek!
My AWESOME podcast!
It’s packed with how-tos, reviews, and your questions!
Yes, send in YOUR TECH QUESTIONS to podcast@goodmorninggeek.com .
Then tune in to the next episode with a question as the title to have your question answered!

Email: Empty or full?

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According to the most recent NYT Tech talk podcast (my favorite), Responding to your emails quickly and moving them and archiving them immediately is very important. They also state that That empty inbox is a beautiful sight. But to tell you the truth, I have to disagree. I always love to get emails. Also, if you have one email you use for your work stuff and everything else, You know that it is hard to know on weekends when that email is useful to read or should wait until the next workday. For this I would highly recommend getting a gmail account and getting all of your personal emails there. Using outlook? On the Gmail help site they show how to set up your gmail account in outlook. Have OS X Mail? Just type in the full email address, not username (username@gmail.com) and your password. Mail will automatically set it up for you. Notice that this is a prime example of where Macs are so much easier than PCs. But the point is, delete the emails you never want to be reminded of, organize some of them into folders / mailboxes, and the rest? Keep is your inbox! Wondering where something is? There is a place for searches called a search box! I use mine all the time. But the question is, If you have an empty inbox, where does the rest go?? I love having stuff in my inbox. with a flick of 2 fingers (a scroll wheel on a PC!) I can go back in time and see some conversations from a long time ago. Do you disagree with me? I am begging of you to post your answer in the poll in the sidebar! Also, There are 2 comments on this whole blog. Please, comment! you can select anonymous, so you don’t have to give your name or anything! I will do my best to answer your comment/question. To add a comment/question, just click the 0 comments at the bottom of this post!

Time Machine Problems

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Time Machine is a very cool application. I can use either a USB external hard drive, or use a time capsule. It will automatically backup my data, and with my backup drive attached, I can view and restore my backups in an AMAZING UI (user interface).

But as I realized the first time I tried to use it, there are MANY downsides.
1) To backup using time machine, I need my backup drive to be twice the size of my internal Hard Drive.
2) It gets unhappy with FileVault. Apperently, I was told that you should never have FileVault on anyways by an Apple Genius at the Genius Bar at my local Apple Retail Store. then why do they include it in OS X?
3) You can’t use it with network drives.
Fables
And heres a heads up. If one of the first things you did when you got your new Mac was turn on FileVault, and you have used up ALOT (I mean around 80 GB of a 160 GB hard drive (internal) then it will be impossible to turn it off. You will have to move or delete about 10 GB from your hard drive To turn off FileVault.
Moral: Keep your Hard Drive uncluttered, and ORGANIZED!

I went and tried My 200GB hard drive with Time Machine, and I have a 160 GB backup drive. When I try to backup, it said I needed to have a whole 300GB on my backup drive. I gave up at that point and started running in circles wondering what was wrong.
Answer:You need to have at least twice the size of your internal hard drive on your external backup drive (in this case, my backup drive would have needed to be at least 320 GB).

I go to do a backup and Time Machine is messing up. it is unable to interpret how big my home folder is.
Answer:Turn off FileVault


From those, you can probably tell that Time Machine is incredibly specific about the things it is happy about.
Conlusion: Time Machine overall is a very good product. It jut depends what conditions it is working in, such as cluttered, or encrypted.