Monthly Archives: January 2010

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

BumpTop

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Do you own a computer? Does it run something other than MS-DOS or another code based system?

Then you have a desktop. The desktop is supposed to be what it is… a desktop. But desktops arent flat. Desktops have depth. You can put stuff on top of other stuff to sort it, you haave sticky notes…Turn your desktop into a desktop with BumpTop.

Here’s your usual Desktop.

Old Desktop...

But open the BumpTop application and turn your desktop into a desktop!

That's a real desktop!

As you can see, BumpTop changes my desktop into a true desktop, giving it a room kind of feel.

That’s truly the whole point of BumpTop. It really Goes even farther than that b y allowing you to make files bigger or smaller, depending on their importance. To do this, just click on an item once to select it, hover over the selected item, and click either grow or shrink. If you get the pro version, this can simply by done with the pinch of your fingers (only with a multi-touch trackpad). I would show you a screenshot of this, but when modifier keys to press for the screenshot make the small box with the options disappear.

Want something to be on a wall? Just click and drag it there. Pretty simple. Want to see one of the three available walls? Just double click it. Still on a wall you can make things bigger or smaller.

One of my favorite features is called piles.

Folders are overrated.

Just select a few items (A great new kind of selecting tool, as squares are just too hard to use), hover over one, and a menu will appear; you can click clean up to make the files into a neat grid, you can grow or shrink the multiple selected items, but there is another option:Make Pile. This will put all of the files into a neat little pile, which you can select, press “Return” and name the Pile. You can also make the pile bigger or smaller. Due to the basics of physics, you can’t have a pile on the wall. Yet do you want to see what’s in a pile?

Luckily, BumpTop integrates almost perfectly with QuickLook. You can select a pile and press spacebar to see the QuickLook of the files inside like you had selected all of the items. To open a file in the pile, you can double-click the file which will popup a little box with all of the files of the pile in it. Click a file to open it. Piles is really convenient for organizing things other than using folders.

Try taking a file and setting it kind of to the side but on top of a pile. This works with the sticky notes (you can click the new note button to create one, and move it around like a file), which is what is shown below:

Talk about physics!

This can be done with all files on your desktop.

Als

o just an FYI, If you want to change the backgrounds of the walls and floor, that can be configured in the preferences located in the menubar icon.

Overall, BumpTop is a great cross-platform way to expand your desktop 3X, and give you a great fun experience.

Plus…. IT’S FREE!!!!!

You CAN in fact get the pro version with a few more features, but If you are looking for an AWESOME and FREE way t have some fun with your desktop, it’s called BumpTop

BumpTop Mac Homepage

BumpTop Windows Homepage

BumpTop Mac Download

BumpTop Windows Download (compatible with Windows 7!)

GrandPerspective

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What does your hard drive look like?

No, I don’t mean a metal block. I mean the inside. No, I don’t mean a needle on some disks (depending on if you have an SSD of course). I mean on the disks (or chips, if on an SSD).

That’s what GrandPerspective is for.

But an even better way of using GrandPerspective. I was using a bit more than half of my hard drive space, but after using grandperspective and deleting the reallybig blocks that appeared, I was able to cut downTunes movies that I never watch anymore.Upon opening grand perspective, you will notice a window. I reccommendyou selecct your home folder, as scanning the Library and System folders will be useless and you can’t delete anything off of them. It will scan, and after you finish it will come out like the below image. The big blocks are files that take up A LOT of space. Smaller blocks take up less space. This gives you a perspective of what is taking up your hard drive space and how much hard drive space it is taking up, hence the name. Click a block to see its path at the bottom of the window. Click reval to open the containing folder in the Finder.

In finder, you can delete the big file then go back into grand perspective and press Command>Option>S to rescan the folder and conquer all of those other big files.

P.S. If you decide to scan your whole hard drive and you see a big block thatis located at /var/sleepimage, that cannot be deleted. It is the image that your RAM is saved to when you sleep the computer.

Also, for PC, try WinDirStat, download from Cnet available HERE.

Homepage

Download

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!