Just a quick update, today is Tiger day. Yep, OS X Tiger (10.4) should be delivered right to my door today! Glad I ordered it ahead of time when I got the new system. To many this may seem like nothing more than a point release, something that would normally be given away but I see it more for what it is… OS X FE (Fifth Edition). This is more than just a couple of bug fixes, though I’m sure there are many, it’s a full on upgrade with new features that just scream Mac (or Konfabulator). Spotlight, the new search engine, appears to be Apple’s answer to the missing Google Desktop for OS X. It indexes your hard-drive contents, documents, emails, etc. making searching for that “whatever you couldn’t remember where you put it” item infinitely easier. Then there is Dashboard, OK, so this is so much like Konfabulator that it’s actually gotten Apple in a bit of hot water legally but we’ll see how it all washes out in the end. Dashboard is simply a way to have small widgets (things like stock tickers, weather, calculator, flight tracker, network information and many I’m sure I can’t even fathom yet) on your desktop in a clean and easy to use fashion. This is just the tip of the Tiger iceberg but they are the features that are getting the most press attention currently. I plan to really check out under the hood and will write about my findings here so check back often.

OK so it’s off topic but then it’s my random thought and I’m a little off-topic in general. The Hubble space telescope has turned 15. 15! I actually remember when it was launched and what a big deal it was and how ‘advanced’ it was. Heck, still is. Just take a look at these photos. NASA has determined that the shuttle will no longer be used to repair the hubble, which is constantly being hit by cosmic garbage, because it is not in the same flight path as the ISS thus not lending itself to a safe return to earth in an emergency. OK, so I understand the need for safety and I for one applaud NASAs safety record. Lets face it, strapping 7 people to solid fuel rockets and shooting them into space is a dangerous prospect and alwasy has been. What happened to the shuttle was no doubt a tragedy and it could possibly have been avoided but… those astronauts all understood the dangers present and accepted that responsibility. I know that they are missed by their friend and family but they made a choice to go into space and with that accepted the risks. They are heros. With that said, can anyone tell me how many successful missions there have been into space? I don’t know the exact number but I can only assume that the track record is far better than that of the average driver on the road.
Anyway, back to the hubble, our soon to be piece of cosmic trash. It appears that a robotic arm is being tested for use in place of astronauts to repair the telescope. Lets hope that it works or images like the ones here will be no more.

I had a great time in Chicago this weekend. My cousin his wife, our business partner and friend Jeff and their friends all made it a lot of fun. We went to a concert on Friday night, the band was called Shellac, it was a load of fun and while I don’t always see eye to eye with Ian’s taste in music I thought they were really good. The venue sucked and thanks to the homo standing 4 inches away smoking clove cigarettes, I felt like I might gag to deatch on the stench but… other than that all was cool.

Ian and I did geek out a better part of the night Saturday night. We attempted to install Ubuntu linux. It’s basically a fork of Debian that’s gaining a lot of traction in the linux community, mostly by people that are tired of Debian moving so damn slow. The install was not without it’s complications however. While the live CD had no problems bringing up my Atheros based Wi-Fi card the install did not. I still haven’t figured that one out and if anyone out there has any ideas please drop me a line.

I’m still waiting for the download of Vida for the PPC so I can try that out.

Anyway,
Ian, Nancy, Jeff, Mark and Mariana,
Thanks for a great weekend in Chicago. I can’t wait to come back.

I’m going up to Chicago this weekend to see my two business partners to talk business, celebrate a successfull transition to our own server (not a mac, sorry) and generally have a good time together. Of course that’s all just a ploy to get to take and show off the new PowerBook. Naturally, I’ve been talking up the new Mac to my cousin and I think I have him convinced that he needs one too! He’s a bit of a Linux die-hard though so I imagine we’ll be installing some linux distro on it just so we can see how it does. I’m looking forward to this too as I installed Yellow Dog Linux shortly after I got the laptop and promptely removed it because it sucked! Now I have historically liked Fedora/RedHat distros but YDL just wasn’t up to snuff in my opinion. I can’t really put my finger on any one thing it just had a clumsy feel and after fighting with the madwifi drivers to try and get them to load I had had enough and wiped it from the system. Fedora Core 4 will be released on PPC natively but it’s currently in early beta. I may download and install it anyway, who knows. The linux I really want to put on the system is Gentoo. I just love the idea of Gentoo. Build it from source, make it small and make it fast and make it for your system and the way you use it. However, installing Gentoo has to be one of the most daunting tasks even for the not-so-faint-of-heart. Enter Vida Linux… Vida is a Gentoo based distro but sports the anaconda (Fedora) installer, this should make for a far easier installation and a system that’s ready to go in far less time. Sure, it’s not a stage1 or stage2 install for the truly geeky but heck, my time is worth something to me and getting a Gentoo system up and running in under an hour makes a lot of sense to me. Unfortunately, Vida Linux was release for purchase today but doesn’t appear to be available for download yet. I’ll keep waiting albeit impatiently.

As I indicated in my first post, I recently purchased my first Macintosh Computer. It’s a PowerBook G4 and after many years with PCs running both Windows and Linux, I can without hesitation say that “Macs are for power users”. OS X is a BSD based operating system which allows me to not only run the many native OS X applications that are out there, with more coming around every day, but I can also compile and run all of the Linux apps that I’ve come to love and use though I’m finding that less and less necessary as I go. I’ll go over this more in later posts.

OK, so I’ve been a little busy and time has certainly slipped by but I’m back and with the help of Michelle I hope to keep this site a little better updated. You can expect to read my ramblings about my life with my new PowerBook G4 and what a sweet piece of machinery it is. It’s my new hot topic so I expect to go on and on about how great it is and how much more productive I am and how I can do everything I need to do without MS Windows or Linux! Watch me fly!