Whimsical.nu

Welcome to a Whimsical Blog~

Hi, I'm Angela, a girl with a blog on five different psyches:
girl, geek, reader, writer, gamer
Choose your poison ♥

I play on a Mac

So I’ve been looking at a possible machine upgrade from my Macbook–and while it’s pretty set that it will be an iMac, I’ve been playing with the idea of getting an Air. I’m not very serious with that, but then we can all dream and drool, can’t we? ;)

While torturing myself with the Air, I looked for posts and reviews about the performance of World of Warcraft on Macbook Airs. I’ve seen a really good review last January about it which started my “serious” Air obsession–it looks like it was playing WoW better than my Macbook (I play on Low/custom settings, at 20-30fps)! It was a surprise, although it shouldn’t be: Airs have solid-state drives, and these new babies should certainly be more advanced than my 2-year-old Macbook.

Rcently, I went on another hunt to just see if anyone else had more to say about it, and came across a Battlenet post about it.

WoW on an MBA

Look at how a shocking number of posters (maybe even the majority?) claim that the original poster was a troll.

Seriously, what? It’s devolved into a PC vs Mac war, which I suppose is rather inevitable, but honestly, the guy was just sharing his experience playing WoW on an Air! It’s definitely useful for other people. I get it, Macs are more expensive than built PCs, and they can get to 100+ fps or something. That’s fine, good for you.

But not everyone uses computers to primarily play games. I don’t. I want my machine to play the computer games I play well enough for my playstyle, but I am not going to buy a computer whose sole purpose is to play games.

I’ve built PCs before. I’ve pored over price charts and built CPUs accordingly. Oh, yes, they’re cheap and they’re powerful. But, uh, they were a pain, too. I’ve had hardware issues that required bringing it in for fixing once a year, at least. And being the “only techie” in the family, that meant I needed to do all the grunt work for that. And the ease of upgrading–oh my. I needed, just needed, to have that really cool new video card, a bigger memory, better drives…and so on and so forth.

I haven’t sent my Macbook in for repairs, ever. Oh yes, it’s expensive. My machine right now is running straight from the power socket because the battery is alarmingly bloated but I’m too much of a cheapskate to buy a new battery, because it’s expensive. It’s also difficult to almost impossible to get upgrades, but that’s fine with me–I don’t feel the need to get the biggest and the best anymore, because what I have works just nice.

And on the subject of “30 fps is unplayable”–really? I play on 20 fps in raids and I am doing very well. Unplayable is 7 fps. I’m a casual raider–I’m certainly not on par with the top raiders in the game, nor do I want to be, and unless I’m in that level, I don’t think 30 fps is going to gimp you so much. It’s not ideal, of course–ideal would be to have 60fps+ in Ultra–but I’m willing to make that trade off because World of Warcraft and other games is not the biggest part of my life, even if it’s big enough to warrant a dominant section of my blog.

I play on a Mac because it makes sense to me and what I use my computer for. I play on a Mac because I’m not someone to have multiple machines when one will do just fine, thankyouverymuch. I play on a Mac because specifications don’t matter to me as much as my experience of the output of those same specifications and the aesthetic, no-fuss quality of Macs.

You have your powerful, amazingly-modded computer. I have my Mac. To each his own.

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Shake it, baby

I'm talking about: homemade fruit drinks

Apple-orange juiceI love fruit shakes, fruit juices, and other such drinks. It’s one thing I miss the most in the Philippines: the proliferation of fruit drink stands. You can’t walk 10 minutes in a mall without bumping into one of these things when you’re there!

Sadly, this is not true in Singapore. Oh, there are plenty fruit stands in the food courts and hawker centers, but it’s just not home.

And so, my blender is seeing a lot of action. Last weekend I bought bananas, apples, oranges, lemons and strawberries, mostly to snack on and cut up for dessert. However, what I’m using them for the most now is for making fruit juices and shakes! I have at least one a day for the moment.

It’s crazy easy to make myself a nice, worthy drink, and cleanup of the blender is pretty easy. I usually put in two different kinds of fruits, a cup or two of water or milk, and some honey. Sometimes I add in some ice cubes.

And after, I rinse off the blender body to remove most of the visible fruit/food particles and slush, then I put in about a cup or two of water, a bit of liquid soap, and blend the mixture. Since I don’t usually put sticky stuff in my drinks, this is usually enough for cleanup. Then I can use the diluted, frothy mixture to do the rest of my dish washing! :D

Here are two of my favorite drinks:

  1. Banana-tomato shake

    This was a bit of an “accident”. I was making a grilled egg mayo sandwich and I wanted tomatoes in it. But obviously, one whole tomato is too much for one sandwich, so instead of popping the tomato back in the fridge, I tossed the remaining half into the blender with a banana. A cup of milk (I use low-fat pasteurized milk), about a teaspoon of honey (I never really measure, my honey container has this twisty top), and then I blend them all together.

    The result is a creamy banana shake that is not too banana-ey. There is no strong tomato taste, but you occasionally encounter bits and there is a slight tartness to the drink, an edge that wouldn’t have been there with just the mushy banana. It also looks pretty good! Creamy beige with a touch of pink and spots of red.

  2. Apple-orange juice

    Perfect as a pick-me-up for the mornings. I squeeze the juice out of an orange and put that into the blender. As for the apple (I use a Fuji apple), I sometimes leave the skin on, when I don’t have as much time to peel it–it makes the juice look pretty nice, what with small specks of red. I just cut it into smaller pieces and take the core out. They all go into the blender.

    Then a cup of water, a teaspoon of honey, and I blend away. I haven’t tried using milk, as I think the citrus and milk together just won’t suit my stomach. It’s perfect as a healthy breakfast drink though, very bright and perky.

I’m doing some more experimentation with a couple other fruits, although I admit I sometimes wonder if I’m crazy to try some combinations out. :x

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Hazel Review

I’ve been taking Hazel for a spin, and I’m rather impressed. The analogy they have running is that it’s a “personal housekeeper”, and does file management/cleaning in the background while you work.

For a good while I thought Hazel was not going to be very useful for me, as my Downloads folder is organized using Speed Download 5‘s rules, and I also had AppZapper for cleaning up application files.

However, firing up Speed Download for downloading a small document sometimes feels a bit overkill, and that’s where Hazel works for me. I can even set custom rules for various file types, like when I download SQL backups:

SQL rules settings

I can send the SQL to a specific folder (here, my database backups folder), and rename it to include the timestamp when I downloaded. Absolutely cool :D

Additionally, firing up an extra application (AppZapper) to delete applications is an additional step, when I can just hit Command+Delete and have Hazel tell me if she wants to delete other application-related files.

The $21.95 Hazel is definitely worth it, especially if you don’t have any of the other applications that manage your folders for you. It’s a great addition to the MacUpdate Parallels bundle, and complements the bundle well.

This is the first review of a series of reviews I plan to do on the applications included in the currently-running MacUpdate Parallels bundle. For the full list, please see my original MacUpdate Parallels bundle post.

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Typinator Review

I bought the MacUpdate Parallels bundle two days ago, which included Typinator. There’s a reason why the first review I’m making is of Typinator: it’s the app that most visibly works in the background, and is easily inserted in my workflow.

Typinator expands/replaces abbreviated text as you type, in any application, and I have to say it’s a really nifty tool. Like what its demo shows, you can create any sort of abbreviation in it and once you hit the space bar, Typinator will replace that abbreviation with “the real thing”.

Pros

One very interesting use of Typinator is for auto correction, which is the reason Typinator is very visible to me. They have an abbreviation set for common typographical errors done for English, French, Dutch, and another set from TidBITS, apparently, which contains gems like “appreachate” translating to “appreciate” and “apperatus” to “apparatus”.

English autocorrection dictionary/abbreviation set

It’s a good tool for programmers, too. A good example is when you’re writing out quick code for debugging, like below:

Abbreviation definition for debug_printr

If you notice, in the expansion field, the value has “{^}” in it, like so:

echo '<pre>'; print_r( {^} ); echo '</pre>';

That tells Typinator where the cursor should be placed. So once I type debug printr $var anywhere, it gets expanded while I’m typing $var and $var ends up at the right place. This will definitely save a good bit of time for those tedious repetitive tasks.

It had just tried to expand that text I put up top. A quick Cmd+Z usually fixes it, but naturally not if there is no such function in the application I’m working on.

Additionally, I liked that when you’re typing out your abbreviations, Typinator tells you if there’s a possible clash with other rules already present in any of your sets, like below:

Rules clash for abbreviations

Cons

It might get better when I’m more used to it, but the half-a-second pause where your abbreviation gets highlighted and then expanded can be rather distracting. Also, I initially planned to load my Terminal aliases to Typinator, but after using a few, I think I will stick with editing .bash_profile for the small stuff.

Typinator also does not have a menu bar even when its window is visible and active, which was disconcerting. Everything is under the Action icon, if you’re looking for it.

I’ve yet to notice if Typinator’s bundled auto correction sets get in the way of typing in another language, but so far it’s behaving pretty well. This shouldn’t be a very big problem, since you can easily go in and change the sets any way you wish. Don’t worry about removing an abbreviation from the bundled sets; if you want to start over, you can just delete that set and add it again.

Conclusion

Typinator, originally at $29.99 for the single license, is a useful application. I wouldn’t say it’s worth the whole bundle, but in conjunction with other applications, it complements them well and is useful in that “running in the background and doesn’t mess with your work” kind of way.

Would I buy it for $29.99? Maybe not, but I suspect this one of those applications which, once you’ve used it for a year or two, you might buy for that price in the future. Way to go for creating need ;)

This is the first review of a series of reviews I plan to do on the applications included in the currently-running MacUpdate Parallels bundle. For the full list, please see my original MacUpdate Parallels bundle post.

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MacUpdate Parallels bundle

Kelvin told me that the MacUpdate Parallels bundle went live yesterday, and I caved and bought it last night. The current bundle, which will continue to run for 12 days (at the time of this writing), contains the following gems:

The latter three are currently still unlocked at the moment, with them getting unlocked once the 5,000, 10,000, and 15,000 bundles have been sold, respectively.

Personally, I’m interested in the following applications:

  • Hazel – looks like this is the ultimate app to have if you’re obsessive compulsive ;) the tagline is “personal Max OS X housekeeper”, and while application deletion is already handled by AppZapper (which I bought in the MacHeist bundle before), this still looks like a good application to invest in.
  • MenuCalendarClock – I’ll admit I’ve never used iCal and Address Book all that much, but with this application it looks like I’ll be using them a lot more now. I love being able to see to-do lists and events right when I login, something that I once had on my Windows PC.
  • StoryMill – for anyone who knows me, you’d know why this is interesting ;) novel writing software! Looks pretty nifty, allowing you to organize characters, scenes, etc.
  • Typinator – for shorter keystrokes all over! I’ll have to see how this works with me typing half the time in a different language. Actually, it just fixed one typo I had while writing this entry, from “hvae” to “have”. ;) Nifty!
  • DVDRemaster Pro – DVD backups anyone? This is an important utility and it looks to be pretty robust.
  • Parallels Desktop – of course. I need IE for testing. Booting up in another OS wastes a lot of time. This will be cool once it’s unlocked!

I plan to review each application in my interested-in list as I play a bit with it over the next few days, so check back if you’re interested. :) I’ll try to do the other applications, so let me know which you’re interested in, but no promises!

Go check the promo bundle out yourself! ;)

Edited to add: I’ve started reviewing! Click to see the reviews, if you haven’t decided on getting the bundle yet:

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Another new MacBook post

So last November 30, I braved the Singapore IT Expo (SITEX) to purchase my first ever personal Mac. Almost a month prior to this, I had received my first Mac in the form of my work machine, a MacBook Pro, and after a lot of deliberation, have decided to purchase my own.

OS X Leopard If you want to see my first few thoughts on working with a Mac (and OS X), you can visit the aforementioned entry. The first few weeks of working with the “new toy” was exciting, if a bit nerve-wracking. As loadx correctly pointed out, I’m not a hardcore BSD (or any UNIX flavor) user, and I do rely heavily on Windows binaries for my PHP, Apache, and other geeky development application needs. Were it not for the sheer niftiness of the Mac, and the amazing colors, I would probably wailed about my choice for the work machine. I’m still learning the works, but so far I’m enjoying.

At the moment, I am:

  1. Learning the ins and outs of iPhoto.
  2. Hunting for a good LiveJournal client that’s up to par with Semagic.
  3. Re-assessing Mail; just because I use Mail for work, doesn’t mean I need to stick to it for my personal email.
  4. Needing to get another Windows license to set up dual booting.
  5. Still deciding about using iCal.
  6. Still hunting for a good personal finance application that will easily let me import my GnuCash data. Would prefer free, but depending on feature set, I don’t mind if I have to pay a bit.
  7. Loving Stacks Overlays.

There’s more, but those are the pressing things. Through the advice of a friend, I have also started using MAMP for my development web server. This is new to me: I’ve always installed Apache, MySQL, and PHP one by one. We’ll see if I get the itch to give myself a hard time and install everything one by one.

More insights on my new MacBook soon. I still need to decide on a name! Continued application suggestions are welcome.

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Musings of a new Mac user

A few days ago, I finally received my actual work machine: a sleek 15.4″ widescreen MacBook Pro. This is the first Mac machine that I will be using on a regular basis, having never owned one before. So, I am slowly re-learning how to be productive on a laptop, but what I can say so far is: the odds are high that my next personal machine will be a MacBook. (We’ll see if I can stretch my budget for a MacBook Pro… if they release a smaller one, then it’s probably a definite yes :P)

I’ve still a ways to go, I’m sure, but so far I’m doing good in terms of personalizing how my machine works. The trackpad now works the way I’m used to it working; I have my trusty Aptana IDE with me; I have installed QuickSilver (but have yet to really get used to it); and I’m slowly learning the shortcut keys and whatnot, which is a big must. I suppose I’m moving along just fine; proof of this is when I sit down after a day’s work at my own laptop and end up hitting Alt+S for saving and Alt+Left Arrow Key to go back one word when typing. ;)

Now, I’m still weighing the pros and cons of going for a Mac for the next personal machine. In a nutshell, these are:

Pros
  • Web development (read: PHP) should be easier on Macs because UNIX-compliant. I have not tried this out yet since I don’t use PHP when at work.
  • Oh my gosh, the colors! The clarity! It’s absolutely breathtaking. I am in love.
  • If I’m working on a Mac machine the whole day and go home to do some hobby coding on my Windows machine… I end up having around 10 minutes of re-learning the shortcuts and the keyboard. Yes, my mind is apparently rather malleable that way. It makes for slower hobby coding!
  • I love the fact that the screen brightness dims when the surrounding light dims. Way to go, Apple! (Have Windows machines done this too?)
Cons
  • Games. Seriously, people, this is a huge disadvantage, and I know that I am not the only one. I like my games. Right now I am delegated to the smaller games that don’t suck you in and make you play all night long, but I still have that inner yearning to go back to my gamer days. :P
  • I’m still trying to get the hang of things not maximized all the way, which apparently is “the norm”. Now I don’t have a problem with multi-tasking in that way (i.e., having a code resource in one window on one side of the screen and the actual IDE in another side) but more often that not this just feels a little messy and disorganized to me.
  • Expensive! Okay, the MacBook isn’t too expensive over a high-end laptop, so it’s probably more of a psychological thing.
  • I need IE on Windows for web design. Let’s face it, lots of people use IE, so I have to design for IE as well. I know about Parallels, and I will have to take that into consideration, and make sure that it does work exactly like a Windows machine (or that IE does, anyway).

This isn’t saying that I’m completely won over, as there are still times when I feel like, oh but this is so easy in Windows! I am missing TortoiseCVS (is there a similar Mac OS X equivalent around that I don’t know about?) and I’m still slowly inching my way around Terminal. But this might all just be because I’m still a newbie, but I’m sure in time it will all feel like second nature.

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