Thursday, June 12, 2008

A Man/Woman and His/Her Mac


After talking to various friends and colleagues of mine over the past year or so, it has become apparent that there are a few Mac owners/users out there. This has led me to ponder how people may use their Mac OS differently. Specifically, I am curious how other users customize their system preferences to suit their individual tastes. If you are a Mac user, please feel free to share your responses to the below queries (my answers are in italics). If you are not a Mac user, seek help, your mind is sick and you desperately need professional help. 

Query 1: How do you organize your files? Do they have a veritable catalogue of well-organized folders and sub-folders that you can easily navigate via the Finder? Or is your desktop littered with folders and files for "easy access". Everyone has a method to their madness, what's yours?

I try to keep a tidy desktop both in the real world and the virtual world. Hence, my desktop tends to be on the tidy side. I try to limit desktop clutter to 1–5 documents or folders on any given day. I find that this allows me a better view of my wallpaper in addition to providing a nice sense of virtual feng shui (see picture).

Query 2: Do the OS Leopard users utilize the stacks feature on the dock? If so, how do you like the documents and folders to be displayed? As a fan? Grid? Or list? 

Personally, I use stacks sparingly. I am so use to searching for files via the finder that I often forget that there are other ways to navigate through the Mac world.

Query 3: How have you customized your dock? Is it set to show or hide? Where is it positioned? Is your minimize effect set to "genie" or "scale"? Is magnification on or off?

At work, I have my dock set to auto-hide and positioned on the on the bottom of the left monitor at my workstation. However, at home, I tend to prefer to keep the dock visible at all times.

Query 4: What view mode is your finder window set to? Icons? List? Column? Or Cover flow? 

As visually impressive as cover flow may be, I still prefer to use the column view mode to navigate through files and folders. To me, this option just seems so intuitive, not to mention how quick it is to navigate back and forth from folder to folder without having to click "back" and "forward" buttons, although you can if you like. I also find it much easier to copy or click and drag files while in the column view mode (see picture).


Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Iron Man vs Batman

I already posted one of these earlier, but I thought I'd share the other two. Enjoy!

I promise to post something more substantial in the future; when life gets busy, posting takes a back seat.

Later!




Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Cricket, Cricket...

I know things have been quite around here lately; life has been busy, plus we have been without the internets at home since the move. However we have occasionally been able to "borrow" other people's wireless internets. Let's hear it for unsecured wireless networks!

I hope to have a post up in the near future about the 2008 Bolder Boulder, that Mustang, Indian Princess, and I participated in this past Memorial Day. In short, it was a blast!

In the meantime, I'll share the below story, which was emailed to me by a colleague of mine.

-------------------------
In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from
Northwestern University.

On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant
standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed
distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully.

He got down on one knee, inspected the elephant's foot, and found a
large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently
as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his knife, after which the
elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the
man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for
several tense moments. Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but
being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and
walked away. Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, Peter was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his
teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the
creatures turned and walked over to near where Peter and his son Cameron
were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its
front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that
several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter could not help wondering if
this was the same elephant. Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over
the railing, and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to
the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again,
wrapped its trunk around one of Peter legs and slammed him against the
railing, killing him instantly.

Probably wasn't the same elephant.

**
**

**This is for all of my friends who send me those heart-warming bullshit
stories.**

Thursday, May 08, 2008

G.I. What Now?

When the first shots of the 2009 film G.I. Joe were released, featuring the popular character Snake Eyes, things appeared to be promising for the adaptation of the popular 80's cartoon and toy-line. Any initial promise has now been thrown out the window, as other shots of various characters have recently been released. See the article at Superherohype and click on the various names to see the different pictures. 

With the exception of the females, the rest of the images are chuckle-inducing, and not in a good way. Apparently everyone just has variations of the same black leather suit that we have already seen in such stellar pieces of cinema as Batman & Robin, and the X-Men movies. I guess everyone has to sport the "team" look. LAME!

I am particularly disappointed in the released image of Storm Shadow; does this look like this? Or this? NO! It most assuredly does not! What is that suppose to be? Some sort of ninja/doctor hyrbrid? The man is wearing a lab coat for Jebus' sake! Oh wait, taking off the mask makes it SO much better. If by better, you mean an asian, emo, pretty boy-ninja. 

I should have expected this oncoming disaster, given that the director Stephen Sommers was at the helm of such venerable films as Deep Rising; The Mummy movies; The Scorpion King; and Van Helsing. 

I'm going to go console my childhood.

Saturday, May 03, 2008

I'm a Marvel...and I'm a DC: Iron Man and Batman

In the spirit of celebrating the recent release of Iron Man, I thought I would post this little argument between two heroes that may have more in common than they would like to admit.