Mumbling Again

Upgrading my MovableType install to 3.3

With the release of MovableType 3.3 it became free again to personal bloggers. This was great news to me since MT 2.6 was starting to feel very outdated and could barely keep away the comment spam even with MT-Scode installed. I had considered porting everything over to Word Press but that seemed like a hassle and was my last resort. The upgrade was a complete success, though I had to disable MT-Scode rather than deal with debugging it. No loss there though since MT 3.3 has great features built-in to combat comment and ping spam.

Short Short Long: AppleCare and Cinema Display Woes

Let this be a lesson to the wise: Don't try to troubleshoot problems yourself when the warrantee is at stake. My 20" Apple Cinema Display and/or the video card on my workstation started acting strange about 6–8 weeks ago. The backlighting was not full strength and the power light started blinking in a pattern of short, short, long. I consider myself a power-user so I went to the Apple Support site to solve the problem. I followed the advice, and re-seated the ADC connection with a restart. Problem solved, that was easy! Good thing I didn't waste my time calling AppleCare—wait maybe not.

Unfortunately the same thing came back again a couple weeks ago. Now I'm starting to think that it could be a problem. I depend on this workstation for my livelihood, and leaving it at the Genius Bar for a sleep-over isn't a very appealing proposition. Besides I've got an AppleCare package and its still got a couple months... right? Anyway, it's another quick fix by re-connecting and restarting.

Today it happened again.

My Workstation

Top 10 Mac Shareware/Freeware Apps

The new Mac geek meme going around. Om Malik writes, "why not take it a step further, and ask Mac Lovers - their ten most favorite apps." So here goes:

1. Desktop Manager – More desktop space is more productivity. Desktop Manager lets you create virtual desktops just like Gnome or KDE does under Linux. Its still a tiny bit buggy still but once you try it, you'll never go back. By buggy I mean its never crashed on me just confused the frontmost window occasionally.

2. TextWrangler – I paid for the bigger sibling, BBEdit which I've been using since 1995. TextWrangler does almost as much and the price is right—free. Even if you want to buy BBEdit, you should download TextWrangler and register it first for a discounted "crossgrade."

3. Saft – A Safari enhancer extraordinaire. Block ads, launch sites and search queries, and more.

4. Flip4Mac – I used to hate sites with Windows Media embedded in them, now it works transparently through QuickTime. Launch WMV files in QuickTime player too.

5. NetNewsWire Lite – RSS/Atom newsreader with a familiar interface.

6. Quicksilver – Theres a whole Way of Life™ behind this one. Its a launcher on steroids and much, much more.

7. Fink / Fink Commander – Stop bashing your head against the terminal window trying to compile binaries from the source. Begone missing libraries and make errors! Fink will download and install pre-compiled apps for you. There's a whole world of FOSS out there, go get it.

8. Firefox – Unfortunately some sites don't work in Safari even though it's the most standards compliant browser to date. When Safari fails its Firefox to the rescue.

9. GamePad Companion – Not just for gaming, this great creation lets me program the other 6 buttons on my Logitec MX900 mouse.

10. MacTheRipper – Not quite legal but you should back up your DVDs anyway. This wont burn but it will let you rip protected (store bought) DVDs so you can guard your investment from scratches, loss or theft.

Official iSync Support for PEBL with OS X

Just as I predicted in my original PEBL review, Apple has updated iSync to add support for the Motorola PEBL and a slew of other phones. You'll need to be running OS X Tiger with the 10.4.6 update that came out on April 3rd. This can be downloaded through the built-in Software Update program.