Baggas’ Blog

Like many, I’ve been watching the release of the iPhone 3G with interest. At present I have no definite plans to get an iPhone although I’m sure I will end up with one in the next couple of years. The main thing holding me back is that I’m less than halfway through my current phone contract and I’m fairly happy with my current HTC TyTnII phone - but if I found a way to get an iPhone cheap without having to pay huge contract fees I would jump at it. The other thing is, even in it’s second iteration I’m still not convinced the iPhone is a complete product - as a phone it lacks simple things like a decent camera, video capabilities, and MMS - I still cannot fathom why it won’t work with MMS. So for now I shall continue to bide my time, whilst still envying those cool people who have the iPhone already.

The other new release from Apple is their MobileMe service, which is an upgrade of .Mac which allows automatic over the air syncing of calendars, contacts, email and more between your Macs, PCs and iPhone. I’m quite excited about this one, having tried to achive similar things previously with Google with limited success. If I had an iPhone I would sign up for this in an instant but even without one I am quite tempted to do so anyway. Will be nice to have synchronized calendars on my Work and Home PCs and my MacBook Pro, which I can then sync to my phone with Missing Sync. I’m also planning to invest in a MacBook Air in the next couple of months to use for my Masters degree study and travel (just booked flights for my first Uni trip over to Townsville in October) - so keeping that in sync as well will be great. In fact, I think I’ve just talked myself into trying MobileMe. I’ll sign up for the free trial and let you know how it goes.

United Airlines offers in-flight iPhone and iPod Connectivity | The Apple Blog

Over the last couple of years I’ve spent many hours on planes, huddled over my iPod watching shows and movies on the little screen. In fact I watched the first three seasons on Battlestar Galactica (awesome show) in this manner. And almost invariably if you look around the cabin on any flight you will see several people with those characteristic white earphones in their ears. So the above story definitely appeals to me and I’m sure many other travellers. In a nod to the increasing ubiquity of these devices, United Airlines have installed iPod connectors in some of their planes so you can browse your iPod or iPhone and watch or listen to your own content on their screens, as well as keep your device charged. Certainly beats huddling over a tiny screen and definitely good to have more choice beyond the usual in-flight entertainment. Hope this comes to Australia soon…

In other iPod news, I noticed today that you can now purchase some TV shows via the Australian iTunes store. Only a couple of years behind the rest of the world! Hopefully movie rentals will follow. My guess is they’ve finally got their act together and done this because of the upcoming Australian iPhone launch.

• The Exigent City - this is a fascinating in-depth article from the New York Times on the history, sociology and architecture of refugee camps around the world. They also have a good article on the groth of new cities.
• Ben Witherington writes an excellent post on God’s freedom, love, and human free-will. I’ve been pondering some of these issues lately so this is very timely.
• On the US election, this article compares the online presence of Obama and McCain, and this article looks at McCain’s strategy in searching for a Vice President - Google!
• Apple News from the WWDC conference. A better, cheaper iPhone with 3G and GPS, coming to Australia soon (wonder how long I will be able to resist?). An upgraded .Mac service (no trouble resisting that) and a new Mac OSX ‘Snow Leopard’ next year. Read a summary of some of the buzz here. My only disappointment is that I was hoping to see an upgraded version of the MacBook Air with more storage and RAM - guess I’ll keep waiting for that one… until the next Stevenote..

So ob1 is raving about Apple again, specifically how much of a pleasure it is to use the Apple store.

My latest Mac win is another piece of great software I downloaded last night. After the fire the other day (which actually didn’t even come close to threatening our home - my brother’s house was much closer to his fire) I got to thinking a little bit about insurance and replacing all our stuff if it was lost. Aside from the fact that the insurance probably wouldn’t come close to covering it all, I was reminded of the need to keep track of things - specifically all my books, CDs, DVDs etc. Well books are already taken care of by my online catalog at LibraryThing (which I have recommended a number of times already - awsome site). Unfortunately I couldn’t find any comparable online catalog for my DVDs and CDs - if anyone has any suggestions I’d be glad to hear them. So I decided to go with a software solution.

After looking at a few alternatives I settled on the ‘pedias’ from Bruji. They have a suite of four programs CDpedia, DVDpedia, Bookpedia, and Gamepedia for cataloguing those things. Very powerful software with a host of options I haven’t explored yet. Data entry is easy - you can scan the barcodes of your CDs using the iSight camera on your Mac - which works quite well, just takes a few goes to get used to. Or you can use a handheld scanner like a cuecat (which I have and works reasonably well). It then uses the barcode data to look up your CD, DVD, book etc on an online database like Amazon (or many others) to retrieve the cover art and lots of other info. You can customize your library with various custom fields and of course tags. All of this is integrated with spotlight for easy searching. There’s plenty of other features which you can check out on their website but already I’m finding this software a joy to use.

One feature I’m yet to try is the web export function which lets you export your catalogs to a website. I’ll do this once I’ve entered all my data and will post links in a few days. But this is perhaps my one disappointment with this (and other similar) software. What would be really great would be if you could somehow dynamically synchronise your library from this software with an online catalog (akin to LibraryThing) so as to have your data permanently available on the web and up-to-date. Maybe this is possible somehow but I’m yet to see it. If not perhaps they could look at making this part of a future version.

But overall, yet another very useful piece of Mac software

I’ve begun using Apple’s Time Capsule as my network storage/backup solution and thought I’d make a few comments.

If you’re unfamiliar with it Time Capsule is a network hard drive (500 Gig or 1 terabyte) and wireless router. It’s designed to work seamlessly with Mac OS X 10.5.2 Leopard and the Time Machine software to backup your Mac, but also works well with Windows as a network attached drive and print server.

Basically I’m using it as an extension of my existing network. I plugged the time capsule WAN port in to one of the ethernet ports of my existing router/ADSL modem. I shut down the wireless radio on my old router and am now just using Time Capsule’s faster 802.11n for my wi-fi connectivity. Through the Time Capsule’s USB port I connected a USB photo printer and another external hard drive (via a USB hub). After running the AirPort setup program on my MacBook Pro and my Vista PC both computers spotted the Time Capsule drive straight away, although for some reason it took a few restarts of the capsule before the USB printer and hard drive would show up. Aside from this, setting up and using Time Capsule has been a breeze. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get my network running the way I wanted to with it.

I decided to use the USB hard drive as my backup disk for my Mac. The first Time Machine backup took several hours but now it does a quick background backup every hour. I have not yet had the chance to look back into the history/restore features of Time Machine but from the demos it looks pretty good. The 1Tb Time Capsule hard drive I’m using as a media server and backup for all my music, movies, photos, home videos etc, and for any other content I may want to access from either my Mac or PC. I’ve now created a second library in iTunes on my Mac which contains my complete MP3 collection so I now have thousands of songs which I have rarely or never listened to before. Expect to see an eclectic mix of tracks in my “Recent songs” list on this site (which is generated using last.fm by the way)

So Time Capsule is great. Combined with Time Machine it is an incredibly easy and effective storage and backup solution. Gives me even more incentive to consider switching my desktop PC to a Mac when I next come around to replacing it. Imagine a 100% Mac household… I wonder if I can?

If you’re a musician then this piece of software is almost reason enough to consider switching to a Mac. GarageBand is my new favourite piece of software. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what this program can do but basically it’s a powerful multi-purpose recording studio that can be used for anything from podcasting to creating a demo CD or just jamming around. We started off with some simple vocal stuff (Jenni recording some stories onto CD for the boys to listen to) and then mucking around with the boys using various vocal effects (like echoes, monster, mouse, and chipmunk voices). Now I’ve got myself some decent quality digital/analogue interface hardware so I can connect my guitars to my MacBook Pro. Even the basic level guitar effects included are not bad. The nice thing is you can lay down your raw guitar tracks and then change the effects after so as to experiment with different sounds.

For those instruments that I don’t possess and/or can’t play myself, Garageband fills the need, with a huge range of software instruments and a nifty “musical typing” keyboard for adding piano or any other virtual instrument. Of course you can also plug in a Midi piano but I’d have to work on my keyboard skills to make much use of any of that. One of the coolest things is that there is a huge database of pre-recorded loops to jam along to or I can create a “Magic Band” in moments in a range of styles - an instant backing band! It also integrates well with other iLife software like iMovie and iTunes so any tracks I record are instantly available to download to my iPod or mobile, or to use in any video projects - watch out YouTube!

As I said I’ve barely scratched the surface of what this software can do but so far I’m having a lot of fun

This week’s been a little quieter at work - no babies born so I’ve managed to keep well away from the hospital. Taking advantage of the odd bit of free time I’ve been working on getting my office a bit tidier and better organised. Now my office is by no means that bad - some of the other doctor’s rooms are incredibly messy. Even so, it’s been good clearing out the shelves and drawers and getting rid of all manner of odds and ends - mountains of drug company post-it notes, pens, out-dated drug samples, old books, drug information sheets, referral pads for services/specialists I’ve never used, various useless gizmos and other drug company paraphenalia, amazon.com boxes, and much more. Some of this stuff was 5 or 6 years old, from doctors who are long gone. I now have all this empty space that I can start filling up again - it’s wonderful.

On the subject of organisation, I’ve been doing some similar stuff at home - getting the garden tidied up, organizing the garage a little bit, tidying my study, organizing my music, doing 6 months worth of filing. Maybe it’s some sort of nesting instinct

I’ve also found an awesome piece of software to help get me organized on my Mac laptop. After trying a few similar options I’ve settled on a program called Together, for Mac OS X Leopard. Basically this is a great way of organizing my thoughts and various pieces of information, documents, pictures etc that I find as I surf the web from day to day. If I find something on the web I like, I just drag the URL to a little tab at the side of the screen, and the Together software will store an archive of that web site for me. Or I can just cut and paste a bit of text and store it as a note in Together. All this can be done through the little tab without needing to open the main window of the software itself so I can keep my focus in the browser or whatever else I am doing. When I do open Together, I can easily categorize webpages and notes etc through various Group and Folder settings, as well as tagging. For example in planning our trip to Denmark tomorrow I was browsing various websites and came across some good information and maps etc - I’ve just dragged these into Together so I now have an offline archive of all this info that I can easily retrieve, even if I am down in Denmark with no net access. I’ve also decided, with the aim of making my book reading more effective, to start typing the odd note or quote into my laptop - Together looks after this for me too. It also handles a large range of other file types, including email (handy to drag an important email across from mail) and media files. Another way of sending info to Together is using the Print command in any other application, and “printing” as a PDF file directly into the Together archive - very neat. I like the way Mac OS is so well integrated with PDFs. Anyway it’s a great piece of software. I don’t think I’ve really done it justice here so if you are a Mac user I’d definitely encourage you to check it out.

Continuing to work with my Mac - now starting to deal with connectivity to various devices. Firstly I was pleased to find that I could get my Windows Mobile 6 PDA phone to sync with my MacBook without too much difficulty. All it took was a download of a beta version of a program called Missing Sync and within minutes I was able to use Bluetooth to synchronise my calendar, contacts, to-do list and more with the relevant applications on my Mac. Changes were reflected accurately in both directions. It also enables you to sync a whole lot of other items including photos, videos, call and sms logs etc, but I haven’t really explored that. But being able to get this working so quickly was a bit of a bonus. I hadn’t expected it to be so painless.

A different story with my Digitech GNX4 guitar effects board. For many months I have had problems with this since Digitech were extremely slow in releasing drivers for it to work with Vista (they finally have within the last few weeks). And now it seems I can’t get it working with my Mac. Not sure if this is a problem relating to the new Leopard version of OSX or what but it’s quite frustrating. Not only can I not install the X-edit software for editing my effect presets on the GNX4, but I cannot even use it as a recording input via USB. It shows up in audio preferences and I can even “see” the sound when I play guitar on the little input meter - but when I load up recording software like GarageBand or Audacity it complains of MIDI driver clashes and refuses to work. Very frustrating - mostly I blame Digitech for this - releasing a product and not providing adequate software support to ensure it works on all platforms. I’m still exploring the forums and hoping for a way around this but I’m not holding my breath.

Finally I’ll just mention the cool iSight camera that is built in to the MacBook Pro. Very handy for recording little video clips like in the intro to the video below of Luke playing piano. The picture quality is very good and it’s quick and easy to use. The iChat software for video chat seems pretty cool, with some fun background and picture effects the kids enjoyed playing around with. Sadly it is not compatible with MSN which is where my few chat contacts hang out - but I’ll see if there’s a workaround for that. I’m not a heavy duty chat user anyway, but this camera may well come in handy for other things.

In the meantime, enjoy Maestro Luke…

One of the news stories that has been sadly neglected in the midst  of our current Australian election campaign is the Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting (CHOGM) which is taking place in Kampala, Uganda, at the moment. I was hoping to see reports of our Prime Minister attending and some news coverage of Kampala, but sadly John Howard has more pressing issues on his mind. At present the Queen, Gordon Brown, Canadian PM Stephen Harper and a host of other world leaders are descending on Kampala. To date I’ve seen one story in the Australian media, who are understandably pre-occupied with our own election tomorrow. Might have to check out BBC news later to see if they have any stories. Anyway, here’s a view of Kampala that the Queen and other CHOGM delegates will most likely never see - the view from the back of a boda-boda motorcycle taxi. These are the quickest and easiest way of getting around Kampala and weaving through the often chaotic traffic. Although on this video, filmed by Watoto team member and lab guru Dennis and myself, the traffic is pretty mild. You will get to see some of Kampala’s nicest streets in the CBD, cleaned up “getting ready for CHOGM”

  

This is my first video edited on my MacBook Pro in iMovie (is it just me, or does Apple seem to have copyright on the letter i ?) Took me a little while to get the hang of it, but I’m pleased to say there was not a single crash or even a significant delay in the whole process, which is a huge contrast to my efforts with Windows Movie Maker a couple of weeks ago on my Vista PC. I’ll be playing around with the video capabilities of my Mac more over the next week or so as I upload more of my Uganda videos. 

Day 2, and here’s some more thoughts on my Mac experience. The initial combination of “wow!” and “what the?!” has now given way to an increasing feeling of confidence, as I’m starting to get my MacBook organised, work out what does what, and set it up the way I want it. It’s getting late, but I’ll touch on a couple of topics that spring to mind :

Networking

I was a bit unsure as to how my MacBook would go on my network with my Vista PC, but so far things haven’t been too bad. Firstly, wireless internet connection through my router took about 30 seconds to setup and has worked fine. Secondly connection to my networked HP all-in-one printer (which plugs directly into my router) was very easy - much smoother than Vista which keeps losing the printer. I haven’t tried using the scanner component of it yet though.The next thing I tried was iTunes. On my PC I have set the iTunes software to share my music on the network. Loaded up iTunes on the Mac and immediately I could see my library on my PC and start playing songs. Just had to authorize the MacBook on my iTunes account to be able to play purchased tracks. Obviously Apple software likes talking to Macs - this was so easy!The next part was not quite as easy - accessing the contents of my PC hard drive from my Mac. I’ve had problems with sharing on Vista before, even with my old Vista laptop. But this only took me 15 minutes or so to sort out thanks to a bit of googling - just needed the IP address of my PC, set-up a new user account on the PC with a password, and re-set some of the sharing permissions on the PC and I was good to go. Not quite as painful as I thought it might be.Final step is if my Vista PC can access content on my Mac hard drive. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Spaces and Shortcuts

Quite impressed with Leopard’s native ability to run a multiple desktop setup. Not that the high-res screen isn’t plenty big - but it’s nice to be able to assign apps that I want running but don’t need to see at all times (like iTunes or Messenger or Mail) to another desktop “space” that I can instantly get to with one keypress. And I can drag and drop applications between spaces. Very handy feature that illustrates one of the key diferences with Mac OS - keyboard shortcuts are way more important. In Windows most everything is done with a mouse - keyboard shortcuts are available but I was always too lazy to learn more than a few. In MacOS the keyboard shortcuts seem to take a much greater prominence, something that I imagine, as I learn them over time, will speed up the way I work. Mousing on the Mac is more versatile than you might think, given that there is only one button. Some useful hints on my previous entry have shown me how to scroll and “right-click” and get more use out of my trackpad.

After a long wait, my journey into the world of Apple Macintosh began today when the agonizingly slow courier service delivered my MacBook Pro, which I ordered on eBay over 2 weeks ago, and which was shipped one week ago. But it’s finally mine. I’ll blog some of my experiences exploring this strange new world over the coming weeks, but first a few preliminary thoughts before I shut the lid for tonight and head to bed.Most of this is externals, concerning the computer itself rather than the OS for now. 

Firstly, the packaging - like everything else from Apple, it’s sensible, minimalist, and cool. Unlike other computers I’ve bought which come in large brown cardboard boxes, this came in a cool box similiar to the iPod ones, with a handy carry handle.Easy to open, unpack, and within a minute or so I was up and running. 

The computer itself is beautiful to behold. It’s a MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2Gig of RAM, 160Gig 7200rpm hard drive, and a high res  1920 x 1200 17″ screen. And it looks cool from every angle - from the lit up Apple logo on the back, to the backlit keyboard with great sounding speakers alongside, even to the very thinness of it - the whole thing with the screen closed would only be around 2cm thick. Once its been switched on and booted up (which is nice and fast), the high res screen, which has a matte finish so there’s no glare, is stunning. Everything, even small fonts, is clear and easy to read. Photos and video look awesome. Websites render just so much better - it’s hard to believe just how much nicer the web looks when viewed from a Mac. It’s like transitioning from VHS to DVD.  

So my first impressions are very good. It hasn’t all been smooth sailing but I haven’t had any errors, crashes or problems as such. The only difficulties I’ve had have stemmed from my unfamiliarity with the Mac Operating System. I’m still missing the windows taskbar and especially right-click context menus but it’s not taking me too long to discover how to get things done. Give me a week or two and I don’t think I’ll be looking back. One omission that surprised me is that of any sort of intro or tutorial to working with Mac OS. I never payed them much attention but Windows over the years has generally always had these “Getting Started” type tutorials. I’m surprised not to find something similar here. But there’s a few good websites to help make the transition easier.

Anyway time to close the lid and head to bed. I’ll blog more about my new toy soon :)