This is a music video for the song “Again & Again” by The Birds and The Bees (I never heard of them either) that was made completely on a Mac. What I mean is all of the effects and camera shots were created using applications that come natively on a Mac. It obviously took a lot of time to make this. I am impressed (though only with the video; the song just ain’t my style).

Josh H.

I just love the Open Source community. Not only are there tons of great free applications out there but also there are so many folks who have figured out different tips and tricks for using and customizing those apps.

Here’s a case-in-point from a recent experience of mine. When I was still running Mac OS X Panther on my Mac Mini, I needed to be able to edit and create new images for the different stuff I do here at The Smoak House. My editor of choice (since I could not afford Photoshop) was GIMP. It is an open source (i.e. free) image editor that is very much like Photoshop. It has suited me well. But alas, all good things must come to an end. When I and thousands of other Mac users upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard in 2007 many of us were shocked and dismayed that GIMP does not run on Leopard. And to this day it still does not.

I began to seek out other Photoshop alternatives but none of the other free ones could touch GIMP much less Photoshop. I had resolved myself to the fact that I would be stuck buying something. I tried out Iris by NoLobe, which is not out yet because it is still in beta. But I could try out the beta version of it and even pre-order the real version for only $39. But after using Iris for a while it is clear that it is not what I am looking for. So I decided to search around on the internet to see if there was any news that GIMP might be soon coming to Leopard. Enter Wilber Loves Apple. WLA is an open source group that has developed a Leopard-compatible build of GIMP. I was so pleased to find out about this website. And not only do they offer their improvements to GIMP but their forums are full of tips and video tutorials that will help folks like me learn GIMP even better (because right now I can only do basic stuff when it comes to image editing).

The open source community has come through for me again and I am eager to get back to creating images to use on my website. My hearty thanks to Wilber Loves Apple.

Josh H.

As I mentioned before Lyndsay made a bag for my Macbook. She saved about $30-$40 by making it herself by going shopping at Goodwill on various occasions and found all of the materials she needed to do the job. She made it into messenger bag which was the style I wanted. She put three pockets under the flap: a large one on the right to hold my iPod earphones, a middle one that my iPod slides nicely into and a left one for whatever else I may need to carry. Then on the backside she made a great hidden zippable pocket to hold my laptop’s power supply.

So I have my new Macbook and I have been in the process of setting up my home network so that my two Macs (Macbook and Mac Mini) can communicate and share files. This has been somewhat tricky since information about setting up the correct sharing accounts is scarce. But for those who may have tried this and are having trouble, I found a great article that explains the different types of accounts you can create on a Mac, including Sharing Accounts, and it is what helped me.

Anyway, today at work I was thinking about what other things I needed to configure in order to get my network to operate the way I wanted. So I decided to make some notes so that I could refer to them when I was at home and actually working on it. So I began and was thinking of the user names and passwords I would need to configure. Then I needed to use the word “privileges”.

Unfortunately Apple did not come through for me. The Macbook will not arrive until tomorrow at which time I will be out of town and far out of its reach.

But don’t cry for me. Life will go on. It’s only a few days. In a few days I will be back home. Home. I’ll come home, and I’ll think of some way to use my Mac. After all, tomorrow is another day.

Josh H.