toddjohnston.org

Concerning Upgrading Your OS

I had a chance to play with Leopard last night while helping my photographer friend get his brand new 24″ iMac setup. He’s new to the mac world and he will soon be happy to be converted.

I really like most of the new features and the new look and feel, but I’m not going to just willy nilly install the new OS while crossing my fingers and hoping it will work with all of my software. One poster on macrumors apparently did just that:

I’m so screwed. I am also having this problem and I have both work and class work that needs to be done this weekend.

All I have to say is “HA” and read up before you install. As for me, it sounds like most people that do a clean install, meaning they wipe their hard drive and do a clean install of OS 10.5 Leopard have reasonably good success using Adobe CS3 apps (minus the pro video apps read here for more).

So lesson learned is: PLEASE, don’t upgrade your operating system without first reading up on how it’s going to potentially affect your workflow in the immediate future and making sure you have a good backup of all of your important data.

If you’re just too excited and can’t wait to install, then I’ll be sure to catch your crys for help in the comment sections of various blogs in the near future. Someone has to be the guinea pig right?

I’m no gamer and this is certainly no game. I came across this link on gizmodo, touding the benefits of using mersive sol server to create a virtual reality similation for training purposes at Nellis Air Force Base in Neveda.

SOL server blends video signals to multiple projectors on any shaped screen seemlessly without delay. Check out their site and be amazed by what this Lockeed/Martin owned company has come up with. I want it.

Tinkertool

One of the first things I install on any mac I use is Tinkertool. It’s a freeware app that allows the user to customize several features in osx without screwing up osx like other apps tend to do. All of the check-box options that Tinkertool enables can be simply disabled by unchecking the box. Best of all, it’s free.

I’m not a parent yet, and I am surely weird in many ways, but if some random weird older guy walked up and asked if he could hold my baby I doubt my answer would be any less than “please get the heck away before I . . .”

Such a situation arose earlier at dinner at the table next to us. Random weird guy walked up to the table of total strangers, saw a baby in her mother’s arms and asked if he could hold her and wanted to bring her back to his table to show his family how cute she was. I watched as the father’s eyes grew wide with disbelief as the irritator continued to goo and gaa at the baby . . . still not clueing into the fact that he was being weird. When the mother wasn’t willing to part with her baby, random weird guy asked her back to the table with her baby and she reluctantly agreed.

Random weird guy’s wife seemed to be so embarassed by this episode that she made him pay for the couple’s dinner. At least she knew it was stinking weird.

The housing market in Atlanta seems to be doing comparatively good when compared to most of the rest of the country. It could be doing even better if there were more builders that were focused on being efficient and effective in home production.

I don’t know if it is because they are sitting on their laurels, enjoying the benefits of homeowner overspending or what, but I have projects for builders that I have done work on that are more than 6 months old now. And no, this isn’t advanced planning on their part. It’s slow decision making and being way behind on developments that were set to begin development long ago.

Imagine the positive cost-benefit ratio for builders that payed more attention to being effecient and effective. They could build more houses, sell more houses, and all with less overhead and more profit. Then, savings could be passed onto the buyer.

Imagine how much less buying a house would cost without all the wasteful builder spending. Then maybe people wouldn’t be borrowing way more money than they need to to buy houses they can’t afford because they cost too much stinking money and are overvalued. We wouldn’t even have this so-called “housing bubble” with all of its bursting potential.

It’s probably all a slippery slope I know. “Imagine”, “what if”, and “maybe” are the key words here. Although, I can “imagine” getting paid for 6 month old projects all day long.