UNO is a system-wide theme for aqua. Basically the installer modifies some system files to your settings so your applications, the Finder, iTunes, and Dashboard look better. You can choose between a default aqua shade, a darker UNO shade, or a lighter unified shade. Personally I like the lighter UNO shade for most of the applications. It really makes apps like the Finder, iCal, and iChat stand out and shine.

iCal, iChat, and Finder

Drive-In is currently a beta product that is being developed by Flip4Mac. This piece of software essentially gives you a quick and painless way to store a DVD movie on your Mac, letting you see it in the Drive-In library, watch it with DVD Player as well as use it in Front Row. What is so cool about this is it’s a one click deal to save it to your Mac, the program deals with the DVD’s encryption for you and preserves the extras as well as the DVD navigation menu. This takes up a lost of space, the same amount as the disc itself, but it’s a lot quicker than encoding the video, taking about 15 minutes on my 2Ghz Core Duo Macbook. A nice application already, but I wouldn’t pay for it just at the moment. I’ll be interested to see what they add in the final release and what the pricing is. Currently you can download a free beta version that will function until January 7, 2007.

Flip4Mac Drive-In Software Storing my DVD

Read more about UNO and download here.

Read more about Flip4Mac’s Drive-In Beta and download here.

 

 Enhanced Podcast [24:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1738)

First off, you can read the article in its entirety here.

Now, for some reason I always find myself suckered into reading these articles when they appear on digg. The top 10 Mac shareware apps, 10 Mac apps you don’t know about, etc. Usually the same stuff over and over again. This was a nice approach and kinda reflected some of the things that I mentioned that I would like to see appear in Leopard.

#1 - Windowshade
I’m a bit of a disadvantage for this article simply because I never used a Mac steadily before Tiger. I used 7.5 for awhile on an old Performa, but that was just for kicks. So, I know what Windowshade is, but never really saw the point of it. I think Expose does a pretty good job of what I like to do now and I’m super excited about multiple desktops in Leopard, so I think that I will be very happy and won’t need this feature at all.

#2 - Improved Trash
I can easily agree with this feature, although I wouldn’t have placed this as high on the list. It would be nice to be able to have a “Restore All Items” or just a “Restore Item” button like you have in XP and Classic. The size of the trash would be nice as well.

#3 - Map any F-key to an Application
This is certainly a niche request, I can’t see myself ever needing this. This is back from the days when every keyboard had buttons for email, browser, music, etc. I always found that very annoying. The first emachines tower that I had easily had 20 buttons along a separate row for various tasks, even one for eBay. I mean, let’s get real here.

#4 - Ejecting One Partition of a Disk
I had always thought I was crazy for wanting this feature, or that I was doing something wrong to not get it working. My external USB hard drive has two partitions on it and while most of the time if you are going to eject the disk you are going to unplug it, I always wondered why ejecting one partition ejects the whole disk. Fundamentally that’s not what I’m doing, I’m just ejecting one. Oh well. Would be nice to have a preference or be able to option-cmd-E or something to get a bit more control over it.

#5 - Internet Helper Preferences
The argument here is that all of your internet related preferences should be in System Preferences instead of in various applications, like Mail and Safari (which contains preferences for your RSS reader as well…go figure). At WWDC 2006 this summer, this came up as a very heated discussion in the Aqua feedback forum. The guy leading the discussion stated that the starting purpose was to make it more intuitive for the user to find the preferences and to just be able to set it in the application they are using. So if you switch to Camino for the best browsing experience in the world (and you should!), then you just set your default browser there. However, not all developers implement these preferences in the same way, if at all, and it’s just confusing, which is the valid argument here. We discussed this in the forum and I believe Apple heard our complaints pretty well. The guy at least said he would put it higher on the list of stuff to look at.

#6 - Tabbed Folders
Yeah, we don’t need this. We don’t need another launcher, there is enough going on with the Dock without this.

#7 - Appearance Themes
I have mixed feelings about this one. Coming from Linux and Windows, I got very used to being able to customize my desktop however I wanted. This isn’t as easy in Windows, but is very easy to do with Gnome and KDE on Linux (as well as the other 10,000 DEs out there). While I sometimes feel like I would like a tad more variety from Aqua, I’m generally very happy. If you could easily bundle all of your preferences, such as your sounds, Desktop, screensaver, selection color, etc into a “theme”, that would be kinda cool. But certainly not a huge selling point.

#8 - Print Finder Window
Really, did people use this? I won’t even bother with this one, I think I won’t lose sleep over it.

#9 - Put URL of downloaded files in Get Info’s Comments Field
This would be nice actually. I like the fact that you can see where you downloaded a file from in the Get Info panel already, but having it user editable, or at least where you could easily launch a browser from it, would be nice.

#10 - Flashing Menubar to Display Alerts when Muted
Sounds like something else that would annoy me. The damn Dock icons already bounce enough, I don’t need the screen flashing at me to let me know Software Update is done.

That’s just my thoughts on this article. Read it in more detail and leave your own thoughts below.

Well, I’ve been working hard on the site in hopes that by doing that, finals won’t come any quicker. If only that were true. To the point, here are so more mockups of possible site art. I’ve learned a ton of stuff in Photoshop in the last few weeks and it’s amazing. That doesn’t say that I’m a pro by any means, but I’m actually pretty happy with my work. The pennant flag and the “pom pom” above the words ‘Fan Boy Stuff’ are all drawn using the magical and amazing pen tool, many duplicated layers, custom gradients and highlights. The newspaper I found from Wikipedia as a part of free artwork to enrich the internet and the podcast logo is just that, the logo applied with a gradient mask.

Please provide feedback. The final decision is still up to me and the artwork is subject to evolve a bit before I hit the final version of the code. However, I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts on the artwork. My major concern is whether or not the pom-pom really looks like one….

The Version I’m most serious about is directly below.

This last image is one that I played around with before adding the pennant to the image. Just looking for thoughts.

For those that possibly don’t know, I am a huge DeLorean enthusiast in addition to my slight addiction to the Mac community. When I have the time to pull myself away from my Mac and my code, I do enjoy playing the Alto Sax and reading all I can on this wonderful car. My goal is to one day soon own one. We’ll see how that all pans out as they tend to be a bit out of my college-student budget at the moment, but one day, one of these beauties will be mine!

So, to share a bit of my love for this truly unique and amazing car, I thought I would share some really good links with you so that you can get started researching and falling in love with one of these yourself. To give a brief history for those out there who may have never seen one (as is the case with me, I’ve never laid eyes on one in person) or those that don’t know the history behind the car, here is a brief intro.

John Z DeLorean was a genius car engineer and designer that headed up great projects during his time at GM. He is credited with many accomplishments, a major one in my eye being the fact that he is the father of the Pontiac GTO. Do some research on the ‘64 Goat (as they were called). A beautiful car that my Dad had for a long time as his first love. After several successful years with GM, however, John wanted to design his own sports car and the idea of DMC, DeLorean Motor Company, was born. To not make this too boring, the guy put a lot of heart and soul into the car. One distinguishing characteristic is that the car is really roomy since John was a very tall man and most sports cars are very uncomfortable for tall people. He designed the sports car that he always wanted.

Keep in mind this car was under development for much of the late 70s and was designed to compete with cars such as a ‘77 Corvette, a Porsche model as well as a Mercedes. John build a state-of-the-art factory in Ireland because it was cheaper to manufacture the cars there and started turning out the first ones in 1981. The last DeLorean rolled out of the plant in 1983 after the company had tried to expand much too quickly and John got caught up in the mess. He ended up doing hard time because he had sold drugs in order to raise capital. The Irish workers were angry, closed down the factory and threw the molds into the sea.

Despite the very short-lived official DMC, the cars are still on the road today. In fact, there are still lots of original parts left over from the factory that were never used, so repairing a DeLorean might not be as easy as driving to AutoZone, but there are parts available from several big centers throughout the US and Europe.

The DeLorean really gained its popularity after it was used in the 1980s movie trilogy, Back to the Future, where the car was used as a time machine.

Today you can find DeLoreans for sale on places such as eBay and other automotive sites on the internet, or you can check into buying a “remanufactured” one that is as good as new from DMC Texas for about $44,000 USD.

Links:

DMC Texas - Great source of parts and information including remanufactured and “preowned” (as-is) DeLoreans
Delorean One - Another very large company that specializes in parts, repairs, and remanufactured vehicles
Delorean Car Show Website (with a podcast) - This is every two years with the next one being in Gettysburg for 2008
DMC News - A great mailing list with lots of info and cars for sale

Free DeLorean Backgrounds - What it says. 36 great pictures that were used in the calendar
DeLorean World Magazine - The only magazine to keep up with DeLorean news

Read all about Delorean and the car on Wikipedia
Back to the Future - A great website for all of those that are fanatical about this movie series

I believe that I found this off of digg, so don’t get upset for me regurgitating news. However, it’s a really nice interview, not the standard boring ones, so head on over to the site and read it!

The actual site itself is down from the traffic, but you can catch the mirror below.

Read the interview here.

I’ve had it with my Macbook battery. I calibrated it when I bought the thing back in July or whenever they were first released and didn’t have any issues with it for awhile. However, over the last month or more, the computer would just die when it had about an hour left on the battery. So, I’ve been trying to calibrate it for the last two weeks. That includes going directly by the Apple Knowledge Base article and running the computer until there isn’t a drop left, which is hard in itself because I only have about an hour of battery life that works now, then it dies. Then I wait about 5 minutes and can restart and use it for about another 20 minutes. Repeat that process several times with the time that you can use it each time getting smaller until finally, finally, the battery light says that it’s indeed dead and I can’t get it to boot anymore. Let the thing charge for hours on end, let it set overnight after it’s charged, and then times like this morning when I have just horrible performance. See the pic below.

Anything that I am doing wrong? My Macbook isn’t 6 months old, but I suppose the 94 load cycles is pretty close to what it should be. However, just last night I was at 83% battery capactiy and this morning I’m at 58%. That leaves me with an estimate usage (from the menu bar) of a grand total of 1 hour and 40 minutes. That’s even if I get past the one hour mark before it dies.

For those that I haven’t badgered with various Photoshop or CSS questions in the last month, I’m working on a complete overhaul to the site. The current theme is one that has evolved from a WordPress theme I found somewhere in the theme directories online, and because of such it’s frankly a mess. The code is nasty and has way too many images in it (the sidebar is insanely cluttered with images making page load times way more intense than they should be). So, I’ve been working on a more aesthetically pleasing as well as cleaner theme for the site.

Part of this overall change will incorporate a bit of layout changes on the main page as well as a new logo for the site. I was hoping to get a pro to do this and contacted several people in the community. However, I was only able to get one company to come back and tell me that they could indeed take on new clients, while everyone else I contacted said they wouldn’t be available for new clients until Spring 2007. There was one listener that contacted me about this issue and I emailed him back, but I have since lost your email (my Macbook’s hard drive failed a bit ago) and I haven’t received another email from you, so if you’re reading, email me again if you’re interested please.

All that being said, here is a draft that I have been working on so far. I originally wanted something super aqua and realistic and still wouldn’t mind having that, but it’s simply out of my ability to create something like that, so I thought that I would go with something flat looking, while still stylish. Just some things that come to my mind when I think of “fanatic” are a lot of sports stuff like megaphones, pom-poms, and mainly the big #1 foam finger. Here is my initial mockup so far.

Please send me some comments, especially if you are coming from a designer perspective and could contribute useful tips. Feel free to email me some suggestions as well, maybe I’ve missed a very cool idea and you have it, that’d be great. Keep the suggestions and thoughts coming people!

You can read the article here, but basically the Zune is being officially launched tomorrow and Microsoft struck up a deal with UMG to provide some money to UMG for each Zune sold, letting them in on the profit. When I first heard about this yesterday, I thought it made a tad bit of business sense and didn’t directly angry me. Yes, this would probably set a precedent and other companies like Apple would have to charge a fee to pay to the music groups and everything could get ugly, but I had thought that Microsoft was doing this as a gesture of peace between the “digital life” community and the record companies. That’s not what happened.

“UMG refused to license its music to the Zune unless it could receive a percentage of each device sold, in addition to standard music licensing fees for downloads and subscriptions.”

That right there has some issues because evidently the music groups are getting even greedier than before. Are they going to start boycotting their customers? Let’s not sell music because we don’t get enough money from it….

Then the punch line, “These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,” UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. “So it’s time to get paid for it.”

This just infuriates me and makes me wonder who in the world put this guy in charge of a company. I’m not a business owner, but I’m pretty sure that you aren’t supposed to nationally upset your current customers, let alone any potential ones. I admit to having music that I haven’t purchased in my library. However, that is a very small percentage. I wasn’t in the whole Napter/mp3 thing way back, I just bought the CDs that I liked and ripped them on my computer. Then iTunes came around and for the ease/quality/price, I was hooked. Heck, I even PAY to get most of my TV shows from the iTunes Store. Don’t even get me started on the amount of money I’ve spent on Law and Order: SVU, Bones, or various other music singles and albums. Evidently I’m a thief because I own an iPod however.

I don’t want to make anyone else angry, but I could justify this a bit if we were talking strictly about Windows using iPod owners. To generalize, Windows users aren’t as excited about their computer and don’t have as much offense about downloading anything, ie, pirating software. However, I don’t know of any Mac users that pirate software. The software on the Mac is great and I, for one, am more than happy to pay the shareware developers when they have done a good job.

All in point though, it is just horribly business practice to publicly come out and say that your past buyers are theives. I’m not going to boycott the label simply because I don’t wanna make the effort. I’ll continue to make my purchases from the iTunes Store. However, I sure as hell won’t be buying any CDs ever again and if I do happen to notice that UMG is the group behind that hot single I want, well, I might just take them up it and become a statistic of theirs.

Found via digg | Read Article

Just to share a bit about myself, I love DeLoreans. I was hooked the first time that I saw the Back to the Future movies with Doc Brown’s crazy time machine made out of a DeLorean. I’ve read books about John Z DeLorean but never had the chance to see one in real life. Maybe I can change that one day.

Getting back to my short story though, when I was younger my Dad purchased a AMT/ERTL model from the second movie. We moved around several times (my Dad is a retired US Marine) and it took forever to get the thing built, but I love it so much because it’s something that we did together and just brings back fond memories. All that said the car itself looks like crap and is literally falling apart. So, since I have time to do as I wish for the next bit as how I’m in between jobs, I thought that I would pick up the hobby from my younger years and look for another model to do. Easier said than done.

As it turns out, you can easily find a diecast model made by Sun Star or Wellys straight off the DeLorean website. Finding a true model kit is a lot harder. The only one currently produced is made by Polar Lights and this kit is one of those snap-together, no paint, no glue, no fun required models for the kids of today that have no patience. Don’t even get me started. So, to find a kit that was worth putting together, I ended up looking to eBay to either find a Japanese made kit that were supposedly made up until a few years back, or maybe to find an original AMT/ERTL kit.

I ran across the Back to the Future: Trilogy Pack on eBay giving me all three models in one box. One from the first movie, the one from the second that has the flying wheels and the Mr. Fusion, and the last one being the wild-west fitted DeLorean. I can’t wait for my shipment to arrive in the mail. Now I have to go out and buy all of my supplies again as my paint, etc has went bad years ago. The joy of being a kid again! Below are a few pics from the eBay post just to get everyone excited.

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