Dec 2008
The Tales of Beedle the Bard
I picked up the new J. K. Rowling book, “The Tales of
Beedle the Bard” last night while grabbing a couple
things from Kroger. It was already 40% off, plus I
used my Kroger card to get additional savings, it
cost around $5.
For those of you not up on Harry Potter, one of the stories from this book was mentioned in the final Harry Potter book. This book is short, around 120 pages, and can be read in about 1 hour. It contains 5 stories, and commentary on each story by Dumbledore. I would liken this to something like Grimms Fairy Tales. Each of the stories are very short, and convey a message. The commentary by Dumbledore is the interesting part. If you’re a fan of Harry Potter, it’s a good quick read if you can find it cheap.
For those of you not up on Harry Potter, one of the stories from this book was mentioned in the final Harry Potter book. This book is short, around 120 pages, and can be read in about 1 hour. It contains 5 stories, and commentary on each story by Dumbledore. I would liken this to something like Grimms Fairy Tales. Each of the stories are very short, and convey a message. The commentary by Dumbledore is the interesting part. If you’re a fan of Harry Potter, it’s a good quick read if you can find it cheap.
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Mac Tip - Tab in Dialog Boxes
Dec 28 2008 11:33 PM Filed in: Apple
The default behavior of the Tab key in a dialog box
is to only tab through the text boxes and lists, not
to allow you to tab to any of the buttons. This is
pretty annoying, and it’s strange that this is the
default behavior. To change this do the following.
Open System Preferences, either by clicking the System Preferences icon in your dock, if it’s there, or click on the Apple menu (the apple icon in the top left corner of your screen) and choose System Preferences. Now choose the Keyboard & Mouse setting
Once you are on the Keyboard & Mouse Pane, choose the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. At the bottom of this tab you will see the Full Keyboard Access section. Choose the All Controls radio button to enable tabbing through all controls on a dialog.
As you can see at the bottom, the keyboard shortcut to enable this behavior is Control + Function + F7.
Open System Preferences, either by clicking the System Preferences icon in your dock, if it’s there, or click on the Apple menu (the apple icon in the top left corner of your screen) and choose System Preferences. Now choose the Keyboard & Mouse setting
Once you are on the Keyboard & Mouse Pane, choose the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. At the bottom of this tab you will see the Full Keyboard Access section. Choose the All Controls radio button to enable tabbing through all controls on a dialog.
As you can see at the bottom, the keyboard shortcut to enable this behavior is Control + Function + F7.
Mac Software 2
Dec 28 2008 05:47 PM Filed in: Apple
This post is a follow up to an earlier post where I
was detailing some of the applications I use
day-to-day on my Mac. This will be split among many
posts due to the number of applications.
Utility Applications (cont.)
XSlimmer has a tag line of ‘Your Mac on a diet’ and this describes it perfectly. XSlimmer has the sole purpose of analyzing an application and determining what can be stripped from the application to make the binary smaller. The way it does this is two fold. First, many applications these days are packaged as Universal Binaries. A Universal Binary is packaged to allow it to run either on an Intel Mac, or on the older PPC Mac platform. This is great because it allows you to not have to worry about finding the correct version of an application, but this also results in your application having a lot of unneeded baggage. The second thing XSlimmer looks at is all of the nationalization’s included with the application. A lot of the applications you download have resources for displaying the UI and all messages and dialogs in the language the user has set up on their machine. A lot of these applications have 18 or so languages, while 99% of the time they will only be used in one language. XSlimmer will get rid of all the unneeded languages and the unneeded platform code, which can significantly cut down the size of the application. I ran it on all of my applications and got back 2.5 GB of space. While hard drive space is cheap these days, it is nice to have it used for important things, instead of stuff that will never be used.
Price: $12.95
Here’s some results from XSlimmer on my machine:
Safari Web Browser started off at 67.1 MB and was slimmed to 8.47 MB, saving 58.6 MB in space.
Mail started off at 289 MB and was slimmed to 24.7 MB, saving 264 MB in space.
Screenshot:
WhatSize is a utility that is helpful at recovering space just like XSlimmer. WhatSize will analyze your machine and will show you the size of a given folder and subfolders within that folder. This will let you see in a glance what is taking up a lot of room on your machine. You may find lots of unused files or applications you totally forgot about that are wasting space. Price: $12.99
Screenshot:
AppZapper is an uninstaller for Mac OS X. One of the great things about the Mac is the drag-and-drop nature of installing and uninstalling applications. To install an application on a Mac you drag it to the Applications folder. To uninstall you drag it to the trash and delete it. The problem with the uninstall is that some applications don’t keep all of their files in the Applications folder, it may store things in a preference file or in a cache file that doesn’t get uninstalled. This is where AppZapper comes into play. You drag the application onto AppZapper and it will search your hard drive for any related files that can be deleted, then you zap the files and delete them. Price: $12.95 with free upgrades for life.
Screenshots:
KeyCue is one of those applications you may look at and go, why would I pay for something like that, but it’s worth it if you are like me and like to use keyboard shortcuts a lot, to stop yourself from having to take your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. I’m sure most people know the common keyboard shortcuts you use very often such as Command-C to Copy, Command-V to Paste and Command-Q to quit a program, but what about the more obscure less used commands? In Safari did you know you can use Command-D to bookmark a page, or do you use the mouse to click the bookmark menu item? Did you know if you are on a web page in Safari you can press Command-I and the page will be imported into Mail so you can e-mail it to someone? These are the kinds of things you learn with KeyCue. It’s really handy when you are a developer and you use something complicated like XCode or TextMate, which can have hundreds of commands available through key combinations. KeyCue is simple to use, while you are in an application you can hold down the Command key, and an overlay with a list of the commands will show. It is that easy, and extremely helpful. Price: $19.99
Screenshot:
That’s enough for this time. I realize that you may look at all of these applications and notice that some of them cost a lot. If you were to just add up the price of the applications in this post it would total close to $60. That’s why I tend to buy my applications in the occasional bundle promotion that is found on sites like MacZot, MUPromo and MacHeist. You can sometimes pick up $400+ of software for around $50. Plus MacZot and MUPromo have daily deals too on software. It’s good to keep a watch on these sites.
Utility Applications (cont.)
XSlimmer has a tag line of ‘Your Mac on a diet’ and this describes it perfectly. XSlimmer has the sole purpose of analyzing an application and determining what can be stripped from the application to make the binary smaller. The way it does this is two fold. First, many applications these days are packaged as Universal Binaries. A Universal Binary is packaged to allow it to run either on an Intel Mac, or on the older PPC Mac platform. This is great because it allows you to not have to worry about finding the correct version of an application, but this also results in your application having a lot of unneeded baggage. The second thing XSlimmer looks at is all of the nationalization’s included with the application. A lot of the applications you download have resources for displaying the UI and all messages and dialogs in the language the user has set up on their machine. A lot of these applications have 18 or so languages, while 99% of the time they will only be used in one language. XSlimmer will get rid of all the unneeded languages and the unneeded platform code, which can significantly cut down the size of the application. I ran it on all of my applications and got back 2.5 GB of space. While hard drive space is cheap these days, it is nice to have it used for important things, instead of stuff that will never be used.
Price: $12.95
Here’s some results from XSlimmer on my machine:
Safari Web Browser started off at 67.1 MB and was slimmed to 8.47 MB, saving 58.6 MB in space.
Mail started off at 289 MB and was slimmed to 24.7 MB, saving 264 MB in space.
Screenshot:
WhatSize is a utility that is helpful at recovering space just like XSlimmer. WhatSize will analyze your machine and will show you the size of a given folder and subfolders within that folder. This will let you see in a glance what is taking up a lot of room on your machine. You may find lots of unused files or applications you totally forgot about that are wasting space. Price: $12.99
Screenshot:
AppZapper is an uninstaller for Mac OS X. One of the great things about the Mac is the drag-and-drop nature of installing and uninstalling applications. To install an application on a Mac you drag it to the Applications folder. To uninstall you drag it to the trash and delete it. The problem with the uninstall is that some applications don’t keep all of their files in the Applications folder, it may store things in a preference file or in a cache file that doesn’t get uninstalled. This is where AppZapper comes into play. You drag the application onto AppZapper and it will search your hard drive for any related files that can be deleted, then you zap the files and delete them. Price: $12.95 with free upgrades for life.
Screenshots:
KeyCue is one of those applications you may look at and go, why would I pay for something like that, but it’s worth it if you are like me and like to use keyboard shortcuts a lot, to stop yourself from having to take your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. I’m sure most people know the common keyboard shortcuts you use very often such as Command-C to Copy, Command-V to Paste and Command-Q to quit a program, but what about the more obscure less used commands? In Safari did you know you can use Command-D to bookmark a page, or do you use the mouse to click the bookmark menu item? Did you know if you are on a web page in Safari you can press Command-I and the page will be imported into Mail so you can e-mail it to someone? These are the kinds of things you learn with KeyCue. It’s really handy when you are a developer and you use something complicated like XCode or TextMate, which can have hundreds of commands available through key combinations. KeyCue is simple to use, while you are in an application you can hold down the Command key, and an overlay with a list of the commands will show. It is that easy, and extremely helpful. Price: $19.99
Screenshot:
That’s enough for this time. I realize that you may look at all of these applications and notice that some of them cost a lot. If you were to just add up the price of the applications in this post it would total close to $60. That’s why I tend to buy my applications in the occasional bundle promotion that is found on sites like MacZot, MUPromo and MacHeist. You can sometimes pick up $400+ of software for around $50. Plus MacZot and MUPromo have daily deals too on software. It’s good to keep a watch on these sites.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
I just finished a great book called ‘The Girl With
the Dragon Tattoo’, by Stieg Larsson.
This book caught my eye one day while I was at Barnes & Noble, and after giving it a once over I figured I’d pick it up. I haven’t read many mysteries lately. This mystery is what’s known as a ‘closed room’ murder mystery, akin to what Agatha Christie would write, where a murder has taken place, and because of the circumstances, you know who all the suspects are. In this case the suspects were all trapped on an island, where the only access was a bridge, that was closed due to an accident.
It wasn’t until I finished the book, and read a quick blurb about the author, that I found out he had passed away in 2004, shortly after delivering the manuscript for this novel, and two others. He was 50 years old and died of a heart attack. The two other books are being released in the coming years, and if they are anything like this one I will plan on reading them.
I recommend this book if you are into a good mystery.
This book caught my eye one day while I was at Barnes & Noble, and after giving it a once over I figured I’d pick it up. I haven’t read many mysteries lately. This mystery is what’s known as a ‘closed room’ murder mystery, akin to what Agatha Christie would write, where a murder has taken place, and because of the circumstances, you know who all the suspects are. In this case the suspects were all trapped on an island, where the only access was a bridge, that was closed due to an accident.
It wasn’t until I finished the book, and read a quick blurb about the author, that I found out he had passed away in 2004, shortly after delivering the manuscript for this novel, and two others. He was 50 years old and died of a heart attack. The two other books are being released in the coming years, and if they are anything like this one I will plan on reading them.
I recommend this book if you are into a good mystery.
Mac Software
Dec 23 2008 06:15 PM Filed in: Apple
There are a lot of people at my place of employment
that are joining the world of Apple, and they often
ask me what application I use to do such-and-such. I
figured I would go through the applications I have
installed on my Mac and tell a little about them,
that way they can see what I use.
Utility Applications
Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X. It lets applications send you notifications. You know those annoying little balloon pop-up windows that come from the task bar in Windows, letting you know stuff like wireless networks are available, or your Exchange e-mail isn’t working; growl is something along those lines, but a lot nicer looking, and less obtrusive. Price: Free.
Screenshot
IStat Menus is an application for those computer geeks that like to know what’s going on with their system. It lets you add up to 8 separate menus to your menu bar. These menus will tell you about your CPU and Memory, Network Traffic, Fan Speed, Hard Drive, Temperature, etc. Price: Free (donations encouraged).
Screenshot
Hazel is one of those applications I got as part of a software bundle that runs every so often. When I first installed it, I didn’t really think much of it, but the more I used it, the more I saw its worth. Hazel lets you set rules on folders to take certain actions. For example, it comes with built in rules for your Downloads folder. If the file you download is a music file, after the file download is complete, the file will be moved from your Downloads folder, to your Music folder in your home directory. Same goes for Movies. Hazel will also monitor your trash can and automatically empty it after a file has been in there for a certain amount of time. Hazel will apply colors to the labels of folders, if there are files in it you haven’t accessed in a while. Price: $21.95.
Screenshot
Default Folder X is a great application that makes the Mac OS X save and open dialogs easy and fast to work with. It’s hard to explain what Default Folder X has to offer, so if you want to know more visit the website. Price: $34.95
Screenshot
Perian is called the swiss-army knife for Quicktime. It’s a free, open source Quicktime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. What that boils down to is Perian lets you use Quicktime to play videos other than the ones natively supported by Quicktime. This is handy when you don’t want to have multiple media players on your computer to handle all of the different video formats out there. Price: Free.
Caffeine is a simple application that stops your Mac from going to sleep. Don’t you hate it when you are on your Mac and in the middle of reading something, or perhaps giving a presentation, and the screen dims because you haven’t typed or moved the mouse? Caffeine will stop the screen from dimming and keep the Mac from going to sleep. Price: Free.
1Password is a password manager and automatic form filler. With all of the web sites out there that request for you to sign in, it’s pretty much necessary to have a password manager these days to keep track of it all. 1Password is nice because it will not only store your password, but can also generate a password for you. 1Password will also integrate itself into your browser, and automatically fill in the information for you when you visit a site. Price: $39.95.
Speed Download is a download manager. Download managers keep track of all your downloads, and will let you resume a download later, if for some reason your download doesn’t complete. Speed Download 5 is spectacular and worth the money. Price: $25.00.
Screenshot
Fetch is an easy to use FTP and SFTP client. While there are free FTP clients for the Mac, Fetch is the first FTP client I’ve used that doesn’t have a crowded, hard to use interface. Fetch has all its functionality in one simple window. Price: $25.00.
Screenshot
That’s enough for now, I will post about more applications in another post at a later time.
Utility Applications
Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X. It lets applications send you notifications. You know those annoying little balloon pop-up windows that come from the task bar in Windows, letting you know stuff like wireless networks are available, or your Exchange e-mail isn’t working; growl is something along those lines, but a lot nicer looking, and less obtrusive. Price: Free.
Screenshot
IStat Menus is an application for those computer geeks that like to know what’s going on with their system. It lets you add up to 8 separate menus to your menu bar. These menus will tell you about your CPU and Memory, Network Traffic, Fan Speed, Hard Drive, Temperature, etc. Price: Free (donations encouraged).
Screenshot
Hazel is one of those applications I got as part of a software bundle that runs every so often. When I first installed it, I didn’t really think much of it, but the more I used it, the more I saw its worth. Hazel lets you set rules on folders to take certain actions. For example, it comes with built in rules for your Downloads folder. If the file you download is a music file, after the file download is complete, the file will be moved from your Downloads folder, to your Music folder in your home directory. Same goes for Movies. Hazel will also monitor your trash can and automatically empty it after a file has been in there for a certain amount of time. Hazel will apply colors to the labels of folders, if there are files in it you haven’t accessed in a while. Price: $21.95.
Screenshot
Default Folder X is a great application that makes the Mac OS X save and open dialogs easy and fast to work with. It’s hard to explain what Default Folder X has to offer, so if you want to know more visit the website. Price: $34.95
Screenshot
Perian is called the swiss-army knife for Quicktime. It’s a free, open source Quicktime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. What that boils down to is Perian lets you use Quicktime to play videos other than the ones natively supported by Quicktime. This is handy when you don’t want to have multiple media players on your computer to handle all of the different video formats out there. Price: Free.
Caffeine is a simple application that stops your Mac from going to sleep. Don’t you hate it when you are on your Mac and in the middle of reading something, or perhaps giving a presentation, and the screen dims because you haven’t typed or moved the mouse? Caffeine will stop the screen from dimming and keep the Mac from going to sleep. Price: Free.
1Password is a password manager and automatic form filler. With all of the web sites out there that request for you to sign in, it’s pretty much necessary to have a password manager these days to keep track of it all. 1Password is nice because it will not only store your password, but can also generate a password for you. 1Password will also integrate itself into your browser, and automatically fill in the information for you when you visit a site. Price: $39.95.
Speed Download is a download manager. Download managers keep track of all your downloads, and will let you resume a download later, if for some reason your download doesn’t complete. Speed Download 5 is spectacular and worth the money. Price: $25.00.
Screenshot
Fetch is an easy to use FTP and SFTP client. While there are free FTP clients for the Mac, Fetch is the first FTP client I’ve used that doesn’t have a crowded, hard to use interface. Fetch has all its functionality in one simple window. Price: $25.00.
Screenshot
That’s enough for now, I will post about more applications in another post at a later time.
Mac Tip - Web Receipts
Dec 21 2008 08:20 PM Filed in: Apple
If you do any shopping or paying of bills online, you
know you always come to the page that has your
confirmation, and asks you to print a page for your
records. Mac OS X has a feature that helps you store
all of these receipts. When you go to print the page,
click the PDF drop down
From here you will see a “Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder” menu option. Click this, and the web page will be saved as a PDF into your Web Receipts Folder, which is located in /Users/username/Documents/Web Receipts. This is a great option, because it gives you a copy for your records, but you don’t have to go through the trouble of printing it out and storing it.
From here you will see a “Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder” menu option. Click this, and the web page will be saved as a PDF into your Web Receipts Folder, which is located in /Users/username/Documents/Web Receipts. This is a great option, because it gives you a copy for your records, but you don’t have to go through the trouble of printing it out and storing it.
Tech Books I'm Currently Reading
The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook
I have a couple ideas for iPhone applications, nothing big, quick hit applications that would be available for free, so I picked up this book to point me in the right direction. I also have plans for a big iPhone application, that the people I’ve mentioned it to think is a great idea, but it’s one of those things that would take a team of developers, some venture capital, and some big company buy in, not something I think I can pull off at the moment, but maybe I can patent the idea
Silverlight 2 Unleashed
The application I am currently working on at work is a Silverlight web application. Silverlight 2 was recently released out of beta, so there are finally books showing up that are no longer referencing the beta build. I purchased this book to bring into our war room as a reference. I like the Unleashed books, and this one seems to cover a wide variety of subjects related to Silverlight 2, so hopefully it’s of use to the team.
I have a couple ideas for iPhone applications, nothing big, quick hit applications that would be available for free, so I picked up this book to point me in the right direction. I also have plans for a big iPhone application, that the people I’ve mentioned it to think is a great idea, but it’s one of those things that would take a team of developers, some venture capital, and some big company buy in, not something I think I can pull off at the moment, but maybe I can patent the idea
Silverlight 2 Unleashed
The application I am currently working on at work is a Silverlight web application. Silverlight 2 was recently released out of beta, so there are finally books showing up that are no longer referencing the beta build. I purchased this book to bring into our war room as a reference. I like the Unleashed books, and this one seems to cover a wide variety of subjects related to Silverlight 2, so hopefully it’s of use to the team.
Using the Netflix API
Dec 08 2008 10:02 PM Filed in: .NET
The project I am currently working on makes use of
the Netflix API to retrieve
information about titles and displays the box
art. It took me a while to get it working,
mainly because I was trying to do too much. I
figured I’d share this information, in case you
also are going about using the API in the wrong
way. There are two ways to use the API. First,
you use it to make simple calls to their RESTful
web services. Second, you are making a front-end
of some sort that signs in as the user and lets
them manipulate their queue, browse the library,
or watch on demand streams. For our application
I needed to go the first route, but was coding
it the second way, which was overkill, and was
causing me major problems. To perform a simple
Title search, or to do a daily download of their
entire index, you don’t need to sign in as a
Netflix user, you just need to authenticate
using Open Authentication with your consumer key
and consumer secret (which you will need to
apply for on their developer site).
Some kind developer was nice enough to write a simple class to help you with this. You can view the code to his implementation, OAuthBase, here. Add this class to your application, and then it’s as simple as the following code to perform a title search.
Believe me, this is so much simpler than what I started out doing. I was following their examples and I was connecting to their site through my application, bringing up a Netflix login screen, having to add my application to a trusted application list, etc. I wasted a couple days development before I realized that was only needed if I wanted to let users interact with Netflix, not just do a title search.
Some kind developer was nice enough to write a simple class to help you with this. You can view the code to his implementation, OAuthBase, here. Add this class to your application, and then it’s as simple as the following code to perform a title search.
private void Search()
{
var url = new
Uri(“http://api.netflix.com/catalog/titles?term=” +
titleName);
var consumerKey =
ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings[“ConsumerKey”];
var consumerSecret =
ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings[“ConsumerSecret”];
string normalizedUrl;
string
normalizedRequestParameters;
var oauth = new OauthBase();
var signature =
oauth.GenerateSignature(
url,
consumerKey, consumerSecret,
null,
null, “GET”, oauth.GenerateTimeStamp(),
oauth.GenerateNonce(),
out
normalizedUrl, out normalizedRequestParameters);
var finalUri = normalizedUrl
+ “?” + normalizedRequestParameters +
“&oauth_signature=” +
oauth.UrlEncode(signature);
// Call the service to
perform the title search
var xmlDocument = new
XmlDocument();
xmlDocument.Load(finalUri);
}
Believe me, this is so much simpler than what I started out doing. I was following their examples and I was connecting to their site through my application, bringing up a Netflix login screen, having to add my application to a trusted application list, etc. I wasted a couple days development before I realized that was only needed if I wanted to let users interact with Netflix, not just do a title search.
Finished Lego Batman with 100%
Dec 06 2008 06:28 PM Filed in: Personal
| Video Games
It took a while, but I finally finished Lego Batman
on the Wii with 100%. I used the same strategy I used
when playing Lego Indiana Jones. I saved up the
points I earned along the way and found and purchased
‘invincibility’ and ‘score x 6’. These allowed me to
get through the levels easier and also to earn enough
points to purchase anything I needed.
It took me a while to figure out that you go through this game as both Batman and Robin, and also as each of the villains. It’s actually an interesting way to tell the story. Usually when you are playing as Batman, you show up to the scene after the villain has already done their deed. Now, when you play as the villain, you play the backstory that leads up to that deed.
Overall I think I enjoyed Lego Indiana Jones more than this one. The first reason is Indiana Jones followed the story from the movies, so it was something I could relate with. Secondly, while this game was entertaining, it seems like it was just created to milk the franchise. I still need to play the Star Wars series, but I think I am going to take a break from the Lego games for a while.
It took me a while to figure out that you go through this game as both Batman and Robin, and also as each of the villains. It’s actually an interesting way to tell the story. Usually when you are playing as Batman, you show up to the scene after the villain has already done their deed. Now, when you play as the villain, you play the backstory that leads up to that deed.
Overall I think I enjoyed Lego Indiana Jones more than this one. The first reason is Indiana Jones followed the story from the movies, so it was something I could relate with. Secondly, while this game was entertaining, it seems like it was just created to milk the franchise. I still need to play the Star Wars series, but I think I am going to take a break from the Lego games for a while.
boxee
Dec 06 2008 09:50 AM Filed in: Apple
I am part of alpha testing for a new service called
boxee. I became interested
in boxee when I saw that it added extra
functionality to my Apple TV. One of the reasons
I wasn’t a fan of sites such as Hulu or CBS.com
or other sites where networks allow you to watch
streaming TV episodes, is you were tethered to
your computer. I liked iTMS and Apple TV, so I
could subscribe to the show and watch it on my
television, commercial free. Boxee adds the
functionality to have these sites accessible
from your television through your Apple TV, and
lets you navigate the interface and watch the
television shows.
It was pretty painless to load boxee onto my Apple TV. I loaded some software onto a thumb drive and inserted the thumb drive into the back of the Apple TV. I rebooted the Apple TV, the software loaded, I rebooted again, and I had a couple new menu options on my Apple TV menu screen. The first thing I did was make sure the Apple TV still worked as it had before, which it did. Next I went to the update menu in the boxee section and updated the software. After this I gave it a try. Now, I have to remember this is alpha software, and they are hacking a closed, proprietary system, so it won’t be the most stable application. I have gotten it to run successfully a couple times, watched a couple episodes of Family Guy from Hulu; but it does freeze up with a blank screen a lot, and the only recourse is to reboot the Apple TV. I’ll be interested to see how this progresses.
It was pretty painless to load boxee onto my Apple TV. I loaded some software onto a thumb drive and inserted the thumb drive into the back of the Apple TV. I rebooted the Apple TV, the software loaded, I rebooted again, and I had a couple new menu options on my Apple TV menu screen. The first thing I did was make sure the Apple TV still worked as it had before, which it did. Next I went to the update menu in the boxee section and updated the software. After this I gave it a try. Now, I have to remember this is alpha software, and they are hacking a closed, proprietary system, so it won’t be the most stable application. I have gotten it to run successfully a couple times, watched a couple episodes of Family Guy from Hulu; but it does freeze up with a blank screen a lot, and the only recourse is to reboot the Apple TV. I’ll be interested to see how this progresses.
Finished a couple more books
I just finished reading two more books.
A Little History of the World by E. H. Gombrich
I have been on a little bit of a history kick lately. The story behind this book is actually pretty interesting. In 1935 a 26-year old Gombrich was tasked with writing a history book that could be enjoyed by children and adults alike. He completed the book in 6 weeks. The way he made it enjoyable to children is the text isn’t littered with dates. Instead he will tell you about on piece of history taking place, such as Julius Caesar in Rome, and when he tells you about another piece of history he would say it happened around the same time as Julius Caesar or maybe 100 - 200 years after. This helps you put everything into perspective, without constantly having to see tons of dates. I guess this makes it more of a history book you can read instead of one you would want to use as a reference book.
I’m a Stranger Here Myself (Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away) by Bill Bryson
I love Bill Bryson books. He could write about the most boring subject in the world and make it both an interesting and humorous narrative. This book is a collection of weekly stories that Mr. Bryson wrote for Night & Day magazine, one of the Sunday inserts for a newspaper in England. Bryson had lived in England for a while with his English wife and kids and had recently moved back to America. His stories are a mixture of what is different between America and England and also is used to introduce English citizens to some of the American traditions. As always, he is very funny, and this is a very entertaining read.
A Little History of the World by E. H. Gombrich
I have been on a little bit of a history kick lately. The story behind this book is actually pretty interesting. In 1935 a 26-year old Gombrich was tasked with writing a history book that could be enjoyed by children and adults alike. He completed the book in 6 weeks. The way he made it enjoyable to children is the text isn’t littered with dates. Instead he will tell you about on piece of history taking place, such as Julius Caesar in Rome, and when he tells you about another piece of history he would say it happened around the same time as Julius Caesar or maybe 100 - 200 years after. This helps you put everything into perspective, without constantly having to see tons of dates. I guess this makes it more of a history book you can read instead of one you would want to use as a reference book.
I’m a Stranger Here Myself (Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away) by Bill Bryson
I love Bill Bryson books. He could write about the most boring subject in the world and make it both an interesting and humorous narrative. This book is a collection of weekly stories that Mr. Bryson wrote for Night & Day magazine, one of the Sunday inserts for a newspaper in England. Bryson had lived in England for a while with his English wife and kids and had recently moved back to America. His stories are a mixture of what is different between America and England and also is used to introduce English citizens to some of the American traditions. As always, he is very funny, and this is a very entertaining read.