14 December 2008

ACDSee for Mac Coming True?!

Can it be? People over at ACDSee actually listened?

I checked a while ago, and nothing more had happened except for a lackluster response to my original post. But lo and behold, in addition to finding one other person on this planet who agrees with me, a moderator posted and showed me this page! It looks like ACDSee is working on a version for Mac!

First Picasa, now ACDSee! It is like a dream come true...

New MacBook!

This is the post I have been putting off for a while now. The post about the purchase of a new MacBook that occurred a few weeks ago. I have not had the time to write on it. But, as I have been productive tonight, I write on it now.

The new MacBook was purchased in all its two-tone glory. I love the backlit keyboard that is now standard and the edge-to-edge glass screen. The gloss really is not that bad, and I think the ease of cleaning way overcomes any downside that presents.

Along with the new MacBook was purchased Parallels 4. However, just a couple weeks ago, VMWare was running a "CyberMonday" (how I hate the term) special on Fusion; it was marked down about $40USD. Because of the deal, I also purchased Fusion and have tried it out somewhat; I hooked it up to my Boot Camp partition on the MacPro and it worked as well as Parallels I would say, but still did not run games well...

At any rate, another Mac has been added to the family. Another hit from Apple.

Best Firefox Plugin!

I recently discovered AdBlock Plus Firefox plugin (found here). I rate this as the most useful plugin I have ever used in Firefox. I don't see ads on my pages anymore. Whenever there is something annoying or offensive, I can remove it permanantly. It improves your load speeds because you are not loading flash ads or other unnecessary images. I do not see advertisments when I browse the web anymore because I have blocked all of the major suppliers. It is truely wonderful. I cannot reccommend it enough.

Picasa for Mac?

I recently read at Ars Technica and Apple Insider (and tried to post at Slashdot) that Google looks like it may release Picasa for Mac! Possibly quite soon! I say it is about time we got a decent iPhoto alternative... But I've ranted enough about that in previous posts.

Hope* is on the horizon!

*Curse the American politician for destroying that word in my daily usage. Chope...

Locking Your System

Macintosh has no obvious solution to the problem of wanting to lock your system. Macworld had a neat article discussing the topic here, but I did not really find any of their suggestions particularly helpful or useful. However, the one that I now use and found most practical and helpful was from the comments.

If you activate Fast User Switching, you can bring up the login window without closing any applications or documents. To activate it, go to System Preferences -> Accounts and then to Login Options at the bottom of the left pane. Check the "Enable fast user switching" box and you are set to go! The Accounts icon will appear at your top menu bar (or user name, depending on the setting you choose). You can move it around to your liking as explained here.

Just click on that icon (or text) and choose "Login Window" and (assuming the account has a password assigned) your system is locked!

Customising Mac's Menu Bar

A simple trick I wish I had learned earlier: Command + Click any of the little menulets and you can drag them around and even drag them right off!

However, some of them seem to resist being put back through any settings tabs. But, if you navigate to your main hard disk (Usually "Macintosh HD"), System -> Library -> Core Services -> Menu Extras, you can double click on those and add them back. A neat little hack. There are many more developments that need to be blogged about, but I am indolent.