Top 10 Mac Apps

Everybody’s got their own Top 10 Mac apps list, and what with my brother recently taking purchase of his first Mac I thought it would be handy for me to do a list of what apps I would recommend for him.

Adium X – Chat client that supports multiple networks and is also highly customizable.

QuickSilver – With QuickSilver and Spotlight you’ll rarely use the dock anymore.

NewsFire – Stylish and functional news reader. (I personally love the Smart Feeds feature)

Synergy – Puts three buttons to control iTunes in your menubar as well as providing you with visual feedback about the currently playing tune, also provides global hotkeys for iTunes.

Flickr Export – Plugin for iPhoto 4 and later which provides a direct export interface to Flickr.com

VLC – Video player for watching…. anything!

Acquisition – You know… handy whenever you need to download that very very popular Linux distribution.

Sentui – For getting songs off your iPod. Handy if your songs are on your iPod, but you forgot to back them up when upgrading computer (here speaks the voice of experience!)

StuffIt Expander – I’m sure it used to be built into Mac OS X, but not any longer. Get it here for free.

Flip4Mac – Industry first product offering that allows you to play Windows Media directly in your QuickTime Player.

Hello, my name is John and I’m an Apple Fanatic

I had a feeling I may have been a little fanatical already, but I didn’t realise just how much until I read this pretty interesting article today about Apple Fanatics which has a funny piece about how to tell if you’re an Apple fanatic…. I took the test.

You believe that Apple is superior and have tried to convert people.
For sure, I’m currently trying to convert my whole family to Mac OS X. So far my brother has seen the light and is expecting his first Mac (MacBook Pro) next week. I guarantee he’ll never look back.

You start your day by reading Apple blogs.
Yep. I have my NewsFire set up for a smart feed called ‘Apple Matters’ which collects feeds from myapplemenu and applematters Then I’ve got another smart feed called ‘Mac Rumors’ which collects feeds from thinksecret and macruomors (although I could probably do without macrumors as it generally relays thinksecret.)

You consider Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs your god.
Well, I wouldn’t say he’s my god, but he’s surely something special.

You refuse to throw away your old Mac computers and/or collect vintage Macs and other Apple paraphernalia.
I’m only on my second Mac so far. My son has my old iMac G4 in bedroom, while I have the Mac Mini with 23″ Apple Cinema Display in the living room. I know for a fact that I’ll keep the iMac g4 forever, and when I replace the Mac Mini (once the new intel macs are fairly stable) I’ll probably have a go at trying to set the Mac Mini as some sort of media center thing. I have a 20GB iPod, an iPod Shuffle and a 1GB black iPod nano. I also have various other Apple accessories such as the Mighty Mouse, wireless Apple Pro keyboard and mouse and Airport Express. Oh, and a really cool dashboard mouse-mat.

You get annoyed with how the media portrays Mac fanatics.
Um, well no not really. I don’t care how they portray us

This isn’t on the list, but I’m an avid Mac spotter when watching TV shows and films: “look darling, they’re using a G5 Powermac!!”

However:
I do not have a higher household income.
I have never received a graduate degree.
I am not self-employed.
I don’t live in California or Massachusetts or in big cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, but I am in suburb of Glasgow

Ten Buckaroos

My favourite t-shirt vendor is having a sale! Ten bucks per t-shirt including their latest designs, but you’ve got to be quick… sale ends wed at 10am cst.
I already own a threadless tee for each day of the week, and I just ordered another one! I’m going to have to start getting changed around lunch time at this rate!!

Clear the Way!

Clear access to rebel HQ

It’s the rooftop level on Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter where you take out the bad guys on the rooftops, while your tanks progress along the road. There’s some kind of glitch in the game where by once you’ve cleared the current sector of all enemies the game doesn’t register the fact and so the next sector on the map won’t open up. The yellow square objective marker is down at road level so you can’t get to it from the rooftop, but even once your tanks get there the level still won’t open up.

Here’s some tips, courtesy of xbox.com forums, which apparently work. I still haven’t managed to get any of them to work yet and I know the level like the back of my hand now.

AlphaZero X:
“I cleared the rooftops of enemies, snipers, etc, before I shot the two guys at the barricade. When I did kill them, I was looking down from the building right next to them and the objective completed immediately.”

Visceral22:
“After doing it the second time I just sent the tanks as far as possible.  They should spot some more enemies up the road where you can’t see.  Order them to attack the enemies and once all are gone the level should open up.”

FunkadeliQ:
“1. Send your tank as far as possible until it says “unable to advance”
2. Walk to a part of the rooftop where you can see your tank.
3. Then somewhere on the right side of your tank you will see some red icons that indicate that are some enemies A soldier, an Anti Tank Gunner and a Troop Support Truck). You can’t see the actual enemies, because there is a building blocking your view, but you can see those red things..Now aim at the red icons and order your tank to shoot at them..You’ll probably have to order him a couple of times, cause he doesn’t hit them at once.”

Update: OK, I cracked it. The last suggestion by FunkadeliQ is probably the best advice. Keep pushing your tanks well ahead of you. When they can’t go any further you advance on the rooftop and take out the next set of bad guys. Next get the tanks to push on again. Keep repeating this until your tanks have sight of the antitank gunner behind the concrete barricade. Order your tank to take this guy out. As soon as he and the guy beside are toast the next sector opens up!

And I know I’ve still got a handful more of rooftop bad guys to go yet

I May Be Gone For a While!

My copy of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter arrived today. I don’t understand what happened with the release date in the UK. My brother pre-ordered from Ubisoft directly and received his game on the 7th. He would have got it on the 6th, but he was out when the parcel arrived.
Play.com done well and got the game to me on the date they had as the release date, the 10th. I guess next time I should pay the extra £10 and get the game days before most people.

Anyway the game’s here now and I have to master the controls, my head and hands still think they are controlling Call of Duty 2. Why can’t we have a universal button for duck and crawl, zoom, hold breath, etc!

Sniper vs Shotgun

My copy of Call of Duty 2 very rarely sees the light of day. It spends all it’s time inside my Xbox 360. Normally once I finish a game I don’t play it again much, but I’ve completed cod2 several times now and am in the process of getting my true money’s worth from the multiplayer experience on Xbox Live.
Yeah OK, there are some issues with the multiplayer portion of this game. The lag can be frustrating, lack of options when setting up games, etc, etc. But if you play at the right times you can get some cracking matches with no lag. Not to mention that IW are working on a patch which will (hopefully) fix all these problems.

Except for the lag I don’t have too much to complain about with regards to the multiplayer experience on Xbox Live. I like the random maps and after a match has finished I don’t mind joining a new lobby. After all I don’t want to keep getting my ass owned by ##gamertag## match after match after match.
However there is one issue causing a lot of commotion over on the cod2 forums and it’s the age-old “please don’t kill me with that particular weapon, it’s too powerful and it’s not fair”
The weapons in question on this occasion are the sniper rifle and the shotgun. Here’s me take on the matter.

Those weapons are there for a reason; to be used. Certain situations call for certain weapons. The truly skilled player will pick the best weapon for the environment they find themselves in.
If he’s creeping around a wide open field with next to no cover to hide behind he’s going to want something which will take the enemy out as soon as he sees them. If he can see them from miles away, then he’ll want a gun which will take them out from miles away. There’s no point having a close-range gun because by the time he gets anywhere near close enough to using it they’ll have taken him out.
If he’s in a built up environment with lots of buildings to hide in and lots of corners for anyone to run around and bump into him then he’s going to want something which is going to take them out at close range quickly and effectively without too much aiming required (he won’t have time to aim!)

The good player is only interested in one thing and that’s killing you. He won’t care how he does it. If he has to chase and hunt you down then that’s what he’ll do. If he needs to stop briefly to make sure his aim is bang on deadly he’ll do that too. He won’t care what weapon he uses as long as you die and he lives. Does he care that the shotgun is so devastating at close range that others think it’s an unfair weapon? No! (I don’t think I’ve ever been killed by a fair weapon…. they’re all unfair!) He’ll use the best killing machine he can get his hands on, because that’s what he’s there to do.

But does this make the good player a skilled player? Well what kind of skill are we measuring here? If he’s owning your ass every time you go up against him I’d say he’s skilled, skilled at killing. If you want to see who can get closest to the bulls-eye then you’re playing the wrong game fella.

Click, Roll, Squeeze and Scroll

Just recently I’ve dug my Mighty Mouse back out of the drawer it was in and plugged it in again. I say plugged it in because Apple still haven’t made this mouse wireless yet. The swines! Straight away I notice how light it is compared to the bluetooth Apple Pro mouse I normally use and I also notice how good it is to have that little ball for scrolling. I didn’t realise it, but I miss that little scroll ball. Apple have the mouse set up so that clicking the ball invokes the dashboard, and squeezing the sides invokes expose, but squeezing isn’t a natural movement to do with your mouse, and I rarely use my dashboard to be honest. Expose on the other hand is brilliant and I use it all the time, so I’ve reversed these two actions, then disabled the squeeze in my system preferences.
However I’m elaborating too much here, I wanted to share a little tip I found out today after having a few problems with the scroll ball. You see I noticed I could scroll down the way, but not up the way. This was weird in itself because surely you would think if there was a problem scrolling one way there would also be a problem scrolling the other way, but apparently not. After a quick Google search I discovered lots of others were having the same problem. Some could scroll up, but not down and vice versa.

The solution:
Press down firmly on your ball and rotate it in both directions (fnar, fnar!)
I find it easier to turn the mouse over and press the ball against the mousepad and drag the mouse up and down on the pad.
I can only assume that there’s some dirt and crap getting down there clogging something up. No doubt after another couple of weeks I’ll have to preform the turn, press and drag maneuver again.

My 2nd Love

My 2nd love is The Great Outdoors. To be more precise; mountain climbing, hill walking, hiking, trekking, whatever you want to call it I just love getting out and about and seeing parts of the beautiful country I live in. A lot of people in Scotland don’t realise how lucky they are to be living here. Then again I do appreciate that my beloved hobby is not everyone’s cup of tea. Luckily for me my brother also feels the same way about exploring our fine country.
My itchy feet were getting the better of me over the last couple of weeks and so today we went out on our first jaunt this year. Part of the reason for these excursions is to keep in shape, fit, and healthy. It’s also some good training for my son Dean as we’re planning to walk the West Highland Way during the summer so we need to cram in as much practise as possible between now and then.

Ben Venue is a rugged little mountain, at 2385 ft it qualifies as a Graham. Apparently it’s usually quite a quiet mountain as most people into this type of thing aren’t too interested in Grahams. Instead they would be out bagging the neighbouring mountains of Ben Lomond or Ben Ledi. Today however the mountain was busy! On the way up we met 6 people, when we got to the summit 4 of them were up there at the same time as us. Coming down we bumped into at least another 6 different people coming up from the other direction. Including our little group that makes 15 people on the mountain at the same time (that we knew of) 15 is nothing compared to Ben Lomond on a good summer day, but it’s a lot for a lowly Graham on a bitterly cold day at the start of March!

I also got try out my newest toy. An eTrex Summit by Garmin. I’ve never owned a GPS before so I’m a complete noob to it all. It’s a great gadget. You can pre-load a route on it from the comfort of your home. Drive out to your destination, select the route from an on-screen menu, click the “Follow” button and that’s it! You follow an arrow which points in the direction you should be heading to stay on course. It keeps track of your distance travelled, speed and elevation. It also creates a track which is the actual route you walked, when you get home you plug the GPS back into your computer and compare what you actually walked to what the route said you should have walked. It’s really cool and I’m gonna have a lot of fun with it.

Flickr link

Shaken, not Stirred

I read somewhere that if you were born after 1970 (I was born in 1973) then Roger Moore is Bond, and yet since Pierce Brosnan’s first appearance as the super spy I knew he was Bond perhaps even more so than Sean Connery! Alas all good things must come to an end and so when Brosnan left the role I was really hoping Dougray Scott would have been the next man to fill the shoes. He’s tall, handsome (I hear), and was quite menacing and fearless in MI2 as the villain Sean Ambrose.
So when Daniel Craig was announced as the best man for the job I was slightly disappointed…. I know what you’re thinking James Blonde, James Bland, “he’s too short”, “not handsome enough”, etc, etc. But you’re wrong.
I think Craig could be really great as Bond. (I think Timothy Dalton was really good as well. He left Bond where Roger Moore had dropped him off and he brought the spy back to his dangerous roots.) But I’m hoping Craig will bring an element of threatening darkness to the super spy instead of the cocky one-liners.

At the moment the British media are really going to town putting Craig down. First there was the “really itchy” sunburn, then the manicures and more recently he was a softy for losing his two front teeth whilst filming one of the fight scenes.
All these stories I’ve dismissed as tripe, but today I read the most unfortunate and infuriating news so far….

Bond will drive a Ford Mondeo.

A Ford Mondeo for goodness sake!!! I own Ford Mondeo! There ain’t nothing suave or sophisticated about a Mondeo. It’s considered among British motorists as a salesman’s car. I can only hope it’ll be a souped up sporty number, although this still doesn’t get me very exited.
The good news is that Bond will still have access to his new Aston Martin DBS. Thank goodness.

Calling all veterans

Seeing as how I’ve never had a blog before and I just created this one today I want to add an entry for something which happened to me during February. You see since I got my Xbox 360 I’ve been going hell for leather trying to complete Call of Duty 2 on it. The game is fantastic. Even before the 360 came out it was the game which made me go ahead and pre-order the console (but that’s another story!)

To be honest I kinda breezed through the normal difficulty and so hardened, “Your skills will be strained”, was great because I appreciated the game more and worked my way through it conscientiously. It wasn’t long before I had hardened nailed as well.
Now at this point I normally put whatever game it is down and generally only ever play it again when buddies are round and we can get a multiplayer going.
Not this game.
I was gripped! I can’t explain what was so good about the gameplay which kept me coming back for and more. Maybe it was the lure of all the achievement points I’d get for completing each campaign on Veteran difficulty, maybe it was the semi-realistic vibrations of the controller evertime I blatted a mag off, or perhaps it was the continual stream of bad guys to mow down, but I had to complete that game 100% And so after much cussing and a few close calls of throwing my controller against a wall I eventually got the veteran, “You will not survive”, difficulty in the bag!

Point to note:
The silo level is hell, but once you clear building F it becomes a little easier