no place like home (and end keys) on a mac

By Josh Highland in hacks, hardware, mac, software, windows

keyfixer

I never noticed how often I use the “home” and “end” keys when I type until they were taken away from me. I am a programmer by trade, and as a result, I type code all day long. On a PC the end key will take you to the end of a line, and the home key will bring you to the beginning of a line. On a mac, this functionality doesn’t exist. It’s simple missing! It just makes a “ding” at me

Maybe it would be different if I was using a mac keyboard with my mac mini. Right now I am using a KVM switch to share my microsoft mouse and keyboard with my PC and my Mini. As a result, My mind and hands continue to type and work just like I was coding using a PC. “DING DING DING” damn its annoying. I had no idea i hit those keys so often, but the mini does a good job at reminding me 🙁

I tried to live with it but it got old fast. I decided to do a google search for “home end keys mac” to see if there was a fix for this. The first result was a God send. keyfixer is a tiny application for pc-to-mac switchers like me, that remaps your keyboard and adds back the functionality of the home and end keys.

It’s amazing how much more productive I feel just by having those 2 keys back. I guess after 15+ years of typing/programing for a living, the home and end keys are a perminiate part of my arsenal and I will never underestimate their power ever again.

I got a mac

By Josh Highland in hardware, iPhone, Josh's Rambling, mac

mac_mini

As part of my 2009 new years resolutions, I’m going to write an iPhone application and launch it this year. I realized that the first quarter of the year is almost over and I haven’t made any progress on this. The biggest hurdle was the development platform. I’ve tried to install Mac OS X onto my PC several times but it never worked right, so I decided to bite the bullet and get the ball rolling, I spend my hard earned american cash dollars and bought a mac.

I weighted out all my options and decided that the lowest barrier to entry would be the mac mini. I’m not looking to completely switch to mac (yet), I’m planning on keeping my PC going strong and using the mac mini as a development platform.

I was really impressed with the packaging of the mac mini, and the form factor of the actual machine, it’s well…. mini.

macminiruler

It’s going to take a bit if time for me to get the full swing of OS X. I’ve been using windows and ubuntu for so long now that I have an expectation for application behavior, and OS X is throwing some curve balls at me  that I need to get used to. The good thing is that most of my friends, and google are helping me cope and deal with it.

I think it would help if I actually got an apply keyboard to go with it. instead of using my PC keyboard. Too bad that apple doesnt make an ergonomic keyboard like the one I use.

I’m going keep this blog updated with my switching experiance as I slowly easy into the fan boy soaked world that is Apple. iPhone app development, here I come!

iPhone 2.1 SMS Reminder Annoyances

By Josh Highland in hardware, iPhone, mac, software

There was a new feature introduced with the iPhone 2.1 firmware update that is driving me crazy and making me curse apple an my iPhone daily. I am talking about the SMS multi reminder.

The SMS multi reminder is designed to notify you with an alert if you have an unread SMS (text) message. Sounds good in theory, but trust me, it horrible in practice.

When you receive a new SMS message to your iPhone, the first few lines are displayed in what I can best describe as a pop up box. Often if the message is short, “hey I’m running late”, you see the entire message. This is where the trouble lies. If you get an SMS message and you don’t unlock the phone, open the SMS app, then open the specific SMS thread, the iPhone thinks you haven’t gotten the message, so it will remind you 5 minutes later, and 10 minutes later that you have an unread message, for a total of 3 alerts in 10 minutes for a message you might have already seen.

Example of why this is annoying:
I’m sitting here working on my blog, “PING!”, ah I have a new SMS message on my iPhone, the screen is lit up and the preview box is showing. “From TWITTER: xFLORIDAx – I look like a shaved ape”. Ok, no response needed, I set my phone down. 5 minutes later “PING!” ah! I must have a new SMS message… strange my screen isnt lit up, turn on the screen. no new SMS messages, weird. 5 minutes after that, “PING!”…. so in 10 minutes, I have been alerted 3 times for a message I have already read. ANNOYING! I don’t want to unlock my phone for every little message that is sent to me.

I understand how this could be useful for someone who gets 1-5 text message a day… I average over 200 a day. Most messages come from twitter and don’t require a response. I would disable the multi reminder if I could, but apple doesn’t allow you to change the setting for it. It’s just on, like it or not. The only way to prevent the SMS multi reminder is to disable text notifications all together, and I’m not going to do that. I like getting one and only one notification when I get a new message.

If im in a meeting, should my pocket buzz 6 times in 20 minutes to let me know I have 2 text messages? GTFO! I should only be notified two times.

I really hope that Apple allows people to turn the SMS multi reminder on and off in the next update. I can’t imagine it’s to hard to do.

My Media Center Died, Time For A New One

By Josh Highland in hardware, Josh's Rambling, linux, mac, software, windows

I have blogged about it before, I have a HTPC (home theatre pc) running in my living room, hooked to my TV. I started off with MythTV, but settled on Window Media Center 2005.

When I first built the Media Center machine, I had basic cable, with no DVR, so I let the media center handle all of that. Now I have Verizon FIOS with HD, and one of their HD DVR Boxes, and I rarely use my media center pc, but its always nice to be able to flip the input over to it and watch youtube and browse the web. I also like the fact that I can download all sorts of movies and tv from the darkside of the web and watch them on the tv. That was a huge plus.

For a while now, the Media Center has been acting funny. I built it on a shoe string budget with some questionable parts I had laying around, so I didn’t expect it to live forever. The other day it stopped working all together.

Today I took it apart to see what the problem was. After some investigation, I found the cheap power supply was dead, and it took the mother board/processor with it. FAIL!

Well, here I am at a cross roads. Before it was a matter of software, now I need new hardware. What do you think I should build or buy?

The main things I’m looking for in a HTPC

  • Ability to browse the web
  • Watch Videos I download form the internet, mostly divX files
  • Small form factor
  • Doesn’t really look like a computer
  • Blu-ray is a bonus

Should I build another Window xp MCE machine, Windows Vista Ultimate, mac Mini, apple TV, myth TV? I don’t even know where to start.

I’ll blog my research as I go. Lets see what you think I should do.

Mac IN my PC – LEO4VMWARE

By Josh Highland in hacks, mac, semi-legal, software, windows

If you have been following my blog, you an read that my PC died, and for a moment, I installed OS X Leopard on it. Well, my new drive from western digital arrived, and I am back working in Vista now (I’m not sure if that is a good thing or not!).

Parallels makes it easy to run Windows inside of Mac, but I haven’t found a good way to run Mac inside of windows. Previously, I used a project called “LEO4ALL” to install Leopard on my PC. A little bit of Googeling around after I installed Vista, I found “LEO4VMWARE”

LEO4VMWARE is a pre-packaged and running distribution of OS X Leopard for the vmware, a virtual machine software. You can download the vmware payer here http://vmware.com/download/player.

Side Note: I’m going to be honest here, you are going to want to get vmware workstation, so you can tweak the performance settings. If you are looking at virtually putting OS X on your pc, you have enough smarts to download vmware desktop for free, and then find a serial number.

What this all means is all you have to do is download LEO4VMWARE and install vmware and you are off and running!

I have gotten it to work (not well, but it worked) on a pentium 4 3 ghz windows xp computer with 3 gigs of ram. On my intel core 2 duo, 3ghz, 4 gigs of ram running vista to work great! Check out the picture below.

Getting networking can be tricky, so read the posts on how to do it here

Downloads for LEO4VMWARE can be found by going here http://www.mediafire.com/?ggkr1obgrft, downloading the zip and looking at the links inside. I personally suggest buying a month of rapid share and downloading for there. LEO4VMWARE is about 3 gigs, and rapidshare offers amazing download speeds.