Ok, so after 3 days my laptop is basically set up, but I haven't even done any productive work with it yet and I've already found 32 gigabytes of space on my drive gone! I mean, I have the dev tools and TeX on here, which takes up a lot of room, but 32G is more than I thought. Not a huge deal, just curious about it. So where'd all the space go? Step this way. [Read more…]

Just got a bouncing baby MacBook Air, and now in the process of loading it up for Mac/iPhone work, scientific programming and other miscellanea. I'm jotting it down here for reference, and if anyone has items to add, please suggest your favorite must-have tools for on-the-go compu-zen. [Read more…]

My love-hate relationship with my Radeon x1900 video card continues, but today was a good day for us. I have been noticing that my MacPro has been getting louder and louder, driving me nuts. I assumed the reason was because I had added two more internal drives in the last few months, and no doubt that is part of the problem, but I really noticed a problem every time I asked the video card to do anything more than drawing standard windows. Then it would really kick up a fuss of sound that was just too much to deal with. I remembered hearing that the x1900 sucks in dust like a vacuum, but forgot to both take it seriously or to check it once in a while. Well, today was that day. [Read more…]

Not sure why this thought hit me, but I figured out almost exactly what I want out of computer hardware in order to comfortably read PDF documents (and I have a zillion of them I want to spend time pouring over). The image shown to the right is of my 15" PowerBook, tipped over so that the screen is flush with the desk and the rest of the machine is sticking up in the air (see photos below). As it happens, the PB is sturdy and stable enough in the hinge mechanism to prevent it from falling over while the machine just sits in this odd position.

The other half of this formula is opening a PDF in Preview and then rotating it by 90°, making use of the slideshow feature and then hitting the full-screen control. Voila, a beautifully readable PDF document, even for intricate PDFs with lots of mathy goodness. [Read more…]

Ever since I was told about Safari's "Reopen All Windows From Last Session" option, I have been unable to control the flow of webpages that I feel I should get back to. [Read more…]

Some things need not be backed up by Time Machine.

For instance, take my ~/tmp folder, where I dabbling in trying to build source code projects, often to no ends. And if it is great stuff, then I do the install into /usr/local and it gets backed up from there. [Read more…]

I think I "need" a new development laptop machine. I have no mobile Intel Mac, and good weather is approaching. I must be set free to roam and code.

Here's a chart of the models I'm considering, and some of the factors important to me on each. The prices shown are not transparent from the chart, but are accurate (they include some custom configuration and Apple Care changes, and not with tax, shipping, etc). Any thoughts? I'm leaning toward option MacBook Pro a or b. [Read more…]