Feelin' Fine - Tiger

Fuck this. (update)

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 13:57:49 +0200

If you are among the two people who read this blog on a regular basis, you might have noticed my entry Worst. Mac OS X Problem. Ever. from exactly two weeks ago.

Yes, I'm writing this on a Windows XP notebook, it has happened again.
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Worst. Mac OS X Problem. Ever.

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 13:14:02 +0200

Today will go down in my personal Mac OS X history as the day I've encountered my worst problem with this operating system and my Mac in general. It all started this morning when I got up and sat down at my desk to check up on my emails. Mail did work just fine, but the Finder locked up. After a few minutes, the Finder was still not working again, so I decided to restart it down using the Command-Option-Esc shortcut. It would not restart, so I decided to log out and back in again, which did not work - I clicked the "logout" menu item, but there was no response. So I rebooted my Mac and went off to get bread rolls and milk for breakfast. When I got back to my Mac, nothing was working anymore.
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I just love the simplicity

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 17:44:08 +0200

If you install the XCode developer tools (current version 2.1 can be downloaded for free) you get access to the processor preference pane which now offers a menu item you can use to disable your second CPU, in case you've got a Dual-CPU PowerMac.

Since I've installed XCode 2.1 recently, I've noted a small entry labeled "Show Processor Palette" in the menu item's drop down list. If you click it, you get a neat little tool to watch your processor usage (I know, there are some out there with a better feature set, but none are as simple or elegant as this one) with the ability to disable the CPU, as mentioned above. Have a look for yourself:

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Neat Little Widget Editor?

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Thu, 26 May 2005 13:11:34 +0200

While browsing Softpedia's Mac section, a neat little application got my attention. WCode claims to be an application for developing widgets - let's see it there is some truth to that.
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Amnesty for Widgets

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Thu, 19 May 2005 19:26:23 +0200

All those Panther users out there who do not want to upgrade to Tiger or cannot afford it at this point, there's a light at the end of the tunnel - you may be missing out on Spotlight, Core Image and stuff like that, but at least you can use Dashboard widgets now.
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Apple releases Tiger update

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Tue, 17 May 2005 18:09:21 +0200

Today, Apple released the first update to Mac OS X Tiger. The update labeled 10.4.1 comes only two and a half weeks after the initial release of Tiger since it has been in the pipe before the new Mac OS X version even shipped.
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Finally...

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Fri, 13 May 2005 22:48:03 +0200

...my favourite IRC client on OS X, MacIrssi, runs on Tiger. This is already a few days old, actually, but I rarely get to check stuff like that during the week.

Creating HTML for Widgets

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Thu, 12 May 2005 17:59:28 +0200

Those of you who write their own HTML as opposed to using WYSIWYG editors like Macromedia Dreamweaver know the hassle it is to find a good, free editor to use on a day-to-day basis. I love vim, but let's be honest - it is not the most useful editor for work on HTML files in a GUI environment. One of the better fitted editors is Taco HTML Edit.
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Widgets I Learned To Appreciate

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Wed, 11 May 2005 22:13:01 +0200

I find myself using Dashboard a lot these days, since I like Apple's intention to have information available in the background, accessible with a keypress (or by moving my mouse in the lower left corner of my desktop). Now that it has been almost two weeks since Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) has been released, I found quite a lot of widgets that I learned to appreciate.
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Widget Manager

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Tue, 10 May 2005 20:58:04 +0200

Since Apple does not provide a way to delete widgets (other than deleting them in the Finder or in the Terminal), you might find a little piece of software called Widget Manager pretty useful. Widget Manager provides a pretty good way of managing your widget collection and allows you to delete unwanted widgets.
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Widget Development

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Tue, 10 May 2005 20:43:38 +0200

Ok, so I finally know what my first widget will be. I won't let you know it beforehand, but it is certainly going to be pretty neat once it's done. As it is going to have a lot of functionality, it might be a while before I actually finish it - I've got lots of work to do this week, so I might only get around to work on it on the weekend.
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Security Threat Involving Widgets

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Mon, 09 May 2005 15:36:30 +0200

As Stephan Meyers reports in an article about his zaptastic widget, Dashboard's easy installation method for widgets downloaded using Apple's own Safari browser might pose a security risk to the average user. Several shortcomings in Dashboard make the situation even worse.
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Possible problems with Tiger?

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Sun, 08 May 2005 00:16:48 +0200

The German publishing company and online media group heise online has reports of various problems with Tiger. The problems seem to be found in various 3rd party applications and drivers all over the system. Apparently, Apple's drastic changes in various parts of the very core of the system have caused some incompatibilities with 3rd party products. Read on for a list of possible problems.
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One Week With Tiger

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Sun, 08 May 2005 00:05:00 +0200

It's been a little more than a week since Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) has been released now, and I'm sure all of you have either read some interesting reviews (my favourite one is the ArsTechnica review, by the way) about it or have already installed it on your Macintosh computer and worked with it yourself. This won't be a review at all, and this will not only consist of praise for what Apple did with Tiger. This entry is about my experiences after using Tiger for one week at work and at home, and I hope it's fun to read for all of you out there.
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More on Widget development

alexander.repty@mac.com (Alexander Repty) — Sat, 07 May 2005 13:39:51 +0200

As you may have realized, I am currently pretty fascinated by Apple's new Dashboard feature in Mac OS X Tiger. I am reading all that documentation, getting out my HTML / CSS / JavaScript books again which I haven't used in months, so hopefully I'll be able to come up with a few nice widgets soon - I already have some ideas. As a part of this ongoing obsession with everything Dashboard, I found a nice article on ADC, dealing with debugging for widgets.
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