I’m spending some time today looking around at various shareware and freeware Mac apps that might be useful on my new iBook. MacTheRipper is a DVD ripper for the Mac. This could be useful if I ever decide I want to rip a couple of DVDs to watch while I’m on vacation or something. Then, I could watch them with MPlayer.
Month: October 2005
Notetaking applications for the Mac
- NoteTaker from Aquaminds — nice look and some interesting features.
- StickyBrain from Chronos — lots of features. Can sync with iPod and Palm.
- NoteBook from Circus Ponies — big on outlining and general note-taking. Very colorful.
- MacJournal from Mariner — oriented towards keeping a personal journal and blogging.
- Formation from Radical Breeze — almost like a database program. Custom fields/forms, stuff like that.
- Hog Bay Notebook — appears to be a fairly simple notebook app. Nice-looking, though.
All of these are pretty interesting. Meanwhile, I’m still using iOrganize, which isn’t as flashy as any of these, but does the job.
Motorola E815
I was taking a look at phones again tonight. My main motivation for this is that my new iBook has Bluetooth, so it would be cool to pick up a Bluetooth phone that I can sync to the iBook. I still like the Motorola E815. It does appear to sync OK with Macs via iSync. Phonescoop and HowardChui.com both seem to be good good resources for phone stuff.
OneNote stuff
There’s lots of info on OneNote 12 on Chris Pratley’s blog. Interesting. I also noticed a link to the OneNote Image Writer PowerToy on his blog.
Note Studio
Another note-taking application. This one is cross-platform (PC, Mac, and Palm) and includes encryption, so it may be worth looking into.
cheap hard drives
I noticed a 400GB SATA drive in CostCo today, for $250. I thought that was pretty amazing, but I just checked Froogle, and that’s actually not an uncommon price. And here I am with a measly 100 GB.
iBook battery
I tried to calibrate the battery in my iBook today, but it’s 11:30pm now and it’s not quite drained yet, and I should probably just go to bed. Maybe I can try again tomorrow. Macworld has an interesting article about battery stuff too.
Sherlock issues
I had some Sherlock issues on my new iBook, but this page at Macworld had a solution (under the heading “Baffled by Sherlock”).
new iBook
My new iBook showed up today! So far, so good. Migrating information from the old iBook was really easy, using Tiger’s Migration Assistant. It took about an hour over FireWire. Now, I’m letting it run Software Update. That looks like it’ll take another hour or so. When all is said and done, I should have an iBook much like my old one, only with a bigger screen, faster processor, bigger hard drive, etc, etc. Much less hassle than I’d have migrating a Windows machine.
I’m so mainstream
I just bought the new CDs from The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, and Coheed and Cambria. Okay, the last one isn’t quite as mainstream as the first two, but it’s still way more mainstream than some of the other stuff I’ve been listening to lately!