Unfortunately, the iCal widget that Jeff Croft asked about never shipped with Tiger. On the other hand, Ben Kazez has developed one himself. This one is called iCal Events. It doesn’t yet support all-day calendars, but I’m sure that functionality is on it’s way. If you (1) have Tiger, (2) are looking for an iCal Widget, or (3) haven’t already purchased Konfabulator 2 (which includes a state-of-the-art iCal Widget), you should definitely give this one a try.
*Pwang* I've Been Batoned
Andrew seems to have tapped me on the shoulder with the musical baton. Well, here goes… Update: It seems that this little “social experiment” has had a tremendously viral effect on the blogosphere. This is worse than ebola! I’m interested in further experimentation. Anyone have any ideas? Anyone game? Total volume of music on my computer 5887 Songs; 29.13 GB. About 2/3 MP3 and 1/3 AAC. Mostly an ecclectic mix of older stuff like the Beatles, to Alt/Rock, to Ska/Reggae, to Hip-Hop/R&B/Rap, to Country/Folk/Bluegrass, to Classical, to Opera, to Jazz/Swing, to Electronica, to Comedy bits, to Sound Clips from movies.
Minor iTunes 4.8 Features
iTunes 4.8 is now available! It’s pretty much exactly the same as 4.7 with a couple of minor things that are cool. Video Playback Option: In the advanced preferences, there’s an option for how video files should be displayed. Can we look forward to movies in iTunes 5? “Now Playing” Artwork: I’ve been looking for an AppleScript to do this for a while, but never found one. In the album art preview pane, there’s a little arrow that allows you to see the album art of the currently playing track (assuming you’ve added it of course).
TiVo/iTunes Media Center System
I think I’ve discovered a great concoction for building your own makeshift Media Center System. TiVo is already pretty great at managing your TV shows, but the method I’m about to discuss add a viable music option to the mix. Luckily, I had nearly everything already, and just didn’t know it until this morning. What do we need? Before we get started, we need to make sure that we have everything we need: Either a Windows 2000/XP PC or a Mac running OSX A TV (which I think just about everyone has) A Networked TiVo Series2 with system software 7.
Thoughts on Mac OS X 10.4
I just installed Tiger 2 nights ago. I did a basic Simple Install, with no backup or disk checking or anything… just crossed fingers. Bad idea, I know. I guess my excitement just got the best of me. Luckily I didn’t have any kind of earth-shattering problems. The only problems I’ve had so far are minor annoyances — nothing I wouldn’t expect from a point-oh release… but I’ll get to those later. Let’s go over some of the features. Discussion of Features Here’s my experience with the most notable new “features” of Tiger.
Switching to Apple Mail/Safari
Ever since I first bought my Mac, I’ve been using Thunderbird as my email client. I really like Thunderbird, and being a Mozilla advocate, I wanted to use the software that I promote to so many people. However, with the impending release of Tiger and the new Mail 2.0 (with Smart Folders), I decided it was time to give Apple Mail a try for the first time. Now, there’s no easy way to import your Thunderbird email into Apple Mail. After about 30 minutes of Google searching, I came across the simplest way to convert my mailbox from one client to another.
Tarzan Incomplete Pre-Release Nightly Beta
If you’re one of the many people clamoring about getting their hands on a Tarzan 1.2 Beta, check out the Tarzan Project Page for a link to the latest Incomplete Pre-Release Nightly Beta builds. Don’t cry if they break your computer. Have fun!
Good News, Bad News
Good News: I just landed a new job with a medical equipment company called Stryker. I had a 3.5 hour interview with 6 people, but I feel that it all went extremely well. Apparently they felt so too, because I’m now contracting for them. Best of all, it only took me 7 minutes to drive there the other day which is much better than the 1 hour commute I was making before. Good/Bad News: My best friend Eric is about to finish up Navigator training in the Air Force (if you’ve seen Top Gun, he’s Goose instead of Maverick).
Sneak Peek
It’s still in the works, but I thought I’d give you all a sneak peek of the new Tarzan Control Panel. Check it out: I’ve still got some things to implement, bugs to fix, design tweaks to make, and API to build, but overall the new 1.2 version of Tarzan is shaping up extemely well. I don’t like to announce timelines for personal projects (as work/professional projects have been known to take up large chunks of time, and I have to dedicate myself to those in order to pay the bills), but I can say “soon”.
What's New?
Sometimes I’m working on my site so much, that I don’t stop to realize that I haven’t posted anything in a while. I think we all do that, but here’s a bit of what’s been going on lately: Tarzan 1.2: I’ve been very hard at work on the next Tarzan release. This release will be everything I’d hoped the last release would be, before I realized it was a bit too ambitious. Rather than talk about the things I want to do, there are a few things that are already done and in the bag.