From Gates to Jobs pt. whatever
20:18 Sunday 7 Jan 07
Firefox = Firefox and with Foxmarks the transition is smooth.
Thunderbird will be the same but I have not installed it yet
X-Chat = X-Chat Aqua. Not a lot of difference really.
Filezilla = Cyberduck. I LOVE Cyberduck. By far the best ftp program I’ve ever used.
Many text editors = Smultron. Together with Cyberduck it is a combo I have been after for years.
Trillian = Adium. Weird (=unfamiliar) noises but looks cool and smooth
Launchy = Quicksilver. Great and becoming second nature.
Keepass = Keepassx. Now if only I could sync them…
PuTTY = Terminal. Does all I want (remembering passwords would be nice)
FeedDemon = Newsgator online (for now. That expires in June so I’ll need something else then)
Done:
Mamp and subversion checked and working.
Dashboard filled with a ridiculous number of widgets. And then cleared.
Dock made transparent
That blue colour removed
WordPress wallpaper applied
Still to find:
- some way of speeding up program launches.
- a good image app that I can make sense of. Note the last 6 words of that sentence.
- go through other programs and check what is needed. Then get them.
- how to format that 160gb drive (it says all I can do is read and I’m not doing anything of real note without a backup solution).
Now initially having just those working makes everything so much nicer. As a Windows user though I am used to poking around, seeing what is where, what it does and generally changing things around even in the registry. But I don’t see that here. It’s odd and doesn’t feel right. Anyway, I have 2 machines which I can work effectively on. That was always the goal.
1
Netnewswire is a good RSS reader. Lite version as well.
Quicksilver is unbelievably simple but becomes essential. Great app.
22:29 Sunday 7 Jan 07
2
Are you using iTunes still or do you leave music on the PC. If you’ve found a good alternative to that I’d love to know about it.
09:14 Monday 8 Jan 07
3
Mosceala – NNW I installed last night. Not bad at all. It’s not worth me buying an app but it’s not bad. Cheers.
Neasan – It’s staying on the PC. I haven’t found anything and also it’s space. I have six times the space on the PC if not more so splitting it would be daft. I also hooked up the better speakers to the PC :)
10:25 Monday 8 Jan 07
4
Second netnewswire lite. it’s ace.
And Gimp is available or is that too complex. what sort of image editing do you need to do?
12:29 Monday 8 Jan 07
5
and what’s up with the drive? You should be able to reformat no problem…
12:30 Monday 8 Jan 07
6
If you’re using Terminal, by far the best thing you can do in place of having a SSH client that remembers passwords is generate DSA keys. Leaving the “passphrase” blank will create a key that will allow you to login to the remote servers without a password. On your Mac type ‘ssh-keygen -t dsa’ and follow the prompts. When you’re finished, you’ll have a file id_dsa.pub containing your public key. Transfer that file to your remote server and move and rename it so that it will be found at /home/youruser/.ssh/authorized_keys2 – the next time you SSH to that machine from your Mac, it will work like magic.
Also, without having access to a Mac and an external drive, just from my *nix experiences, I’m guessing your external drive is formatted as NTFS. Writing to NTFS partitions from non-MS OS’s is really in it’s infancy. You’ll probably have to reformat as FAT32 if you want to be able to use it from both machines.
14:06 Monday 8 Jan 07
7
A couple more suggestions for things:
Text editor – SubEthaEdit, integrates nicely with Cyberduck (older versions can be downloaded for free non-comercial use).
RSS – Vienna, nice and free, though I am still using a mix of Safari2 and bloglines.
For formatting, I used Disk Utility to format an external drive with a mix of HFS and FAT32 partitions. Something like SuperDuper can then be used for a bootable HFS volume while you can read and write to the FAT32 with both OS’s.
23:07 Monday 8 Jan 07
8
Is the new computer a laptop? Model? Will it be your main computer? I am guessing so seeing how you have found replacements for all your “productivity” apps.
Why the switch?
23:08 Monday 8 Jan 07
9
I’ll second Vienna for a free open source Mac desktop client RSS reader, though I personally use a server side reader, Gregarius, that I host myself. That way, I can always read my feeds no matter what machine/location I’m at.
23:18 Monday 8 Jan 07
10
Claire – NTFS and Justin has what I keep reading too.
Justin – thanks for the key pair thing. It’s gone 2am here and I can’t get it right but it’s top of the heap for tomorrow certainly.
Ian / Michael – Feeds. NNW is okay but I’m using Feeddemon anyway so it’s more just testing the water. NNW syncs with Newsgator which syncs with Feeddemon which is why I like that.
Lloyd – no switch :)
I haven’t given the mini a fair crack and despite my initial frustrations I did want to. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m seeing what works – for me – better on which machine. One will win but as yet I do not know which – and that’s genuine. It was also because of a new laptop I wanted and a Macbook was sort of in there. But every machine always needs more memory than arrives with it and that puts an already very tight macbook just well out of my reach. I can get a cheaper XP machine.
02:17 Tuesday 9 Jan 07
11
[...] Mark is documenting his own experiences with a Mac Mini. Must try X-Chat [...]
19:05 Wednesday 17 Jan 07
12
[...] Mark is documenting his own experiences with a Mac Mini. Must try X-Chat [...]
19:12 Wednesday 7 Feb 07