kdmurray.blog

The crossroads of life and tech

Monthly Archives: September 2006

Run for the Cure – October 1st

Those of you in the Vancouver area can participate in the fight against breast cancer by donating to and/or participating in the 2006 Run for the Cure.  Rebecca over at Miss604 is collecting donations for the run which she and her husband are participating in this Sunday.

On a related note TELUS‘ national Day of Service is tomorrow, September 30th.  The company hopes to get over 5000 of its team members and retirees nationally participating in charity events in their community.  One of the major events for 2006 has been their Tour for the Cure (currently on their media page).  This campaign wraps up with the Run for the Cure tomorrow.  I’ll be at the TELUS headquarters in Burnaby packing and stocking boxes of food and clothing.

‘Tis the season to help!

DIY Music – Garage Band & MacOS X

I was messing around with the new MacBook last night and decided to take a shot at playing with GarageBand, Apple’s music mixing & recording program that ships with iLife ’06. At first glance GarageBand appears to be a fairly basic mixing program, allowing you to take samples and loops from its (relatively small) built-in library and compose some ho-hum tunes with them.

However, what I soon found out, is that GarageBand will also allow you to connect a MIDI compatible keyboard so that you can either record your own music using the keyboard’s instrument bank, or use the keyboard to control any of the built-in MIDI instruments in GarageBand.

Now, admittedly I’m no musical genius, but I did put together a short (1:42) track inspired by some of the video games of my youth. Those of you who know me well probably already know what this is going to sound like. If you think you know what game this is from, add a comment and let me know!

Download: Audio Sample #1 (M4A, 0.78 MB)

I know that there are also some podcasters out there producing their shows using GarageBand. The new version has some features which are supposed to make that easier. I haven’t tried to use them yet, but maybe that’s a project for the near future. GarageBand 3 reviews on: CNET, ZDNet, JeffMacArthur.com

MacBook: Day 5

Well its been a few days now using the new MacBook, and this is the first Blog post using said MacBook. As I mentioned in the last post, the look and feel of OS X is unbelievably polished. The transitions between windows, screen savers and other views (like Front Row) are seamless and easy on the eyes. Even some of the in-OS animations like shrinking windows and bouncing icons are well done — translation: they’re understated and complimentary instead of in-your-face.

I look forward to exploring and experiencing new things in this strange new world that I’ve moved into. I would never have thought it would be so different… but it really is. This journey with me will undoubtedly bring me in contact with numerous members of the infamous Mac community. I have to say that among my macophile friends I was readily accepted and they seem to be enjoying the experience of one’s first Mac vicariously through me. Thanks guys! (you know who you are!!)

MacBook: Day 1

Well the beast finally arrived! I’d like to think it was my scathing review of Apple’s customer service from earlier this month, but I highly doubt that Steve Jobs is an avid reader.

Well having had the chance to play with this new machine for only a couple of hours, I have to say I’m very impressed so far. The only practical applications I’ve put it to the test with so far are sending a few emails, taking some notes (questions about the MacBook), and writing up this post. The overall Mac experience has been very good, there certainly has been a great deal of care and attention put into “the little things”.

However there are a couple of pet peeves I have so far….

  1. Maximizing Windows is hard to do. I realize that this may seem like a silly concept for some in today’s open-a-million-windows-at-once world, but I like to have my current activity fill my screen. I’ve had some difficulty figuring out how to do this with my new Mac.

  2. Tabbing in windows. This may again just be a Windows-ism, but when I’m on a form, or in a window and I’ve finished typing, I want to be able to push tab and move to the next field, including any buttons. However the Mac OS X software only seems to want to send me to the next text field… managable, but annoying.

I’ll continue posting more about the MacBook in the weeks ahead, as I unconver interesting details, or annoying bugs. Stay tuned!

MacBook: Still Waiting…

Though I’m super-excited about my new MacBook I can’t say I’m very impressed with Apple’s honesty with regards to shipping dates.

Their website advertises a shipping date of 5-7 business days.  When I ordered the laptop they gave me a shipping date 8 days out.  I could understand that being back-to-school time and all, but on business day #8, they changed my shipping date!!!

Instead of shipping on September 14th like they had promised, the new shipping date is September 25th.  That’s a full 7 business days after the maximum ship-date that they promised on their website.  And to top it all off, they’re website STILL advertises a 5-7 business day shipping window.

My confidence in Apple’s customer service has been severely shaken.

Microsoft turns over a new leaf?

Subsequent to an article I posted back in April (Microsoft Joins the Free Software Revolution), Microsoft has made another step towards public good-citizenry by making its Open Specification Promise on August 13th. This declaration states that Microsoft will not assert certain patents that it presently holds, or will hold in the future, around Web Services.

In David Berlind’s blog Between the Lines on ZDNet he notes that this isn’t the first time Microsoft has made a community-friendly move with regards to its intellectual property. In addition to opening the doors to developers by offering the Express editions of Visual Studio free of charge, it has also made steps forward with the Office Open XML document format which will be a part of the new release of Microsoft Office 2007.

Its refreshing to see the software giant evolving with the times and making an effort to be a good corporate e.Citizen.

Macbook: The adventure begins

As some of you may already be aware I’ve recently become somewhat enamoured with one of Apple’s newest releases the Intel Core Duo based Macbook.  I’ve never owned an apple computer, however in my recent search for a new notebook, several of the Macbooks new features really showed once again that Apple’s product designers put a great deal of thought into how the product will be used.

I’m currently waiting for it to be delivered…. and waiting with bated breath.  Hurry up, FedEx!