Yeah, it’s on…
MilwaukeeDevHouse3 is Friday, November 21, 2008 at 6pm at Bucketworks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Join us!
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BarCampMilwaukee3 is over…
We somehow managed to pull it off again, and BarCampMilwaukee3 happened without any unfortunate incidents, even though there was threat of desks being burned to the ground…
In the coming weeks I will try to follow-up on specific things about BarCampMilwaukee3, but for now I will just ramble on aimlessly…
Wifi seemed good and the internet connection worked. This probably sets a new record for Bucketworks.
I did not get to complete my robot, but it looks like Royce Pipkins may be starting up a Milwaukee Robotics Club. (Possibly meeting at Bucketworks.)
We had a desk building competition (sponsored by Bucketworks) and I did not win, despite building two (yes two!) amazing desks…
Blake Hall and I (mostly Blake!) started working on the new BarCampMilwaukee web site & infrastructure. We should be done before BarCampMilwaukee4…
We’ll be discussing what worked/what didn’t and ideas for future *Camps in Milwaukee, including some sort of “FoodCamp” and DrupalCampWI2, and WordCamp, and others I forgot about…
Discussing where? At Web414 on Thursday, October 9th, 2008… 7PM at Bucketworks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin…
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z2marketing at last.fm
So we decided to try an experiment… instead of everyone using headphones or listening to music on their own computer, we loaded up our Living Room Mac with a bunch of songs and turned it into a jukebox. It plays through the office sound system so pretty much everyone can hear it. Since everyone contributed songs, we’re starting to hear a good variety. But in order to solve that “What song is this!?” problem, I set up a last.fm account at last.fm/user/z2marketing. (It started with just my music for the first day, so the stats were a little screwy at first… well, they still are, but it will even out over time.)
So far it’s proved interesting… and it’ll be neat over time to see what the office collectively listens to. The new office is a lot larger, so this has sort of helped to pull things together and make it feel more comfortable and not as spread out, which it felt at first due to how much room we have now.)
Anyway, if you want to see what we are listening to, check it out at: last.fm/user/z2marketing
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Mac Apps
A few months back David from Korporate Media sent an email to a few folks titled “Dear Macintosh users, let’s talk apps” and a bunch of people replied. It took a while to compile, but here’s my list. Some of these I don’t use much anymore in Mac OS X 10.5 but still do in Mac OS X 10.4, and some of these I almost never use, but still think they might be useful to others…
- Adium – multi-protocol IM
- Audio Hijack – re-route audio, record anything your Mac can play
- Chicken of the VNC – VNC client
- CocoThumbX – nice thumbnailer
- Colloquy – IRC client
- Combine PDFs – handy utility to merge PDFs into one file
- Desktop Manager – like Spaces, but not… (yeah, I still use Tiger on some Macs!)
- EvoCam – awesome webcam/timelapse software
- ffmpegX – GUI front-end to ffxmpeg
- Final Cut Express – awesome video editor for under $200
- FontDoc – display fonts in their face (blows away Font Book)
- GarageBand – fun with music composing!
- GraphicConverter – can’t afford Photoshop? need to convert images?
- Growl – system notifications, including roll-your-own
- Interarchy – file transfers, ftp, sftp, Amazon S3 support, etc.
- iSquint – converts .wmv files to QuickTime
- iTerm – blows away Terminal.app, IMHO…
- jEdit – multi-platform text editor, no one likes it but me
- Linotype FontExplorer X – manage fonts the right way
- Mactracker – details on every freakin’ Mac model ever
- MetadataHootenanny – embed metadata in media files
- MPEG Streamclip – awesome video converter (easier to use than ffmpegX)
- MrDrum – simple drum machine app
- NeoOffice – word sucks, this is open source
- OmniOutliner – nice outliner, if you use an outliner
- OmniGraffle – nice grapher, if you use a grapher
- Parallels – run that crappy Windows thing
- PsyncX – automate backups on the command line
- Senuti – move music from iPod to iTunes
- SWF & FLV Player – free player for weird formats
(Oh, and Perl, which does everything else.)
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Dislocated (Part IV)
It’s off… The progress splint I was using to help my dislocated elbow heal has been removed, and I am now free of all splints, slings, and other such contraptions. But I’m not healed…
Right now I cannot straighten my left arm. It gets to about 35 degrees and just stops. It’s too painful to move it anymore than that. I’ll be starting therapy in a week and a half (that too is worrisome, as I would have liked to have started right away, but some miscommunication slowed down that process.)
I’m also supposed to “take it easy” which is something I have a hard time doing. I’m pretty conscious of my arm, and if I try to extend it too much I get a (slightly) painful reminder that I can’t. You’d be amazed how many times I look at something that used to be within my reach, and then reach for it, and realized I can’t quite get it. It’s this sort of disappointment/failure thing, and it’s a bit depressing.
Of course the most painful part of all of this just started. I got the first (of many) medical bills from this injury. Ouch… I’ll probably be paying this one off for some time… hopefully my arm will fully heal before the bill is fully paid off. Who knows? Maybe we’ll soon see a change in the U.S. and we’ll get a president who cares enough about people who cannot afford good health insurance and does something about it.