Tiger - No, we didn't get a new cat. After waiting about 2 1/2 weeks since mailing in my DVD, Apple's 5 CD set of Mac OS X 10.4 (aka Tiger) arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon. (Stupid Mac trivia: Prior to its release, version 10.0 was code named Cheetah internally at Apple, and version 10.1 was codenamed Puma. Version 10.2 was named Jaguar, and 10.3 was named Panther.) Ironically I got an email several hours later notifying me that the CDs had shipped. Gee, thanks.
Knowing that an operating system install often consists of a lot of waiting around while software gets installed — "insert disk 1, wait 10 minutes, insert disk 2, wait, lather, rinse, and repeat" — I postponed the install until I was at work. That way it could do the update in the background while I got something productive done. As mentioned earlier, there was also a 10.4.1 update to be installed immediately afterward. Perhaps that's a creme rinse or conditioner step. Anyhow, this is my first post on the newly rejuvenated laptop. I'll spare you the details about what's new. I've only skimmed the surface anyway.
I Spy - Last week I noticed that Scholastic, the company that makes children's books and educational games, made a version of I Spy for the Gameboy: I Spy Challenger. It had mixed review at Amazon, but Abby has all the 'I Spy' CD-ROMs for our Mac and enjoys them. This was my first time buying something second hand at Amazon, as they were all out of new cartridges. I'm still uncomfortable in using eBay. Michelle found it odd to get an envelope from somewhere in Utah. “This is the game from Amazon?!” I played it with her a bit tonight. It has many familiar themes of pattern matching and puzzle solving, much like the CD-ROMs do.
Classic Starts - The Wall Street Journal did a piece about a publishing division of Barnes and Noble that is reprinting classic children's novels in abridged form with some simpler words in order to make them appealing to newer readers. It's known as the "Classic Starts" series. I decided to try them out and ordered three for Claire: Little Women, The Secret Garden, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I hope it gives her something to work on over the summer vacation.
Boys - "Boys will be boys", the saying goes. When I came home today, Daniel was sitting in the "naughty corner" in a timeout for biting Abigail and refusing to apologize. Timothy had recovered from tumbling down the stairs due to a bump from Michael. Just hours earlier I was at my office desk debugging a problem with how a vendor's analog transceiver was misinterpreting our digital signaling. Upon arriving at the home scene, I suddenly thought work seemed so much easier.
Cosby - Over the past two nights Michelle and I have watched "Bill Cosby: Himself". We skipped over the first 15 minutes where he jokes about drugs, alcohol, etc. and watched the section where he talks about married and family life. I'd seen it before decades ago. It's almost a classic by now with well known routines: the skit about him feeding chocolate cake to his kids for breakfast, how as a kid he thought his name was Jesus Christ (due to his father's swearing), the discussion of children as "brain damaged" ... all gut busting funny. Like all good comedy, it resonates with a bit of truth.
Bloglines - One last geeky discussion, albeit a long one. Bear with me. People ask how I can keep track of so many website updates. The answer is an RSS aggregator, which is a fancy way of saying a news reader. Many websites offer their content in an alternative format meant for these news readers. It's often a little button or link that says "Syndicate", "RSS" or "Atom". It's not humanly readable in a web browser, but is meant for news reader software.
News readers typically look more or less like an email program. Each folder represents a different website. The number next to the folder represents unread items. When you click on the folder, you see a layout similar to an email folder where you see subject lines (bold fonts indicating unread items) and can click on them to see more details. Finally, if you want to see the whole story in all its web goodness, you usually double click on the subject line to open the article in your web browser. Writing the above description takes more effort than its actual usage. If you can navigate an email program, you can use a news reader.
For the past few years I've used a standalone Mac program called NetNewsWire, but on a whim I tried using a popular web hosted news aggregator called Bloglines. If anyone is interested in trying a news reader without a lot of fuss with installing a program on your computer, I can highly recommend it. If you need help with getting started, drop me an email. What I like about Bloglines is that you can check your news from any web accessible location with just a browser, just like you can check email from anywhere with Hotmail, GMail, or Yahoo Mail. But it also has social aspects, meaning you can get recommended websites based on what sites you're already subscribed to. Lastly, for me as a Mac user, NetNewsWire actually integrates well with Bloglines. I can use NetNewsWire when I have it handy, or can just scan the news from any web browser if I'm away from my Mac.
Like I said, Josephine Q Public still hasn't gotten into news readers yet. Most are only recently comfortable with email and web browsers. A few braver souls open a weblog with Livejournal or Xanga. Once you've seen a news reader in action, you'll be hooked. You click at button and within seconds you can monitor all the changes that have happened at dozens or hundreds of your favorite sites. Rather than calling up each website one by one in a web browser, you have a quick, neat summary and can decide what you feel like reading. It's a great way to get a handle on the information overload of the Internet.