Five New AppleKory Menu Bar Tweaks

As I become increasingly more comfortable with Leopard I am exploring more and different ways to leverage its many features and access points.  For instance, last Friday I tripped over a great site for tips and tricks (www.coolosxapps.net), and the next thing I knew I had spent 2+ hours adjusting and enhancing AppleKory's Menu Bar for maximum effectiveness.  Five new favorites from among the new adornments include:

• MainMenu:  Allows you access to powerful system maintenance tools (www.santasw.com/)
• MagiCal: Menu-based clock and calendar, Features a huge range of configuation options (www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/magical)
  
• Caffeine: Places a small icon in your menu bar that can be clicked to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting your screen saver (lightheadsw.com/caffeine/)
• SMARTReporter: Designed to warn of hard drive failures before they happen (via warning dialog, email alert, or by executing an application), and which always indicates HD status in the Menu Bar (www.corecode.at/smartreporter/)
• aLunch: Customizable application launcher for OS X, that can be accessed from your menu bar (mactips-lib.net/m/software/alunch/en/main.html)

Doonesbury Widget 1.1

I am a long-time fan of Doonesbury, having started in on it back in December of '74 at the tender age of 9.  

An Aside: Before you go thinking that I am either (1) a political prodigy, or (a) consumed by all-things-Watergate, or (i) lying, I will say here that what drew me to Doonesbury at that early age was the artwork.  Then, as now, Gary Trudeau's pencils stood head-n-shoulders above most of the scribbles found on the typical comics page...or the editorial page, where the strip has often found itself.

OK. Back on track...  As the years passed, and I DID grow into a political prodigy with a Watergate obsession ;-) I continued to follow Doonesbury...through Trudeau's sabbaticals, through the Broadway musical (yes, I CAN say I saw it), through the strip's move onto the Internet...etc.  

Much to my regret, despite the easy availability of Doonesbury -- heck, for over seven years now I have had it delivered to me every morning via email (but who can be bothered to open every email, right?) -- I have at times drifted...but no longer.  After 30+ years of tuning into Mike, Zonker, B.D., Duke, Boopsie, and the rest in ways and media various and sundry I have FINALLY found the perfect delivery method for my daily fix...Doonesbury Widget 1.1, installed to AppleKory's Dashboard. Now, every day, there is Doonesbury -- in full color -- securely anchored in the lower right-hand corner of my Dashboard.

Take away my MacBook?  Only once you peel my cold, dead fingers off of its glossy white plastic hide.

First Moment of Concern

A few moments ago I actually heard a computer-y noise coming from AppleKory for the first time...the sound of the cooling fan.  I have no idea what caused AppleKory to spin its fan so hard and so loud, however as I have never before heard any such sound it raised immediate concern.  I went from Space to Space -- I am currently loving the Spaces application and am working to employ it in the best way possible (more on that in a future entry...perhaps later today) -- searching for an open application that MIGHT be causing high processor activity that MIGHT be causing AppleKory to spin her fan at such a level...but no joy.

Anyway, AppleKory is now back to its marvelous silent self and all is fine. Will report back the next time it makes a peep, though, and every time thereafter...though I am not anticipating many such entries.

There's No Place Like Home

Following 9 days spent in the Famille Kessel hovel in Blangy le Chateau -- not including my short 2-day sojourn back to Paris for work commitments -- AppleKory and family are once again Home Sweet Home. And of course, the transition for AppleKory was completely friction-free.

More soon. Learning to love Spaces!

My Constant Companion

Without any conscious intent, AppleKory has become my constant companion in my work area, despite the fact that I use it for virtually none of my client-based work (yet, anyway). At first this was due to the whole "new thing" thing (must touch, must caress, must keep in sight, etc.), however the more I configured and shaped AppleKory to reflect my personal cyber tastes the more I came to rely on my marvelous MacBook for all-digitalness-connections-and-communications.  Now, after scarcely a month, my work area is not complete unless AppleKory is at the immediate left of my primary keyboard, ready for action.  Email, instant messaging, RSS, Dashboard information...it is all right there at the ready, handled off-work-system. And dare I say it, but my work focus is much improved as a result, as I no longer deal with intruding notifications of the social sort in the middle of completing tasks. 

Days Away...

For the past two (2) days I have been away from AppleKory -- I have also been away from my Missus and the Boy, but this blog is only about the two of them in a tangential sense -- and I haven't liked it one little bit. Not one bit. Hours spent crunching on a Dell Latitude D620 to make a Monday deadline (often applying two fingers to the track pad and sliding them towards me, only to find the experience sorely lacking), or fiddling about with a Dell Latitude D505 -- yes, there are far too many Dell laptops in my life -- that serves as my work environment for a different client, etc. etc.  Enough!

For logistical reasons, AppleKory remained at our home in Normandy with my Missus and the Boy when I returned to Paris on Sunday night. Sure, I had to take the D620 back-and-forth to Paris for work reasons, but carting two laptops ain't no thang, right? No, it was because I also needed to bring the D620 back to Normandy, AND in-between the flat and the train tonight also had to take the D505 on-site for a client that I opted to leave AppleKory behind.  The visual: had to cart two Dell laptops from home this morning...couldn't imagine lugging a 3rd, even if that 3rd was AppleKory, despite the fact that I always planned to leave the D505 with the client for safekeeping.

So, cue "Reunited".  SO glad to be back in AppleKory's warm embrace...and that of the Missus and the Boy, of course. ;-)

AppleKory goes to Normandy!

Tonight I will take AppleKory to our house in Normandy for the first time.  No big deal, really, as the place is fitted out with wifi and I have been cyber working/playing there since we bought the place in Oct '06, but it is as good an excuse to blog here today as any other I have at the moment.

EVERYTHING is work right now, and -- yes -- all work and no play makes Kory a dull boy...hence this dull blog entry...