I mostly bought it for CoverScout, Flow, and Tales of Monkey Island.

CoverScout

CoverScout is really cool, but I’m annoyed at the SongGenie integration thing…  I don’t want to buy SongGenie.  It should check if it’s installed and then decide whether or not to use it.  It also installs SongGenie by default (then tells you you have to pay for it after a trail).

Other than that, it’s pretty awesome.  It usually finds the cover I’m looking for instantly.  If it’s not directly on Amazon or Google images, you can launch a web browser, search for the image, and set it by clicking “Apply” from the web browser.  Pretty nifty.  It’s better than my previous way of searching through iTunes for albums with no covers, then passing the song name to a dashboard widget which would search amazon and yeah…  This ways a lot faster, nicer, and easier.

Flow

Flow is another FTP/SFTP/AmazonS3 client.  It looks and feels awesome.  I’ll admit that there are many similar clients out there, and many of them also boast the same features.  One main feature Flow has that other don’t is an internal editor.  Other’s (ForkLift, Fetch, etc.) allow you to open files in an external editor, but for some of the smaller edits, it’s sometimes useful not to have to launch a separate application.

How does Flow go beyond the competition?  Pretty much just in the user interface.  It’s beautiful.  Transmit feels a bit outdated.  Fetch is awesome, but there’s small things that irk me (mainly presentations of transfers, and I swear it’s not at fast, but it’s probably just me).  Forklift is also good, but there are tiny visual elements to Forklift that offset me.

In all honesty, I already own Fetch and Forklift and probably would have never bought Flow if it weren’t for the nanoBundle.  It’s beautiful, but it won’t cause me to go “Oh, I already own an FTP app, but Flow is just to beautiful not to buy.”  But now I’m using Flow, mainly because I feel that a nice interface will increase my spirits helping to produce better results…

Tales of Monkey Island

For those of you who don’t know me, “The Secret of Monkey Island” is about the only computer game I play.  Tales of Monkey Island being on the nanoBundle sold me.  That’s pretty much why I bought it.  I don’t like spending more than $20 on a game, so a $20 bundle with a game I was itching to get had me sold.

No screenshot yet because I haven’t played it (downloading it now).  I love the original game, and I’m hoping that Tales of Monkey Island is just as fun.

The other apps…

So there are a bunch of other apps you get as well.  I can see myself using RipIt, but I don’t normally watch movies, so it may just sit there…  MacJournal feels a little bulky.  I’ve never been a fan of journal desktop clients, especially big and bulky ones…  I might use Clips.  Never really tried a clipboard manager or anything like that because it was never part of my workflow.  RapidWeaver hasn’t been unlocked yet.  I might use it, doubtable, but still possible.  I’ve never been a fan of WYSIWYG or template editors, but recently I’ve been caught in a “quick make a page for _____” and would have preferred a faster method, but I’m currently looking at Flux for something like that (as it has more freedom than RapidWeaver).  For everything else, I use Espresso or Textmate.

I’m all for learning something new like Git, Hg, or Bzr.  When looking, I sortof eliminated Bzr from the list.  There’s only one main host for it, and I’ve just heard bad things about it (yup, I listen to the rumors).

So here’s basically what I was looking for.

• Public and Private Repositories
• Have collaborators on projects
• Reasonable priced
• Eye candy (sadly)…

So I’ve been looking around and saw GitHub, BitBucket, Codaset, and Codebase.  I won’t really go into a feature by feature comparison, just point out what I like and don’t like.

GitHub

This is probably the most popular at the moment.  It’s known for it’s awesome Git hosting, being fast, reliable, and feature rich.

My favorite part of GitHub is the interface.  It’s nice on the eyes, easy to navigate, and makes it fun.  The downside is the features of the plans.  Public repo’s allow you to have as many collaborators as you want.  For Private Repositories, it’s based on your plan.

I usually only have 2-3 private repositories at a time, but the number of people I work with fluctuate.  The smallest plan (which provides much more space than I need), only provides 1 private collaborator.  Normally, it’s me and 2-3 other people (per project).  I don’t really want to pay that much more just to have more people collaborating on a project.

So GitHub is great, but needs to be more flexible in the number of collaborators.

BitBucket

BitBucket is pretty awesome.  It does Hg hosting.

It’s not as pretty as GitHub, in my opinion, but it does provide a great set of features.  What I really wish for is that the Source tab would display the readme file.  Other than that, it’s okay.  Could use a few minor changes to make it friendly and lovable, but good as it is.

My main nit-to-pick is how the project pages look.  Not that big of a nit-to-pick, but I like my eye candy .  Other than that, it has a lot of the features I want.  I can have my private repositories, and have as many collaborators as I want.

I’ve heard rumors about uptime issues they previously had, but nothing recent.  I do wish the blog were updated more because (like I said earlier) it needs a more welcoming feel to it.

Codebase

Codebase supposedly hosts Git, Hg, and Svn.

I like what features it has listed.  My main issue is that the site isn’t well documented.  It has good instructions for using Git and setting stuff up, but there’s nothing much about the other features.  In terms of cost, it’s reasonably priced.  Good number of people you can have collaborating and everything, but it’s too costly for what I’ll be doing.

Codebase seems more like something for a small group or company.  So it’s really cool, but it aims to be in an area that’s not aligned with mine…

Codaset

Codaset is another Git host.  I think it’s kindof new…

It’s kindof like GitHub, but I think Codaset is more social.  Codaset provides a lot of what I want, but right now it doesn’t have a price setup.  The developer is still debating and setting up how to pay for it.

I love the features of Codaset, but my main nit-to-pick is how they’re setting up pricing.  It’s a great idea (don’t get me wrong), but I prefer a flat fee.  They haven’t implemented it yet, so I’ll see if I like it later on, but it’s sortof leaving me with my current setup of host personal stuff on GitHub and group projects on BitBucket.

Pay as you go is good, but I’m concerned about the implementation.

In Conclusion…

What do you currently use for your projects and why?  Do you work with people?

As I stated, I currently use both GitHub and BitBucket.  I might move it all to Codaset once I see it up and running with payments and all.  So yeah…  Thoughts, comments, suggestions?

I’m hoping to take a break from everything, but there’s a lot to do to prepare for next semester.

So yeah…

Final grades came out today.  I’m proud of myself.  I’m hoping to raise my GPA up a little more to be in my happy zone, but it’s sitting at a safe level right now.

Still working on a poem for the Transformations Project.  I was told it good right now, but I still feel like it’s missing something.

As for videos comparing VMWare Fusion to Parallels, VMWare Fusion just published an update that was supposed to fix a lot of stuff.
I couldn’t get Team Fortress 2 to run well under Fusion (it kept glitching), but it ran fine under Parallels.  The new update (3.0.1) is supposed to offer a big boost in speed and whatnot.

The more I compare Parallels to VMWare, Parallels seems much better.  The only issue I run into is that Parallels will crash more often, although I’m guessing it’s the same reason why it seems better.

The was mostly a discussion of purchasing music online, but we also talked about applications and programs.  Most of the people I talked to felt it was fine to download music illegally.  Most said you should purchase applications, with a few saying alternative methods should be used.

I personally believe you should buy the music, movies, or applications.  I know that some of the stuff is expensive (and I’ll agree that some applications are over priced), but most of the time, the pricing is reasonable.

The main argument about music was a bit odd.  You can have 7,000 to 40,000 songs depending on your iPod (not including the suffle).  Songs normally cost anywhere from $0.69 to $1.29.  So assuming you’re luck enough to buy all of you music at $0.69, then you spend at least $4,000 (all prices in USD).  Larger iPods could go up to ~$30,000 to fill.  If you’re caught downloading music illegally, apparently most of the time, it’s a $3,000 – $10,000 fine.  So they were arguing that if you do get caught, it can be cheaper than filling up your iPod (but some get charged millions).

Some other arguments were that there are other crimes that are much worse that have a lower fine (don’t know how that’s an argument).  Apparently if you’re caught shoplifting a CD, it’s a lot cheaper.  I argued you don’t get as good quality when you rip the CD…  That was a joke… Anyways, I found this blog post analyzing some different crimes in Illinois that are cheaper than illegal downloading.  Instead of struggling to make ends meet though, you’ll be given a free room and meals in prison.  I’m not sure about you, but free food has me sold.

Some of the more sound arguments were that if it’s not made available to a person, then illegal downloading could be fine.  I still disagreed, but I do understand.  If a dead band you liked isn’t signed anymore and published an album on a vinyl record independently (and the songs weren’t sold on CD or anything else), there’s no way you’d find that in a store or an online store (you might, but chances are slim).  I wouldn’t say “Go and download it.”  I’d first say check eBay or check some pawn shops or something.  I’d advise not to download it illegally, but I wouldn’t be calling the music police if they did.

Anyways, in looking at some previous cases, it’s really odd.  One woman downloads 24 songs and pays $1.9 million (although she was just being tried for 24 songs when there were over 1,000?).  Another guy downloads 30 songs and pays $640,000.  I’m guessing it varies by song?  I’m wondering if the RIAA would take it easy on you if you logged all the people you shared music with or downloaded music from and gave that to them (not that people should try to find out).

So yeah, I do know this post is late on the whole “OMG RIAA is suing people!”  But the conversation just came up recently.  So what are your thoughts or feelings on the debate?  Apparently a lot of my friends disapprove of Obama now because he supports the whole RIAA fining up to $150,000 per song.  I didn’t vote (so I don’t think I can argue so-and-so would have been better because I didn’t voice my opinion at the election), but I do think the punishment is a bit high.  A song is usually at most $1.29, so I think the fine shouldn’t be 116279 times that.  $150 for downloading a song is punishment enough (I think), but then I agree that people distributing the music should pay more (but it should be proven that they distributed to # number of people, so they pay $150 * # of people or something like that up to a certain amount).

Both are awesome, but I guess it depends on what you’re doing that determines which one you want to buy.  Here are some viewpoints and yeah.  Don’t take me on my word, both offer trials, but this is just from my experience.

Developing

If you’re developing, I say go with VMWare Fusion 3.  VMWare Fusion 3 feels more stable and crashes less on me.  Parallels is pretty stable, but I run into a few quirks every once in a while (mainly with how the windows move or programs closing without notice).

VMWare Fusion also offers some cooler integration features (in my opinion).  Both show the windows notification area, but VMWare introduces an application menu as well (which works on Linux as well, at least Ubuntu).  Parallels shows the start menu if you click on the icon in Mac’s Dock (while in Unity), but it shows the Windows start menu, not feeling very Mac-like.  Okay, okay… that’s not really development related, but when I’m testing stuff, I like feeling some connection between everything.

As for speed, Parallels does feel faster, and it does perform some tasks faster, but it’s not as stable.  I’ve had Visual Studio crash a couple of times so far while it’s pretty stable in VMWare Fusion.

Gaming

Not that I do much gaming.  Parallels wins.  That sums it up.  Sure VMWare has made tons of improvements, but it’s not as good as Parallel’s.  I’ll post a video running some stuff in Parallels, then running in VMWare.  I play some simple games, like The Secret of Monkey Island, and there’s a difference.

So if you’re gaming, then I suggest using Parallels.  Some of the bigger games will die or slow down (in both Parallel’s Desktop 5 and VMWare Fusion 3), but the games that do run tend to run better in Parallels.

Office & Productivity

I say go with either.  Parallels is less stable with some applications, but for general office and productivity applications, it ran well.  VMWare runs fine too.

If you’re buying it to run general Windows apps under Mac OS X, then pick either.  If you want to watch some wmv’s under it, pick either.

Linux Support

Go with VirtualBox.  It provides a really awesome Linux experience…  The only issue is it doesn’t integrate with Exposè or the Dock.  It does do OpenGL and DirectX (for Windows) though (I think).

If you don’t want to use VirtualBox (because you’re running multiple VM’s at once, or just want to spend some money), I say go with VMWare Fusion 3.  In my opinion, the features offered by VMWare beat Parallels making the Linux experience better.  It’s mainly just how they handle the “Unity” or “Coherence” modes.

Other Points

• When switching to Unity or Coherence, VMWare Fusion 3 is faster (at least for me).
  • VMWare has better integration with the Dock.  Applications minimize to their place in the Dock (so I.E. minimizes into the I.E. icon).  Parallels doesn’t do this.
  • Parallels has better integration with Exposè.  Overlapping windows aren’t drawn overlapping in Exposè.
  • For dragging windows, Parallels looks a lot nicer.  I tend to get a trailing effect with VMWare Fusion.
• For running and starting applications, Parallels Desktop 5 is faster (for things like Firefox, Internet Explorer and whatnot).
• In terms of stability, VMWare is better.
  • Applications tend to crash less.
• Feature wise
  • Windows Support: I think Parallels is slightly better at running Windows.
  • Integration with Mac OS X: VMWare Fusion wins in number of features and usefulness, Parallels wins in quality of features (definitely looks nicer).

Buying Advice

Like I said, it depends on what you’re using it for.  I feel safer with VMWare Fusion 3.  It feels more stable, but it is also somewhat sluggish.  If you’re developing, or just looking to run simple Windows apps, VMWare Fusion is good.

For gaming, I like Parallels better.  It’s faster, and the graphics seem smoother.  It also support OpenGL 2 on all versions of Windows, unlike VMWare which only support OpenGL 2 on Windows XP (or is it the other way around?).

Hope this helps you.  Don’t blame me if you spend but don’t like, there’s a free trial for both.

I like to carry around my computer, and my computers like to talk to each other (seriously)...  The only problem is that the IP addresses of the computers change throughout the day.

The easiest solution was to use DynamicDNS.  There's probably several other ways to do this, and you can probably use some free service with an easy to install script, but if I have a host that supports it, why not use it?

So this is just a modification of the script originally post on the forums.  I tweaked it so the settings are at the top (to make it somewhat easy to modify), and so it can update multiple domains (because one of the computers is setup to send stuff to the older domain, but I bought a new shorter and cooler one)...  The last ip file is also hidden in Unix/Linux.

So here's the script:

Chmod the file "chmod +x updateIP.py"

Add it to your crontab, I have:

0,30 * * * * /Users/scripts/updateIP.py >> /dev/null 2>&1

This runs the script every 30 minutes and redirects any output to null. Every 30 minutes is probably a bit of overkill (since I think the TTL is about an hour, and I'm not too experienced in the matters of DNS), you can probably run it once an hour or so.

So this let's my computers talk to each other. They steal and store files on each other. There's some other minor things as well that are cool.

It also allows me (and others) to SSH in without having to remember numbers and do some cool stuff, like compiling homework on a machine more powerful than our laptops.

My first looks at it aren't too impressive.  It's been quite sluggish for me, but that might just be the Windows XP VM I have.  Switching to "Unity" was about the same speed, exiting "Unity" was definitely faster.

The new start menu is cool.  Integration with the Mac OS X Dock is a lot better.  There's still the redraw issue when using expose and the windows are minimized or overlapping.

Applications don't seem to be starting up as fast since I switched.  Like I said, it's probably just me Windows XP VM.  I'll post updates if Vista has the same issue, or if a clean install fixes it.

I don't really see the "improved drawing in unity."  It's actually worse for me.  When I drag a window, I get even more lag than usual (like the trailing window outline).  The mouse does seem more responsive though.

There's a whole list of new features here, but I think a clean install will work much better than upgrading.

Updates:

Vista is definitely running faster.

Some of my likes:

• No longer have to tell people to call me at this number in the morning and another number at night (because I don't get cell phone service in my room).
• I can use it with Gizmo5 so I can talk to people from my computer if I want.  Kind of cool, but it doesn't work to well with my laptop since the mic isn't as good.
  • If you use this with the call feature from Google Voice, you basically can call people for free without using your minutes.  I'm not sure how I feel morally about this...
• My room phone only allows me to call locally for free, so I got a local number from Google Voice which allows me to call anyone from my room phone.
  • Or I can just use the call feature on the Google Voice page.
• I really like the voice mail feature.  It's a lot nicer than my current providers.

My dislikes:

• The SMS feature is okay, but without an awesome phone, it's like me e-mailing peoples phones (have to launch my web browser to use it)
  • It's okay if I'm in an area with Internet and no service.  This is more of a phone problem then a GV problem though...
• Call Screening.  I'm iffy on this one.  The feature is great for me, but people who have called me so far don't really like it.  I don't want to disable it, but yeah...
• When you call your Google Number to configure stuff or listen to voice mail, it's not as intuitive as it could be.
  • Google is known for keeping things basic, which is good, but I think there could be some cooler things added, I mean it's Google, right?
• I really wish there was an advanced setup for the "ring schedule."  I have classes on Mon, Tue, Wed, Thurs, but not really on Fridays.  But I can only pick times for "weekdays" or "weekends."

Overall, it's useful.  It's not something epically awesome or insane, but I'll use it.  The international call rates are cheap compared to what I've found so far (not that I do a lot of international calling).

It'd be awesome if they integrated it with Google Chat (and released an awesome Google Chat client for Mac and Linux).  I'm guessing they don't want to step too much into Skype's territory though.

Anyways, after I use it some more, I'll post some more updates.

I should hopefully be posting some code this weekend.  The only issue is that GitHub switched servers and there's some creation problems for new repositories.

One of my friends was able to convince me to start using GitHub.  He uses GitHub and loves it.  My current mode of managing code and previous versions is copying all the code onto an external hard drive and labeling it.  Hopefully GitHub can help with that.

Yeah...  Hopefully I churn out some cool stuff.

Current projects include:

• Sebastian - A Butler for remotely accessing my PC.  He has a small brain for holding conversations, but he mostly aids in getting files from your desktop, printing files (so they can be ready when you get back), and some other stuff.  It runs on Mac OS X and Linux.  I use it for college because it frees up some time (like if I need a document for class, it can be sitting in my printer waiting for me).  It just makes it easier for me because I don't need to type out long commands.
• KMChat - A P2P Chat system.  My friends and I use a lot of other chat things, but sometimes it'd be fun to play some games or something.

That's what's on my plate for now.  Sebastian is almost done, just need to do some final touches.

Snow Leopard seems awesome so far (except that not all of the software I use has been updated for it yet).

The issue I faced today was the installation times.  When I installed Tiger, it only took 1 hour.  Leopard installed in 45 minutes.  Snow Leopard took 32 minutes on my iMac (pretty quick I guess).  On my macBook, it took 1 hour and 37 minutes.  The times for Tiger and Leopard are for my macBook.  My iMac is new and Snow Leopard is the first major upgrade on it.  I was really shocked about the whole 1 hour and 37 minute thing.  People were posting that upgrades were as fast as 13 minutes and the longest I heard was about 50 minutes.  So I allocated a good hour to do this on my macBook.  Just shocked.

I'll admit, the Finder and Preview run a lot faster on my macBook now.  There are some other applications that also run a bit snappier.  The boot time, shut down time, and connecting to a wireless network are also faster.  So it's definitely worth the upgrade.  Disk eject is now a lot more intuitive.  The preview in Finder is a great improvement (Expecially when uploading videos and stuff).

My only complain is that the installer didn't run as fast as it claimed it would.  I'll admit, I'm probably an anomaly because I do have some custom compiled things and modifications...  But that's on my iMac, not on the macBook.  So yeah...

Love using Snow Leopard, but let's hope that if I ever need to reinstall, it's a lot faster.  The installation itself was easy and simple, but the wait was killing me (out of eagerness to test).

Oh, and one quick questions.  Is anyone else (on a 13" macBook) experiencing issues with the Grid view of a Stack going out of screen?