Mom, this is God talking…
Posted on February 27, 2003
Filed Under Macintosh | 1 Comment
Sorry, just had a flashback to seeing “Real Genius”:http://us.imdb.com/Title?0089886 in college…
Anyway, my Mom is a switcher. My dad loved his PC. My mom barely used hers outside of work or when she had to. After my father died, Mom tried to use his souped-up-for-its-day computer but it wasn’t easy. I couldn’t help her, and the 233mHz PC was sorely outdated. Rather than upgrade or replace the PC, I talked her into buying a new flat-panel iMac. The draw was the fact that I could install software (”Timbuktu Pro”:http://www.netopia.com/en-us/software/products/tb2/mac/index.html) that would allow me to troubleshoot her system in New York from my couch in Connecticut. There would be nothing she would try on the Mac that I wouldn’t be able to help her through. Men don’t like to stop for directions. My mother doesn’t like to read manuals or help menus. It’s that simple. You have to show her.
Boy, has it been worth it. She calls me and says “Jude, take a look at my screen and tell me what that error message means” instead of “Jude, I’ve got this thingamagic that says I have to do something, what does it mean?” Huh?
Tonight I got an email from her:
bq. Jude .. HELP !! Why can’t I forward pictures. I sent this to _xx_ and she wasn’t able to open it. Take a look on my past mail and you’ll see from cousin _xx_ the post that was HUG. Do you have an explanation of this?
Sure enough, something funky is happening in Mail.app (she’s running OS X 10.2.3…no point in training her in OS 9 now). She can receive mail with inline images, but she can’t forward them. When she does forward them, the images are stripped out. It seems to only happen with mail that originated on AOL (surprise, not). This is a problem sending to anyone, AOL, broadband, etc. whether they are reading from Mail.app or not. Since Mail.app doesn’t allow you to change encoding methods, I’m not sure if there’s anything that can be done. It’s certainly not a setting I can find, and since I’ve switched from Mail to “Eudora”:http://www.eudora.com/ I can’t easily duplicate the issue.
I tried to send her an iChat to discuss this, but she didn’t know she had to click on the window in order to reply to an incoming IM. With my mother and technology, I learned to never assume anything is obvious. !../images/blog/wink.gif! It’s very frustrating to watch her through the Timbuktu window, clicking around everywhere but where she needed to be. I remembered that Timbuktu has an intercom feature, I opened it and shouted at my iBook “MOM, CLICK ON THE ICHAT BUBBLE”
It’s probably not nice to make your mother jump out of her seat, but it was kind of fun. !../images/blog/smiley.gif! I’ve been using Mac Slides Publisher (brutally slow, but it works) to keep her screen saver up to date with pictures of the kids. I think that makes up for it.
Konfabulator!
Posted on February 27, 2003
Filed Under Macintosh | 2 Comments
I’m normally not one to hack and modify my system beyond what is functionally necessary. It usually leads me to trouble, like last month when I installed “Silk,”:http://www.unsanity.com/ not realizing that it wasn’t fit for Jaguar and I ended up reformatting my iBook. Ouch.
I kept hearing about “Konfabulator”:http://www.konfabulator.com/ and I certainly know the reputation of one of its developers, Arlo Rose. So tonight I decided to take a look. The website is soooo purty. It seems safe enough since the widgets are all self-contained. I decided to try the demo and it is definitely cool. I downloaded a bunch of widgets and now I have the weather, my schedule, a launcher, a quick click to the finder and a search tool in easy reach on my desktop. Here’s what my desktop now looks like:
!../images/blog/konfabulator.jpg!
I’ll play with it a few days and then I’ll probably pay for it. This seems to be *the* OS X tool to have and with good reason. It’s only $25.
sad news
Posted on February 27, 2003
Filed Under Life | 1 Comment
Mr. Rogers “died today.”:http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/TV/02/27/rogers.obit/index.html Some of my earliest memories are of watching his show on PBS. I was about as old as Laini is now. She has watched the show a few times in reruns, and she seems bored. Today’s kid TV is so whiz bang that watching Mr. Rogers quietly change from his loafers to his sneakers doesn’t do it for her. Too bad. I hung on every word and when his show came on I felt like I was safe with a friend.
I watch some of today’s programs and it’s sad to think that there probably won’t be anyone that she will look back at 30 years from now and have the same affection and nostalgia.
when bad things happen to good Mac developers
Posted on February 25, 2003
Filed Under Macintosh | 3 Comments
“BareBones Software”:http://www.barebones.com/ is discontinuing BBEdit Lite in favor of the $49 Text Wrangler.
I am not happy. Neither is “Erik J. Barzeski”:http://nslog.com/archives/2003/02/25/bare_bones_now_officially_sucks.php who writes “Bare Bones Now Officially Sucks” I think my title works too. _update: He didn’t write it, someone on an IRC channel did_
Let’s say you used a certain street in your town to get from your home to your job. Now, your town puts up a toll on the road because they’ve just installed a system that served Diet Cokes and tuned your radio for you. “Nice,” you say, “but all I wanted from the street was a way of getting to work from my home. And now I have to pay for that?”
That’s how I feel about TextWrangler. I used BBEdit lite to edit CGI scripts as needed for my website. I used it to read text files friends send me. I used it to paste/copy web text before placing in InDesign so the text would appear unformatted. Syntax coloring, FTP, multi-language support? “Nice,” I say, “but all I wanted was a simple Text Editor. And now I have to pay for that?”
BBEdit Lite may be “dead” but it will live on in my iBook for as long as whatever version of OS X I’m running supports it.
I should say that my complaint comes from the fact that Bare Bones has removed BBEdit Lite from their pages. I know I’ll still be able to get it elsewhere. I would have happily paid $10-15 for it. $20 even. But throwing more features at BBEdit Lite for $49? Not thrilled.
new renovation pictures
Posted on February 23, 2003
Filed Under House | Comments Off
I took Gigi to see the house today, and as long as I was there I took the camera. “Here’s some new pictures”:http://www.momathome.com/home/house/renovation/week17-19.html The pictures look a little dreary because it was so foggy while we were there.
