Recently I have been getting more and more into Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X. I have become attached to the syntax of Obj-C. If you are also just starting to learn how to develop applications for OS X and would like someone to work with hit me up. I could always use someone to answer questions for me and also someone who can use the knowledge I do have so that I may help you as well.

Programming for OS X takes an approach that I am not quite used to. You spend most of your time pointing and clicking rather than writing code which I am used to coming from a PHP background. I am not yet sure what I will write for my first application, I am actually still going through the new Hilligass book which is quite good in my opinion.

In the past I wrote a review on Linkinus. Since then I have been using it as my IRC client and have been loving it. It has a nice clean interface and allows you to write scripts (AppleScript) and Cocoa Plug-ins to add functionality to the client. The other day version 1.3 was released which added a few new features which I thought were worth reviewing. The first thing I will cover are the split chats. If you command-click on several IRC channels / Queries. You will be able to see all of them in the same window. It takes the window area and splits it if you will. This is a very nice feature however I believe it is lacking a bit of functionality just yet. It is a new feature so I am sure it will be enhanced as time goes on.

The very first thing I noticed is that when I had IRC running but Linkinus closed (detached mode) when I opened Linkinus I had split windows already set. It had been a few hours since I was in Linkinus and I was in some very high traffic channels. The channel windows were scrolling madly for about 5 minutes. It seemed like it was trying to “catch-up” to the IRC buffer. After about 5 minutes I had to close Linkinus, quit IRC and restart it all. The other area of the split chat’s that I feel needs improvement is how you switch windows. Yes you can use cmd+shift+down and cmd+shift+up and you can also click on the topic bar above the channel. However clicking in the channel window alone should change the active window. However it does not work like that.

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Over the last few days I have been reading up on CarPuters and the things you can do with them. As you might have read in my post about the CarPuter there are a lot of things you can use them for. I was reading the forums over at mp3car.com and I found this post about a Dashcam video with GPS Speed overlay. I was intrigued to find a solution that I would be able to use with the Mac Mini I plan to integrate. During my search I found a great piece of software called SecuritySpy.

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Last week I wrote a review on Handbrake and MetaX which lightly touched on tagChimp. This week I am going to review a nice web based service that MetaX has been tightly integrated with. tagChimp.

If you like me have a lot of movies in your iTunes library, you will like this web based service that is community driven. MetaX used to only search Amazon, but now has the ability to search tagChimp. Before this integration you were subject to low quality cover art and you had to settle for less than perfect tag data (unless you added the missing information from Amazon). Now however when you perform a search you get high quality artwork (generally a max height of 600px) and accurate tag data. Now if you do not find the movie you are tagging in tagChimp’s database, not to worry. When you click on Write in MetaX it will add the data to tagChimp (Only if you have not disabled sharing with tagChimp in MetaX’s preferences). At this time tagChimp is relatively new so not all movies have the chapter data associated with them. Tim is still hard at work making improvments to the site every day. Recently he made it so that if the movie you are editing does not have chapters or the chapters are named like Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc. it will not add the movie to the tagChimp database. This was done to ensure that the tagChimp data was the highest quality possible.

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There has been a lot of controversy as to whether or not the Psystar OpenPro Mac clone is real or not. Will it actually make it to the market or will Apple squash the idea. One person actually provided a video of their machine booting into Leopard. Now this is a cheap alternative to buying a Mac system but it is very far from a suggestion on my part. After watching this video and reading what I have about these machines I would never suggest that anyone buy one of these machines.

The sounds that come from this machine are hilarious. The fans make the system sound like a vacuum cleaner. Now there are some benefits to getting a machine like this. It is cheaper than buying a mac system, however you will not get any support from Apple. Now let’s weigh out the cons.

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Since I bought my first Apple TV a while back I have been using a few applications to convert my DVD collection to a digital format. I do not know about you but I really got sick of searching through 300+ DVD movies to find what I wanted to watch.

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For a while now I have been looking for a good solution for online billing for clients that I have. I have tried using Quickbooks and while that is a very nice application I just cannot access it from anywhere I am unless I have it installed on both my home machine and my laptop. I did look into the online version of Quickbooks that Intuit offers however this was only for IE users. Sorry mac users. Tonight I have started looking at Freshbooks and I must say that it is very nice.

I signed up for a free account but with as easy as it is to use I think I will be upgrading soon. You can customize how your invoices will look, add clients, projects, tasks. This is just the tip of the iceberg though. They have a nice dashboard widget that Mac users can use to track time. When you are developing you don’t want to have to flip back and forth from a web page. You just want to start the timer and then go back and stop it. A web based timer means it is yet another window that has to remain open.

I am going to furthur explore the system but since it is free to try why don’t you go sign-up for an account and check it out. If you do a lot of online work I am sure you will find it very useful.

Ever since the release of Leopard people have been taking the initiative to hack their Docks so that they were not using the same old dock that everyone else has been.  With the release of CandyBar 3 they have made it very easy to change the look & feel of your dock but it also allows you to change other system icons.  CandyBar 3 is not free however it has a $29 price tag.  With CandyBar you can download tons of icons and docks from the repository that they have created. Today I read about a program called Dock Library which I have not tried.  It looks like this is only for customizing your Dock so CandyBar has the upper hand with me so far.

In the same article that I found the link to Dock Library I also found a link to a site called Leopard Docks.  There are a ton of different docks for you to choose from.  You can use these docks in both applications that I have stated above.  In CandyBar you just click on the Change Dock Appearance tab and start dragging the images from finder into the appropriate spots in CandyBar.  Once you are done you can save the set as an iContainer to share with other CandyBar users.  I have created the iContainer for the Garden theme which you can download from here if you so choose.  I have to say that the best theme I have seen so far would be the Litho theme by Anthony Piraino.  You can grab Litho System from this page along with all of the extras which make it even nicer.

Leopard Docks has some nice Dock themes and Icon Factory has some nice themes to choose from.  The one thing I really wish was that there was a very large repository of full blown themes for Leopard.  Even if they were just images in a zip file I could create iContainers to use with CandyBar.  I would like to see a theme where the wallpaper, system icons, dock etc were all rolled into a theme that looked good together.  Anyone know of such a repository on the web?

Over the last few days I have had several kernel panics on OS X 10.5.2.  The only thing that has changed since this all started happening was a new job.  I have been working from home using the Cisco client for the first few days and all was going well.  I found it tedious to continuously enter my password into the Cisco client and it was recommended that I use a utility called Shimo which is a more feature rich front end for the Cisco backend.

All of these kernel panics started happening shortly after I started to use Shimo, I am wondering if it could be the cause?  Have any of you readers had this issue?  It seems to only happen sometimes and not every time I connect or disconnect.  It even happens after I have been connected for a while.  I think I will have to discontinue use of Shimo and go back to the Cisco client.  If this solves the kernel panics I will be sure to let you know. 

If you are a geek like me then you must have watched TechTV’s Call For Help.  This is where I first heard the name Chris Pirillo.  Chris has been known as a Windows expert and has helped a lot of people through the TV show.  On Valentines evening Chris posted an article that states 50 reasons to switch from Microsoft Windows to Mac OS X. 

One of his best points is the fact that the cost comparison for Mac vs. PC is about the same.

A Mac costs about the same as a comparable Windows PC - for hardware and (for argument’s sake for those who don’t believe me) bundled software. And for those who still claim that Macs are still more expensive, they obviously have never seen or priced a gaming rig. Price / cost is relative. If you want a cheap machine, that’s your prerogative. The resell value on Macs has always been higher than that of an equivalent “Windows” machine.



Everyone always seems to think that the Mac costs more and at one point I did too until I priced a PC with the same hardware as my mac pro. Granted you could opt for cheaper hardware but you will not get the same performance.

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