May 27, 2006

Backup, Backup, Backup

When I'm working on a significant project, I am particularly mindful of my backup practices. It can be a little confusing--what to backup, how to do it, and how often. Here is an outstanding article about how overcome any roadblocks you have to good backing up practices.

How To Backup Your Mac Intelligently

May 24, 2006

Accordance 7 Available Today (& WOW!)

Today, the new version of Accordance Bible software was released, Accordance 7. It is packed with new enhancements. Many will welcome the ability to arrange your modules into groups. The ability to search by Greek and Hebrew roots is quite advantageous. Punctuation searches are now enabled. There are more new Graphs and Plots than I know what to do with at the moment.

My favorite additions are the contextual menus, the auto-fading Instant Details box and the ...

(drumroll)

support for OS X Services!

Over on the Accordance Blog, they've been covering some of the new features. Have a look.

May 17, 2006

New MacBooks Arrive

The circle is now complete. Say The new MacBooks have finally arrived. If you are in the market, here is a chart comparing all MacBook and MacBook Pro models.

MacBooks are 13.3" screens, while MacBook Pros come in 15" and 17".

All of them include iLife and a built-in iSight camera.

All of them are powerful enough (1.83GHz Intel Core Duo, 2.0 GHz or 2.16GHz) to run any pc application you need to in emulation using Parallels.

May 10, 2006

Looking for a Short Story

There is a short story I read as an early teen that made a profound impact on me, and I've never been able to find it. I've tried various internet searches to no avail. Part of the problem is that I only remember glimpses of it, and no details.

Essentially, it is a coming of age story. A young boy returns to the farmhouse from his duties tending the herd (of sheep I think). He realizes that one has been lost, and goes back out in search of the sheep. The main of the story is his retrospective, reflective thought process as he journeys over hill and vail in search of the animal. Many of his internalizations have to do with his relationship with his father. "What will father think?" "How could I be so irresponsible?" "Will I ever amount to anything?" "I can't give up... I can't, I can't!"

This last sentiment repeats throughout the journey, coupled with the growing annoyance of a pebble in his shoe. Instead of stopping to remove his shoe and the stone, it becomes symbolic of his perseverance. He thinks that to be a man means to stubbornly press on through the annoyance and eventual pain.

Night begins to fall, and by this time, the pebble now feels like a boulder on his foot. And then, not in an act of giving up, but around some other epiphany, he does stop and remove his shoe to extract the stone. He thinks that perhaps becoming a man means more than being stubborn. After removing it, he is, of course, amazed at how teeny tiny the pebble was, given how much pain it had begun to cause.

And then, after resuming his search under the dark sky, as if the clearing of his shoe has also cleared his mind and senses, he finds the lost sheep.

Don't recall many details, as I said, and I'm probaly misremembering a fair amount of what I claimed. Perhaps if I could find it, the story is better in my mind than it ever really was. But I sure wish I could find it.

Anyone know the story? Anyone have ideas on how to locate it? Maybe I should try emailing the National Radio Selected Shorts folks.

(Photo courtesy of someone named Bagryan.)

May 08, 2006

Apple's 10 Quick Maintenance Tips

Apple just published a new info document in their support section entitled Mac Maintenance Quick Assist. It has ten beginner-type tips for keeping your Mac running well. In sum, they are:

  1. Use auto software updates
  2. Keep your desktop clean
  3. Name folders and files as they're created
  4. Archive old files when not needed
  5. Run Disk Utility to repair disk permissions regularly
  6. Backup, backup, backup
  7. Even though it never crashes, still restart your Mac every now and then to give it a fresh start
  8. Don't be totally ignorant of virus-like baddies
  9. Optimize your Hard Drive once a year
  10. Clean the computer exterior & keyboard a bit.
These all struck me as good beginner-type tips.

May 07, 2006

Popular key symbols

One of the most popular pages for the Mac Biblioblog (ie. receiving traffice via web searches) is just now a year old. It is the reference page I did showing all the Special Key Symbols on a standard computer keyboard. I've added to it the Unicode Hex references.