SmartRemarks

Through many years and many computer systems, I’ve always been the sort of person who likes to tweak and customize my setup. I’m not happy just to make do with the programs that come preinstalled or shipped in shrinkwrap. I acknowledge a point of diminishing returns in this sort of thing, of course; I’ve never taken the effort to learn how to use Linux, for instance, or for that matter even to dip into Terminal on my Mac… but I do like to be able to do my own basic troubleshooting.  I don’t script my own utilities… but on the other hand, I do know how to dig up, install, and use custom scripts created by others, whether I use ‘em through Automator in OS X or through Greasemonkey in Firefox or what-have-you.

Nor have I ever had the inclination (or money or time) to be an early adopter of every new thing that comes along… but that just makes it all the more important to put in the time and effort to properly research and configure my choice of tools and workflow when I do make a change, because it’s probably something I’m going to be sticking with for a while.

So I’ve always been in sort of a middle ground… I’m by no means a Power User compared to the kind of folks who post on SlashDot, but OTOH I am one compared to probably 90+ percent of day-to-day computer users.

With all that said, one might imagine that finding a way (in the course of my latest nearly-from-scratch rebuild of my system) to handle basic PIM functionality wouldn’t be that big a deal, right? After all, managing data like contacts, calendars, and to-do lists is at the very heart of what people do with computers, and there’s been user-friendly software for the purpose for over 20 years. You’d think finding a solution now would be a no-brainer.

Think again…

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Tags: Apple, BusyCal, calendar, computers, contacts, Entourage, internet, iPhone, Mac, Plaxo, software, task management, to-dos, Toodledo, user interface

It’s been quite a few weeks since my last post. That’s because during most of that span, whenever I’ve had time to sit down with my laptop, it’s been to work on restoring things from the catastrophic hard drive failure I suffered just before Christmas. I’m happy to say that as of now, I’ve finally got the computer back to a state where I feel my life is under control again (as much as it ever was, anyway), and in fact the system is (in some ways) better than ever.

All the gory details below the fold…

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Tags: Apple, computers, e-mail, iPhone, Mac, PowerBook, software

I love my PowerBook. My computer is my life… or at least, it allows me to conduct it, and contains most of the relevant details of it, and connects me with the world beyond it. And using a Mac makes the whole process, really, downright fun sometimes.

Nevertheless, I admit to living dangerously where the safety of my loved one is concerned. I know the mantra that hard-drive failures are a matter of “not if, but when”… but despite that, I’ve never really had a regular backup routine. I have some archived files that are years old, but most of the more recent documents on my current machine (purchased over three years ago now) aren’t backed up.

Recently, however, I decided to own up to this irresponsible conduct and change my ways. I’ve been putting off a system upgrade (from OS X 10.4 to 10.5; this Mac is from the last pre-Intel generation, so it won’t run 10.6), but I knew that before installing a major upgrade a backup would be a Really Good Idea, just in case Something Went Wrong. This drive has worked flawlessly for as long as I’ve had the computer—in fact, I’ve never had a drive failure—but better safe than sorry, right? Plus, its 80GB capacity was about 75% full, and I know performance starts to take a hit above that level, and I figured before I started weeding out old files I should have everything backed up. And I expected that regular incremental backups would be easier after the upgrade, anyway, thanks to Apple’s nifty TimeMachine utility, so any headaches involved with this “safety” backup would be a one-time thing.

So yesterday I pulled a pristine new 500GB external drive out of its box, and attached it to my trusty PowerBook with a FireWire cable, and downloaded the latest version of the handy freeware backup utility SuperDuper!, and carefully shut down everything else that was running, and had the program begin making a bootable clone of my PowerBook drive on the external drive.

And guess when my hard drive decided to fail?

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Tags: computers, hardware, irony, Mac, PowerBook, troubleshooting

So as anyone who pays attention to the technical side of the blogging world (although I have no idea what small, obsessive sliver of the population that may be) is probably aware, WordPress 2.7 is scheduled for release in a few days—December 10th, to be specific. In fact, it’s already been rolled out as of today (Thursday) for bloggers hosting at WordPress.com, and for the externally hosted (like me) there’s the only-slightly-preliminary “WordPress 2.7 Release Candidate 1.”

I’m not usually an early adopter of new software; if I have something I like that works, I stick with it… but this is a major upgrade, and they’ve been teasing its improvements for a while now. (At least as long as I’ve been blogging, in fact, which after all only dates back to September.) I don’t feel like waiting.

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Tags: blogging, computers, WordPress

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I love Apple products. I’ve been using Macs for over 20 years, I write this blog on one, and I’m consistently excited at the way the company weds practical usability to technical innovation and gorgeous design.

So it was with some pleasure that I saw yesterday’s story on Fortune (CNN? Money? Whatever, some part of that media conglomerate) that Apple finally explained in painstaking detail just exactly why and how Wall Street has been undervaluing the company. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Apple, computers, economy, iPhone, Mac

I love computers. Really, I do. The Internet is a wonderful thing. E-mail keeps me in touch with people I would otherwise have lost track of long ago. I can’t imagine researching anything anymore, or even following the news, without access to Google.

And yet… sometimes one can’t help but wonder if these lovely life-enhancing benefits really need to come at the cost of so much annoyance and confusion. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: computers, customer service, e-mail, hosting, internet, software