Bluetooth Mouse Blues

While I have been very happy with the new mac I bought, I have been VERY unhappy with the bluetooth mouse. I bought it thinking "Hey, no wires to worry about". Well, the stupid thing never works right, is always having to be re-paired, and turns itself off after a ridiculously small amount of time.

Specifically, if you have to buy a bluetooth mouse DON'T buy the Microsoft 5000 bluetooth mouse. My $10.00 corded logitech does much better, and doesn't frustrate the living daylights out of me.

I also did some more research and it explains my 'sleep' problem that I was having with the mac. The unit will randomly wake up the mac. This doesn't happen now that I am not using the stupid thing. All in All, a very horrid waste of $35.00. Just stick with wired. I will try with just the windows pc to see if it is any better. I did like the tracking, but with all the other attendant problems this unit is just 'junk' when considered for mac use. Don't!!!!

THomas

Found place to Hawk my new book

I am going to be teaching some cooking classes (gluten free) at the local earth fair store. Basically I will be helping gluten intolerant people to cook things that taste good.

It will be a good venue to sell my book.

Thomas

VIrtualization experience under Mac

I tried vmware fusion under the mac. It was awful. It was so slow I deleted it within an hour. Parallels was interesting, but the import of my windows (yech!) machine resulted in adobe programs that didn't work. I was also unhappy with the lagginess of the apps. It would be nice for 'temporary' use, but for heavy duty desktop publishing, it was terrible. It went into the trash can as well.

So I guess virtulizing for DTP is a "NO Winner" in my book.

Thomas

New Mac makes editing Book really easy

Well, I sprang for a new mac, mostly because of a cool writing tool known as 'scrivner'. It basically allows a completely non-sequenial person like me to write.

I am currently writing a gluten free reciepe book, and dreaded the thought of having to take all 85 of my reciepes and get them into a single file.

Well, scrivner let me avoid doing that. I took the html files, opened them in firefox, selected the text, and dropped into scrivner. It automatically created the new titles for me, and put the text into the body of the document.

What makes scrivner so different is that you don't edit a whole document. You chop it into little bits, and then put those bits together (at the end) once you decide on structure etc. I can drag and drop 'index cards' or chapters within the text, not having to bother with the stupid word tricks etc.

Anyway, it is a MUCH cooler process than just word processing. It also allows me to take 'snapshots' prior to doing some major editing, rather live cvs, or git. I can 'roll' back to previous versions. Very nice feature. The price is also right: $39.00.

Palm Treo 680`

I just got the palm treo 680 at the advice of my friend Will. I really like it. It has a nice switch to make it 'quiet' and has a very nice interface. I got it for $99.00 on ebay. I also find that it syncs nicely with my Outhouse at work, as well as being nice for bible study. I am using a copy of something from 'olivetree' which is indeed a nice bible. Added to the mix is 'plucker' which lets me put my html stuff into my palm (nice for my book conversion project).

I have also began doing OCR on a devotional book that I study. I found a cool secret in 'openoffice' that allows me to autogen a nic toc. The toc is clickable, using just heading 1 2 and 3 styles. The main trick is to put the 'hyperlink' on the item type between the "E" and the other item "looks like an L' inside the item. The hyperlink has to be before and after. Otherwise it doesn't work. Its accessed by going to the insert index and tables, entries tab,

It is the second, and the fourth entries. between what looks like the 'e' and the 'f' entry. Its kind of hard to explain but play with it and you will see. Just look at the 'preview'.














Anyways, thats it, other than the fact that I have discovered a cool new (not really that new) thing spiritually:

Its called the "fathers love letter". Google it.

Thomas

Using Visio to export and search Network Diagrams

One of the great annoyances of visio is its inablity to search for Ip addresses within large network diagrams.

If you go to the 'save as web' option within the export function of Visio, it creates a happy web page (unfortunately IE is required to use!), and it allows you to search, and will even put a nice arrow where the object occurs within the diagram.

At some point I will figure out how to do a screen cast.

Recieved my Bass Clarinet

I have had my Bass Clarinet for two days. Its beautiful. I need to photograph it and put on the site. It is WAY smaller than I expected (the case is only 1/3rd the size of my old bass from 22 years ago!). It only weights about 8lbs, and sounds wonderful.

Its a Yamaha, and the case is green. I played on it for about 20 minutes today, and tried to learn Greensleeves again. Funny how that is. I found that starting on "a" middle register produced a most pleasing rendition. I still have a lot to learn on the keys, however! The chromatics still get me after 22 years...

Thomas