Saturday, April 17, 2010

iTripped 3.0

As it turns out, my previous computer lasted almost three years - at least if I look back I see that my previous upgrade post was made that far back. It was a good computer and I had lots of fun playing games on it. Despite running Windows Vista I never had a virus problem with it. However, one day last week it just stopped working. I suspect a failed motherboard but really, I'm so far removed from actual computer maintenance these days that I shouldn't be faking like I know what is wrong with it - other than it doesn't work.

Of course, this all happened right when we finally had decided to purchase a new refrigerator - a much needed upgrade to our kitchen. In some ways that was a good thing as it meant I was plenty busy on delivery day - even though I still managed to procrastinate until then on all of the installation jobs required. As I type this now I can say that all I have left to do is finish putting food items back in the cabinet.

But this isn't supposed to be a refrigerator post. I ended up getting an Apple laptop for my next computer and so far I have managed to turn it on, install Firefox and download some photos from my camera. This is my first blog post with it and I couldn't be happier with the keyboard as I type this. There are too many features to list on this machine and plenty of information online about it so I'll just say that this is my first laptop - Holly has had a couple now and has always appreciated the more convenient form factor.

So why get a laptop for the computer game player in the family? Well for one, computers are pretty fast these days - I'm hoping I can still play most, if not all, of the games I already have. Of course that will mean installing Windows on this machine but I'm happy to do that anyhow because it will make it more useful for me to do work. A few co-workers have earlier models of this computer and they have been able to play a wide selection of games, so I am confident that I will be able to as well.

There is a lot to learn here though. I haven't quite figured out how to upload my photos onto my blogpost yet! iPhoto seems to have hidden all the actual files for me (how helpful). I'm sure it can be done, but well, I have some learning to do I guess. I should go do that before posting to Wheezie's blog - her fans might be less tolerant of no photos.

UPDATE: As you can see, I got at least one image added, but wow, this will take some adjusting to. I'm sure there is a better way.

4 comments:

burbaget said...

You should give Safari a try. It really is fast and nicely integrated into the OSX experience. Worth a try. Firefox is becoming a hog. Chrome is super fantastic too. Weblog rocks.

As for iPhoto, the images themselves are stored in a package inside the iPhoto app. You have to put your mac hat on here and unlearn. Try to forget about where they are in the file system, and interface with them in iPhoto. You can drag them out, drag stuff in, tag and interface with them there. It's hard coming from a system where you have to keep in mind where they physically reside, I know, bit if you let it just do it's thing you grock it after a short time. Jobs/Apple is all about one entry point.

burbaget said...

*Webkit

iTripped said...

Yeah, it took a few searches but I figured out how to export the photos from iphoto. Once I got them out, well it was straightforward from there. Still bugs me that I can't use the file directly from iphoto though - I am surprised there aren't plugins or something but then thought, this is Apple vs Google (vs Microsoft) and nobody makes it easy to play nice with each other.

Derek said...

I just emailed you some stuff that should help with iPhoto.