Category: software

  • Blogoshpere’s Vista verdict? Blech. VmWare Fusion? Yum.

    Apparently I’m not alone in finding Windows Vista a less than compelling upgrade over XP. Bloggers all over, including more than a few on my daily or weekly reading list like Philip Greenspun and Joe Wilcox, seem to be finding the same irritating flaws. Those pro reviewer reviews that come out on the first day…

  • Blaspheming in the temple of the Mac: Boot Camp

    Ah, the crazy things we do to play a silly computer game known as Civilization, or in this case Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword expansion. Each and every version of Civ comes out first for Windows and some months later for Macs. And so, each and every time, I have to obtain, borrow…

  • Calling all comparers – time for virtual showdown

    Software developer Paul Lefebvre has a tidy comparison up on his blog between VMware’s Fusion and competitor Parallels Desktop. Both products let owners of Intel-based Macs run other operating systems like Windows XP or Linux. I’ve been messing around with Fusion for a few months now and it’s very impressive. One cool feature absent from…

  • Not all EMI content available sans DRM yet

    With one day left in the month of May, Apple and record label EMI made good on their promise to start selling higher-quality digital music without annoying copying limits (so-called digital rights management, or DRM, technology). The new files are $1.29 each although buying a whole album of these “iTunes Plus” files doesn’t cost any…

  • Imperfectly building my imperfect PC

    Had a couple of free hours last night after the kids went to bed so I went up to the attic to sling together my latest and greatest cheapie Windows box. This one, based on an ASUS T3-M2NC51PV all-in-one, barebones case and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Brisbane processor (actually running at 1.9GHz ),…

  • Refreshing our look with Mandigo

    After years with the basic WordPress default theme, I decided it was time for a spring wardrobe update at GravitationalPull.net. I wanted a new theme compatible with the latest version of WordPress as well as the plug-ins I rely on like SpamKarma and Automattic’s wicked cool sidebar widgets manager. Some of the theme preview sites…

  • Solving Tivo download issues

    I’ve tried a variety of programs to get TV shows off our Tivo and onto my iPod, mainly so the kids can watch some of their favorites while traveling. The Tivo, which sits in our bedroom far from the nearest wireless access point, was connected to the Internet and our home net via a Netgear…

  • A couple of better Lightroom guide books

    I’m happy to report that I’m learning a lot and getting plenty of use out of both of the books that I bought last week about Adobe’s Lightroom program, my new preferred photo manager. Martin Evening’s The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers, with the dark grey cover above, is a bit…

  • It’s Lightroom by a full length over Aperture

    (Updated 6/21) Some time last year, I can’t say exactly when, I crossed a threshold with Apple’s iPhoto software. The program had already slipped from the “greatest thing since sliced bread” category down a few notches to just “really useful” as my growing photo collection had slowed basic operations and made the program’s tagging deficiencies…

  • He marched in the animals, two by two

    …And he called out as they came through Hey Lord, I’ve got green alligators and long-necked geese Some humpty backed camels and some chimpanzees Some cats and rats and elephants, but Lord, I’m so forlorn I just can’t find no unicorns. Ah, the Irish Rovers and The Unicorn Song. Brings back fond memories of rainy…