Gravitational Pull: A blog about tech and other stuff.

  • Fantastico or who won’t let me upgrade WordPress

    It’s a real “hmmm” moment with my just-installed WordPress 2.5. There are a couple of annoying bugs, as I mentioned yesterday, so I want to upgrade to version 2.5.1. But my web hosting service, Bluehost, uses a program called Fantastico De Luxe to give me the capability to install and upgrade WordPress on their server.…

  • New version of VMWare’s Fusion brings multitude of improvements

    VMWare is out with a public beta of the 2.0 upgrade for their Mac-based virtualization program Fusion. One problem — you can’t run the beta alongside the current 1.1.1 issue because the beta overwrites it. So I’ll be holding off for a good long time. But in an excellent first look review, Macworld’s Rob Griffiths…

  • Speaking of simple, upgraded to WordPress 2.5

    Fantastico, the web server application installation service used by my hosting company, finally posted version 2.5 of WordPress so I hit the button for the upgrade. So far no visible hiccups. The writing and administration screens are less colorful than before but I have yet to uncover many differences. The Mandigo theme, upgraded to version…

  • Twittering onwards with terrific Twitterrific

    As I noted the other day, I’m life-testing the Twitter service. I’m trying to take it slow at first. I signed up to follow some famous folk, like John Gruber, and a half dozen friends I found with Twitter accounts. And a couple of people are following me already. I’m posting not more than every…

  • Twitter continues integration of everything theme

    I was lucky enough to sit in on a blogging seminar this week given by the inestimable Jeff Javis, who’s got a million brilliant things to say about media, blogging and the Internet generally (though his Hillary flogging is getting a little tiresome). He’s quite high on Twitter, so I decided it was time to…

  • PCMag review misses Mozy’s greatness

    PC Magazine has posted a bunch of reviews of online back-up service, including Pressman household favorite, Mozy. I use Mozy on two computers to automatically back up almost 120 GB of data — that’s everything I care about: music, movies, photos, documents, email, the kitchen sink. It’s an unlimited service that cost $208 for 24…

  • A new header image for early spring

    The last very little bits of snow have finally melted around these parts and spring is in the air. So it was hight time to get that lovely but snowy picture off the top of the blog. The new header was taken a few weeks ago at the Grassy Pond in the Ashumet Wildlife Sanctuary…

  • OS X Leopard — we have arrived

    (Updated 3/26) The addition of a spiffy new Apple Time Capsule prompted the final move in our household to OS X 10.5 aka Leopard. After holding off for five months on my most important, work critical system, a 15″ Macbook Pro, I swallowed hard, threw a pinch of salt over my shoulder and inserted the…

  • Apple’s Time Capsule plays nice with Verizon’s FIOS

    Wow, that was easy. Sometimes Apple’s auto-magic, self-configuring stuff works just as advertised. Sometimes, it’s Apple’s penchant for knowing how to simplify the front-end to hide the wacky back-end that carries the day. In the case of the new Time Capsule wireless base station with hard drive, it’s both. Phew. I’ve been using OS X…

  • More info about what’s running and in the running

    For the past few years, I’ve maintained a few pages describing gear and gadgets I use off of my other site, aaronpressman.com, starting with this page called “Tools I use.” It’s not the best set-up as those pages are created with Dreamweaver and then have to be uploaded by FTP. It can be time consuming…

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