In love with my Mac Mini

Okay if it was a girl. It would be the kind of girl that you treat with respect. Like Teal (another story).

The Mac Mini has proved to be one of the smartest things I did. I got the screen calibrated last night so at last it looks as beautiful as it works. I am thrilled with the simplicity of it, the small footprint (ignoring the power brick of course) and the Mac OS. I used Macs many, many years ago. I started on Macs and being a visual person the "Dock" is much smarter to use than the Windows Vista counterpart.

The Mac comes loaded with "lifestyle" software to manage photos, music, and movies. It also comes with email, web editing and calendaring. When you add OpenOffice 3.0 (now native to the mac) or just use Google Docs online - it's a complete info worker workstation. I also added a simple paint program called Scribbles which is a lot of fun (though not entirely useful). The biggest drawback I've found is just one screen. I've gotten kind of spoiled by my two computer, two screen PC command center - but when I think about what it's doing for the juice it's pulling - it's pretty clear I'm being a bad Earth Citizen.

At some point we have to examine ourselves and not just fill our life with being critical of others.

When I did that I saw wild excessive consumption and I think what I do is meager compared to some.

I do like the idea of reducing, and reusing. The Mac Mini will allow me to downsize my entire setup.

I bought the bargain basement Mac Mini (because I was originally only going to use it for GarageBand). You can get one here.

Apple Mac mini MB138LL/A (1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, Combo Drive)

A Message From the Maker (see Note too)

I dreamed this morning that God spoke to me. He said (in red 24pt. Helvetica type)....

"Keep your promises."


Note: I use the traditional form of "God" and "He" out of habit. I don't believe God is a) an entity we can comprehend and b) a guy. I mean look at flowers. A guy did that? I don't think so. And I don't think of God so much as a being as I do a "be". That would take a long time to explain. The main thing is "keep your promises". Which would also imply be careful what you promise. They say we will be "accountable for every word" on Judgment Day (not that I believe in Judgment Day) BUT if there IS a Judgment Day AND you talk less - your trial will be a LOT shorter. The jury will thank you and all the people waiting to go after you will be very glad too. But really "keep your promises." So that means when someone is staring at you with Bambi eyes and saying "Do you promise?". It probably would be a good thing to say "Nope." They will be crestfallen and then you will be tempted to cave and say "okay, okay. I PROMISE." Then they have you. So stick with "nope" or better yet be like a good lawyer and say "maybe".

Blogging From Firefox

Well, well, well. It appears that I can update my blog from my Firefox browser using an add-on called ScribeFire. Pretty interesting.

I got to be me and see Becky.

Yesterday my good friend Becky Rawley invited me to her OpenSIM SIM in the opensource metaverse at osgrid.org. What was very interesting is when creating my account, I could pick my first and LAST name. So naturally I picked my RL name (mainly so some other yahoo wouldn't get it). I have to say it was a different experience to be looking at my avi and it was ME.

Becky had recreated her Stockton Springs SIM and it was beautiful. She is probably one of the most talented builders in SL for creating Americana flavored venues.

You should contact her if you are trying to create a SIM with a distinct flavor of America.

Leading Cause of Death

Technically, according to medical doctors, everybody dies of the same thing....

a broken heart.

But I humbly submit that many many of us die of something else....

a hard head.

I know every major problem I've had in life was the result of chronic hardheadedness.

Don't die of this crippling disease. Listen to the ones that love you today.

MT Streams

Stumbled upon an inworld stream provider here. Not the cheapest I've found - contact Clarissa Pastorelli inworld for the least expensive stream I've found to date. And I have not tested MT Streams for quality. But for $250L you can check them out and see if you like them. At the very least you can add them to your list of possibles.

Welcome to "So You Think You Can Sing" the Home Edition

I got the studio up and working. So now it was time to lay down some tracks. Ran into some problems with using a Microsoft PC style keyboard with a Mac like there not being a Command key (I have to research the mappings, but I'm leaning toward a Mac keyboard). Ran into a much bigger problem.

I can't sing. Yet.

I mean I can sing, I have for a long time. But when it's just my voice on a recording studio track, it's a bit of a splash of cold water to hear it standing out by itself - warts and all. I missed tons of notes. So one more thing added to the todo list, need to do a little research on the right way to sing.

The thing that seemed the worst was trying to do covers because I was trying to "knock off" the original. That seems like a huge mistake because everything that isn't like the original is "wrong". So I made a mental note to work up all the covers Catfish style. Make them my own. Bend them to fit my voice.

I do understand that a lot of it - is working with it until I get it.

After telling so many folks in sLife that I was going to perform this month, I'm thinking now I'll have to take a more realistic assessment. I think a realistic time frame may be April of next year.

Peace.