Minor Heresy

This week, I built a black MacBook out of spare parts that I pulled out of the company recycling. Its amazing what gets discarded. In any case, having this lusty little machine on my desk that I cant sell, I decided to get some bootCamp action going, and install Windows Vista. In the process, I’ve learned that the vista installer annoys me, Windows has to reboot almost a dozen times before I even get close to a working desktop, and the damned thing apparently hates my land line ethernet connection, but loves my wireless connection. Go figure.

I’ve now got safari, itunes, quicktime, miro, trillian, and a bunch of other windows apps on here, in order to make it more functional, but I realize it can never be my primary computing system. No iChat, transmit, ical, filemaker, Disk Utility, Miro, NetNewsWire, Twitterific, etc. No exposé, spaces, screen sharing, finder based idisk…

Sure, it’ll do about 75% of what I want, but that other 25% is critical to my daily workflow. In effect, I would still need a mac, in order to be as functional as I am now.

Now bear in mind, I started this little project at about 9AM, and have been noodling with it in between everything else. I’m less than impressed. Its definitely not HappyPants™ Certified. As of this moment, I look at the windows using public and must ask, “This is what you call good? This is your primary computing environment? This is better than Mac OS 10.5? This is Microsoft’s Gigantic, Amazing, Next Generation, Guaranteed to cement their OS dominance offering?

Seriously, the MacBook is awesome. But using windows? Its like finding out someone took a dump in your christmas stocking. All that build-up and impending awesome, and you end up with shit.

I’m gonna keep playing with the thing over the next several weeks. We’ll see if my opinion changes.

Yet another redesign.

So I was looking through the site traffic log and I noticed that traffic all but completely died off when I updated to the previous gray and blue theme with ads. I dont know if this was theme related or ad related, but I’ve since killed both, and gone with something a little more clean and modern. I’ll be tracking web statistics, and we’ll see how things pan out.

DIAF ADC Upload page.

I built a dashboard widget this morning. Its good, its clean, and I’m pleased with it. What is it? a countdown for the release of GTA4. I then decided to upload it to Apple’s widget download page. Arent I nice for sharing? Yeah. Screw it. You can all download it from my site. Why? Let me tell you why. Apple’s widget submission page is completely tarded. After filling out all the boxes, and including screenshots and the whole nine yards, the submission form kept finding errors. And of course, then I had to change the urls for everything, because I’d already submitted those urls. And then, my upload and download packages were different sizes. and on, and on. Finally, I said, “fuck you” and clicked the cancel button. I’m all about making something and sharing it, but when it takes longer to upload it than it does to build it, I’m done.

If you want the widget, click on the page in the menu bar.

Ad Content

Yes, it should be fairly obvious. There’s now ad content on MYM. No, its not the end of the world, and no, I’m not selling out. But do bear in mind that websites involve time and money, as does modding. Paint doesnt pay for itself, and frankly, time is money as well. Therefore, I’ve put up four ads. They’ll be whatever randomized advertising that Google Adsense rotates, so I have slightly less than minimal control. It is what it is, and hopefully it’ll generate some change to go towards the hosting bill and such.

So yeah, click on an ad maybe. Support your Mac Modding communities!

A Slight Facelift

Some of you may have noticed that the look of MYM has changed a bit. Previously, it was this very loud red and orange and yellow stained glass looking design, that while eye catching, kind of grated a little bit. After pondering it for a while, I decided it was time for a change. So I changed things. Now, we’re more of a cooler color palette, with more main page pictures, and so on. So far, I like it. I’m still tweaking, and debating google ad placement (this website really should pay for itself.) and such, but we’ll see. For now, enjoy the new look!