Almost Paradise

We have a new puppy. He’s a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, just under three months old, and we’ve named him Farley.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the last five months I’ve found an armload of great OS X freeware:

Firefox is my default web browser, but I also use Camino and SeaMonkey.

For an office application suite, you can’t beat OpenOffice. Its OS X incarnation is NeoOffice.

OS X has a good set of system utilities, but there are still a few gaps here and there. For example, it’s not easy to know file and folder sizes at a glance — using ⌘-I in the Finder will only gives you one size measurement at a time. WhatSize measures your whole hard disk and lets you know, well, what size everything on it is. It’s a must when housecleaning time inevitably comes around.

Azureus is my BitTorrent client of choice for P2P downloading. And once you’ve downloaded all those files, for unpacking zipped and archived items, StuffIt Expander and UnRarX come in handy.

Now that I have a fast computer that can read DVDs and play videos, I’ve been experimenting with ripping my DVDs to AVI files using HandBrake, and playing them (and files in practically any other video format, too) with VLC.

If I need a Photoshop-style image editor, I use The GIMP or Seashore. But honestly, iPhoto is often all I need for cropping and resizing. I’m not crazy about iPhoto’s goofy file structure, and I don’t trust it to manage my images, but it sure has nifty tools.

I use ArcGIS at work, so of course I was curious as to what kinds of geographic information systems apps are out there for the home user. ArcExplorer Java Edition for Education doesn’t have the professional-grade capabilities of its full-service big cousin, but it reads shapefiles just fine, and that’s 95% of what most people want. And hey, it’s free, which is a hell of a lot cheaper than paying per-seat licensing for ArcGIS. And although Google Earth isn’t strictly a GIS app, I include it here because it’s still an amazing tool for looking at the world and I use it just as often.

Other than the Apple apps that come pre-installed in Tiger, the only OS X software app that I’ve actually paid money for is CrossOver Mac, a Windows emulator to let me run those few Windows apps for which there isn’t a good OS X counterpart, like specialized technical software, or certain games, or even Internet Explorer (!). Rival Windows virtualization apps like Parallels Desktop require you to buy (!) and install (!!) Windows onto your Mac, but Crossover Mac works without needing an actual copy of Windows. Instead, it emulates the Windows APIs and fools the Windows apps into thinking that they are running in a Windows environment. It’s very cool, it doesn’t make you vulnerable to Windows viruses, and at $60 it’s also a lot cheaper than having to buy a full copy of Windows.

I use CrossOver Mac to run a few hard-to-replace Windows apps: AutoStitch (an awesome image-stitching tool), ACDSee 2.42 (my favorite old image browser), Picasa (potentially my favorite new image browser, if Google ever develops an OS X version), and even some technical software from work like Visual Sample Plan. I love it.

Last summer, after 20 years of owning and upgrading and playing with PCs — and, all too often, cursing as I nursemaided them through one glitch after another — I finally got tired of dealing with all the spyware and the adware and the viruses. I started taking long slow walks through the Apple Store, eyeing the sleek notebooks… and finally in August I took the plunge and bought a MacBook Pro. We named it Oscar.

At first, Oscar was meant to be Judy’s, since her old Vaio had recently given up the ghost. But a week later, she declared that she really needed a Windows PC. “I need my MSN Games,” she said. “They’re my stress relief at the end of the day. And that means I need Internet Explorer.” Well OK, honey. If that’s what you really want. So we headed to Best Buy and picked up a shiny new Vaio instead, which Judy promptly dubbed Phoebe. She then turned Oscar over to me.

Now it’s five months later, and I’m a total OS X convert. I was sold the first time I browsed my Razr V3’s photo files over Bluetooth. So smooth, so easy. The Apple ads are right; Macs really do just work. And my Oscar is a gorgeous piece of engineering. He’s built better than any PC notebook I’ve had my hands on.

I’m still running a Windows PC at work, and at home I’m still maintaining Windows PCs for my family members. But as for myself, well, I don’t miss Windows at all. Once you go Mac, you don’t go back.

More 7-Eleven manapua experimentation.

A pepperoni pizza manapua? I’m sorry, that’s wrong too.

Compare with two years ago.

It’s amazing how a few colored lights can lift one’s spirits so.

Judy once told me that she could imagine being perfectly happy as a zoo keeper. Well, I guess she’s decided that it’s worth pursuing as a backup career. Step by step, Judy is transforming our yard into her very own reptilian petting zoo.

This is her latest addition, a Hermann’s Tortoise that she has named Bernard. Hermann’s Tortoises are European, as opposed to our three-toed box turtles (Chester, Molly, Abigail, and Chestnut) and ornate box turtle (Daisy), who are all North American.

In the afternoon traffic, I ended up next to a flatbed truck carrying a car. Hey, what do you know — it’s a police car.

Hey wait a minute… that’s not a Honolulu Police Department car…

What the hell?

This morning’s earthquake was something. It was the strongest quake I have ever felt, my time in California included (1983-1988). We were still in bed, and the house shook and the bifold closet doors rattled like crazy. It lasted for quite a few seconds, and was followed by a second one of comparable size and length a couple of minutes later. Wow.

We were out of power from a few minutes after the quake, at about 7:10am this morning, to about 8:30pm tonight. It’s now 10:50pm and our broadband connection is finally back up!

It was a loooooong day at home with no power, listening to the radio and not doing much of anything. The hardest part was not being able to plan anything, in the absence of reliable information on how long the outage would last. When evening drew close and we still didn’t have electricity, we hauled out the Weber and grilled some chicken for dinner. But by the end of dinner, the radio was saying that HECO was bringing neighborhoods back online one at a time, so we were pretty confident that we’d have power before morning, which we did.

Boy. Now imagine the same thing, except with severe injuries and property damage, and it gets scary real fast.

The Mānana Ridge Trail starts at the top of Pacific Palisades. For me, growing up in Pearl City, it was practically in my back yard. As a teenager I tramped its first couple of miles with my friends many times, but never more than that because the trail’s pretty long — about 6 miles one way — and being young and lazy, we never got started early enough to feel comfortable that we’d be able to get to the Koʻolau summit and back again before sundown.

So, when I started hiking again a few years ago, Mānana was on my definitely-gotta-do-one-day list. A few months ago, when I saw it listed on the Hawaiian Trail & Mountain Club schedule — and on my 40th birthday, no less! — I knew that it was a sign. I pinned that schedule to the fridge and circled the date. Summiting Mānana would be my birthday present to myself. So last Sunday I got up early and was up at the trailhead at 8:30am.

Read the rest of this entry »