When I first started blogging regularly I purchased a license for Ecto which is an amazing application. I started using it on OS X, so I was a bit disappointed in the Windows translation. Most applications that start on the Mac platform don’t quite translate to Windows just because of the limitations of the operating system. At any rate, since I moved back to Windows (temporarily) I have struggled to find a good desktop blog editor.

A while ago I went through almost every free and low cost blogging software package that I could find for Windows. I found a software package with a good interface, it ran slowly. If I found one that was good all around, the price was too high. For kicks and giggles I figured I would try Windows Live Writer because other people seem to like it, and I also found a quick and dirty article on getting it to work with the Wordpress Ultimate Tag Warrior plug-in. It causes me physical pain to say it but I like the software and it works well for my purposes. Furthermore it’s free. It also has a growing library of plugins which will encourage versatility. I just hope it doesn’t become bloated like Microsoft applications tend to get after they have been around for a while. I also hope it remains free.

Do you use Windows Live Writer? If so what do you think of it? Do you use another application I may be unfamiliar with? Let me know about it.

I know I have not been posting much lately but I have been very busy and the hurricane has thrown quite a wrench into my life. I am not here to make excuses though.

I am selling my old 20gb iPod (the original 20gb, firewire only, Apple item M8738LL/A).

You can view it here.

It is missing the headphones and the remote as they wore out over time, but other than that only has some cosmetic scratches. I am not a heavy iPod user so this unit has a lot more love to give to its next owner and it will be shipped promptly.

Yet again, Vonage makes me proud to be a customer:

Vonage SoftPhone for OS X coming

[MacMinute]

Wow, PSU did something right. For once.

Fluent PowerBooks

In Penn State’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, graduate students prepare for careers in academic research and information services by learning Linux, UNIX, BSD, Solaris, Windows and more. They manage their entire computing course load on 15-inch PowerBooks running Mac OS X.

[Apple Hot News - June 17]

So I gave up on Mail.app. I know a couple of people who couldn’t wrap their head around why I would settle for Mail.app in the first place. In retrospect, I wonder the same thing. I guess Mail.app was less cumbersome, slow, and irritating when I started to use it. Maybe I thought it would be less burdensome to my old desktop which was already laboring under the weight of Jaguar which was really slow and cumbersome by itself compared to 10.1 and Panther. Maybe the competition was a bit sad then. Entourage is bloated and I use it for school and school alone. Eudora never felt quite right on the Mac to me. I guess a bunch of things back then pushed me to Mail.app, and I guess it was OK for a while.

Mail.app has horrible IMAP support and I guess that’s what is driving me away. All of the waiting and the errors for problems that don’t exist get tired after a while. I’ve moved to Thunderbird and I’m very happy. I started playing around with it on my iBook and it’s very quick to load, receive, and send messages. That’s what I needed and that’s what I got. I’m going to miss the Address Book integration but I won’t die without it. Address Book is more important to cell/palm usage than to e-mail. I’ll survive.

What client do you use? Feel free to share your experiences.

Can it be? Can it possibly be that I got my OfficeJet d135 which is connected to my Mac to just print something over the network from my PC? I think it could be. The Mac is being nice to the PC right now and I should be happy about that. The key to the whole thing was using any old postscript printer driver. You think I’d know that after being the interim plotting slave at PSU for a while, but no. Cold logic took over and I attempted to *gasp* install the proper driver for my printer. Heaven forbid, right? After a bunch of muddling, and a little websearching at one of my favorite sites (MacOSX Hints) of course someone says “Use a postscript driver” so I do and it works. All the people sing…

The longer I own a Mac and use OS X, the harder it is for me to remember why I suffered through several releases of Windows. I mean, I know why.. back then MacOS was a joke. But now, the tables are turned and I just don’t understand how people who use Windows products get to sleep at night. Since I’ve delved into OS X I haven’t worried about viruses, trojans, mass data loss, corrupted partition tables, defragmenting my drives… you know.. the list goes on and on. Furthermore, I can’t remember why I ever defended Wintel.

The funny thing is, the more I use a Mac, the more I pity PC users. I think this is kinda the same for Linux/Unix users too. You just want to pat the Windows users on the head and tell them that everything is going to be alright while deep inside you know it will never be for them. *sigh* The only thing worse than the poor sheep that are scared of getting out of their Windows rut are the Windows freaks who try to talk down to everyone who doesn’t use Windows while they don’t realize that without Apple and Unix, there would never have been DOS or Windows in the first place. *sigh*

After 8 hours of helpdesk, this is particularly funny: http://homepage.mac.com/deadtroll5/.Movies/wesmonocable.rm