Screensaving Artwork

The new screensaver in Mac OS X Leopard that randomly displays album artwork is amazing. I never had enough music on my laptop to try it, and now that I have recompile a music collection on my newly-upgraded G5, it is now what I see when I lock my computer from my shady officemates.

Sometimes I just start the screensaver and watch it. My best guess is a week before it gets old.

A Clean Slate

A computer wipe and operating system upgrade is normally a pleasant affair. That is, when it is not forced by instantaneous data loss, including time-sensitive homework and grade reports. I will give just one advice to Apple users: never ever use FileVault, as it slows programs down that may actually cause the computer to freeze and when you force a power-down your data is stuck in the middle of encrypted and unencrypted. This happened and I was not even able to log in to my account.

However, Leopard is finally on the G5, and will run faster since the data is no longer passing through encryptions. My lack of important data is very sad, and a few of my very favorite applications have been lost in the upgrade. I no longer have the installers for these absolutely legally-acquired programs.

Code Project: Sudoku

I resurrected my Sudoku code long enough to export an executable Jar so I can share it with the world. Give it a try and see how you like it. It doesn't solve it for you, just helps with keeping track of info.

Inside Jokes

It is a frequent occurrence when I find something hilarious when no one else would. The most recent example was when I was making Beefaroni and began to argue with myself about the comparison of this fine dish to one of similar nomenclature but based on a slightly different pasta.

An Odd Combination of Incompatibilities

I bought a new toy this week: a Keyspan Presentation Remote. It is essentially a powerpoint clicker with a built-in laser pointer. There are some other features that I don't care about, but these are the two things I needed. However, I plugged it into my G5 to test it with my presentation, and it didn't work. Apparently, all of the Powerpoint/Keynote applications advance slides with up and down arrows, but when I run a PDF presentation in Preview, it uses only left and right arrows to advance pages in full-screen mode. This is a problem!

However, I test it on my laptop with OS X Leopard, (instead of Tiger, a point-release difference) Preview uses up and down arrows to advance in full screen. This solves my issue as I'll only use my laptop for presentations. It does trouble me that left and right now longer advance pages. If anyone needed that to work before, they are now out of luck when they upgrade.