Justin Allard dot com

New Pioneer deck

Justin Allard — 2009-07-06T08:34:01-07:00

Last week I bought a new Pioneer CD receiver for my truck, and swapped it out with my old one.

Face closed.

Face tilted down for a CD.

Here is a brief demonstration of some of the capabilities of my new Pioneer CD reciever.

Prevent partitions from auto-mounting

Justin Allard — 2009-07-04T00:46:22-07:00

Please note: theses steps worked fine on my system, a MacBook with OS X 10.5.7. Always be extremely careful when executing commands in Terminal as you can easily trash your system. If these steps are followed correctly everything should work just fine, but it is always a great idea to have all of your important data backed up incase something goes awry. I am not responsible if you trash your system or loose any data.

For Christmas I got a 1TB Western Digital My Book hard drive, and I’ve got it partitioned up like crazy. One partition for the clone of my internal MacBook hard drive, one for a backup of another drive, and a third just for random data that I don’t have to keep on my MacBook. Normally when I plug in my My Book all three partitions will mount, which is sometimes annoying because I usually just want my ‘My Book HD” partition to mount and not my two backup partitions. Thankfully I was able to find a way to prevent those partitions from mounting and I’d like to share my discovery.

A quick Google search lead me to an excellent blog entry at MacSeven.

Step 1 - Launch Disk Utility, it is located in Applications/Utilities.

Select the partition that you don’t want to auto-mount and click the Info button.

In the information window, copy the Universal Unique Identifier.

Step 2 - Launch Terminal, it is located in Applications/Utilities.

Type in: sudo pico /etc/fstab

or you can copy and paste from this page.

Press Enter and type in your password, and press Enter again.

Step 3 - Make new entries in the fstab file for the partitions you don’t want to auto-mount.

Type: UUID=paste your UUID none hfs rw,noauto

Here is an exampe of what one of my entries looks like:

UUID=0238CF7B-75BE-398A-84ED-A476F9D5F861 none hfs rw,noauto

You can add aditional lines for other partitions that you don’t want to auto-mount

After you have entered the information for all of the partitions you don’t want to auto-mount,

press control+X to Exit and press Y to save, then press Enter to return to the command line,

you can now Quit Terminal.

Step 4 - To see the results of your mucking about in Terminal, eject your hard drives, unplug them and then plug them back in. If you did everything right the partitions you told not to auto-mount won’t mount.

If you need to mount a partition that is set to not auto-mount, just launch Disk Utility, right click on the partition you want mounted and click Mount.

If you ever want to auto-mount the partitions you disabled auto-mounting for, just open up the fstab file in Terminal, delete the lines you added, press control+X to Exit and press Y to save, then press Enter to return to the command line, and Quit Terminal.

Fun with dry ice

Justin Allard — 2009-05-21T14:14:40-07:00

I had bought a 20 lb. block of dry ice for a demo I was going to do in my Chemistry. There were some left over pieces so I called up my friend and we had a little fun.

Fun with Dry Ice from Justin on Vimeo.

Tweetie for Mac

Justin Allard — 2009-05-12T23:03:34-07:00

Tweetie for Mac is my first favorite Twitter client for OS X.

Its interface is just plain great, the way you can drill down through users is awesome, and you have all the controls you would online.

Direct messaging is no longer a confusing stream of conversations like it is on Twitter.com. Instead, direct messaging is now formatted like an iChat conversation, so you are never lost when it comes to who said what.

I also love its small desktop footprint it takes up. Growl notifications are very nice as well as the support for multiple accounts.

Tweetie may be young, but a lot of work has been going into it. It’s definitely worth a look if you want a great native Mac Twitter client.

To register, Tweetie is $19.95, but there is a free ad supported version as well.

Killing some time

Justin Allard — 2009-02-21T22:54:50-08:00

After a day of snowmobiling Tanner and I got back to the trucks first, so we decided to break out the sleds. I found a hill to go down and Tanner wanted to build a ramp. You can only guess what happens next...

Killing some time from Justin on Vimeo.

Internals of a hard drive

Justin Allard — 2009-02-19T17:28:08-08:00

I received this old 8GB hard drive today. I was going to salvage parts to make a clock, but I couldn't get over how beautiful it was. So I filmed it turning on a seeking around a bit. This may be boring for some, but I found it quite cool to watch.

Internals of a Hard Drive from Justin on Vimeo.

Western Digital My Book review

Justin Allard — 2009-01-19T21:42:32-08:00

For Christmas my parents were kind enough to get me the 1TB Western Digital My Book that I had on my list. I made sure that they would get me the Essential Edition because, at the time, it sported Firewire 400 (which was a must for me because it really is faster, overall, than USB 2.0, and uses less system resources) as well as USB 2.0 and eSATA.

Setup was simple enough. I just plugged it in and it was ready to go. It came formatted as either NTFS or FAT32 (I wish I could remember, but I can’t). Because I was going to use it solely as a backup drive, being a Mac user, I chose to reformat it to use HFS+ with Journaling enabled. This was simple enough in Disk Utility, but at first the format kept failing. It failed about 5 times before I checked the settings under the Advanced... button. I changed it to use the GUID partition table, instead of a Master Boot Record, and it formatted to HFS+ just fine.

Software was a completely different story. The description of what the software does, just by the names, was quite odd. Here is a picture to illustrate what I’m getting at:

The disk image was called “WD Drive Manager” yet the name of the installer was “WD RAID Manager.” This had me quite confused and, because of that, I began scouring the internet to find the software that would let my drive use its capacity gauge. After about half an hour of that business, I finally (albeit, partially) discovered that the so-called “RAID Manager” was actually what I needed to install to gain the functionality of the capacity gauge (and it had nothing to do with RAID). So, I installed that, and low and behold! A lovely blue WD logo appeared in my menubar whenever I had my drive plugged in. That quickly warranted an uninstall, so I never really got a chance to see the capacity gauge in action. (But its not like I would see it much anyway because I put a pice of Gaffer Tape over the status light so it wouldn’t drive me insane as I slept).

Western Digital’s backup software isn’t any better either. After I had installed the software, it wanted me to immediately set up a backup schedule, which I didn’t want to do at the moment. Now you would think there would be an option to quit the app and set it up later but there wasn’t. The only way I could find to quit it was to force quit it. (Very elegant Western Digital, very elegant indeed). Once again, that functionality (or rather, lack of it) warranted another uninstall, but that process wasn’t so simple. The installer had set up launch daemons that needed to be forced quit through the Activity Monitor before I could delete it.

Personally I prefer to back up with SuperDuper! from Shirt Pocket Software. It makes a nice bootable clone of my MacBook’s hard drive so if it ever fails I can boot up from the clone and copy it back to a new hard drive with little downtime. Along with SuperDuper! I am using Time Machine. Dave Nanian of Shirt Pocket Software has done a great job of making sure SuperDuper! can back up to the same volume (yes, you don’t even have to partition your hard drive) without having to worry about it interfering with your Time Machine backups. SuperDuper! along with Time Machine are invaluable tools, both for their own reasons. SuperDuper! for its bootable clones and Time Machine for its ability to go back to a date and pick out a file that was accidentally deleted.

The Western Digital My Book is one of the most esthetically pleasing external hard drives that I have come across. It complements my MacBook very well and looks great amongst the mess that I call my desk. The only complaint that I have about its design is the lack of rubber feet on one of the sides so it can be placed horizontally.

For more pictures, check out the image gallery.

Merry Christmas!

Justin Allard — 2008-12-24T23:42:41-08:00

Merry Christmas to everyone! Most people think Christmas is about is presents and food and family, but that is not so. The real meaning of Christmas is the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ. God sent His only begotten Son down to earth, fully God and fully man, from the flesh of God. We persecuted Him and nailed Him to a cross. That was the only way for us to be reconciled to God. That was the only way we could spend eternity in heaven with Him. There was no other way, Jesus even asked God if there was and He told His Son that there wasn’t. So, please remember the real meaning of Christmas this year as you celebrate with your family.

This is the Christmas Story from Luke 2:1-20

And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:“ Glory to God in the highest,And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger. Now when they had seen Him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this Child. And all those who heard it marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told them.

- Luke 2:1-20

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Sodium in Water

Justin Allard — 2008-12-12T23:07:11-08:00

In chemistry we put chunks of Sodium into water. What you end up with is a very violent chemical reaction.

Sodium in Water from Justin on Vimeo.

Macbeth - The Cawdor Menace

Justin Allard — 2008-12-10T14:51:19-08:00

My friends and I had a project for our senior British Literature class to act out, for us, Act 5, scenes 5 and 8 of Macbeth. We could have just done it in class, but we opted for the video.

Macbeth In Space - The Cawdor Menace from Justin on Vimeo.

Gummy Sacrifice

Justin Allard — 2008-11-21T23:03:02-08:00

We sacrificed some gummy bears, sour patch kids, and gummy worms in Chemistry.

Gummy Sacrifice from Justin on Vimeo.

Grungy wallpaper

Justin Allard — 2008-10-19T22:51:36-07:00

A couple of days ago I stumbled across a cool Photoshop tutorial detailing how to make a grungy poster. I followed the tutorial and made a ‘poster’ that I am now using as an avatar on some of the websites that I frequent. But that wasn’t enough for me, so I decided to make a wallpaper version following the same tutorial, just changing the canvas size. Here is what I came up with.

Download 2560x1600 png wallpaper

This first one is without a frame, which I think looks the best as a desktop wallpaper.

Download 2560x1600 png wallpaper

This second one has a frame, which the tutorial will have you add.

If you can’t tell, my JA logo is in the lines. All in all, I like how they turned out and I had a fun time making them.

Thoughts on Apple's new notebooks

Justin Allard — 2008-10-14T15:13:20-07:00

Today Apple announced major redesigns to both the 15” MacBook Pro and the MacBook.

Let me jump right to the MacBook. One word: Aluminum. The MacBook is now made out of aluminum and a solid brick of aluminum as well. It also features an Nvidia 9400M graphics card which is said to be 5 times faster than the Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics. The display on the MacBook is LED backlit which produces crisper color and leads to longer battery life.

This is all very cool indeed. But there is no more FireWire on the MacBook. Obviously Steve believes that consumers don’t use it. And I’m sure he is correct. I would probably not be considered the average consumer and fall more under the category prosumer. The thing is, Apple has always been big on FireWire and now they take it away, and some people can’t afford a $2000 machine. That is the one thing that will keep me from buying a new MacBook. Also, the entry level processor speed is back down to 2.0 Ghz. That would be a downgrade from my 2.2 Ghz processor, something I won’t do.

As far as the display port on the MacBook I couldn’t really care too much about it. I had to buy dongles anyway. I am however, sure that MacBook Pro users will be up in arms about having to cary a dongle around with them.

Moving onto the MacBook Pro, again there is one word: Glass. The MacBook Pro now has a glass display. And what does glass mean? Glossy. And what does anyone dealing with colors as a professional hate? Glossy displays.

So, if I were to buy a new Mac on this round of refreshes, I’d buy a refurbished 15” matte MacBook Pro.

This is by no means a complete review of specs and features, just my thoughts on Apple’s new notebooks.

BCHS 2008 Homecoming

Justin Allard — 2008-10-04T21:40:22-07:00

This past week was Spirit/Homecoming week at my school. I had been helping out with the Senior float pretty much every day after school as much as I could. It has been a lot of fun working on the float and hanging out with friends and getting to know people I never really knew before (which is odd in a school of 500). Our float and class won which is awesome and how it should be.

My brother took a lot of pictures of the floats as they went around the track, so I put them up on my site using InstantGallery which is a simple little app that makes decent looking web galleries very quickly, so here are the pictures. The first few pictures I took with my phone (which yielded pretty decent pics). The floats go around in order, Freshman first with their Mexico float, the Sophomores are after them with their Jamaican float, then the Juniors with their USA themed float, and finally, the Seniors with our Egyptian float.

Green Laser

Justin Allard — 2008-09-06T22:04:47-07:00

On Friday I ordered a 532nm 5mw laser. To put that in English, I bought a low powered green laser. It’s pretty darn awesome. At night the beam can be seen in the sky due to how dusty Bakersfield can get, and the dot can be easily seen on buildings at a fair distance.

This is my laser.

This is my laser’s beam.

This is the beam in a dark closet

This is a case that I made for my laser. I was inspired by an article on Instructables that showed how to make a case.

Laser Case from Justin on Vimeo.

This is a tripod mount that I made for my 5mw green laser. It's a pretty simple design that was inspired from a how-to I read on Instructables. I took that idea and ran with it, making a simpler, and more elegant tripod mount.

Laser Tripod Mount from Justin on Vimeo.

A truely universal password manager

Justin Allard — 2008-08-10T11:03:50-07:00

Password managers have become commonplace. Every modern web browser has one built in, there are even fancy utilities that integrate into all of your web browsers to manage your passwords. The whole idea of a password manager is to only have to remember one password, generally refereed to as the master password. This is great! That means that you can use complex and automatically generated passwords and not have to remember any of them! Password managers improve security and increase ease of use. But as soon as you’re away from your computer and on another machine, you can’t access any of the websites you log into because you don’t know the password for that site, which is why most people (myself included) just use the same, simple password for all of their websites.

Thankfully I have recently discovered a truly universal password manager: SuperGenPass. SuperGenPass works with any modern web browser. It doesn’t store your passwords, so it can be used on any computer. And, SuperGenPass doesn’t need to install anything to work. It is a bookmarklet, a piece of Java Script that when clicked, performs an action, in this case, fills in your password. SuperGenPass creates secure passwords using a very complex math problem, based on your master password and the domain name of the site you are logging into. If even one character is different in either your master password or the domain name, the password that is generated will be completely different. Because SuperGenPass uses a complex math problem to generate your passwords each time you enter them, it doesn’t need to store your passwords anywhere on your computer, making it a very safe and truly universal password manager.

Fuge 2008

Justin Allard — 2008-07-28T16:36:43-07:00

Camp was awesome! The whole week was great. I had an awesome Bible study group with an awesome leader. Eric, our Bible study leader, just had a different way of thinking about concepts and a great personality. I am really going to miss Eric and my Bible study group even though I only knew most of them for a week.

One thing that the Lord really taught me this week was the concept of unity. There were only two 11th and 12th grade Bible studies, Egypt (mine) and Zimbabwe, both of our leaders were named Eric. Sometimes during rec, we would compete against each other, but after that we would all get together and talk about what we had just learned. It was also awesome how both of our Bible studies would cheer for each other as one, so we became Zegypt. Each day after rec, a 'Spirit Cup' is awarded to a Bible study in each grade set (7th and 8th, 9th and 10th, 11th and 12th, College, and Adult). On the last day of rec Zegypt won the Spirit Cup as one. For me, that was one of the coolest things that happened throughout the week.

Here's another cool thing about unity I learned, and this is coming from Eric. He said, it's always awkward the first night when our Bible study got together the first time with almost no one knowing each-other. On the last day we got together at the same spot and everyone is so close after only a week of being together.

Camp has just been an awesome week and having an awesome camp pastor doesn't hurt either. This year the pastor was Will Snipes, he was the camp pastor two years ago and was really awesome. Will has a unique way of preaching. He likes to always have a key word that his sermon centers around. The first night's word was Cure, that's what Jesus is, the cure for our sin. The second night's word was Repentance, that's what we need to do, repent of our sin and run from it like it's a burning building. The third night's word was Victory, we have to defend what God has made ours. And the last night's word was Feet, if we don't go and spread the Gospel, who will?

I have learned so much at camp this week. I has been so awesome.

For some pictures check out my Flickr

An update in the life of Justin

Justin Allard — 2008-07-18T23:56:46-07:00

July 12 was my birthday. I am now an adult. Kind of weird. At least I can put Google Adsense on here now.

For my birthday My parents gave me $300 to put toward whatever I wanted. I bought myself a 320GB hard drive for my MacBook because I had filled up my 120GB drive. I managed to find a Firewire/USB enclosure for my old hard drive so I purchased that as well. My hard drive has been great so far, and I am loving my Firewire enclosure, it’s so much faster than USB.

Today I purchased a new iPod. I had filled up my good ol’ 30GB 5.5 generation iPod to the brim, so I thought I’d by a new one. I went with a silver 80GB iPod Classic. I’m really happy with it so far. The new UI is very slick and the whole metal case makes it feel like a rock solid device. Eventually I’ll post a write-up similar to the one I did on my new MacBook a while back about what I’m loving and hating with my new iPod.

Later days!

- Justin

HDR Photography

Justin Allard — 2008-07-14T00:13:12-07:00

Recently my family purchased a digital SLR. Needless to say, I love messing around with our new Nikon D60. While I was over at Pismo Beach two weeks ago I went on a little hunt for some scenes that I thought would make great HDR photos and came up with two great looking pictures.

I personally love the HDR entrance to Pismo Beach. It looks very creepy to me, but that’s why I like it so much. It is currently the wallpaper on both of my monitors.

I do like the HDR trees as well, but it isn’t my personal favorite.

To download the full size images to use as your wallpaper just click on the image you would like to download and save the full size images that load.

Videos Updated

Justin Allard — 2008-06-29T23:21:46-07:00

The Videos section of my site has recieved a complete overhall. After much deliberation I decided that it was too much work to keep the videos hosted on my own server and decided to use the excellent video hosting service Vimeo. What I love most about Vimeo is the ability to upload 720p videos to their servers, and SD vides uploaded to Vimeo look great as well and 100% better than YouTube. My videos page is now a blog page that I will embed my videos from Vimeo into. You can subscribe to the Videos rss feed to stay up to date with my latest videos.

Cheers!

- Justin

Pause Minimization

Justin Allard — 2008-06-20T21:31:06-07:00

Here’s a fun little trick! This screencast I made will show you how to pause a window in mid-minimization. This trick really has no value, but it’s always cool to show off to your friends.

10.5.3 brings Spaces enhancements

Justin Allard — 2008-06-02T22:52:37-07:00

When I first got my hands on a copy of Leopard (if I remember correctly I snagged a copy of the beta just before the Golden Master, which was still very buggy) Spaces became my favorite feature (along with Quick Look).

With the recent release of Leopard 10.5.3 Spaces has seen some great enhancements. The most notable one has an excellent write-up by John Gruber over at Daring Fireball. I’m not going to discuss this new feature because I feel that John has done an excellent job at that task.

One feature I would like to discuss is one I discovered today. This feature is much less prominent than the former, however it is still very useful. In 10.5 through 10.5.2 in order to add an application assignment for Spaces, you had to click the plus button and search through your Applications folder to find the application you wanted to add. In 10.5.3 you are now presented with a pop-up list of all of your currently running applications and can quickly add an application assignment. This small enhancement is welcomed with open arms and will save precious seconds while using my Mac.

Firefox Search Engine Keywords

Justin Allard — 2008-05-30T23:28:28-07:00

A cool new feature of Firefox 3 is the ability to add a keyword (or “keyletter”) to a search engine.

To add a keyword to a search engine, click the search engine icon to pull the up the drop-down menu and then click Manage Search Engines... . Select the search engine that you want to add a keyword to and click Edit Keyword and then assign a keyword. I personally like to use a ‘keyletter.’

For example, I have the letter G assigned to Google.

What this assigning of ‘keyletters’ allows you to do is to type the letter g into the address bar and then type what you want to search for.

For example, typing in: g justin allard will be like going to Google.com and searching for justin allard.

This trick can be particularly handy for when you don’t want to change the search engine in the drop-down menu just for one search.

Again & Again

Justin Allard — 2008-05-12T11:20:52-07:00

I'm not normally one to embed random videos into my blog, but this one is different than any other video. It is awesome. Yes, awesome. And it looks like it took a lot of time to create, thus the reasons there is a YouTube video embedded in my blog.

Song is Again & Again by The Bird and Bee. Video created by Dennis Liu

LogicielMac Update

Justin Allard — 2008-05-08T08:36:18-07:00

LogicielMac Update is useful app that checks for updates for all of your non-Apple applications. It will automatically check for updates at a set interval anywhere from every hour to every month. The applications with updates will be downloaded and automatically installed.

One of my favorite features is that LogicielMac Update doesn't mind the organization of my Applications folder. It happily replaces the apps in the folder they were in and checks the sub-folders of my Applications folder.

Another cool feature of LogicielMac Update is that it will let you interact with DMG licenses and the finish installing the application. And, if there is an application that you don't want to have updated, just add it to the blacklist and LogicielMac Update won't check for updates.

Overall, LogicielMac Update is a great little application to help keep your applications up to date.

Freedom from internet

Justin Allard — 2008-04-25T20:43:15-07:00

Whenever I try to get some school work done on my MacBook I always seem to get distracted from my task. It just so happens that my favorite web browser (currently Firefox 3 Beta 5) is usually the source of my distraction.

Enter Freedom. A simple little app that conquers a very big problem. Freedom disables your Mac's AirPort and Ethernet for any amount of time between 1 minute to 3 hours. And just to be sure you aren't tempted to quit Freedom to get back your 'internets,' the only way to disable it before it's time is up is to reboot your Mac (or have some Terminal skills).

Needless to say, Freedom can really boost your productivity.

Command + up arrow in the Finder

Justin Allard — 2008-04-16T21:33:45-07:00

Keyboard short cuts always come in handy and usually improve the speed one can use a computer. Here's two short cuts that aren't too well know for the Finder: Command + up arrow will send the navigation up one level. Command + down arrow is essentially an alternative to Command + O, in that will send the navigation down into the selected folder or open the selected file.

Command + up arrow can greatly improve navigation within the Finder.

RAM upgrade

Justin Allard — 2008-04-10T20:28:23-07:00

The second GB of RAM has come in for my MacBook. I have installed it and OS X recognized it just fine, the way it should. My MacBook is noticeably faster than before especially when I'm multi-tasking with Photoshop CS3 and iTunes open playing a video.

New MacBook

Justin Allard — 2008-04-05T11:54:34-07:00

On Thursday, April 3, I received my new MacBook. I sold my old one to a good friend and I bought myself a refurbished MacBook. The Specs are as follows:

2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Intel X3100 GMA graphics
DL SuperDrive
1 GB of RAM (soon to be 2GB)
120 GB hard drive

It's not the newest MacBook but it was sure quite an upgrade from my old 2.0 GHz Core Duo MacBook. All in all, I am very happy with my new machine, and I'm very happy with the condition that I received it in.

When I ordered refurbished I expected my new MacBook to look slightly used with a few scratches. Imagine my surprise when I took my new MacBook out of the sleeve it was in and saw that it looked practically new! I was very happy with that and I'll definitely buy all of my Macs refurbished for now on. Another plus to buying refurbished (besides the price) is that you don't feel obligated to keep the beautiful packaging that Apple is known for. Refurbished products are just shipped in a plain brown cardboard box so there's nothing pretty to keep.

Now for some things that are different from my old MacBook:

The most noticeable difference is the new keyboard layout. It's the same layout that Apple is using on their new desktop keyboards. When I first saw it introduced I hated it, but I am now beginning to like it after using it for only a few days.

Let's start off with the function keys: I really like having the volume control keys on the left. Because of the volume keys being on the left, they are a lot easier to find in the dark. The new media keys aren't too bad either, but they weren't anything I was missing because I had been using programs like CoverSutra that would let me set system wide hot-keys for iTunes. Also, the media keys only seem to work with iTunes which can be seen as either a feature or a bug. Another change is how the text is printed on the function keys. Functions such as adjusting brightness and volume are now centered on the key and the F1, F2, F3, and so on are now in a small type in the bottom right. The escape key text is also centered and something (I still can't figure out what) is different with the eject key. Those last two changes drove me nuts.

Another difference between the two keyboards is that Apple has done away with the useless num lock function. I never used it and not having the numbers printed along with the letters on the right half of the keyboard makes it look a lot cleaner.

Now for the modifier keys: The  (Apple logo) is no longer present on the command key. It just says 'command' and has the Swedish Campground Symbol. This change saddens me dearly, but it can be seen as good for the new Mac Users. Especially when you tell them to press 'Command so-and-so' and they ask "What's the 'command' key?" Also the 'enter' key next to the right 'command' key has been changed to an 'option' key which is very nice because that 'enter' key was quite useless. The 'control' key is now completely spelled out instead of just saying 'ctrl'. It sure did take me a while to get used to that change.

Finally, the arrow keys: They no longer say 'page up', 'page down', 'home', or 'end' on them, making for a much cleaner look while still performing the same task.

The second thing I noticed was that the fan grill is designed differently. The fan grill used to be very busy and actually looked quite nice with all of the vertical bars. Now the fan grill is more sparse, and I assume Apple made this design change to improve airflow and cooling.

The third thing I noticed is that the iSight is no longer centered vertically in the bezel above the screen and it seems to be a bit smaller. I'm curious to why Apple made that change.

That's it as far as changes I've noticed. Check out some unboxing pics to hopefully clear up what I was talking about.

FeedBurner

Justin Allard — 2008-03-29T14:13:27-07:00

The rss feeds for Justin Allard dot com are now being syndicated through FeedBurner. The original rss feed will not be up for more than a week, so please subscribe to the FeedBurner feed to keep getting updates. Thank you.

Marathon for all!

Justin Allard — 2008-03-27T13:08:21-07:00

I have been hard at work (well, it wasn't really that hard) creating Marathon packs for Windows and OS X and I am happy to report that I have gotten both Marathon and Marathon Infinity finished and uploaded for both OS X and Windows. All of the packs include the HiRes Texture packs, AlephOne, and their associated data files. So have at it! Go grab yourself a copy of Marathon.

Marothon

Justin Allard — 2008-03-15T15:47:01-07:00

Marathon, developed by Bungie in 1994, is a pretty cool game. I've just now started playing it on my MacBook and it is pretty addicting. The nice thing about Marathon is that it actually runs really well on my MacBook (2Ghz CoreDuo, 2GB RAM, Intel GMA 950). The other great thing about Marathon is that it's open source and is available for OS X, Linux, and Windows. If you have some time to kill and want to get your hands on Marathon, it can be found at source.bungie.org. If you download Marathon, don't forget to grab the HiRes textures to enhance your experience, they are worth the 222mb download.

Linux Spotting

Justin Allard — 2008-03-12T19:53:14-07:00

When I was eating dinner at Jack in the Box today, their JackTV system rebooted. The OS of choice was none other than Linux. I took a couple of pictures with my Venus. I'm sure everyone that was eating was wondering why I was taking pictures of the TVs, but who cares? I got to see that they were running Linux.

Bridgeport Trip

Justin Allard — 2008-03-09T09:29:59-07:00

We left Bakersfield at 4 am Friday morning. When we arrived in Bridgeport we reserved our room and then took off riding to Bodie around noon until 4 pm. It was a great day of almost go anywere riding.

On Saturday, we started riding around 10 am. We took off toward Ricky Peak and ended up dropping down the back side toward Sonora. If there was more snow, we would have been able to make it back to the truck, but there wasn't so Robbie caught a ride 14 miles up the road to come back to us with the truck and trailer around 4pm. It was another awesome day of virtually go anywhere riding.

Sunday, we rode Sonora starting around 9 am to about 1 pm. This was the worst day of riding, but the scenery was sure beautiful. All in all, it was a great trip full of lots of laughter and fun.

All of us can't wait to do it again next year.

View the picture galleries.

Remap that pesky enter key

Justin Allard — 2008-03-04T14:24:37-08:00

That pesky little enter key next to the right command key is quite useless. Apple has even come to the realization this wasted key with the latest versions of their MacBook (Pro) keyboard layouts.

Bring in Double Command. With this free preference pane, that useless enter key can now be something useful, such as a second option key, or my personal preference, a second control key for the ease of changing spaces with one hand.

Doughnuts in my s10

Justin Allard — 2008-03-02T21:23:47-08:00

On Saturday, I was out at the fairgrounds with my friend Bryan watching my brother play in the XPSL paintball tournament. When I pulled into the parking lot earlier that morning, I thought to myself, that it would be an awesome place to spin some doughnuts, and I was right. So, here's Bryan and myself in my s10 spinning some doughnuts.

Justin Allard dot com wallpaper

Justin Allard — 2008-03-01T22:31:25-08:00

I was bored and decied to make a wallpaper. Three different versions to be precise:

The first version has Justin Allard dot com with a deep internal shadow and quotes around my quote.

The second has a light interal shadow on Justin Allard dot com and quotes around my quote.

The third, which is my favorite, has a light interla shadow on Justin Allard dot com and no quotes around my quote.

I'm pretty sure nobody will use these, but hey, I just thought I'd share them with the world.

SimpleToDo

Justin Allard — 2008-02-27T21:28:38-08:00

SimpleToDo is a very minimalistic to-do application developed by Julius Eckert. The only functions are to add a task, and to remove finished tasks. To add to the minimalist approach, everything in SimpleToDo can be manipulated with a keyboard if you're that type of person. Julius even offers a Quicksilver plugin for SimpleToDo so you can easily add a to-do via Quicksilver. If you just haven't found that perfect to-do manager, SimpleToDo is definitely one to check out.

Ejecting multiple partitions on one disk

Justin Allard — 2008-02-26T15:47:49-08:00

One so-called "feature" in Leopard was that when the user ejected multiple partitions on a single hard disk at once, Leopard would display a dialog warning you that if you eject "Partition A," "Partition B" will be ejected as well. I was somewhat fine with having that dialog displayed, but was a little miffed because Tiger was so nice about things like this that it would just eject both partitions without complaint. But what really pushed this over the edge was that Leopard would tell the user this twice, once for each partition he was ejecting.

Fortunately, and thankfully this so-called "feature" (or what I would like to call a bug) is gone in the 10.5.2 update. Leopard now handles ejecting multiple partitions at once the same way Tiger did; without complaint.

Quickly close a Widget

Justin Allard — 2008-02-20T21:48:28-08:00

Need a quick way close a Widget and are tired of clicking the + icon in the bottom left corner to get the X's on all of the widgets? All you have to do is hold down the Option key and move your mouse over a widget you want to close and the X will appear. Just click it, and it's gone. Simple as that.

Zoom Images in Quick Look

Justin Allard — 2008-02-18T15:08:02-08:00

Sometimes when you view an image in Quick Look, it's just too small to see an important detail. So what do you do? Open it in Preview? Probably, but not anymore. When you Quick Look an image, hold down the Option key and click to zoom in on the image, and when you're zoomed in, move around the image by clicking and dragging.

SuperDuper! Updated

Justin Allard — 2008-02-05T18:05:18-08:00

SuperDuper!, my favorite backup app has just had it's latest version released. The biggest fix in 2.5 is that it is now fully Leopard compatible. This update makes me very happy.

While SuperDuper! 2.5 was in development I tried out Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. I don't like Time Machine because it wants a hard drive larger than the source and the backups that it makes aren't bootable. What I don't like about CCC is that it can't do incremental backups.

SuperDuper! just takes the cake as far as backup software goes and it's totally worth the price.

Clear marker lights look clean

Justin Allard — 2008-02-02T21:28:01-08:00

My clear marker lights came in for my truck today, so I installed them. It was really easy, just two torx screws and the lens slides out and the bulb twists out. I had to get some amber bulbs since it is illegal to have clear bulbs and clear lenses. So after I picked up some amber bulbs from an auto parts store I installed the new lenses. I think they look a lot nicer and cleaner than the amber lenses. I've got some new pictures up of them in my truck gallery.

The spacebar is a powerful key

Justin Allard — 2008-01-24T21:00:26-08:00

You may not know this, but in OS X (especially Leopard), the spacebar is a very powerful key. Not only is it the key of choice in the Finder to view a file in Quicklook, it may also be your key of choice in dialog boxes. When a button is surrounded either graphite (as pictured below) or blue, just hit the spacebar and you activate that button, whereas if a button is graphite (as pictured below) or blue just hit the return (enter) key to activate that button.

Hopefully this little tip will help you improve your productivity.

Pics of my Truck

Justin Allard — 2008-01-19T16:52:27-08:00

I've finally gotten around to taking some pictures of my truck and putting the up on the net. Go check them out in the Images section.

NetNewsWire: the verdict

Justin Allard — 2008-01-15T11:08:58-08:00

Overall, NetNewsWire is a nice rss reader, but I would rather support the open source community and use the ever improving Vienna. The one feature in NetNewsWire that I would love if I had multiple Macs or was often away from my own MacBook for extended periods of time with web access would be it's syncing feature and being able to log into NewsGator and see my feeds on the web. However, neither of those two scenarios apply to me, therefore syncing isn't a valuable feature that will get me to switch away from the great Vienna.

I guess I could be called loyal, and I am to most of my applications. If there isn't enough to get me to switch, I won't. And I can't ever see how or why anyone would have paid $30 for NetNewsWire, I know I never would have, especially when there was a great open source alternative.

Giving the now free NetNewsWire a shot

Justin Allard — 2008-01-10T19:17:55-08:00

NetNewsWire, probably one of the most popular rss readers for OS X has now gone from a price of $30 to free. Up until now, I have been a hard core Vienna fan which has been free and open source since it's introduction. I've heard that NetNewsWire is a great reader, and I'm willing to give it a try now that it's available for free, so I'm gonna use it exclusively for a week and see how I like it. One feature that I feel I'll enjoy dearly is the ability to sync me feeds to NewsGator's website and view them online when I'm away from my Mac. That may very well be the deal maker for me.

Lock your Mac from the menu bar

Justin Allard — 2008-01-04T09:41:09-08:00

Having my Mac lock when ever my screen saver starts can be a pain when I'm at home and I don't need it to be locked. That is why I enabled an icon in my menu bar that lets me lock my Mac with two clicks. However, the process of getting this in your menu bar is probably not what you would think. First open Keychain Access and then go to the Preferences and check the box that says Show Status in Menu Bar. That will put a little lock icon in your menu bar. To lock your screen just click the lock and select lock screen.

Merry Christmas!

Justin Allard — 2007-12-25T09:24:10-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone! Just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas today. I hope everyone has a good one, and just so you guys don't forget the really meaning of this wonder holiday, here is the Christmas story.

And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:
“ Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger. Now when they had seen Him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this Child. And all those who heard it marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told them.

- Luke 2:1-20

Just in case anyone is interested, here is what I've received this year:

White Wacom Bamboo Fun graphics pad (it's really awesome, and small so it can fit nicely in my Brenthaven MacBook case)
True Power battery for my MacBook (it's currently charging at the moment, and is a nice match to the original MacBook battery)
Griffin iMic
PGR4
Money for some fog lights for my truck
a catalog to pick out a tool box for my truck
and various gift cards for Starbucks and Sonic

Merry Christmas everyone!

netPong

Justin Allard — 2007-12-19T18:29:47-08:00

netPong is an awesome little Pong app. But you are probably thinking, "why is 'net' in the name?" Well, with netPong you can automatically link up with a friend on your local network or play alone. However, the coolest feature is how you control your paddle. netPong uses the built in Sudden Motion Sensor in your MacBook or MacBook Pro. Simply tilt your MacBook (Pro) left or right to move the paddle. It takes a little getting used to, but once you get it down, it's awesome. As always, you can always find netPong on the Games page in Macish.

Senuti and VLC

Justin Allard — 2007-12-17T08:10:53-08:00

Senuti and VLC are both two great apps and both do totally different things. That's why I've added them to the media section of the Mac Apps. Senuti is a great little app for pulling music off of your iPod (or a friends;) and putting it on your Mac. VLC is one of the best media players available for any platform whether that be OS X, Linux, or even Windows.

I'm also trying out a new little Featured Links section in the sidebar of the blog. Basically it'll have have links to stuff on the site that has been recently updated or links to other sites that I think are pretty cool. Most of the links will stay up for about a week. It's just not going to work out the way I hoped.

LG Venus is mine

Justin Allard — 2007-12-15T14:59:38-08:00

I got a new LG Venus today. So far I am liking it. The bluetooth isn't crippled like most of Verizon's phones, so I can transfer pictures and videos to and fro and supposedly music as well, but the first time I tried it didn't see the song I added. So far I am enjoying it.

I hate being the "Tech Guy"

Justin Allard — 2007-12-14T09:11:30-08:00

I apologize to anyone who does not want this little insight to my personal life, but I just have to get this out of my system, so be prepared when reading this I am in full on rant mode at this point in time. I HATE BEING THE TECH GUY!!! There, I said it, I hate being the tech guy. Everyone wants you to do crap for them and it just gets to be annoying as hell.

At my high school, the majority of the administration and even some of my teachers know that I am good with computers, and technology all around, therefore I'm always being asked to do crap for them. I was sucked into running MediaShout during chapel. And guess, what, I do run it and I really hate it for many reasons.

One reason I hate it is because I'm always being asked to do a three hour task in Photoshop about five minutes before chapel starts. I'd be fine with it if I could have know what they wanted done on Monday (chapel is on Wednesday), but when someone wants me to do something for them in Photoshop five minutes before the whole school piles into the gym it just pisses me off.

Another reason I hate being know as the tech guy at school is that the administration feels that it's just fine and dandy to pull me out of my study hall when i am happily reading comments on Slashdot to do a task that a trained frickin' monkey could do. For some reason there are only a select few that know how to pull a cart with a computer on it out of a closet, roll it to the other side of the gym, turn on a projector, press a button to put the screen down and plug the computer into the wall, and run a 100 foot VGA cable 3 feet. I guess I'm the tech guy and they feel that I should do this stuff, either that or the administration is just too darn lazy to learn how to do that.

A third reason I hate being the tech guy at school is that for some odd reason the administration (once again) feels it is just fine and dandy to ask me to attend an event so I can run the computer. I guess it's just soo hard to press the arrow key to advance a PowerPoint presentation or hit the space bar to go to the next cue in MediaShout that they have to have me do it.

Things may be a little different if my parents weren't paying through the nose for me to go to a private Christian high school. And things would definitely be different if I were being paid for doing what I do. Hell, even a simple "Thank you for all you've done Justin" would be nice to hear every now and then.

When I'm doing tech at church (usually running the sound board and getting the band all wired) it is just totally different. It feels that people have more respect for what I do there, and they know that if they didn't have me they couldn't get anything done.

I am sorry for anyone that read that and didn't need to know about my personal life, but I just had to get that rant out of my system.

The proud owner of the MU Bundle

Justin Allard — 2007-12-11T20:19:24-08:00

I am the proud owner of the MacUpdate bundle that had a bunch of good apps in it worth over $650 for $50. A pretty good deal if you ask me, even if I'm not going to use all of those apps.

Tweaking your Mac

Justin Allard — 2007-12-11T08:32:08-08:00

I've added a new section in Mac Apps called Deep Tweaking. The apps in the Deep Tweaking section offer extended personalization that would normally not be possible without feeling comfortable in Terminal. These apps can dramatically simplify tasks that would otherwise take some time to do.

Enable the root account in Leopard

Justin Allard — 2007-12-10T08:12:00-08:00

Enabling the root user in Leopard is quite easy. Why you may want to run as root is quite beyond me as it is quite dangerous to do so. But, if you must, enable the root user account do the following:

Open Directory Utility located in Applications/Utilities.
Unlock Directory Utility by clicking the the lock icon and entering your password.
Once it's unlocked go Edit » Enable Root User and type in a password, make sure it is secure and memorable.

You have now enabled the root user account in Leopard. A word of caution: Do not use this account as your normal account. It is very dangerous to run as the root user. You can easily render your Mac inoperable if your are mucking about in the file system. This how-to will remain eternally* organized in the tips and tricks section of macish.

*or until I quit paying for hosting

File structure changes

Justin Allard — 2007-11-13T09:33:40-08:00

I recently changed the folder structure of my site. Because of this, some of your bookmarks may have been broken. These changes also broke my rss widget, so I updated it to find the new feed location. You can download 1.3 from the Downloads page.

Convert a DMG to an ISO

Justin Allard — 2007-11-11T17:56:56-08:00

The only reason I've ever wanted to convert a DMG to an ISO is so I can burn that DMG on a dual layer DVD on a Windows machine. Unfortunately, there is no way to convert a DMG to an ISO in Disk Utility. That's where a handy little Terminal command comes into play.

hdiutil convert /path/to/filename.dmg -format UDTO -o /path/to/savefile.iso

Just replace /path/to/filename.dmg with the path to the DMG that you want to convert. An easy way to do that is to just drag the DMG into Terminal.

Then replace /path/to/savefile.iso with the path to where you want to save the file. You may get the .cdr extension at the end of the new ISO, but you can just delete that extension and change it to .iso.

Stacks Overlay Icons

Justin Allard — 2007-11-11T11:44:05-08:00

The way Stack in Leopard assume the first icon of whatever is in the folder of the Stack pretty much sucks and looks horrible. However, this is a way to make them a little less ugly. Optica Optima has a beautiful solution with their beautiful semi-transparent icons.
Download the icons.
Mirror on Justin Allard dot com.

Getting the icons to stay at the top of the Stack is the real trick, and involves a little a little Terminal hackery. The following Terminal command is an example of what you may have to type.

cd /Applications touch -mt 202001010101.01 ApplicationsIcon

What the first command does is change the directory of where you are working, so change it to the place you put the icon. If you don't know the path, just drag the folder to the Terminal after typing cd.
The second command uses touch which changes the date modified of the icon to January 1st 2020. Because of the date change, you can sort the folder by date modified and the icon will remain at the top.
Alternatively, you could just name the icon with a 0 as the first character, and sort by name. Use whatever works best for you.

Credit to Optica Optima and XD.

This little how-to can always be found in the Leopard Tricks section, along with some other tricks.

Change Leopard's login wallpaer

Justin Allard — 2007-11-07T21:49:31-08:00

Are you not a big fan of the new login wallpaper in Leopard? I wasn't a huge fan either and luckily, there is a pretty easy way to change it, and I'll tell you, and show you, how. Just a disclaimer, I am NOT responsible if you screw up your Mac in any way, shape or form. This process worked for me and it should work for you. Also, CoreServices contains some important system stuff, so if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it.

Read the how-to

or

Watch the screencast

SurveillanceSaver

Justin Allard — 2007-11-06T20:37:01-08:00

SurveillanceSaver is a Quartz screensaver for OS X, but not just any screensaver. SurveillanceSaver pulls live streams for unprotected web cams and displays that as your screen saver. It really is quite neat, and contrary to what I believed, it isn't very processor intensive, which means the fan on my MacBook won't annoyingly spin up.

SurveillanceSaver is currently in alpha 0 (I know, scary isn't it?), but it seems pretty darn stable. Go check it out, it's a free download.

Tips and Tricks

Justin Allard — 2007-11-05T19:33:22-08:00

I'm moving stuff around in the Macish section. I've now made two separate categories for Mac Apps and Tips and Tricks. Mac Apps will have all the Mac apps that were in the Macish section. Tips and Tricks will eventually contain tips and tricks for Leopard and Tiger, and maybe even Windows.

I apologize for broken bookmarks to all of my Mac apps pages.

Milky is back

Justin Allard — 2007-11-03T16:58:18-07:00

The Milky theme is back. I didn't like the other theme as much as Milky, and I figured out how to make the title smaller, so now it's back.

Kernel Panics and themes

Justin Allard — 2007-11-02T08:50:50-07:00

Earlier this week I got maybe 5 Kernel Panics in one day. I thought is was due to me running a Leopard dev build, so I re-installed Tiger (whose GUI and Dock I much prefer over Leopard's) hoping to solve my problems. But it did not. When I was updating from 10.4.6 to 10.4.10 I got another Kernel Panic. Needless to say, that KP hosed my install of Tiger. That last KP got me thinking that my RAM may be bad, so I put in the two stock 256mb sticks and re-installed Tiger using the Upgrade command. (I should say that right now I am very thankful for back ups). Unfortunately that Upgrade didn't work out and resulted in a Kernel Panic at boot up. That really got me angry. I again re-installed Tiger this time zeroing out the hard disk and doing a clean install. After Tiger installed I copied back all of my data over night.

The next morning I had to put one 1GB stick of RAM in so I could install Photoshop for my photography class, so I put in the one stick that I was pretty sure was not bad. Later that night I put in the other 1GB stick of RAM that I thought might be bad. So far I have yet to have another Kernel Panic with my 2GBs of RAM, so now I am thinking that they may have just needed to be re-seated.

I now have a new theme on my site that I like, and I hope you guys do too.

Stacks: Useful, but oh so painful to use

Justin Allard — 2007-10-27T13:43:55-07:00

After running a developer build of Leopard for the past week and a half, there is one feature that I have come to hate. Stacks. They can be nice if you just have a folder that you throw a few documents or pictures in here and there, but there really is no use for them, at least the way I used folders in the Dock in Tiger. To me, Stacks have become a nuisance, sure they look pretty, but they don't seem to serve much of a purpose besides looking cool.

Luckily for me, and anyone that reads this that likes how folders in the Dock worked in Tiger, I have found a way to circumvent stacks in Leopard's Dock. What you have to do is create and Alias of the folder you want in the Dock and put that Alias in the Dock. Doing that makes the folder in the dock open up in a Finder window.

Graphics tablet

Justin Allard — 2007-10-22T21:34:21-07:00

I think I'm decided on the tablet that I am going to get. The one I want is the Bamboo Fun tablet from Wacom. I would like the the Graphire Bluetooth tablet, but I'm not prepared to shell out $250, the $100 for the small Bamboo Fun tablet is right up my alley as far as pricing goes and what I would like as far as features go.

Looking for a graphic tablet

Justin Allard — 2007-10-22T20:11:00-07:00

I'm in the market for a graphic tablet to use with Photoshop. There have just been times that it's a pain to do something with a mouse knowing that it would be almost 100 times easier to do it with a tablet. If anyone had any recommendations, lay 'em on me.

Leopard Countdown

Justin Allard — 2007-10-18T10:45:05-07:00

I honor of the release of Leopard in just 8 days, I have made a simple countdown widget for Dashboard.

Download it

Who's up for a little humor?

Justin Allard — 2007-10-17T20:48:20-07:00

Here's two funny music videos that a kid at my school has made. These both are very funny, so watch them.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight
It's Magic

Leopard... It's coming

Justin Allard — 2007-10-16T09:09:30-07:00

Leopard is coming. The release date is October 26. Just 10 days from now. I can't wait for the final.

Web based CMS = little success

Justin Allard — 2007-10-14T16:45:00-07:00

As you can guess by the title of this post, a web based CMS (Content Management System) had little success for me.

I first tried Movable Type, but it failed to install correctly for me twice. After that I moved on to try out Drupal. It installed great, but I couldn't get it to do what I wanted very easily. If I do go web based, Drupal will probably be my first choice though. Wordpress came after Drupal. It installed very quickly, but I'm just not to fond of it, as far a the ease of customizing themes.

Now, I am back with my favorite CMS, which isn't web based and is Mac only, RapidWeaver. It really is an awesome program and well worth the $50 Realmac Software charges for it. It's ease of use is incredible, and it's flexibility is amazing. Anywhere you can put text, you can drop in html or any web code and RapidWeaver will do what it needs to do and display or hide that code correctly. It's a very nice app. The only big downside for me is that it's not web based and Mac only.

If I ever get away from the Mac OS I will move my site to Drupal.

Moveable Type

Justin Allard — 2007-10-13T08:50:35-07:00

I am going to try moving my site and blog to the Moveable Type platform. It should be better for me because I will be able to post and edit the site anywhere I am from the web and I won't have to use proprietary software (although it is very nice software that I have come to love) that only runs on OS X to update my site and blog.

That being said, wish me luck. My site will probably be down for much of the day, so don't panic.

VMware Fusion is 1.1b

Justin Allard — 2007-10-07T17:30:49-07:00

VMware Fusion, my favorite virtualization program for OS X, has it 1.1b. For me, the most important fix is that Air Port will no longer spas out and take up 100% of my CPU. The true test for that will come on Monday when I'm at school. For some odd reason Air Port will only do that at my school and not when I'm at home or at church.

Another new feature that I find pretty cool is that you can now hide the status bar at the bottom of the OS window to gain some screen real-estate.

Keep it up VMware!

Update: I can vouch that the Air Port bug is fixed. It's nice not having to restart it every time I get onto my school's WiFi network.

Xbox Media Center

Justin Allard — 2007-09-30T12:47:08-07:00

I now have XBMC running on my old Xbox. It is pretty cool so far. I now need to set it up to stream media from my MacBook.

To get it installed I had to softmod my Xbox using an exploit in Splinter Cell. I also had to get files to the Xbox, so I soldered a USB connector to an old Xbox controller so I could hook it up to my Mac and put the files on it through Action Replay in Windows XP in VMware Fusion. It really was quite quick to do, and I'm glad I have a use for my old Xbox now.

If you want to do this, Lifehacker has a great step by step guide on how to get everything modded and installed. Just follow it step by step and you will be good to go.

I finised the fight

Justin Allard — 2007-09-27T21:34:49-07:00

It rocked. But, I have to say, it sure seemed like Bungie left room for a Halo 4.

Ninjawords

Justin Allard — 2007-09-27T18:49:20-07:00

Ninjawords is simple. It is an online dictionary. But why use it? Because it is very fast. Fast like a ninja.

A Few Minor Site Changes

Justin Allard — 2007-09-26T08:43:53-07:00

I just made a few minor site changes. All of my image galleries on my site are now consolidated into one section called "Images". I also moved the location of the image galleries from the root directory to /images, so some of your bookmarks may be broken. I apologize for that inconvenience, and I try my best not to move stuff around very often, if at all.

Those are the changes, I hope the end up making this a better site.

Halo 3, I have it

Justin Allard — 2007-09-25T01:03:31-07:00

I am now the owner of the Legendary edition of Halo 3. Go check out the gallery of unboxing pics.

More good news about the iPod Classic

Justin Allard — 2007-09-24T15:48:49-07:00

Today I had the privilege of actually being able to play around with an iPod Classic for a short amount of time. I must say, the GUI is a lot faster than I had previously heard, and it looks very nice too. Coverflow also looks nice on the Classic as well, I just don't see much use for it other than to show off to people. They are also very thin. The 80GB was at least as thin as, if not thinner than my current 30GB 5.5G iPod.

That's two complaints off of my list. Now Apple needs to stop being greedy and not cripple the video out.

Halo 3

Justin Allard — 2007-09-22T23:37:34-07:00

I finally paid off my copy of Halo 3 that I've had pre-ordered for a year. I'm getting the Legendary Edition and looking forward to it. My EB Games is having a mid-night release, it should be somewhat fun. There is supposed to be a band, food, and a Halo 2 tournament.

Two more days baby! Just two more days.

'Tis good news

Justin Allard — 2007-09-16T21:40:43-07:00

The new iPod's have been cracked to sync with Amarok once again. One down on my list of complaints and two to go.

Please bear with the site I linked to. It is experiencing the Digg effect.

Apple, you seem to be doing a lot of bad things lately

Justin Allard — 2007-09-14T16:55:32-07:00

Seriously Apple, what the heck!?

When you announced the new iPods I was quite happy to see the 160GB Classic, the new Nanos with video and the Touch. I was leaning toward a touch, but 16GB is just not enough space for me. For a device with a gorgeous screen for video I would actually want to put a lot of videos on it, and that's pretty hard to do with only 16GB of storage space. I would be happy with 30GB of space on the Touch, that's what my current 5.5G iPod is and that holds all of my music and videos with about 4GB to spare. The Touch needs a hard drive and at least 2GB of flash memory to store the applications and OS on and to load up videos and music to.

Because of the small amount of disk space on the iPod Touch, I was considering getting the 160GB iPod Classic. My plan was to re-rip my library as FLAC and store the FLAC audio on the Classic and keep 256kbps AAC files on my Mac and sync them to my iPod Classic.

I would love to do this, but unfortunately with the reports of the iPod Classics being extremely slow with their new GUIs, that partially turned me off from getting a Classic.

Another thing that somewhat turned me off from the iPod Classic, or any of the new iPods for that matter, is that users can no longer sync their iPods with anything but iTunes. This upset me because I may switch to Linux when KDE4 is released, and as most people know, there is no iTunes for Linux. The one program that does work, or used to, is Amarok. Now I may not be able to sync my iPod under Linux, and that would really, really suck.

The biggest turn off from the Classic and all of the new iPods for me personally is that I can't use the video out on the new iPods unless I purchase Apples $50 cable that has a special chip in it that allows the video out to work. Now, I don't normally use the video out too often, but when I do want to use it with my new iPod (that I am now probably not going to purchase) I don't want to replace a my video out cable and spend $50!

Apple, you really need to get your act together.

Back from Hume

Justin Allard — 2007-09-13T20:44:22-07:00

I'm back from Hume lake. I had a really awesome time up there just hanging out with friends a getting to know some of the school's staff better.

I also got a sub and an amp installed in my truck. It sounds really nice.

Hume Lake

Justin Allard — 2007-09-10T21:19:15-07:00

Hey guys (the few of you that read my blog), I'm going to be out of town at Hume Lake with my school from Tuesday morning until Thursday evening. So, if you're wondering why I haven't been updating my blog, that's why.

Vienna Update

Justin Allard — 2007-09-10T09:00:06-07:00

Vienna, the open source rss reader has just had a major update released today. This update features an entire redesign moving away from the brushed metal look.
Also, Vienna now has the ability to search all of the articles in the reader. Vienna's browser has also been improved upon. When you open new tabs, they automatically size themselves with beautiful animations.

Vienna is my favorite rss reader for OS X, and the best thing about it is that it's open source and free, so if you're looking for a free rss reader for OS X you may want to consider Vienna.

More Macish updates

Justin Allard — 2007-09-09T15:13:46-07:00

I've added a whole new section to Macish for system monitoring apps, and in that section I have added iStat Menus.

Also, in the Miscellaneous Apps I've added the famous system-wide notification app Growl.

Growl v1.1 has arrived

Justin Allard — 2007-09-08T11:57:55-07:00

Growl, the system-wide notification system for OS X has now been updated to version 1.1. There are many visual and UI improvements along with several resource usage improvements. Get the latest version of this awesome software, and check out the version history.

InsomniaX

Justin Allard — 2007-09-06T20:56:46-07:00

Since I've had my MacBook I've been looking for something to keep it from going to sleep when I shut the screen. I had searched high and low and couldn't find a thing that was compatible with the 10.4.

Today my friend introduced me to InsomiaX. It's a simple little app that lets you close the screen of your Mac notebook without it going to sleep.

As soon as I get some free time, I'll put it up in the Macish section, this app is just too handy to not tell you about.

How to remove added words from Firfox's dictionary

Justin Allard — 2007-09-01T23:23:01-07:00

Have you ever accidentally added a word to Firefox's dictionary and found no obvious way to remove it? I have, and I found a pretty easy way to remove words you've added to Firefox's dictionary.

Here's how you do it:

Quite Firefox. This causes Firefox to save the dictionary
Locate your Firefox profile folder. For OS X users that folder is located at ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/. For Windows XP users, that folder is located at C:\Documents and Settings\[Windows login/user name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\. For more information on Firefox's profile folder go to the Firefox Profile Folder page on mozillaZine.
Locate the persdict.dat file in your profile folder, and open it with a text editor.
Find the words that you want to remove and delete them.
When you are done, save the file and start up Firefox. The words you deleted will no longer be in the dictionary.

There you go, that's a realativly simple way to remove added words from Firefox's dictionary. Here's to hoping that Mozilla will make this easier to do with Firefox 3. And I must give credit where credit is due.

Quiet PSUs are Nice PSUs

Justin Allard — 2007-08-30T16:03:51-07:00

As I stated in my last post, I may end up changing out my PSU in the soon to be torrent box that I have named Blade.

Well, I did change it out with the under powered PSU from THRESHOLD, my gaming desktop. While I'm on the topic of names, my MacBook's name is Brink. That PSU is a lot quieter than the one that was in Blade, and it also 100watts more powerful at 350watts. 350watts just wasn't enough power for THRESHOLD, not after I put in the GPU.

So, once again, I am that much closer to having a torrent box!

Fans: What makes or breaks a quiet PC

Justin Allard — 2007-08-29T21:50:48-07:00

I ordered a 60mm, 90mm, and a 120mm fan from Newegg last night. I am now that much closer to having a torrent box. The computer is going to be my old desktop which I wanted to use as a server, but never got around to finishing it. I need to mod the front of the case for 120mm fan, but the rest of the fans shouldn't require any modding of the case. I may end up changing out the power supply in it with another PSU I have, only if the other one is quieter.

As you can tell I'm going for a quiet box so hopefully it won't bother me when I try to sleep. Currently that computer sounds like a jet taking off.

I'm replacing the 80mm intake with a 120mm, the 80mm exhaust with the 90mm, and the 50mm heat-sink fan with the 60mm. You will not believe how the fan is attached to the heat sink. Basically it just has two long screws screwing into the fins.

iPod for Sale

Justin Allard — 2007-08-27T18:42:37-07:00

I'm selling my black 5.5G 30GB iPod. I want to sell it for $230. It is in very good condition. I have had it in an iSkin eVo3 case since the day I have gotten it, and there is not a scratch on the front, and very little on the back. I have the original box, and I'll throw in the iSkin case with it. The only thing I can't find for it right now is the original sleeve that came with the iPod in the box, but with the iSkin case, you don't need it. If you want to see a bunch of pictures of what you're getting, check out the iPod Gallery. If you are interested, you can email me or leave a comment. Act quick, or this may end up on ebay soon.

Chapter Tracks

Justin Allard — 2007-08-25T20:13:50-07:00

Here's the story: I had a video a little over an hour long of a concert. I wanted to create scenes, or chapters, for each song. I knew that I could do this with iMovie HD, but I did not feel like waiting ten hours for the video to import, so I set out to find an easier and quicker way to add chapters to a video.

I figured that I could do it with QuickTime Pro, but I could find no obvious way in the menus to add chapters to a video. I did a little Googling, and I found a how-to page on Apples website.

Adding chapter tracks is not as easy as one might think, but if you follow the how-to you can get it done. I would have expected an easier way to add chapters, but at least I'm not doing it every day.

Ubersoft

Justin Allard — 2007-08-22T20:10:27-07:00

Ubersoft.net is the home of the technology related comic called Help Desk. It's an awesome comic that is always clean, and very funny for us tech savvy folks. I personally love Help Desk, it's great and always helps me get through my day. So, if you need a laugh, check out Help Desk, and add their rss feed to your favorite reader.

School: It's a comin'

Justin Allard — 2007-08-18T22:08:53-07:00

Monday, school starts up for me. I'm kind of looking forward to it, This year shouldn't be too bad, at least the first semester shouldn't. Since students are allowed to have laptops at school, and in class, I'm looking forward to being able to use iWork '08. I especially like making Keynote presentations, everyone is always in awe at what I can do with that program, they just don't know how easy it is to do that kind of stuff with Keynote is.

I'm also hoping that my photography teacher will let me keep my photos in an iPhoto library, I'd really like to get to use iPhoto, I'm just not a big picture taker. I also hope he will let me use Photoshop CS 3, I know that in the past the school has used Photoshop Elements.

So, I'm kind of looking forward to school, at least the first semester, and then again, I'm kind of not. I wish summer was never ending.

Games

Justin Allard — 2007-08-14T17:53:44-07:00

I have finally gotten around to adding a Games section to the Macish. Some of the games in there so far are Quinn, X-Moto, and Solitaire XL. When I discover some new games worth mentioning I'll throw them up on the games page. So, go check out the developing Games page and have some fun.

4G iPod

Justin Allard — 2007-08-09T17:29:46-07:00

I just got a new 40GB 4G iPod today. I got it at the MacSuperstore in San Louis Obispo. I've been wanting an older iPod to use in my truck, one that I wouldn't have to worry about as much as my 5G iPod. I got this one used for $30. Not a bad deal at all considering that when this first came out is was about $400.

iWork '08

Justin Allard — 2007-08-07T15:09:11-07:00

iWork '08 along with iLife '08 has been announced today at Apple's press conference. Apple has put up a free 30 day trial of the brand new iWork '08. I really can't wait to try it out.

Dashcode beta expired

Justin Allard — 2007-08-04T14:27:19-07:00

As you may know, I have been using the very well built Dashcode beta from Apple to create my widgets. Unfortunately, it has expired. It will be back in Leopard, however. I am looking forward to the final release of Dashcode in Leopard this fall.

Yahoo Pipes

Justin Allard — 2007-07-20T16:37:13-07:00

Yahoo Pipes is pretty darn cool. I know that it's been around for a while but I have just now given it a chance. I usually am not a big fan of what Yahoo does, I'm usually more of a Google guy, but they have done this very well.

For those of you that don't know what Pipes is or does it is an interactive data aggregator and manipulator that lets you mashup your favorite online data sources.

Pipes is a nice way to mash up rss feeds from multiple sites or a site with multiple feeds, like the Engadget blogs. I mashed up Engadget, Engadget Mobile, and Engadget HD. Pipes is also handy for filtering content that you don't want in a feed; for example, I found a pipe that filtered any posts about the iPhone from The Unofficial Apple Weblog feed.

All in all, I'm pretty impressed with Yahoo Pipes.

High Definition

Justin Allard — 2007-07-16T22:56:35-07:00

My family finally purchased a HDTV. It's a 47" Vizio LCD. Very nice. My new favorite channel is Discovery HD Theater.

iTunes 7.3.1 and QuickTime 7.2 updates

Justin Allard — 2007-07-11T14:57:05-07:00

Apple has just released QuickTime 7.2 which, most notably adds full screen video support for non-Pro users, as I had predicted

Quicklook, in my opinion, is pretty cool and I will definitely be using it in Leopard. The fact that it can play videos in full screen leads me to believe that Apple may be getting rid of Quicktime Pro. I think it is stupid that you have to pay $30 for full screen video playback; although, a working serial for QT Pro isn't too hard to find.

may happen. Turns out I was half right. Apple still has QT Pro, but they added full screen video to the free version of QT. Also the QT update fixes some major security issues, bugs, and updates the H.264 codec.

iTunes 7.3.1 fixes the bug that some people ran into with not being able to access their music libraries.

More in the Macish

Justin Allard — 2007-07-10T18:23:03-07:00

There are some new applications up in my Macish section.

Taco HTML Edit is a new addition to the Web Apps. Taco HTML Edit is a full on HTML and PHP editor for OS X. Taco HTML Edit has many features including a built in spell checker, live previewing, and syntax checking. It's light-wieght and best of all, it's free! I've used Taco HTML Edit a lot, that's even what I created my email signature in. It's a great little HTML editor.

New to the Miscellaneous Apps is AppTrap. AppTrap is the feature that Apple forgot. It is a simple PrefPane that detects whenever you put an application in the trash. When you do put an app in the trash AppTrap offers to delete associated system files that would normally get left behind if you just put the app in the trash. AppTrap is a quick, easy, and streamlined way to delete all of the files associated with an application.

Widget v1.3

Justin Allard — 2007-07-10T11:02:26-07:00

To go along with the old theme of the site. I changed the GUI of the rss widget back to the old GUI. You can get the widget on the widgets page.

It's back

Justin Allard — 2007-07-08T11:58:02-07:00

The old theme is back by popular demand. I like it better too.

Segway

Justin Allard — 2007-07-08T11:38:20-07:00

The other day I rented a Segway. It took a while to get used to tell your body that you aren't going to fall over even that you know you won't. After about a minute or two you can get the hang of it and feel comfortable on it. They really are a blast to ride. What surprised me was how well the off road one that I had went on the soft sand. You just have to take it easy and be prepared to stop your self, but it will just crawl along. They go uphill really well, you just have to lean forward farther. They also go downhill really well too, and you just have to lean back a little. I would sure love to have one if they weren't over $5000. Here's a little vid of me on the Segway.

Widgets

Justin Allard — 2007-07-07T21:01:25-07:00

To go along with the new site theme I revised my rss widget's theme. It is available for download on this page.

Re-design

Justin Allard — 2007-07-06T20:29:05-07:00

The site is all back up. Everything should be working fine. If you experience any problems shoot me an email, or leave a comment. Hope you like the new theme.

Maintenance

Justin Allard — 2007-07-06T17:15:05-07:00

Justin Allard dot com is temporarily down for maintenance. Although you may be able to see the home page, some other pages may not be working properly while the site is uploading.

I took the site down at 5:00 pm -8 UCT.

It should be up by 9:00 pm -8 UCT.

Potatos

Justin Allard — 2007-06-27T13:31:06-07:00

My dad had recently gotten a bunch of firecrackers for the Fourth of July, so I, my friend Bryan, and my brother, decided that we should blow up something. We settled on blowing up a potato. Go watch the video.

Fast Internet

Justin Allard — 2007-06-21T16:41:54-07:00

I got a new cable modem today. For the past few months my internet has been very slow. We finally called in to tech support to find out what the problem was. Tech support diagnosed that the cable modem was hurting our speed. I was only getting half a mbps down when I should be getting about 7mbps down. Today I went and exchanged our old cable modem for a new one, and viola! Fast internet!

Also, last Friday night I ordered some Spy KGB sunglasses. They were on sale for $30, a price that is hard to beat considering that they regularly cost $140. They arrived this afternoon.

WWDC 2007

Justin Allard — 2007-06-11T22:50:21-07:00

I enjoyed reading the text feeds and watching the stream of WWDC 2007. It was nice to see some more features of Leopard like then new Finder, Quicklook, and the new Desktop. But, to me WWDC 2007 was more like WWDC 2006 version 2.

Quicklook, in my opinion, is pretty cool and I will definitely be using it in Leopard. The fact that it can play videos in full screen leads me to believe that Apple may be getting rid of Quicktime Pro. I think it is stupid that you have to pay $30 for full screen video playback; although, a working serial for QT Pro isn't too hard to find.

I am liking the new sidebar in the new Finder. It is now more than just a place to store folders or apps that you want to drag and drop to. The thumbnail preview of files in Finder are really cool, and I suspect that they will come in handy when you need to quickly find a PDF or Keynote presentation, but with Pages or Word documents the thumbnail previews might not be so helpful.

The semi-transparent Menu Bar on the new Desktop is a nice welcome. It would be nice if Apple allowed you to adjust the transparency of it. However, I am not digging the new Dock. I think is is very ugly, yet somewhat beautiful at the same time. I would really love to have the option to revert the Dock to a Tiger style dock. Stacks are going to be very cool and very handy. When I saw the stack with the large grid I thought, "Wow, that is just like Overflow!"

The rest of the keynote was pretty much like having to review for finals. It was pretty much everything that Steve has gone over at last year's WWDC.

Some of the features that were covered in last year's WWDC that I am looking forward to are Spaces, iChat Theater, Web Clips, and the new Mail.app.

Currently for virtual desktops I am having to use Virtue Desktops which is fine, but it takes about 6 clicks to put an app on a different desktop. Spaces solves that problem and that is the biggest reason, next to the 'exposéing' of the Spaces, I'm looking forward to that app.

iChat Theater should be pretty cool, but I believe that it will only work with someone else with iChat, which can be unfortunate.

Web Clips should be cool as well. I have a few sites in mind that I would make some Web Clips of.

All in all, I am looking forward to Leopard in October and I can't wait to find out what those other 290 secret features are.

Good Calc Bad Calc

Justin Allard — 2007-06-10T14:31:07-07:00

I was trying to find the sum of the widths of both of my monitors so I coulc make a canvas that width in Photoshop.

I first used OS X's calculator, and to my surprise and anger, the canvas was much to large for both of the screen shots of my monitors. I was like, "What the heck? Why is the canvas so big?!"

I decided to add the widths myself and got 2960 instead of the 3000 that OS X's calculator was giving me. I double checked my answer remembering that Google had a calculator and it too told me the sum was 2960.

I made a new canvas with a width of 2960 in Photoshop and it was the perfect size. I'm just amazed that OS X's calculator won't do this simple math.

Try it out if you have a Mac and email me if you had the same thing happen in OS X's calculator as I did, or if it is adding correctly.

Watch the video of this strange event.

RSS Widget

Justin Allard — 2007-06-09T20:36:19-07:00

I have updated the rss widget for my blog here. I changed the title, fixed the feed, and changed the icon. So, go ahead and download the new widget

Hex Color Picker

Justin Allard — 2007-06-09T18:38:26-07:00

The site is back up, and should be functioning perfectly.

Also, I added an app to the Macish section of Misc. The app is the Hex Color Picker. In short, the Hex Color Picker lets you view and edit the hexadecimal HTML color codes in the Mac OS X color panel. This can become very handy if you are a web developer or programer in need of a color hex code. The Hex Color picker can recognize short hand and HTML/CSS color keywords, and it has a live preview of the color as you enter the hex code.

Site will be down

Justin Allard — 2007-06-09T17:47:43-07:00

Justin Allard dot com will be down starting at 6 pm -8 UTC this evening. I am doing some cleaning up on the server. Hopefully we will be back up by 7 pm -8 UTC. Sorry if this will cause you any inconvenience.

VMware Fusion Beta 4 released

Justin Allard — 2007-06-07T20:34:06-07:00

VMware Fusion Beta 4 has been released. In it includes the new feature Unity, which I blogged about yesterday evening. It also has better Boot Camp support and improved performance, and some UI tweaks. Currently, I am downloading it. I can't wait to try out the new Unity feature. I plan to give a little review of it after I have played around with it for a while

Also Boot Camp 1.3 has been released today, as well as Parallels Desktop 3. It sure does seem to be the day for Windows virtualization software to be released, granted that Boot Camp doesn't virtualize Windows, jus the BIOS.

VMware Fusion is a free beta, so don't hesitate to download it and try it out on your Intel Mac.

VMware Fusion: Unity

Justin Allard — 2007-06-06T21:50:27-07:00

This is Unity demonstrated in VMware's Fusion. It is very similar to Parallels' Coherence view. What I applaud most about Unity is that when you exposé the windows in OS X, the windows in Windows do the same as well. Parallels does not do that; instead, when you exposé it treats the Windows OS as it's own window and not individual windows as their own. Unity also ads some nice drop shadows to Windows windows.

I can't wait until I can use this for myself.

New rss widget

Justin Allard — 2007-06-05T18:30:28-07:00

This is a new widget that I made that pulls the rss feed from my blog on this web site. It is based off of my abRANDOMrss widget. All I've really done is change where it pulls the rss feed, and the UI.

eyeOS

Justin Allard — 2007-06-05T16:37:58-07:00

The eyeOS is a web based operating system (OS). It is a really cool concept, being able to access your OS from any computer with a web browser and an internet connection.

The OS has a few built in applications. Under the first Office tab at the top is a small word processor (pictured above), a file manager, a calendar, and a contact manager. Under the Network tab, there is an rss reader, and a web browser! Under the Accessories tab there is a calculator, and a note pad. Under the Games tab there is chess. Under the System tab there is a simple process viewer. And finally, under the Places tab there are links to the Home folder, Desktop, Public folder, and Groups.

There is the date and time in the bottom right, and in the bottom left is what would be called a taskbar.

The green button in the bottom center lets you log out, launch an app, see your applications in a folder (similar to OS X), and open the system preferences where you can change your password and set a custom wallpaper.

I really think this is a cool concept and has some great potential, especially for a student that is computer hopping between public libraries, school, and the dorm/home. I would really like to see some more applications, like a simple photo editor, and a wider variety of games.

I've made a decision

Justin Allard — 2007-06-03T22:51:38-07:00

I've decided to just leave abRANDOM where it is, and use this blog for all of my future posts. I will continue to upload the podcast to Gcast, and I will upload an enhanced AAC version here for download that will feature pictures of whatever Bryan and I are talking about at the given time. So, for now on, I will be making all future posts here, but I will maintain the old podcast feed.

abRANDOM episode 7

Justin Allard — 2007-05-31T21:23:44-07:00

Episode 7 of abRANDOM. This one is really random. I hope this new set up works out for the podcast!

Welcome

Justin Allard — 2007-05-28T20:50:33-07:00

Soon, I will be moving my blog abRANDOM to this page.