W00t!!

Playing with Windows 95 in a VM on my macbook. This is freakin' AWESOME!!!!! I'd forgotten how old-skool I can be!

Mountain Lion has this really cool spaces feature that existed before, but this one seems slicker somehow. Maybe it's just my imagination. Instead of making it an opt-in thing it just sort of exists, and all of my vm's, if I make them all full-screen, end up in one of their own spaces or something. It's awesome to be able to swipe left or right and see a new os. I also discovered that if you open vm's in this order, then you can swipe through in this order: w7, wxp, w98, w95

So now I swipe right from mac os x, and get Windows 95. Then I swipe right again and get Windows 98. Another right swipe and I get XP. Another, and I get 7.

OH!! That reminds me… at some point I need to see if W8 is available for download and testing. I'd love to get my hands on that and see what it's about… LOL

~w

Morning Thoughts: Foot and Computers

The other day, Dale and I went on a 7-mile hike (two-way).  Towards the end I was very concerned that the plantar fasciitis would come back to haunt my foot, but … it did not.  Painful during the end of the hike, yes.  The next day, however, despite the soreness in leg muscles, my feet - both of them - were fine and completely pain-free.

THAT is a huge thing.  Since getting the Reeboks, I've had no foot pain at all, and I've got my stride back.  My knees and hips have stopped hurting, too.  Well, my knees still have twinges, but they always had twinges which I'm sure is because I'm "not walking correctly."  Whatever.  All I know is that I am slowly becoming less afraid of being active again, and in the past few months I've already lost a few pounds.  Being very inactive for four years took its toll but I believe I'll bounce back quickly now, because I've always had good metabolism.  I just need to enjoy the activity.  So I took up dancing upstairs (and there was the long hike, but believe it or not, dancing doesn't hurt my foot as much).  So in light of all this, ROCK!!  Cool beans.  Awesome.  Yay!!!!!  :)

Computer stuff now.  I recently upgraded my computer to the latest OS X.  The first few times that I upgraded a Mac, it wasn't horrible or anything, but it did take some doing to make sure all my settings and things came back without all the extra crap.  I.e., doing the restoration piece manually rather than allowing the mac migration assistant to do it for me.  This ensures a totally clean slate.  I found this time around that my organizational self has made things far, far easier than ever before.  In my mac, I have an SSD and an HDD.  I did that earlier in the year to allow for both speed (OS on the SSD, and files I use frequently that could use speed) and for increased onboard storage (HDD) instead of the optical drive, which I like having but seldom use.  (I haven't really missed it, and now have an external optical because of myself which is far more useful since it can work with any computer now.)

ANYwho, things that made this time around go so much easier:

- Most of my documents were stored on the HDD.

- I already had a backup scheme in place, so making three full backups was a breeze (even if each takes a while).

- Scripts that I use for photo processing are stored in a folder on the HDD, so they were very easy to restore to the Finder toolbar… I just dragged and dropped.

- I have all of my software AND registration information in one place, organized into folders and support files named for easy recognition.

- I looked up all of my programs ahead of time so there were no compatibility surprises.

- For programs I knew would not work, I made plans accordingly with how to deal with the lessened functionality.  (For instance, I upgraded Fusion from 3 to 4.)

- I planned to do the wipe and reinstall during a non-stressful time when I didn't need my computer (okay, I've always done that, it's only logical).

- Important settings that I've found over time have been marked with red.  I.e., each folder leading to the setting, and the settings file itself, gets marked so I can trace it down through the folder hierarchy.  Go, mac OS X for having that feature!

- I remembered to deactivate my computer in iTunes so I could reactivate it properly and ensure access to all of my music/videos/apps/etc.

- I made sure to shut down the virtual machines in case upgrading to 4 would cause issues with running ones.

- I knew where my keychains were, just in case I had something in there I might need later.

At that point, I wiped out the OS and reinstalled it, which went very cleanly and quickly I must say.  Then I gave myself the same login name and started pulling copies of important things to the SSD for testing.  iPhoto libraries, that sort of thing, since I knew they'd get upgraded.  The VMs came up fine.  iPhoto libraries were very responsive - more so than before, which means the latest version of iPhoto which I'd been avoiding must have been better and more stable than I'd hoped.  (I hate upgrading photo software… you just never can trust anyone with your photos no matter who the company is behind the product!)

The most difficult part in all of this was and continues to be iTunes.  It seems to be working far better than last time, but I had to have done something to allow it to play .wav files and now it doesn't.  I was, however, successful in pointing it to the existing directory on the HDD and then modifying the actual pointer files back to the originals so all of my metadata, play counts, etc remained.  I'm still testing that one.  Maybe it was Flip4Mac that I installed for this purpose.  I dunno.  I can play stuff in VLC but that's not what I was doing before.  At any rate, that's a whole other story and I expected to have issues with iTunes no matter how careful I was.  It's the most complicated of everything I have had to restore and this was actually pretty smooth compared to my less knowledgeable attempts in the past.

Then I reattached my old keychains.  I probably did not have to do that, but I didn't want to be surprised.  Some day I'll go in and clean those up…

Things I really like about my "new" system:

- Seems more responsive (although Mail froze up solid on me this morning and I had to force quit it, but… that was the first issue I've seen in over a week)

- The gestures are SLICK!!  I got Windows 7 going in one space (yes, it's more responsive even though Spaces is running all the time now) and a simple gesture gets me from Windows to Mac OS X.  A friend was down last night, saw me do this, and almost drooled in his lap.

- Speaking of gestures… In Safari, you go back and forth with gestures.  Gone are the days of the back button.

- I love, love, LOVE the syncrhonization of reminders with my iPod.  I haven't really gotten into the notifications yet but I've come to appreciate the little popup windows telling me briefly what a new email is about.  That could be considered a distraction, I suppose, but I like it.  There's probably a setting or two for that, too.

Things I don't like:

- Takes an extra sixteen or so seconds to boot.  I got the SSD in part so it would boot in under 20 seconds and I had it down to about 10.  Dammit.  Now it's up to 26!  GARGH!  But it's a small thing since I usually put Talon to sleep anyway, rather than shutting him down…

There's a nice long-winded updated in the life of me.

~nv