Beer Tuesday

Daily Apps

These are the applications that I use on a daily basis and are the ones that stay open all the time.

- Mail

- Adium

- NewsFire

- Things

- LittleSnapper

- Twitterific / Tweetie / Beak (I tend to use the one that has the most recent update but it can rotate at times)

What applications do you have open all the time?

Long time no see

It’s been a while since I’ve posted to this site. I’ve been busy with work and trying to learn how to program for the mac. The programming is going slow and I don’t have much time to work on it at this time so I’m going to put it off for a while and work on other projects. The next project that I am working on is going to be another website related to Mac applications. At this time I can’t give any further details but I am working to get it up and running as soon as possible.

Programming road blocks

So I’ve been slowly reading through my Objective – C book and my Cocoa book. The problem I’m having is that the Objective – C is getting complex in my mind and the Cocoa book is outdated. I’m running the latest XCode and Interface Builder so the Cocoa book isn’t matching up exactly. It’s hard to find the stuff that has moved around when you’ve never used the application before. I do have some ideas for my first app that I’ll be posting soon.

No Time

So I have two books for learning to program. One is Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X and the other is and Objective-C book. I don’t remember the authors since they are not in front of me right now. The problem that I am having is that I work in front of a computer for 8 hours a day and I don’t have the urge to read when I get off work. I need to find some sort of motivation to read and study them.

I felt like I had way more free time when I was in school but now that I have graduated I feel like I don’t have as much time now. I thought I would be getting more free time, oh well. I do have a great idea for my first app that I want to make but it might be a bit ambitious for a first app. I’ll get into more detail on that later.

New Job and a change of pace

Since starting this Apple blog type site a while back I have since gotten a job at Apple and will no longer be commenting on any rumors involving Apple. I think I will turn this into a site dedicated to my learning how to program Objective-C and Cocoa. I will document my progress and the problems that I encounter as I learn the two new languages. I will also create a list of resources that I find helpful as I learn.

I hope you like the new changes and I hope some of you will help me as I will do the best in return as I can. Keep checking back for more updates.

Mike Landers

We have a widget!

I put together a small little dashboard widget (Mac OSX 10.4.3 required). A simple RSS widget with a custom skin. If anyone knows how to take widgets above and beyond what dashcode can do please email me if your interested in pimping my widget for me. I’ll even give you the source file.

You can grab the widget by clicking on this sentence.

Top 5 Dashboard Widgets

The dashboard for the Mac is a wonderful little app that’s always running. It can have tons of information or very little, it all depends on what you want. There are many great widgets out there but to many to talk about so here are my top 5 widgets that I use:

iStat Pro by iSlayer – These guys have made a wonderful and very informative widget that keeps you updated on how your Mac is doing, from processor power down to how much hard drive space you have left.

Now Playing by funkdaddy – This widget allows you to see what has been recorded on your TIVO and download them onto your mac as long as your on the same network.

Delivery Status by Mike Piontek – Great for checking when your next package is supposed to be delivered from about 20 different delivery sites.

Sports Fan by Andreas Amann – Great widget for following your favorite sports teams in the NFL, NBA, NHL, and baseball.

Gas by andrethegiant – Find the cheapest gas stations wherever you live in the US.

Don’t forget you can find some more awesome widgets at DashboardWidgets as well as Apple’s widget page. If you have created a widget send it my way so I can check it out.

Tip: Slow down your stacks

This is a worthless tip to know but it’s still fun to do from time to time.  When you go to click on a stack hold down the “Shift” key and click.  This makes the stack raise and lower extremely slow.  Just remember you need to hold down the shift key when clicking to make it go back down as well.  For a little video of the slowmotion in action, click on.

Tip: Rearrange the Menu Bar

With the video bellow you can see that I was able to rearrange the icons in my menu bar.  I did this by holding down the “Apple” / “Command” key and dragged the icons.  The different looking icons that I have come from iStat Menus.  The only icons that don’t work for this are application icons such as Adium and DeskShade.

10 Great Mac Wallpapers

Some of the best wallpapers on the web just so happen to be themed around Apple and the Mac.  After some searching I found 10 of the best Mac related wallpapers.  Click on an image to be taken to the source where you can download the original.