RoboTastic

So I have had my Mac for about a month and I am still digging it. I like it so much that I have actually gone out and purchased some software for it. I just got Adobe Lightroom, which is great photo workflow/mangement program. It lets you go through your photo collection. Here are the highlights:

• Tag photos with keywords
• Organize them into collections
• Edit them, all changes are virtual which means the original is untouched
• Since the editing is virtual, you can keep multiple virtual copies
• Export selected photos and correctly resize and do special processing.

The end result is that it is easy to go through a bunch of photos, find the ones you want, clean those up, export one downsized version for the web and export another color corrected version for printing, all while keeping the original version intact. With photoshop, you would have to create a custom folder structure where you save different version and come up with some custom scripts. Not fun!

So far I am loving Lightroom, and it is helping me go through more photos.

I also purchase Ecto for blogging. It is not my favorite blogging client. I still like Windows Live Writer better, but Ecto is the best Mac blogging client out there. I searched around and I couldn’t find anything that came close. It has a decent WSIWYG Rich Text editor that allows you to simply drag photos in. It can also resize photos right in the program, if you need that. So far it is getting the job done. I think I will come to love, it is just a change. I think it may also be the first Shareware program I have purchased.

The next thing up for me is a FTP client. It is a show down between Transmit and Cyberduck. Transmit may win out, but Cyberduck is pretty good!

I just got the photoshop cs4 trial, and it is tons of fun drawing on my Wacom Bamboo. I think they upgraded the paintbrush tool or something, because it is way better. Here is a quick sketch. Note that I am not a better drawer:

• I never ever want to drive a car in Indonesia, it is like a big game of Frogger… #

• is in singapore with a 9 hour layover. #

• is spending the next 36 hours in airplanes and airports. #

• Just has his first pumpkin spice latte of the season #

• All of the election wash posts sold out. There was a second printing and I waited in line at the post hq to get one! Print is not dead. #

• Things I have gotten for free for voting: 12oz coffee at starbucks, 1 donut at krispy kreme. #

• Looks like the trip to Bali may actually be happening… This saturday!!! Crazy! #

So I have had my MacBook up for about a week new, and I took it on a road trip. So far I am loving it. This notebook is solid, and the keyboard is lovely. I am also in love with the trackpad. I am not sure if I can go back to a normal trackpad. I find myself trying to click, scroll, and expose on other laptops.

While I am loving the MacBook, I am not sure how I feel about OSX… or really how I feel about the software available for OSX. The iLife software package that comes with OSX sucks compared to the Windows Live package. Lets start with iWeb… who still makes web pages? Everyone blogs these days and Windows Live Writer is the best software package out there. In fact there is no Mac software package that even comes close! This is my biggest compliant for OSX, there is no software free or paid, that come close to Live Writer. Also Windows Live Gallery kicks iPhotos butt. iPhoto is a cutesy kids version of photo management. The tagging and organizational features of Live Gallery set it apart.

I am sure I will find solutions going forward, but it is a learning curve. I still find myself booting back into Vista for blogging.

Here is one of the biggest things I have learned:

– To right click in BootCamp, which a multi-touch trackpad, use three fingers to click instead of two. I took me a long time to figure this out.