Directory fragmentation is very much an issue with Macs, as the first screenshot below clearly indicates. While I make sure to perform routine Mac maintenance on my desktop system, it had been several months since I last performed the same tasks on my notebook system (a Macbook Pro).
Below is the directory structure for the same drive after running Alsoft’s Disk Warrior tool.
At present, I’m running Coriolis System’s iDefrag to take care of the file fragmentation on my computer. Below is the current progress (started this evening):
I’ve used DiskWarrior and iDefrag for several years now and would highly recommend them both for any Mac user looking for a solid arsenal of quality Mac utilities.
I admit, I’m a bit of a desktop wallpaper snob. I take great pride in maintaining an excellent set of desktop backgrounds to use on my computers. Here are a few of my favorite sites, each with exquisite designs, that earn my highest recommendations. Not only are the sites clean and easy to navigate, many of the sites listed below have desktop backgrounds available in multiple resolutions.
I’ll be at Photoshop World in Orlando, FL tomorrow (Wednesday), taking in workshops and lectures and filling my brain full of general pixel-goodness. If you spot me at the conference, feel free to hit me up for a free sketch. :)
I placed my first order with Poster Burner last week after discovering that they were offering a special $15 deal for 24″ x 36″ size posters. This afternoon, my poster (shown above) arrived – and I’m really, really happy with the way it turned out! (I bought the frame from Michael’s.)
The quality of the print was excellent, as was the paper it was printed on. I’m thoroughly impressed by their products and fast service. The poster came well packed in a sturdy tube container. Shipping prices are very reasonable – only $5 whether its one poster or 100. Their website was very easy to use, and they also accept Paypal. Their testimonial page of satisfied customers speak for itself.
In short, if you’re looking to make a poster of your artwork or favorite photos, you’ve gotta check Poster Burner out!
My daughter Sonia has always been fascinated with drawing – here’s a quick video of her creating her latest masterpiece. She draws way better than I did at her age. :)
If you haven’t ordered your copy of “PC Weenies: Rebootus Maximus” yet, or if you’re looking for a few good reasons to justify your purchase, let me share with you the Top 11 Reasons You Should Buy “The PC Weenies: Rebootus Maximus”!
11. You get two years of hilarious PC Weenies strips AND bonus artwork, commentary, and extra never-before-seen goodies all in one beautiful package. (But you already knew that.)
10. It’s wireless (No Internet connection required.)
9. For a Version 1.0 release, it is completely crash proof and does not require a reboot before using.
8. It does not require accepting an EULA.
7. It’s portable and easily transportable.
6. If you’re giving “Rebootus Maximus” as a gift, you do not need to provide technical support.
5. It does not require a user manual (a sense of humor helps)
4. It’s future-proof.
3. Purchasing version 1.0 provides R-n-D (research and drawing) funding for version 2.0.
2. No assembly (or C++) required!
1. We’re moving in mid-January (to our first house!) and the less books I have to haul with me, the happier my back will be.
Once the first prints have sold out, they’ve sold out for good. I’ll be focusing my efforts and expenses towards PC Weenies: Book 2.
As always, I thank you for your support. Your generosity makes it easier to convince my wife Aarti that making comics all year (for free) is a worthwhile endeavor.
If you have a large monitor or a multi-monitor setup on your Mac, no doubt you had to endure mousing up to the menubar. If you’ve coveted quick access to the menubar instantly from your current mouse position, MenuPop from BinaryBakery may be just what you need. Besides, it’s free, and you can’t argue with free. So how does it work?
After installing the app, you can use Control-Z to activate MenuPop, or assign a specific hotkey of your liking.
In the Menu Options tab, you have several more configuration options including the ability to resize the menu.
Once you’ve configured MenuPop, using it is as simple as invoking the hotkey. After activating MenuPop, I can instantly access the application’s menubar from anywhere on my desktop. In the example below, you can see the Google Chrome menubar appear.
You can instantly access any active application menubar from anywhere on your screen. No more need to travel to the top of the screen each time you want to access the application’s menus.
MenuPop is a very useful application. I’ve found it to be an invaluable tool in my Mac arsenal. One feature I would like to see in a future version of MenuPop is the ability to bind a mouse button to activate the program, in lieu of invoking a keyboard shortcut.
In summary, MenuPop is a true productivity booster for Mac power users. It’s stable and works well with every application I’ve tried. The best way to see if you’ll find MenuPop useful is to give it a try and see for yourself. Worth mentioning: MenuPop is for Snow Leopard only, so PowerPC Mac users won’t be able to partake in the experience. If you have Snow Leopard and an Intel Mac, MenuPop is a must-download. Did I mention MenuPop is free?
This weekend I took part in the inaugural UP! Fair – a celebration of indie comics held in Lexington, Kentucky. I am so glad I went – I not only met up with folks I already knew, like Jerzy Drozd, Mark Rudolph, and Sara Turner, but I also had the pleasure of meeting a lot of folks who I’ve only known on Twitter – people like Rob Stenzinger, Kim Holm, Matt Zolman, Ryan Dow, Justin Stewart, Shawn Robare, Jim Lujan and Pat Higgins.
My flight from Tampa kicked off at 5:15AM and I arrived in Lexington 20 minutes before 9AM – picked up by Sara and Brian Turner, of CricketPress. Sara and Brian generously let me and a few other cartoonists crash over at their place this weekend. I am very grateful for their incredible hospitality!
After arriving at their place, I met Norwegian cartoonist Kim Holm. Like me, Kim was a regular guest on the Art & Story Alive podcast, so it was an honor to finally meet him in person.
Shortly after, I was reunited with my good buddy Mark Rudolph. I also met his friend, Holly, who came down to take photos of the entire event. (BTW, the photos she took were amazing and really captured the mood of the event!)
We left the house shortly after to set-up at the Carnegie Center for Literacy. At the Center, I met Jerzy Drozd, his wife Anne, and Shawn and Carrie Robare.
(NOTE: If you’re wondering why this blog post is a bit text heavy, I opted not to bring my camera on this trip. Photos of the event were nicely chronicled by Jerzy Drozd and ghettomation extraordinaire Jim Lujan.)
I had a chance to see the beautiful artist gallery upstairs, featuring work from UP! Fair supporters around the world. After setting up, we indulged in some downtime before returning to the Carnegie Center for the gallery hop, which took place from 5PM – 8PM. Citizens from Lexington milled around – checking out the gallery while sampling some delicious finger foods.
These photos were taken by Shawn Robare. You can see the rest of his photos on his Flickr page.
The highlight for the evening for me was the Drink-n-Draw event that took place that night. It was at this event that I had a chance to meet and mingle with a whole host of amazing cartoonists. Beverages were consumed, art was made (on a 30 foot wide wall, no less!), and a good time was had by all. It was at the Drink-n-Draw event that I first met Jim Lujan and his wife Leann, and Justin Stewart, and mingled with Lee Cherolis, Joe Combs, Pat Higgins, Matt Zolman and other folks. The vibe was great! Everyone was really laid back, friendly, and interested in hanging out. Below is a video Jerzy took of Jim Lujan drawing on the wall:
The party lasted until 1AM or so, and we said our “see you laters” before arriving at the venue on Saturday morning. Friday night was terrific!
Solid State Drives (SSDs) are the bees-knees in computing, at least from all the tech reviews I’ve read. SSDs promise the holy valhalla of computing: super fast boot-up times, instant application launches, and increased durability due to no moving parts. In short, everything a traditional hard drive should be.
The downside to these drives has been its higher GB/$ cost when compared with conventional hard drives. Slowly but surely, as production and adoption of these drives increase, the price points will go down (just like everything else in technology). More than a little piqued by the phenomenon of SSD drives, I decided to buy one. The unit I purchased was the 40GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD, from my site sponsor Other World Computing. I spent roughly $120US total for both the 40GB OWC Extreme Pro SSD and Icy Dock.
Installation
I placed the order last Monday, and the goods arrived on Saturday. Along with the SSD drive, I purchased an Icy Dock 2.5″ to 3.5″ converter. The Icy Dock lets 2.5″ drives interface with 3.5″ SATA ports. It’s made of durable plastic and perfectly housed OWC SSD within it. Installation within the Mac Pro involved mounting the Icy Dock to one of the Mac Pro’s built-in drive sleds. Four screws later and the OWC SSD was inside the machine. Installation was literally a snap. I only encountered one minor snag – and that was initially lining up the drive sleds with the Mac Pro.
The OWC SSD unit I purchased was 40GB in size. While this size is paltry for all the data I work with, my intention was to use the OWC SSD drive for speeding up boot times and application launches. After reformatting the drive using Disk Utility, I performed a clean installation of Snow Leopard and all my main applications. This left me with 11GB to spare on the SSD. I opted to leave my data (all 400GB of it) where it was at, on my internal SATA hard drive.
How Fast is It
While I haven’t made any quantitative measurements, I will say that this drive is a significant improvement over the conventional hard disk drive. Boot time after installing my applications and utilities was under 30 seconds – compared to the usual minute and a half. Application launches, especially for heavy apps like Photoshop and Maya, took place at a fraction of the time they normally would via HDD.
I’m not really going out on a limb by saying that SSDs are the future of computing storage. I can imagine that in the next three years, SSDs will be the standard on all machines. My first impressions with the OWC SSD can be summed up in two words: insanely fast.
If you yearn for faster performance and have the money to spend, adding an OWC SSD is a fantastic upgrade for your machine. It’ll literally make you feel like you have a new computer again. Now that I have had a chance to own and use one in my Mac Pro, I have seen the light.
Quantitative results will happen soon. Questions? Hit me up on the comments below.
-Krishna
P.S. The ApplePress has an informative review of the 120GB OWC Extreme Pro SSD.
I have an attachment to my backpack that borders on emotional. I cannot say that about most of the material things I have owned in my lifetime.
My Spire Explore backpack (shown above) has been my constant travel companion for over 12 years: I’ve taken it to Australia, Mexico, Canada, India, Germany, and all over the United States. It has safely and comfortably housed 4 laptops since I’ve owned it: a Wallstreet edition Powerbook (1998), a Pismo Powerbook (2001), the 2006 Macbook Pro and (currently), an early 2008 Macbook Pro.
Why do I love my Spire backpack?
It’s incredibly durable and made out of quality fabric.
It protects my laptop with excellent cushioning surrounding the front, back and (where it counts the most), the bottom
It has several pouches and compartments to store your power adaptors and other gear.
It’s comfortable to wear, particularly on long journeys. The back of the laptop is contoured to your back and made of a breathable fiber that wicks sweat off, making it great for hiking.
SpireUSA, founded in Boulder Colorado, makes awesome laptop bags. They’re a little more expensive than your typical laptop bags (I paid $125 for mine in 1998) – but the cost is totally worth it. Oh, and each of their products comes with a lifetime warranty. The model I own, the Spire Explore, has long since been discontinued, but I’ll keep mine for the rest of my life.
-Krishna
Update: The Torg, Spire’s latest backpack offering, is also winning accolades.
