NIN in Garageband format

This is really cool - a Nine in Nails song in GarageBand format! You can go in and change the tempo, cut stuff out, add stuff, whatever. Really cool. I wonder what else is out there like this?

The Switch and UPS

So I moved my WinXP and Linux boxes into the basement. I guess that's that - I'm on a Mac for good now. Feels a little funny.

I saw on a web site or two that some places recommend an APC ES 350 UPS. Luckily, I had one of these lying around in the basement. I plugged it into a USB port a voila - in true Mac fashion - it was just there and operating. Cool. So far on my wireless Mac I've got three data cables coming out:printer, UPS, and camcorder. At least they are neat and tidy.

Other than games, I don't think there are many apps that I need my PC for right now. And if I do, I can just fire up my RDC to my old PC that's in the basement.

Kickin' back and Quicken

I'm a few gulps from finishing my first homebrew of the day. I made a wheat beer and the guy at the beer supply place says I got it dead on. Not bad for the first time! I'll be cranking out another batch of Mexican Cerveza today too(while the kiddies are napping and the wife's out running errands!). I'll be using a German yeast so it should be pretty good stuff.

I think I've come to a conclusion on my Quicken dilemma. I'll just Remote Desktop into my PC(which I'll be moving into the basement soon). This way I don't have to mess around with data transfers and such. Darth Vader sent me a screen cap of a post in a forum that gave a procedure involving importing pieces at a time. I don't think I want to mess with my data that much.

I think what I'll do is let this ride for a while and see how it goes. Come January 1, 2006, I'll switch to the Mac version of Quicken. We'll see.

The next thing I need to do is put this iMac on a UPS. Last night, the lights went out for about 5 minutes. All my PC's(old main unit, servers, etc.) powered down gracefully. The iMac had the rug pulled out from under it. I hear that all I need to do is plug the UPS into the USB port and it should see it. Stay tuned on that.

Spotlight rocks! Just a quick [Cmd][Space] away. I've using it to pull up the Remote Desktop client to get at my old PC. This is a great way to find stuff and a huge benefit to using OS X.

That's all for now, need more beer!

Task switching

Here's something weird(probably a Mac thing). When you fire up an app, minimize it, then try to [Cmd][Tab] back to it, the app doesn't appear. Seems like a minimized app doesn't come back with a task switch. I've got Azureus and iTunes down there and they don't come back up with a task switch. I'm used to Windows cycling through each open app. Maybe there's another key combo somewhere.

I did more configuring of the email for this site(fly@iswitchedtoamac.com). I still need to add it somewhere on the blog page.

iDVD and Email

I tried to create a DVD of my son's recent preschool graduation. I think using iMovie and iDVD will take some time to learn. Part of the problem from yesterday was that I was choosing the clips to play rather than the whole video. I'm still not quite sure why the title kept bouncing out. Seems to stick now.

I created an email account for anyone who wants to email me directly:
fly@iswitchedtoamac.com

I'll edit the blog somehow and add this email somewhere(like in the footer).

I'm still trying to decide what to do with Quicken. I may have to start over on the Mac. I'm just not too crazy about having our finances across two systems. Any ideas?

Mail, Quicken(WTF!), iTunes

I configured Mail so I can start getting my main email from a few accounts. That looked liked it worked pretty well. Mail started coming in and I can send too. I sent an email to a buddy of mine. Let's see if knucklehead responds.

I then backed up my Quicken 2004 Basic data on my PC to a USB flash keydrive. I then fired up the included Quicken 2005 on my iMac expecting to be able to import.

It was a no go!

I found this on Quicken's main support site:
Quicken data files are not meant to be transferred between Quicken for Microsoft Windows and Quicken for Mac. Currently, there is not an available converter tool.

WTF! Do I have to start from scratch?! I hope the hell not. What a pain. I usually do home finance types of things on Tuesdays. I'll give this another look tomorrow. If needed, I guess I'll have to create a new file on the Mac. I won't be able to compare years and next tax season could be a pain.

After talking to a co-worker(let's call him Darth Vader) about my iTunes issue, he suggested a change in the settings. I think I found the setting DV was talking about and I'm hoping that iTunes won't make a local copy of music that I have out on a network drive. I'll have to play with this.

I loaded more video of my son's pre-school graduation to make a DVD. This will need more attention too. I tried to add a simple title and it kept bouncing out. When I hit play after adding a bunch of clips it kept stopping after play one clip. I've been a Pinnacle Studio user for years and I'll just need to figure out iMovie and iDVD.

Lightsabers, DVDs, and CDs

With all the Star Wars buzz these days, this looked like a cool program for the Mac: CrimsonFX It's an app to add a lightsaber effect to videos. Unfortunately, I could not get it to render a short test video. Oh well, I'll keep on eye on it anyway.

I needed some video to try Crimson so I grabbed some video off of my digital camcorder. I just plugged it into the Firewire port and opened iMovie and I was off. Pretty cool! I expected something to tell me it found a camera attached but that's OK - it seemed to "just work" like the ads say.

I hunted down a DVD ripper that seems pretty good: MacTheRipper
On the PC, I like to rip DVDs that I own and combine them onto a single DVD for car trips with the kids. Instead of bringing along three DVDs(and risk scratching, loosing them, etc.) I can bring one and keep them entertained for up to six hours. Comes in handy on long trips and flights. Now that I can rip with MTR, I need to find something on the Mac that can do what I was doing on the PC with Nero's NeroVision Express 3. I'm sure there's one out there somewhere, I just have to look. Maybe this Toast app I keep hearing about is the Mac world's Nero. Or maybe Popcorn.

{Darn [End] and [Home] keys! I need to figure that out.}

Next, I burned TWIT onto a CD for the commute tomorrow. I popped in a CD-R and it directed me to a few apps. I used iTunes to burn it after I created a playlist. One thing I'm noticing about iTunes is that it seems to make a local copy of MP3's that I have elsewhere(like on my Windows server in the basement). I'd rather it just pointed to this and not copy them. Hopefully there's a setting somewhere.

I didn't get a chance to convert my Quicken files. Maybe I'll try that sometime during the week.

I also tried loading a driver for one of my printers and it didn't work. I think it's because they don't have a Tiger compatible version yet. I'll check into that tomorrow. I've got a few other printers to use if I need to print something.

Let's see, what else. I'm still getting used to the keyboard and mouse. Mouse speed isn't as fast as on my PC - I know, I know, it's changeable. The keyboard is a little mushy but it's quiet.

Oh yeah, saw Star Wars yesterday - thumbs up!

Azureus you twit

I started to configure a BT client. I'm trying Azureus - looks really good! I had a little issue with the IP blocker plugin, SafePeer. The trick is to find the right directory to put the plugin in. You also need to put it into it's own directory.

To find the right directory, go into Preferences and choose Plugins but don't click the little down arrow(usually used to expand this area). In the right pane you'll see the info for your plugin path. I put mine in the user-specific area. Create a SafePeer directory here and move into it the SafePeer files. After this do a restart and it should be OK. Seems like it took a little while to load once I did this, but now I see that it's blocking 85,391 IPs. Cool. Now I can go grab the latest TWIT.

I'd also like to find an IP blocker for the general case, like I had with ProtoWall on the PC. I'll keep looking around.

Starting to play a little more

I'm playing a little more this evening. I found out some much needed shortcut keys for Firefox:

• [Cmd]` to switch open windows
• [Ctrl][Pageup] and [Ctrl][Pagedown] to switch tabs

I still need to figure out how to make [End] and [Home] work. On the old PC, these got me to the beginning and end of sentences while editing. On the iMac, they don't seem to do anything(at least in the editor of my blog).

I'll try to transfer over my Quicken data from my PC tomorrow. I need to pay a bunch of bills first. I might need to allocate a good block of time for this crucial step. This could be a major turning point for me.

I think I'm starting to miss my scroll mouse. Might be a minor thing at this point. I'm still trying to get used to the "Apple way" with my usual computing so the single button mouse is OK for now. Let's see what happens, maybe I can can used to a single mouse button.

Maybe I'll go hunt down a BitTorrent client and see what's out there. If you have some ideas on a good one, let me know.

Pix of my new iMac

I figured out how to get pictures off of my digital camera and into the iMac using iPhoto, upload them to a photo sharing site, and post them here on the blog.

Sucking in the pix from my camera was a little slow. It was almost like watching a slideshow. Must be the USB speed on the camera.

I need to find a table of shortcut keys for Firefox that allows me to flip through open windows. Going through the posting of pix was a little tedious. I kept having to use the Window menu. Seems like the shortcut table in Firefox is for Windows. I don't see references to the apple key.

On with the show...

Here's what was waiting for me when I got home from work:


Here's what was in the second little box(extended service):


Here's my new iMac all set up and booting into OS X:

It begins

Got it. In fact, this post is being written using my new iMac G5. Pretty damn cool. Ran into a few things during setup, but all is well. I'll see if I can post some pics of it when I get a chance.

Here are some of the things that I ran into:

• The Applecare Protection Plan came in a separate box. Looks like there's a CD that needs to be loaded. Maybe I'll do that over the weekend.
• During setup, I had to go through the "pairing" process with the wireless keyboard and mouse. The mouse was OK, but the keyboard needed a power cycle before it was recognized.
• When I got to the wireless setup, I had to figure out the MAC address for the built in wireless for my router/access point. Fortunately, this was on the outside of the box in a field labeled "Airport ID".
• Once I got the MAC address into my MAC filter list, it asked for a password. I assumed this was my WEP key. After a little monkeying around, I figured out that you need to enter this in hex, rather than the ASCII version. It should tell you this.
• After asking me for my name, address, phone number, and other registration info, I was in. A few minutes later it notified me of new software(kinda like Windows Update - but better - right?).
• The screen darkens on it's own after a few minutes of idle time. Moving the mouse or touching the keyboard makes it bright again. I'll bet this is changable in a control panel somewhere.
  
• I get about 2500Kbps over the wireless versus around 3600Kbps with my wired PC. Not bad!
  
• Uh oh, here's a big one. I don't get the same editing options on Blogger that I do on my PC. I had to go back to my PC to make this a bullet list. Maybe the"Compose" feature inside of Blogger doesn't like Safari. I'll need to go find Firefox. [Edit: Yep, Firefox to the rescue! The editing in Blogger is the same as the PC now.]
  

So far, I'm pretty pleased. It'll take a little while to try things out, fumble here and there, and Google issues for answers. I'd like to play more, but I need to get ready for work tomorrow. Work seems to always get it the way of playing with my toys!

First post! Woohoo!

OK, so here's the deal - I'm making the switch from a PC to a Mac, an iMac G5 to be exact. I've got one on order and just today I see that it's being shipped. I ordered it the day the new iMac's were announced and I was expecting it last week. That might have been strike one, but, hey, it's on it's way now.
This is also my very first blog. I thought I would share my experiences with my new iMac and document my switch. I'll be learning alot and maybe, just maybe, others can learn from my experiences.
So, this blog will:

• Document my first experience with an Apple iMac G5
• Share info that may be useful to other PC to Mac converts

Right now I'm using a few trusty Windows boxes I built. Within the next few days I'm hoping to be updating this blog from my new iMac.

In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out what other software I'll need, preparing for the conversion, learning how to use this blog system, etc.

I guess that's it for now. So far so good.