It’s been a month since I’ve blogged here. Just been enjoying my Summer playing with my kids and trying to finish my basement. I have a couple funny / interesting stories to share, but I haven’t had it in me to write about them. Possibly because they weren’t funny when they happened so I just want to forget about them.

So for now, here are a few things I have been enjoying latley:

Bob Dylan Podcast - A fantastic exploration into the life and influence of this amazing artist. Each show is only from 5 - 10 minutes long, but full of interesting insights. Hosted by Patti Smith.

Bon Iver - I’m always on the lookout for new music and I hit the jackpot with this guy. Beautiful, chill, indie folk music with a unique sound. The entire album is nice.

The Big Picture - It’s like High Definition for news story photos. It’s my new favorite RSS feed. Beautiful photography, ran as a blog of interesting world news topics. Great idea.

Traxxas Revo - I sold my salt water aquarium and found a new hobby, gas powered RC trucks. Driving this truck on a rough dirt field is such a blast.

Kung Foo Panda - Great acting and animation, the story was nothing new, but overall, very enjoyable. Can’t wait for Wall-e tomorrow!

Mac Software - I recently purchased the Macheist Bundle and continue to be amazed at how well the Macintosh application software development just works. Currently loving CoverSutra, WriteRoom, Sound Studio and TextExpander.

After being a hard core Windows user for life, switching to Mac has been a super smooth process thanks in large part to these sweet applications, which just so happen to be free!

All are highly recommended. I’ll start with the best.

1. Xee - This is a lightweight and unbelievably fast image viewer and browser. Forget Preview, I have it set to open every type image related file by default. A perfect replacement for ACDSee, which is Windows only.
   Update: I forgot to mention the scroll wheel. The best part of this app is you can flip through a massive folder of images by spinning your scroll wheel.
2. NetNewsWire - For all your RSS feed reading needs. I’ve tried all the RSS readers out there, mac and pc, this one is my favorite. Not all the features of FeedDemon, but that’s not a bad thing, it’s simple, easy to use and customizable.
3. xPad - I take notes and make to-do lists in text files. Now with xPad, all my notes, ideas and to-do lists are in a single place and I can assign custom catagories to them. Brilliant. I only wish it were indexable by Spotlight or Quicksilver.
4. Adium - for all your chat needs. Customizable, skinnable, fast, I like it much better than iChat. Downside: no voice or video chat (see skype) and file transfer is broken.
5. Quicksilver - It’s not a replacement for Spotlight, even though the adapive search is much smarter, it’s also tool for quickly opening applications, moving files, opening contacts and completing simple tasks, like attach this file to a new email to this person, more info here. Lots of great plug-ins.
6. Disk Inventory X - Very useful to find out what is taking up the space on your hard drives
7. VLC - Use this to play any video file that is not Quicktime compatable. Specifically, .flv files and .iso files, which I have my ripped DVD’s bundled as.
8. Twitterific - A fantastic tool to keep up with your Twitter friends. I currently have mine turned off due to the massive distractions that is causes. But it sure is fun to have it turned on.
9. Skype - Video and audio chat. I like iChat, but I still have friends and family on Windows, so this is our only option. And it’s a dang good one, especially if you want to take advantage of VOIP.
10. Linotype FontExplorer X - Great font managment tool. Very iTunes like, you can rate and catagorize fonts then create smart folders of your customized sets.

It’s interesting to compare this video of Jackson, yesterday playing with a Ladybug with the one from two years ago.

The video was shot on my new Canon HD Vixia HF10 camera, which I’m really enjoying. I also just posted a great video of Jackson and Eli going at it on Wii Boxing.

I’ve been messing around with physics engines in AS3 for a while now. My favorites are APE and Box2D, both have their pros and cons. APE is much simpler to use and understand where Box2D is more advanced. Box2D has support for throwing particles and rotations, but it’s all based on metrics, so you have to adjust for pixels.

Here is a little experiment I’ve been playing with and optimizing using APE. Enjoy.

My APE Balls

Flash Source Code This requires the APE engine in your classpath to compile.

You have to realize, I was a big fan of the Windows operating system. I was very comfortable on there, happy with the speed and applications available. Before I even switched to mac, I had made a list of apps that I knew were not available on OSX knowing they were apps I would need to find a replacement for, run as an emulation app, or just miss.

I’ve been on my mac for over a month and I still have not installed Parallels (even though I have a license). So there’s nothing that I miss that much, but to follow up my post, Top Things I WILL miss about Windows Vista, here are a few items that would be nice if they were on mac:

• Snagit - not available for Mac (yet), I’m using Snapz Pro X and it’s decent, but not able to capture scrolling browser content and without the browser chrome.
• DVDfab Platinum - Awesome DVD ripping. Handbrake is cool, but I like to rip DVD’s uncompressed. There are other options, but nothing like DVDfab.
• Picasa - I haven’t yet transfered my (pre-switch) photo library over to iPhoto. I like iPhoto, but the features are just different than Picasa. Both apps have pros and cons and I could live with either of them. But it would rock is Google released Picasa for the mac.
• Google Talk - Adium is awesome for chatting and iChat is fantastic if you are hooking up with a fellow iChat user for voice and video communication. Both support Google accounts via Jabber. But what I miss from the Google Talk application on Windows is the simple ability for voice chat and to drag images into the chat window for sharing at full size. File sharing on Adium is jacked up and there’s no support for voice chat.
• Flash Develop - A free open source Actionscript editor with excellent code hinting and code completion. I really miss this one. I’ve replaced it with Flex Builder 3, which is an amazing application (until my 60 day trial ends… $300) but it’s built for Flex developers. I’m not a Flex developer but a Flash developer looking for a fantastic code editor. It feels like a huge hack to use Flex builder for Flash development in the Flash CS3 IDE. lots of switching back and fourth and you must create a project for every instance to get the code hinting. Kinda sucks, c’mon Adobe!
  TextMate is an amazing app, but there’s still no robust code hinting or code completion for AS.
• Sothink SWF Decompiler - The best Actionscript decompiler. Windows only.

That’s it. Nothing major. I’ll never go back. The simplicity of being on this machine and the massive amount of new applications that I’ve discovered have really made my computing experience much more pleasing.

On Friday I’m heading up to Toronto for my third visit to FITC, a design and technology conference with presentations from some of the best Flash developers and designers in the business. I’m quite excited to get out of town, spend some time focusing on new concepts, ideas and relaxation with some Actionscript mixed in.

Fortunately this time my sweetie will be accompanying me for the first few days. Unfortunately she’s not a baseball fan and therefore not keen on checking out a Blue Jay’s game.

I’ve been using a red Speck SeeThru Hard Shell Case on my 15-inch MacBook Pro for two weeks now. Overall I’m very happy with it, no complaints. It fits perfectly snug and the openings to access the the side ports line up perfect. It’s very light weight and thin enough that I hardly notice it on there.

I especially like the rubber feet on the bottom as they are larger and more robust than the ones on the MacBook, so they elevate the machine higher to allow better air circulation. I initially had a concern about it retaining heat, but there are special ventilation slits on the bottom to prevent overheating. This also provides a layer of protection for those of you who suffer from MacBook leg burn.

This case provides extra protection from scratches and bumps, which is useful for me as I like to carry my MacBook around while it’s open AND I have two kids. It also provides some additional style. Now available in nine colors, including pink! I went with red to represent my company’s brand.

They retail for $49.95, available for 39.03 on Amazon, which you might say is a bit steep for a piece of plastic. But what your paying for is the high level of detail and engineering that has gone into making this fit and work as well as it does.

I really like the look and feel of the MacBook as it is, but the addition of this case what quite seamless and gives me a bit of comfort in the extra protection. I recommend this to anyone looking to add protection and color to you MacBook or MacBook Pro.

I’m not sure which I’m more excited about, how fun it is to cut up video in iMovie or how sweet it is that Flickr now supports video. Both have just made my day. It took me about five minutes to become completely comfortable with this unique video editing interface. It’s simple, clean and still very powerful. Not built for longer form video, but for short clips and mixes of typical videos, iMovie is fantastic.

My two favorite features are, the rollover previews that include audio, this just makes it fun, and second, Export. Apple has taken the frustration out of exporting video, no longer am I messing with audio and video codec settings just to simply export a clip. Set it and forget it.

Now I present you with this little gem, my Star Wars Kid.

Jana rented Episode 2 for Jackson and told him he could watch it on Friday. As you can see, he was quite excited about seeing Count Dooku.

Checked out Vampire Weekend again last night at In The Venue in Salt Lake. They’ve blown up in that short time since I saw them last at Kilby Court four months ago. They mentioned multiple times during the show that playing Kilby Court was probably their favorite venue of the entire tour. Tonight’s show was originally scheduled for Kilby, but quickly moved to a larger venue when they realized how many tickets were being sold.

Since being here in December they’ve released a full length album, been SNL musical guest, Letterman, and cover of Spin magazine among probably many other things. Four months ago there were just over 30 people at the show — tonight, I’d say well over 300 500 people. These four very talented musicians are having fun making new and unique music and their success is well deserved.

If their music alone wasn’t good enough, Vampire Weekend has figured out how to make them look and sound even better… By hooking up with an opening band that sounds like your little sister and her friends singing karaoke at 3 am after drinking two gallons of kool-aid. Yacht has to be one of the strangest opening bands I’ve ever seen or heard (I just listened to their music on myspace and it’s much better recorded than live). It was nothing more than a guy and a girl screaming chants to music played on a laptop (which continued to skip and mess up). Good thing for pool tables…

Vampire only has one album, so a short set is expected, playing only an hour. They claimed a new album is very close, but didn’t reveal any new music from it. Still, a fun show. I realized just how good their drummer is…

I posted a couple vids:

Blake’s Got a New Face
M 79 (compare to last time)

Update: Vampire Weekend: Quality trumps quantity as critical darlings live up to the hype By David Burger - The Salt Lake Tribune

I made a Muxtape (a virtual mix tape) for you. Enjoy.

I’m a fan of the usefulness and simplicity of this web interface from user registration to the presentation page. Beautiful design and fun idea. See 37 Signals comments.

Update: How to Make a Proper Muxtape