Audio Books at the iTunes Music Store – kool!


The iTunes music store has tens of millions of songs and also to my delight a good selection of audio books. Remember you don’t need an Ipod or even a Mac to download and listen to music from the Itunes music store

Books on tape as they used to be know seem to be in vogue now as almost anything you can get at the local big box book store you can download onto your iPod or mp3 player. I’m ashamed to say I currently doen’t have an iTunes account but by the time you read this article I will of clicked on the linly below and my trangression will be cast into Steve’s “sea of forgetfulness”!

Don’t laugh but here are my first two purchases:

How To Make People Like You In 90 Seconds or Less

Guiding readers from the first encounter, through body language, to the end of a conversation, Boothman doles out advice for establishing rapport with anyone, in any kind of situation.


Getting Things Done-The Art of Stress-Free Productivity


Getting Things Done-The Art of Stress-Free Productivity is David’s proven guide to staying on top of it all in a world where communication and responsibilities are increasing exponentially. Part I describes the game, Part II coaches you through implementing the system, and Part III explores the subtler and more profound benefits you will experience when you incorporate these core principles and proven tricks into your work and your life.

Here is a link to the Audio Book Selection at the Itunes Music store.

Thank’s Bin Laden – another reason to take him off your christmans card list!


In an article in the Washington D.C. newspaper, The Examiner, Bush is reported to of said that the video tape released the Friday before the 2004 election by our favorite 6 foot Saudi aided his re-election. Thanks Bin Landen you jackass, thanks for our double dose of misery; your reign of supposed terror and helping Bush and his reign of tomfoolery as he drives this wonderful country into the friggin dark ages! What a thinker our Pres is: From the article: “I thought it was going to help,” he decided. “I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.” So whatever BL says you’ll endorse the opposite viewpoint, oh what logic!

I suppose we can also thank the more than 50% of folks who voted for Bush too. Christ on a bike!, anyone would of been better than this clown, someone go dig up Regan or grab Billy Bob Clinton away from one of his book tours.

World’s Most Downloaded Podcast – Ricky Gervais from the Office!


Christ, Christ and triple Christ on a bike …. how did I miss this! It seems that our mate Ricky Gervais from the British version of the hit TV series The Office has a friggin podcast and it was just awarded the most downloaded podcast in the Guiness Book of World Records! I insist that you all subscribe to this Podcast at once and I wonder how many more hits he’ll get now the new is out? Here is his website and here is a list of his Top 10 TV sitcoms.

Here is the link to the download page and if you’re an Itunes fan then go to the iTunes music store and search for Ricky Gervais.

The easily way to listen to any podcast is to install Itunes. [Windows users click here] Itunes has a great subscription feature. Once you’re subscribe to a podcast iTunes will (if you select the option) look for fresh episodes on a regular (hourly, daily or weekly) basis. Just listened to the latest episode, absolutely ridiculous! – crazy shite …. if you don’t find this funny you need your freaking head read!

The Laughing Goat Cafe – is Penny Lane back?

Since the demise of the Penny Lane Coffee House in August of 2005 there’s been a void in the Boulder coffee house scene. It’s not that the new ones that have sprung up aren’t nice; Allisons The Cup is cute and Folsom Street Coffee has great seating and nice free off street parking. It’s the people that have been missing, not necessarily folks you knew but just familiar faces, in some cases faces you’d seen for years, suddenly gone. Walking round Boulder you may have seen them from time to time, a quick raising of the eyebrows in recognition or a short “hi” in passing. It was like running into past members of a now disbanded secret club or society.

Well fellow wanders it’s time to come home, as two former Penny Lane Batista’s, Jonny and Shaun have opened up the eagerly anticipated “Laughing Goat Cafe” in same block as the old coffee house. It’s tastefully decorated and although there’s no smokers patio but there are doors in the front of the cafe that can be opened during warmer weather – this will be welcomed by sidewalk people watchers and dog owners like myself alike. Sure, it doesn’t have the funkiness of the old Penny Lane. Gone are the all day patio campers (Saul :)) and the crazy mumblings of the daily crazy mumbling person who would stop by to amuse us. I often said that all we needed were a few vertically challenged people and tiperope and we’d have had a friggin circus out there!

My observations so far: the Internet is super fast (sucks upfront cos the router is in the back of the coffee shop, come one lads please move it), they have a good selection of teas with the ability to get a pot too and the coffee is not too bad either. I’m glad my one time fave hang out is back, and I look forward to talking it up with some of my long lost pals.

Here is their Location on Google Maps – 1709 Pearl Street, Boulder, CO, 80302. They are open daily till 11pm and word on the street is that they’ll try to get extended closing hours in the near future, Whittier Neighborhood Association permitting. The one thing still missing in the Boulder Coffee shop scene is a late night hang out – one that closes at 2am so perhaps one day us nigh owls will have a place to hang.

May 2007 Update

Seems like our pals are in the process of putting up a website at the Laughing Goat dot com but it only contains a link to their calendar (as of May 22nd 2007) and it advises visitors to check out the Laughing Goat’s MySpace page.

Laughing Goat now on CU Boulder Campus – July 2009

The Laughing Goat has just opened a second coffee shop on the ground floor of the new wing (Called the Learning Commons) of the Norlin Library on the campus of CU Boulder. It’s a great well lit space with high vaulted wooden ceilings and sit in the south east corner of the new addition. The only downside is that there in no public wifi, you’ll need to be a student registered at CU to log on or get a guest pass from a student or CU staff member. Coffee is good and next to the seating are are rows of magazines for your viewing pleasure. My new hangout for the hot summer months and I have wifi too thanks to a friend who works at CU 😉

Native OS X Applications – all 17000 of them!

Next time someone tells you that there’s very little software for the Mac take a look at this website – 17,322 Native OS X Applications . Sure there are more programs for XP but 117,322 or so programs for the Mac is not too shabby. Here’s a little jewel that I found for you tea lovers out there. It’s a little tea timer app. that will bounce a dock icon and play a sound after a preset time letting you know that your tea is now ready to be consumed!

Here is a mini list courtesy of OpenSourceMac.org who’s tagline is “Free and open-source software is good for you and good for the world. This is the best OS X software that we know of”. I’d say this is closest thing to my “top 20” list of free mac apps and I personally use 6 of these apps on a daily basis (Firefox(browser), Thunderbird(email client), Adium(Instant Messenger), Cyberduck(FTP), Smultron(Text Editor) and NeoOffice(MS office Clone) on a daily basis.

Here’s a quick top 10 list from MacZealots. Also be sure to check out the comments at the bottom of the page where everyone chimes in on their faz OsX app.

Not to be outdone by OS X take a look at this website – linuxlist.com that lists 17000 or so Linux programs. I’m a mac guy, switched from Linux, and one of my first gripes when switching was not having a good word processor installed on the Mac by default (Linux distros have Openoffice) also having to fork out $80 or so for Toast so I can make images of audio CD’s. Go Linux!

Windows to Mac switching in the workplace – What to do when your boss says “NO!”


Here’s a quick and dirty guide to using a mac at work in a windows environment. When your network guru is a windows only wanker and is too lazy to spend an hour or so adding to his skill-set and making himself more marketable simply follow the steps and links in the article below. You can also use the information contained in this article to further your argument when you’re boss gives you some lame ass excuse about how we “don’t do mac around here”. Just make sure your boss has a nice set of knee pads on hand cos when you’re done they’re gonna be doing a lot of sucking, especially after the liberal amount of bitch slapping they’ll of gotten from you and you’re new found mac knowledge. Of course if you’re using very specific window’s only software package and windows specific hardware then switching to a Mac may be a dumb move (Intel mac will let you dual boot to Windows and Vista so this is no longer a deal breaker) but if you’re an arty type and use Photoshop / Illustrator then a Mac is perfect. I will also produce a “Work Friendly” version of this article where there won’t be quite so much sucking and bitch slapping! So here are some answers to the most common barriers you may encounter:

“You won’t be able to send and receive email – we use Outlook here”

There is a Mac version of Outlook produced by Microsoft called Entourage. See a comparison of XP Outlook to OS X entourage here. A resource and help page is here – MVPS.org.

“You won’t be able to connect to the office network”


Bull shite – bitch slap number one, (boss is now down on bended knee!) OS X was made to network with windows. From Apple.com. Share Files: With a Mac running OS X Tiger, you can easily connect to a Windows-based server or Windows PC that has file sharing enabled. Windows servers automatically appear in the Finder, so you just click the Network icon and browse to the server you’re looking for. Likewise, Mac OS X users can share the files on their computer with Windows users with sharing software that’s built into Mac OS X Tiger. Shared Macintosh home folders appear in the Windows Network Neighborhood just like a Windows server — enabling Windows users to browse folders and share files without having to install any additional software. Through file sharing, Macs and Windows PCs can open, edit, save and copy the same files using a shared folder or directory on the Mac or PC. Here is a step by step tutorial at ifelix.com on how to connect you spanking new Mac to your office Windows network.

“You won’t be able to print”


A second bitch slap to for the boss as he’s knee down now! Yet again we look at the Apple.com website. Under the heading of Share Printers: Macs and PCs can also share printers. Shared Windows printers automatically appear in the Mac OS X Printer Setup Utility so they can be added to the Macintosh as a local printer queue. You can create a queue for as many shared Windows (and Macintosh) printers as you like, and any application that can print on the Macintosh can print to the shared printer.

The only hitch you may run into is not being able to find a suitable (OS x) printer driver. If you’re trying to connect to a shitty 10 year old HP laser printer you’re probably gonna be SOL but if you’re trying to print to a newer printer then you’ll probably be fine and you’ll see you printer in the pull down list of printers when adding it to your mac. Printer drivers can normally be downloaded from the manufactures website free of charge and the most common ones will already come with OS X. Sometimes selecting “Generic printer” may work if your don’t see it listed. You can also try googling for OS X printer drivers too . I found a site – LinuxPrinting.org where I found a driver that will work on both printers that my buddy has on his work network (an HP Business inkjet 2600 and a 2300n HP Laser Printer) It seems that these drivers are as good as the ones that ship with the printers and they are written by HP so they should work fine. So now a little more detail on how to print with your new Mac.

Shared Printer: If you have a little network and want to print from your new Mac to a shared Windows printer (not networked printer) then see this article on iFleix.com. A shared printer is normally a printer that is physically attached to a computer as opposed to a network printer that is normally connected to the network via a network cable and not physically attached to a computer.

Networked / IP printer: This is probably the default way most businesses set up their printers. For a networked printer you”ll need to know the ip address of the printer and you can follow these steps: See this article on askdavetaylor.com and step 9 of this article may help too.

In closing


So now I hope that at least someone around your office can claim the title of “Mac Guru”! So there you sit, big silly smily face, the boss man still a sucking and your Network Admin bowing down to a makeshift shrine he’s built in your honor. On that happy note I’d like to end this silly article and be sure to add your comments below (comments are moderated) as I’d love to hear how the switch goes.

My first DJ gig – Wendy’s Valentine’s Day Party

So I’ve always fancied the DJ life style, in the dj booth, jumping up and down to the beats, vinyl in hand, while the crowd below rages on through the night. Ok, it did turn out exactly like that: replace the DJ booth with a rickedy old table that I should of thrown out a long time ago, vinyl with mp3s and the raging with more of an ebb and flow!

Don’t get me wrong it was fun but I learnt a few lessons in the school of DJ.

  • You can’t please all the people all the time – Christ it was comical, I was handed two full hour CD’s with party tunes and asked to play them both(I guess that I did ask for peoples tunes) Christ, did I just spend the past 4 days working on my friggin play-list for nothing! I realize that one has to be respectful of requests and the folks who handed me the CD had obviously spent quit some time compiling the CDs.
  • Read the crowd, very important, if the crowd is floundering you’re playing the wrong song. How does one get out of this quandary? I don’t know, perhaps just skipping to the next track.
  • Match the beats: thanks Andrew B. for this one. I’d like to be able to see how many BPM’s each song has but most mp3 ID tags don’t have this filled in. A valid point though.
  • Stay kool: Hmmm this is a hard one for me, I hate to be told what to do and perhaps if I was getting paid for the gig it would be a little different. It’s almost comical how each song draws a reaction from the crowd, with a can you play this and I don’t like that and …….. I love a “Hey can you play dancing queen some time” but a “Can we change the song now cos it’s too slow” Sweet christ on a bike, right in the middle ! I think I need to adopt the Ken B. method when handed a CD, smile a lot, nod your head or pretend not to hear exactly what they say or so Bridgette told. Need to be more of a political and less of a hot headed Brit!

    Overall it was a fun night, lovely gurls and fun tunes (well at least that what I thought!)

    Technical Notes

    I loved using Itunes – Christ you can be playing the songs from your party playlist at full throttle, someone hands you a regular old CD and in she goes (gently does it) and a ripping you go all while the party is a raging. The beauty is that you can drag the audio CD tracks to a folder you create on the hard drive bypassing the cryptic locations of the itunes library and then all you do is create a new playlist and drag the ripped tunes to the new playlist. Kool friggin awesome.

    A big big problem was the inability to preview the next song in itunes but I see a nice solution on macosxhints where you can use quicktime to preview the tracks. I’ll try this and report back.

  • New “Really Nasty” Virus set to hit on Feb. 3rd 2006!

    Back up all your files people as a new nasty virus is due to hit on FEB 3rd 2006. It’s really nasty in that it will delete all word docs and more. You probably all know about it and have backed up your documents and important data right? 🙂

    Article: BBC online article

    If you’re paranoid you may want to check to see if you have it with this free MS download:

    Download a free tool from MS here or try this online scanner from CA (must be using Internet Explorer for these pregrams to work)

    Pass this article onto your computer challenged pals will you! (Windows users only)

    Cheers

    Richard

    MylittlePortal.com