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The History of Mario

Just in time for the launch of Super Mario Galaxy, IGN Presents The History of Super Mario Bros.  Long before the modernly-famous “It’s-a Me, Mario!”, a japanese company took a couple serious gambles on a certain italian plumber.  This look back at the greatest franchise in gaming is fascinating.

comment on this | posted in: Gaming News

Super Mario Galaxy Rocks!

I picked up my copy of Super Mario Galaxy this evening after work and all I can say is “wow.”  This is what a Wii game should be like.  Definitely the best game since Wii Sports.  Nintendo spent some serious time on this game and it shows.

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If you’re in NYC and looking to pick it up, I walked right into the Nintendo World store and didn’t even have to wait in line.  I guess all the serious fanboys got theirs last night after the launch party.  12am-2am- sheesh!

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comment on this | posted in: Gaming News

Jailbreak before sentence passed?

It seems odd to me that there has been such a flurry of activity in jailbreaking iPhone 1.1.2 (available since Friday).  I’ve been patiently awaiting a simple jailbreak and once it was released yesterday, I took a look.  The thing is.. Apple hasn’t really released 1.1.2 as far as I can tell.

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iTunes doesn’t know about it yet and all the download links posted online presuppose that this is the final software.  I think I’ll wait.

comment on this | posted in: iPhone News

.Mac sync documentation would be nice

Now that I’ve been running Leopard for few weeks, I’m ready to spend some time diving into dotmac sync.  Overall, it seems to be less-error prone, but then new sync conduits seem to work sporadically. 

For instance, the only time I notice that widget sync has successfully run is when I see two of the same widget in my widgetland space- hardly my intended result. 

And while I’m at it, what exactly what “preference sync” do?  What kind of “smarts” should I expect?  Surely it can’t just sync my entire ~/Library/Preferences folder to dotmac.  I ran it and the only thing I noticed was that it changed the name of each of my iTunes shared libraries to the same name. 

It probably is still a bit early to give a harsh review since Apple is still reporting problems with sync.  That said, what commercial service provider allows a production, premium internet service to be in maintenance for nearly 3 weeks?  The only email I’ve seen from Apple on this stated that the changes necessary for Leopard would occur starting October 19, 2007.

comment on this | posted in: Mac News Troubleshooting

Leopard eats crontabs

The Leopard install wipes out all user crontabs.  Gee, thanks for the heads-up. 

comment on this | posted in: Mac News

iApp a Day

Sean Heber has justed announced 31 days of fresh iPhone apps.  His new package source in Installer.app promises a new downloadable app every day for the month of November.

They’re all going to be free and I now have something definite to look forward to each morning when I check for new apps.  Thanks, Sean.

comment on this | posted in: iPhone Music

Leopard, what happened to my printers?

It was very nice of Apple to overhaul the printing front end in Leopard.  I think it actually makes sense now for the first time since- well forever.  Sorry, Chooser-devotees!

But why are all my printers removed after an upgrade install?  This is a seriously bad thing.  I don’t even want to know how many hours went into discovering and setting up the various printers from my many travels.  It has always been great knowing that nearly any printer can be hooked up to MacOSX, given the correct settings.  Well, now those many settings are now gone. 

I guess I know what I’ll be doing Monday morning on the first day of my trip to Nashville…

comment on this | posted in: Mac News

One-step hack install for iPhone debuts just in time

Woke up this morning to find that iTunes had “forgotten” about my my iPhone’s music.  This is a pain because it means you have to restore the device.  Easy to do, but it meant that I had to re-apply the lengthy hack process for the 1.1.1 firmware. 

As I was waiting for my first iTunes sync to complete, I saw that a new process “AppSnapp Installer for 1.1.1” had been released to hack the phone.  This worked perfectly and took about 2 minutes.  Too bad it won’t continue to work after the next Apple update. 

jailbreakme.com

comment on this | posted in: iPhone News

Leopard’s Finder audio previews

I really dislike the new Leopard audio previews in Finder.  Gone are the functional “mini quicktime” controller bars.  In their place is a lame cover art square and a single play button.

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The square takes a while to generate and is extremely sluggish.  Pressing “space” activates QuickLook and gives a status bar, but the whole process of previewing audio files just got a whole lot less convenient.

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comment on this | posted in: Mac

Leopard is a good cat (updated)

Many of my suspect apps do indeed work in Leopard:

  • Parallels 3.0 build 5160
  • SnapzPro 2.1.1
  • Little Snitch 3.0 b10
  • Timbuktu 8.6- ancient, I know but I haven’t yet given it up for LogMeIn
  • SoonR 1.1.8
  • iStat menus 1.1- slight visual defects
  • Locator 0.7.2- great front end to the unix locate service
  • FileMaker 6.0v4- yes, I still have one database in the old, 2002-released, crusty, carbon application (please don’t tell anyone)


Anyone dare try installing Fink?

Update: It seems to work fine after a recompile with XCode 3.0 installed.

comment on this | posted in: Mac Troubleshooting
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