Monthly Archives: August 2007

Bird’s Eye View of Iowa City

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Tonight our friend Ken took Rebekah and I up in his plane to take some pictures of the Iowa City area from the air. It was a beautiful night and a neat experience for both of us as we had never been in a small plane like that before. We were up for about 45 minutes and got to see all sorts of stuff, some of which I took pictures of. The pictures are collected at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mizidymizark/sets/72157601682292290/. I can't wait to go up again and in the future hopefully with a better camera to get even cooler shots.

Great Software

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I have been meaning to do this post for a couple weeks but have not had it entirely fleshed out so I have been avoiding it. Since it is not getting any clearer or better thought out in my head, I am giving it a go. Basically there have been a number of Mac applications that I have grown fond of recently that fit a nice niche and most are free. I recommend checking out each of these apps as they have made my computing life easier.

Vienna - I have mentioned this in the past as my RSS reader. The application continues to be updated regularly and has the three top features I am looking for in an RSS reader, searching posts, viewing all unread and flagging posts. This gets me more than Google Reader has (GR is missing search) and keeps a nice backup on my machine. The one thing I am missing is being able to post to my blog about a post directly, but if that is major difference between a $30 program and a free one, I can handle the free one.

Ecto - Another one I have mentioned before, I am now using the version 3 alpha and it is looking great. The keywords worked without any problems and I have a local archive of posts from my blog. It is also nice to write a post and save it locally while I might not be connected to the Internet. It also has a cool new Amazon helper thing that allows for quick adding of Amazon links. Here is an example of what that looks like:

"Stephen King's Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born" (Stephen King, Peter David, Robin Furth)

All in all, I am pretty impressed with ecto for allowing me to avoid the web interface with WordPress.

Miro - I like video podcasts but iTunes is not the best video podcast player. Luckily there is a program called Miro that works the way iTunes should. There are now over 2000 different programs to sign up for including some cool programming and science ones. The nice part is that it automatically expires old files and deletes them for you. The interface is wonderful and the switch to watching full screen is great as well. If you are interested in any sort of video casting, this is something you should check out.

 

Bring the Blogging Back

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I havn't posted much recently because I had to reload my mac and havn't reinstalled ecto yet and I have been too lazy to go to the web interface to post.  That is in conjunction with having about a billion things going on with the house, the kitten and softball over the last two weeks.  That being said, I have a few comments about stuff that has happened and is noteworthy.

  • The EPL started, besides Iowa football games, Saturday mornings are up for some debate as to start with college football or soccer now.  Also, Everton won, so that is a bonus.
  • The new iLife is cool.  Rebekah and I are getting used to the new Events thing in iPhoto, but we think we like it.  We havn't given iWeb a look yet, but we think it holds promise for some family sites we have.
  • Gas weed-wackers are tough on the arms if you are not used to them.
  • The 4400 continues to be one of the best shows that few people know about.  If you like Heroes, then you owe it to yourself to get all of The 4400 and watch it.
  • It hasn't been cloudy all weekend and has been very hot.  With hours before a great meteor shower, it is cloudy.
  • 54 holes of golf in 48 hours is always a good thing.

That kind of sums up the last couple of weeks.  Posts will come faster now that my mac is up and going again and I am feeling motivated to post.

Large Yard = Lots of Mowing

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I mowed the lawn for our house the first time this evening and discovered that it takes about 30-45 minutes to mow. I also found out that having a large yard is a good thing most of the time, but a bit of a bear when mowing it. It doesn't help that the majority of the backyard is in bad shape for a lawn and is basically like trying to mow an off-road course. All of that being said, it is kind of neat to do some of this home owner stuff.