I think I’ve found a theme that I’m happier with. I started using it on my personal blog and immediately started hacking it to make it more suitable to my liking. It’s very nice and the stylesheets are clear enough to do some meddling with. If you are looking for a “less is more” kind of theme that is yet clear and “perty”, then give Hemingway a shot.
The manifesto at the end is right on…inspirational. Take a peek.
I haven’t had a chance to attend a BarCamp just yet. Tracy sent me a text message on Saturday night to let me know that he was attending BarCampSF. It’s one thing to have this stuff blogged about and entirely another to have your friends show up in the flickr photostream of none other than Tara Hunt herself. *Wow* I definitely look forward to him blogging more about the experience and many thanks to him for reminding me about barcamp as BarCampAustin is coming up in a couple of months. I’m so there…
If you are pulling your hair out with Parallels because the mouse is jerky, stuttering, or otherwise not smooth when you are inside Windows VM then you’ll want to install the Parallels Tools (go to VM -> Install Parallel Tools). You have to have the VM in question running. Once you click this and continue then it’ll automatically start up an installation process inside of Windows, an InstallShield Wizard process, where it will install the Tools for you in Windows. Among other things (like fixing the silly mouse issue) it also allows you to have a shared folder to push files back and forth between systems. It actually took a little bit of googling to figure out that this was the fix. I’m surprised that it’s not an issue that is more openly discussed because without it, your Windows VM can be a pita. (I thought previously it was just because the software was in beta, but once it went gold I knew there had to be something else afoot). Mystery solved and all is right with the world again. And btw, if you don’t have a copy yet and you are running an Intel Mac, then hop on over and buy it. It’s worth every penny.
The MacBook memory upgrade, while not as easy as some Dell lappie upgrades I’ve done in the past, is still not bad. Luckily, there some folks folks who can’t help themselves from disassembling new Mac hardware which is great because it provides us with some real world guidance on what’s going on once we remove the battery. The most difficult part of the upgrade itself was removing the panel that shields the battery from the memory. These are the “not even the smallest screwdriver in the world could unscrew me” screws. Using a knife (what can I say, I couldn’t wait) I unscrewed the screws from the panel and gently removed it. The two memory slots (thank you Apple for giving us two!) sit underneath where the panel laid and using the levers for each you can easily remove them. Now here’s where that real world guidance comes in handy as the big suggestion on inserting new sticks was to make sure they are properly seated. You will have to put more pressure than you think you will need to accomplish this…there is a significant pop and drop when you get it right. The thing is solid so you shouldn’t hurt anything. After I did this on my MacBook, replaced the battery and panel, I started it back up and voila! 2GB of RAM. All the better to run Virtue and Parallels with.
I continue to be impressed with the performance of the MacBook.
It’s a bold statement, but given the experience I’ve had with my new MacBook in just the last 12h, I can assure you this is not anywhere near an over-exaggeration. With the MacBook, Apple has redefined the consumer laptop segment by engineering a masterpiece. But you knew that. If you own a Mac, you love the design, adore Mac OS X and talk about your machine like it’s part of the family.
So what makes this iteration of Apple’s consumer laptop (as well as every MacIntel to come out so far) so special? One word: Parallels. When I first saw this a couple of months ago on TUAW I was completely intrigued. As a Web Developer, I’m wedded to developing in Firefox (and happily so), but tweaking to IE which means that I have to have a windows machine to do so (yeah, or Linux/WINE). But it’s incredibly difficult to maintain such a set up and still maintain a high level of productivity. The dream setup would be to run Windows inside of Mac OS X - seamslessly and without rebooting (a la boot camp) - and it should be fast unlike VirtualPC. I was convinced though that even if Parallels could do this then certainly Apple wouldn’t make a consumer grade laptop that could handle this type of work. Boy, was I ever wrong.
Enter the Core-Duo MacBook, capable of 2GB of RAM: an incredibly powerful combination that is a web development workhorse at-the-ready.
In the first days after the MacBook started shipping there was even footage showcasing some possibilities with Virtue and Parallels (fast and “perty”). Now I can personally vouch for the MacBook - it is a more than capable machine that can run (multiple installs of) windows and allow you to do the IE6/IE7 testing that you need to do. That alone is worth the price of the machine. Add blazing fast performance (Firefox is no slouch as a Universal Binary), built-in iSight, FrontRow (and Remote - which is definitely icing on the cake) and you have a monster package.
If you are a developer, I would heartily recommend purchasing *any* of the Core Duo Intel-based Macs. Parallels is clearly a killer app for developers and makes your next Apple purchasing decision not just the most important one you’ll ever make - it’ll be the easiest one.
Amazon currently has MacBooks with $100 rebate or MacBook Pro’s with $150 rebate (no tax, fast shipping). Even though it says Pre-Order and they scare you with a July ship date, I got mine in less than a week. Also, check out AppleCare there as it’s $30 cheaper than buying it at the Apple Store. You can easily save some serious cash by going that route - a great deal for such a great machine.
I’ll post more on how my memory upgrades and Parallels + XP Pro install went a little later.