Leopard

Mac OS 10.5 is here!

First off, a warning. Don’t buy the Leopard Family Pack. I did, because I’m a sucker. I paid an extra $100 for a sticker on my box and an extra word on my receipt. Seriously, Apple, at least give me a CD key or some paper authorization of my extra licenses. Don’t just give me a sticker. I can fake a sticker.

Here are some of the things I really like about Leopard:

• NetInfo Manager is gone! I hated that program so much. It’s been replaced by about 3 different control panels, but things are where you’d expect them to be instead of in an obscure, atrociously ugly utility.
• Frostier frosted glass menus! Eat it, Vista! 
• Terminal finally has tabs. iChat also finally has tabs. It’s a tab fiesta.
• Although Screen Sharing uses VNC, it’s not glacially slow; their compression algorithm isn’t half bad.
• Based on my benchmarks Spotlight is exactly a gajillion times faster than it was in Tiger.
• Believe it or not, Leopard actually runs really well on my 4-and-a-half-year-old Powerbook G4. I am really surprised.
• Apparently the OpenGL drivers are much improved, although I don’t really run games anymore.
• NFS mounting (and auto-mounting for that matter) is no longer a gross hack. Hooray for nfs://
• It’s shiny. Wait, you probably already knew that … but oh man it’s shiny.

I had this problem with my Macbook Pro that basically involved my keyboard suddenly not working for minutes at a stretch, but a clean reinstall seems to have solved that problem (fingers crossed on that one). I haven’t tried Time Machine yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

I’m OK!

My apartment didn’t burn down. My advisor’s home also didn’t burn down (at least it wasn’t burned a couple days ago – let’s hope that’s still true). My office didn’t burn down, so I’ll have a place to go on Monday. I’ve escaped to LA, where the smoke isn’t as thick and the house isn’t full of distracting things (like Final Fantasy XII, Guitar Hero II and reporters pointing to fires and saying, “Hey look! The people who hate America are on fire!”), so I may actually be able to get work done.

Business of the day: get renter’s insurance and get back to work.

*cough cough* … crap.

So basically, Southern California is going up like a box of matches.

My advisor may have lost his home; he had to evacuate earlier today, but thankfully they’re physically OK. I for one have packed my bags and am ready to hit the dusty trail should the need arise; the fire is fairly close, and I’m crossing my fingers that we don’t have to leave.

If you’ve ever stood downwind from a grill, you’ll know how the air smells out here. It’s a little hard to breathe; I’ve got an air purifier running at full blast but I’m not sure it’s doing anything.

I’ve been putting off buying renter’s insurance for weeks. D’oh!

My new local record store

Google has been kind enough to enlighten me about a local record store in Encinitas called Lou’s. It feels very independent – from the bookshelves full of CDs to the cashiers’ snarky customer banter. One thing that shocked me, though, was the giant dent in their wall:

Customer: “So, uhh, did someone run into your wall or something?”
Snarky Cashier … Frank?: “Nah, I just got angry yesterday and did the whole ‘Frank smash!’ thing.”

Combine that with the music, and it was a pretty good experience.

Ratatat’s first album – holy crap the guitars. I mean seriously, how do they do that?

This was in the bargain bin – 23 Thelonius Monk tracks for $5? Sure!

The New Pornographers have hooks that won’t quit, and they harmonize like few other bands in this day and age. Plus, any rockers that include a piano (not a synthesizer, a piano) in a lot of their tracks get my respect.