Our New Mac OS Leopard

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So I tell Samantha that I need a Mac Book for Dummies or something like that! Starting this morning, I have started adding items to our blog when I discover configuration tips that I personally find useful. It is not meant to be a comprehensive list of everything you can do to customize OS X; it is mainly a record so I remember what customizations I've performed, so I can potentially undo them later and/or repeat them after major OS upgrades. Good resources for more Mac OS X configuration tips are macosxhints, lifehacker, secrets, and (somewhat less frequently) the official Apple Support site – most of the tips I've listed here were either found at one of those sites initially or have ended up archived there later.

Customization Tip 1: Samantha wanted her Date and Time changed.
We had July 29, 10: 54 PM or something like that. Today was July 30 and now was 10:04 AM, which meant I had to do something. So I try to launch System Preferences by clicking on the System Preferences Icon sitting in the Dock. That did not work, because the System Preferences Pane was supposed to open, right? And nothing happened. (Maybe I am doing something stupid here, so Samantha and the Mac Gods need to cut me some slack here, thanks!). Next I click on System Preferences at the upper left hand corner of our gigantic screen and looked under Services. No Date and Time. Looked like I was going anywhere with this for now. The next step actually solved my problem. I navigated to View -> Show all Preferences and I was able to pull up the System Preferences Pane for the first time and locate Date and Time! Significant change in my morning! After that it was a matter of obtaining access to it. And I did not discover this feature until I discovered "Click the Lock to make changes". This enabled me to go in and reset my clock. One little problem solved. Now, how did I create those screenshots? The following link helped: http://danstechnstuff.com/2007/12/30/easily-take-screenshots-in-mac-os-105-leopard/ (Thanks to the author of this blog). The gist of it was to use Shift + Command + 4 and then use this nifty cross hair thingy to get the screen shot you want. But wait, the cool thing about this is that, once you are done choosing your screenshot area, a camera in the background clicks automatically and then lo and behold, you have a picture on your desktop. This is saved as a .png file.
One little leap for Ilango and Samantha, one giant leap for Mac-Underdogdom!

Why did I create this blog?

So Samantha and I finally decided we were tired of PCs. We wanted to be on the other side of the fence. Samantha is a big fan of the Mac and has practical experience with them. I have tried Ubuntu before but have never really left the Microsoft camp. Well, I am not in the .NET camp. I am very much a Java evangelist. Have been for some years now. In 2007, I installed Ubuntu inside a VMWare Server Virtual Machine on my Windows Vista box. I took this server down a few months ago when I decided that Windows Vista pretended like it was this ancient car trundling along with Ubuntu in a hot desert road.
Well, I am now going to have my own all-Ubuntu system on an older Dell Laptop. This time, it will not be on VMWARE or Sun VirtualBox. As it turns out, Samantha handed me this Jaunty Jackelope CD from work and requested me to install it on her laptop. I said, "Well, let's take her out for a whirl and see what we can do". Samantha's Dell Laptop is a venerable old lady from Dell. She has seen much better days. Lately Windows and our own ways have been wearing her down. It looks like she won't hold up for much longer. And I ended up installing Ubuntu on her laptop.
So going back to why I created this blog, I draw upon my thinking in the earlier paragraphs and my own leanings with Java Technology in general. This is a blog that will record what I think will be useful to at least some in the technology community and some in the non-technology community (there are some people in the past who use computers but have loudly declared " I hate computers..ha ha" ).

In my next article I will tell readers how I got Ubuntu to work with Wireless.