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Mac Make: Macbook Pouches
As I’m preparing to spend away all of my money for a Macbook my classes require, I’m starting to think about protecting it. Not just protecting it, but protecting it in style. I like the custom made Macbook pouches on Etsy because I know that if I buy one, I’m probably never going to see someone with the same pouch. There may be a handful of others out there, but they’re so few and far between that you can consider your purchase unique.
fernfiddlehead has a barrage of Macbook envelopes that look excellent. There’s a simple pattern to their dimensions, but the fabrics available are vibrant and exciting:
This one has a matching power cable pouch.
Mac Make: Key Jewelry
Etsy seller creativedexterity‘s Mac jewelry made my heart jump. How awesome is a command key tie pin, an escape key ring, or eject earrings? Here are a couple other pictures to whet your appetite:
My bank account is glad I don’t have anybody to buy jewelry for right now.
Canon 5D Mark II and MacBook Pro Make Excellent Team
If you’re looking for a compact, efficient solution to shooting and editing high definition video, you’d probably be very interested in Florent Porta’s work with the new Canon 5D Mark II and a Macbook Pro. The video above (best appreciated at the Vimeo page or at Dailymotion) was shot in three days and edited in two. This was released shortly after the last Macbook/Macbook Pro announcement, so it likely wasn’t on the latest Macbook Pro.
With the significant upgrade of the new Macbooks and the Canon 5D bringing fantastic high quality photo and video to consumers, a few thousand dollars certainly goes a lot farther and a lot lighter than other shooting and editing solutions. Some suggest that tethering for video might even work, but there doesn’t seem to be any real solid confirmation on that.
Mac vs. PC Video
Despite the many times I’ve had the “Mac is better than PC” argument, I’ve never had a fight break out.
Youtube Link
- Via Neatorama
Folklore: Burrell’s Exit
We’ve been following the stories of Burrell Smith for a while now and gotten to know him and how he thinks. Of course, Burrell was not the only person invested in the Macintosh’s success. The sheer amount of work put into the project could not have been achieved by the team if it weren’t for Steve Jobs’ special brand of encouragement. Andy Hertzfeld’s stories describe Jobs’ powers of persuasion using an analogy to Star Trek: the reality distortion field.
Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field convinced people to agree to absurd deadlines, work much harder, and even agree to stay at Apple when they really wanted to quit. Burrell watched his colleagues at Apple try in vain to leave. Eventually, Burrell came up with the perfect plan to “nullify the reality distortion field” for when it was his time to quit:
“I’ll just walk into Steve’s office, pull down my pants, and urinate on his desk. What could he say to that? It’s guaranteed to work.”
Read on at Folklore.org for the exciting conclusion of Burrell C. Smith’s tenure at Apple: Are You Gonna Do It? [Folklore.org]
Vintage Coke Machine Office
Craftster.org member DogGrrl posted pictures of their excellent room, painstakingly painted and decorated to look like a diner. Just the murals are impressive enough to warrant it a second look, but buried on the fourth page of the thread is a link to DogGrrl’s office:
A vintage Coke machine on the outside…
and an impressive iMac house on the inside!
DogGrrl says:
“To compliment my new dining room mural I bought an old unworking coke machine, gutted it and then sent it to a friend to weld some shelves onto it. Tada! Here is my new new computer cabinet! The Pepsi and Coke picnic coolers I am using to house my files/office stuff.”
Well done indeed. There’s a nice keyboard tray in there, a shelf for the printer, space for files and a phone, and the inside of the door is neatly multi-purposed as a magnetic calendar and note holder!
Survive Time Warner’s Viacom Blackout with TVUPlayer
With Viacom demanding higher fees for their channels to be run on Time Warner Cable, it looks like you might have to turn to the Internet for your Colbert Report and Dora the Explorer. That time might come as soon as tonight, with a blackout on Time Warner Cable and Brighthouse Network customers threatened for tonight at midnight.
Fear not. With TVUPlayer you can watch most of the 19 channels that might be removed if an agreement can’t be reached. At least you can watch the key ones: Comedy Central, Spike TV, Nickelodeon and MTV are all available to stream. The quality’s not great, but it’s better than nothing isn’t it?
Folklore: Creative Problem Solving
Now that you’ve been introduced to Burrell Smith, you can get a feel for the kind of eccentric behind the original Macintosh. This is a charming guy, a hard worker, and a creative character. These types of people are the foundation of Apple’s success through innovation.
While it’s great to read these examples of creative things that these employees have done, it’s much more valuable to understand how they got about becoming this type of person. The story “Make a Mess, Clean it Up!” from Folklore.org provides that key analysis using a lesson in Burrell’s style of video gaming. Notice that even in the first few paragraphs, the idea of innovation comes to mind immediately.
“Working 90 hours a work week requires frequent, and highly effective, work breaks. In the center of Macintosh work area in Bandley 3 we had a ping pong table, a nice stereo system, and a Defender video game machine. We found that competitive play gave us a jolt of adrenaline, and a refreshed mind-set when we resumed work. We also learned a lot about our coworkers and how they excel during competition. While playing Defender one day I got some great insight into how Burrell accelerates his own learning process.”
Make a Mess, Clean it Up! [Folklore.org]
- Source Folklore.org”
Folklore: An Introduction to Burrell Smith
I love hearing and reading stories about the people who made great things happen. In much the same way that I enjoyed “Classic Feynman” and shared the book with many friends, I share with you the beginning of the Apple Macintosh. Andy Hertzfeld’s website, Folklore.org, chronicles the early days of Apple Computer and the creation of the Macintosh. It does more than that though, it brings back all the fun had in creating it, and gives us a first look in the original Cult of Mac: its creators.
Quite a few of the stories follow Burrell Smith. Originally hired as an Apple II service technician, Burrell was an amazing hardware engineer and generally crazy guy. It was his hardware and circuitry work that made the original Macintosh a reality.
“I’ll Be Your Best Friend” introduces you to one of the key men behind the Mac through his introduction to Andy Hertzfeld:
“Toward the end of my first week as an Apple employee in August 1979, I noticed that someone had left a black binder on my desk, with a hand-written title that read, “Apple II: Principles of Operation”. It contained a brilliant, concise description of how the Apple II hardware worked, reverently explaining details of Woz’s epic, creative design hacks, in a clearer fashion than I’d ever read before. I didn’t know who left it there, but the title page said it was written by “Burrell C. Smith”.
Later that day, in the late afternoon, I was approached by a young, animated, slightly nervous guy with long, straight, blond hair, who entered my cubicle and walked right up to me.“
I’ll Be Your Best Friend [Folklore.org]
- Source folklore.org”
Nostalgia: Shufflepuck Café
For those of you who remember the good old days of the Error Bomb and the SE-30, you may remember the old Broderbund game Shufflepuck Café. You were thrust into rough and tumble space bar, clearly the outsider, forced to prove yourself in a true game of wits and agility: computer air hockey. It was a simple game for simple times: a handful of wacky alien characters, mild nudity, and an animated screen crack when your opponent scored. Ah to go back for one more round.
But you’d need a vintage Mac for that, and you threw yours out with your velour leisure suit years ago. Fret not! There are a few free possibilities for a quick match on OS X! None line up perfectly with the original, and for that I am exploring the avenues of emulation, but in a pinch these will do.
TuxPuck is perhaps the most reminiscent of the original, with a character closely resembling Princess Bejin. It is, however, limited in the characters you can play against and might need a bit of massaging to get it to play.
Shufflepuck REVOLUTION provides a bit more variety in the way of characters, including Woz and Jobs as opponents, but it’s also updated the system with 3D graphics. Unlike TuxPuck, Shufflepuck REVOLUTION insists on playing in fullscreen, which is a bit off-putting if you don’t know that right away.
The quest for the perfect OS X Shufflepuck match continues!
