Stranger Fruit

Day 5

Posted by John Lynch on March 11, 2009
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It’s Day 5 of my transition to using OS X and all is well. Once I got used to the different ways of doing things, things have been running remarkably smoothly. The trackpad on the Macbook has taken a bit of getting used to, but I now find myself pawing impotently at the pad on my Dell when I need to use it. Go figure. I don’t think I’ll be going back to a non-Apple product.

Some things I like:

  • Software installation & deletion is a breeze.
  • Sleep mode – being able to put the machine in a sleeve for a few hours, carry it around, and reawaken it in a flash without it overheating is a dream.
  • Speed- starting programs seems a hell of a lot faster than in Windows.
  • Spotlight.
  • Networking – linking to my Windows boxen was a snap.
  • Bookpedia – seriously … scanning barcodes using the iSight is amazing.

Some things I’m still getting used to:

  • The trackpad
  • Keyboard shortcuts being different
  • Converting file formats

The file format thing is a little annoying. While Keynote will import my Powerpoint files, it screws up some of the charts and it takes time to fix things … more time than I have in a semester. I’m thinking it will be next semester before I will be totally independent of Windows. (Yeah, I do realize I can get Powerpoint for the Mac … it’s just going to take awhile before the seriously discounted version ships to me from Microsoft via ASU).

I’ve managed to find software that does most of the things I need to do. The only thing I don’t have is an HTML editor like Adobe Contribute (which I use for my classes). Any suggestions so that I can avoid hand-coding with BBedit or such?

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Comments

  1. #1 John S. Wilkins
    March 11, 2009

    It screws up the charts because you did them in Excel and it is importing as a linked graphic from PowerPoint. Since that’s dynamic, it can’t convert it. But if you copy the chart and paste it directly into Keynote, it will remain a static graphic (or better, do the charts in Keynote or Numbers).

  2. #2 Paul Hutch
    March 11, 2009

    Try out the OS-X version of KompoZer an open source WYSIWIG HTML editor.

    http://kompozer.net/

  3. #3 peter
    March 11, 2009

    well, there is Adobe Contribute…;-) or slightly cheaper might be RapidWeaver. for free there’s Seamonkey or nVu.

  4. #4 John Lynch
    March 11, 2009

    @ Paul & Peter

    Problem is that access has to be through SFTP – the programs you mention only have FTP. I’ll take a look at Rapidweaver.

  5. #5 dean
    March 11, 2009

    “I do realize I can get Powerpoint for the Mac”
    Latex+Beamer+texshop?

  6. #6 peter
    March 12, 2009

    late additions to the list of possible html editors

    espresso,
    coda,

    coda seems to cover the sftp requirement.
    both are happy cocoa style mac apps. though espresso is in beta.

    personally I use textmate for everything that I don’t use emacs for, not free, but worth every penny.

    panic’s stuff is good, transmit is a very popular ftp client at my company.

  7. #7 peter
    March 12, 2009

    bugger, the URLs didn’t make it past your filter.

    macrabbit.com/espresso
    http://www.panic.com/coda

    coda really seems to be your best shot.

    have run into second content filter that will not allow me to post a second comment too soon… sigh…

  8. #8 John Lynch
    March 12, 2009

    @ Peter

    Thanks. I’ll checkout Coda.

  9. #9 peter
    March 13, 2009

    let me know how it turns out. as I say, out of pure masochism I tend to do html stuff by hand in textmate. I’m pedantically anal about semantic construction of html and I have yet to find a wysiwyg editor that maintains that very well. that and it’s more fun to do the javascript programming that way… frameworks give me hives…

  10. #10 John Lynch
    March 13, 2009

    @ Peter

    Coda is not wysiwyg. It integrates the site management, SFTP, and editing nicely but you have to preview using external browsers. It would be possible to duplicate it all with BBedit and some scripts.

    It’s looking more and more like there is no equivalent to Contribute (beyond the OSX version which Adobe seems to have abandoned).

    I’ll muddle through :)

  11. #11 SteveN
    March 13, 2009

    I’ve made the Win -> Mac switch just this last week too. I unpleasantly discovered that all of the .swf files embedded in my PPTS do not function in Keynote. In fact, my Mac can’t read my old .swf’s at all, even as stand-alone files. This was a big bummer, b/c I use the .swf’s to illustrate so many dynamic things during lectures.

    Everything else is a plus, but this problem did feel like a bit of regression.

  12. #12 Sean
    March 22, 2009

    Use whichever editor works for you, save the pages, and upload with the Mac secure shell.

    Some links. Strangely, Rutgers provided the first best explanations (as found in a search engine).

    http://sas-it.rutgers.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=119

    http://www.nbcs.rutgers.edu/ssh/ssh_osx.php3

    Interesting blog you have. I found it as I’ve been cruising evolution-related blogs again lately.

    Cheers.