I’m in one of those annoying places where my brain is full of project and code ideas, and my hard disk is full of half-completed projects.

While I’m really NOT in a position to start hacking away on yet another item, especially when 99% of my active code-writing cycles is going into Spot Specific, there’s some good ideas that I really want to get out/alive.

So, I’m wondering – not dissimilar to the Shot of Jaq contribution scratch-your-itch wikithingy – should I just get them out there (even on said scratchpad, or my own site) and let them roll with the punches, see what happens.  I’m in the fortunate position where time is the one resource I’m lacking, but I’ve got pretty much everything else that I could need. Hosting coming out of my ears, spare hardware, etc. Could probably even muster some geeks and support workers to help with the project…

Anyway, what should one do when you’re sure the software you’re thinking of would make the open source world a better place, but you don’t have time to write it?

Suggestions welcome.

-Dx 

Recently a number of annoying things have happened to me:

• I have been running a fever of 101F, which is relatively annoying; but also spending most of my time feeling like I’m freezing to death, which makes it worse.
• My Phone (yes, I found it) has stopped permitting any traffic but proxied HTTP over 3G. This is annoying, as I did most of my work over ssh tunnels when working from “out and about” and am “real” IPless at home for the next few weeks due to moving house last week.
• I have to move house, again, very shortly – and am still recovering from the last one. (see first point)
• I have lost a somewhat valuable parcel in the post.
• Hardware Death.
• My toothache came back.
• Leopard build 4a499 stop seeing my internal speakers, only seeing the Digital (Optical) Output or Headphones on the 15″MBP.
• Organisationally, things are getting somewhat busy, to say the least.

Also, recently a number of good things have happened to me:

• The fever broke today.
• Um, er, no, my phone is still shit. I don’t think T-Mobile liked me doing over my daily limit the day before yesterday :-/
• New house is nice and big, newer house is bigger, the move is shorter, and my new landlord is offering to help!
• A different, equally valuable parcel came today.
• DD & VMs FTW!
• I remembered where I packed the temporary filling kit.
• Leopard build 4a500 which was deployed via the shinynew software update system fixed the problem, at the expense of a 505MiB download. The new installer thing is good and worked very well, better than I expected for a first release.
• via schwuk, and rediscovered mindmapping

Now, if anyone passing has a pack of Co-codamol 500/30’s, could they just drop into #19 and give me 4, I’ve got a cracking headache.

-Dx

There was a recent round of this on #lugradio recently, and I kept stum, as I’d recently reformatted my MBP (to upgrade to Leopard seed4a499 [hurrah for ADC]). Since then I’ve gotten around to restoring my backups, and I can now present you with my menubar, for those who care.

In order, that lot are:

• Adium

Multi-protocol instant messenger client. Frequently can sign into “services” when the native clients fail for unknown reasons. (eg: MSN wrong password messages, etc)

• Skype

I use this a lot less than I used to, but that’ll change come LugRadio season.

• Pathfinder

It’s like finder, but sane. Although, in all fairness, finder is better in Leopard than Tiger, but I still like it – and it’s been updated for “improved Leopard compatibility” which is nice

• Caffeine

Prevents Mac OS sending various bits to sleep, including screensaver and screen-dimming. Useful for presentations and the like, and when watching movies

• ByteController

Yet Another iTunes Remote Control. But this one is free.

• QuickSilver

QuickSilver is everything that Spotshite should have been. Is there any OS X users out there who aren’t using it?!

• Spirited Away

Hide those idle apps, fully configurable, highly usable. Considerably less annoying than I first thought it would be when I heard about it.

• Power Manager

Like the standard Apple Power menu, configure on and off times, etc. But about 22million times more useful with multiple intelligent schedules and, this is the killer, Automatorable! It has a few TINY cosmetic issues with the Leopard transparent menubar, but nothing that stops it working.

• Growl

Highly configurable alert messages, a la libalert or those MSNtoaster things on Windows. Growl support is almost everywhere it should be now, except in the OS itself. Cummon Apple, you spunked the cash on CoverFlow, now buy Growl.

• iStat Menus

If you’re more about the widgets than the menucruft they do a nice widget version too, and a lite version for those short on RAM. iStat tells you pretty much all you could want to know about the core of you Apple. Perfect for your inner German.

• Sound Source

Useful for people who have USB headsets and like like – easy control over assorted sound hardware, etc.

• Spaces

One of the new Leopard features. Virtual Desktops rock. It’s not as pretty as VirtueDesktops, but on the other hand it works properly!

• WiFi

Standard. Yawn. Shiny Replacement Suggestions welcome.

• Modem

Standard. Yawn. Shiny Replacement Suggestions welcome.

• Displays

Standard tool, but I switch displays alot, Apple Cinema at work, stealing Essk’s 1080p monitor at home. Shiny Replacement Suggestions welcome.

• VPN

Standard. Yawn. Shiny Replacement Suggestions welcome.

• Power Status

Standard. Yawn. Shiny Replacement Suggestions welcome.

• Bluetooth

Standard. Yawn. Shiny Replacement Suggestions welcome. (I’ve tried the one in iStat, and didn’t like it)

• Volume

Even with Sound Source, I still like to keep the standard volcontrol on hand.

• Day And Time (with seconds)

Really useful when using Remote Desktop/VNC to see if the link has dropped and, yes, it wastes bandwidth, it’s good for seeing roughly how long screen updates take

• MenuCalendarClock (iCal Edition)

A simple “dropdown” menu of the current month, but with all my appointments from iCal (and thus, googlecalendar) and birthdays, etc. all at the touch of a, well, mouse button really.

• Spotlight

SpotShite. I really like to disable this, but it appears that the whole help system in Leopard is tied into spotlight searches, etc, which kind of discourages me from doing so on Leopard. I’ll experiment more upon final release, I fear….

Others, your personal favourites and general “Why aren’t you running $blah”s welcomed… and, yes, that is well over half my screen, even at 1440×900 – Growl sits “just left” of my iSight, and many applications do hide the icons however, I’m not overly worried, the Apple Cinema Display hanging off the DVI port keeps my real-estate up.
-Dx

I’ve not made it any secret that I’m a cross platform geek – I’ve been a Mac user long before the Intel switch, and have made the point of not hiding it. I’ve still got machines at home that barely boot OS-X, and Tiger is way beyond their abilities. However, this MacBookPro15″ isn’t one of those

I’ve decided to start making notes about what I like on Leopard, because I was presented with a copy of 499 recently from a co-worker, some will be practical, some will be bling (like this one), some will even be in other operating systems, possibly And with that in mind I may also do “Things I Like About Windows Vista”, but I doubt it.

So – Part 1:

Dynamic Reflecty Bits.

The dock is new, it’s shiny. It’s SHINY and NEW!

When you move things behind it, they show through; when you move things above it, they reflect. Real Time.

See my (rather slow) updating of the LugRadioLive 2007 Video mirrors.