Friday, August 20, 2010

The Mac

I've always liked PCs more than Macs. Main reason is that I'm a programmer. I write programs and historically, there've always been more programming languages tools and more access to the machine for the PC.


What's interesting in the last month and a half for my new job, I've been using a Macbook Pro. At first, I hated it. I couldn't get used to the different keyboard layout for something simple as the control key. I also had to get used to the bash shell as opposed to 4nt. Of course, since I'm using this for work, there's the usual Microsoft Office applications. There's also Eclipse so that I can do PHP and Java programming.


I have to learn Mac, Cocoa, XCode, iPhone, and iPad programming. Lots of fun ahead of me.


One of the main thing I've missed from the PC world is SlickEdit. That's a great editor and for a programmer, there isn't a more essential tool. After the OS, everyone has an opinion for the editor. I tried SlickEdit for the Mac, but SlickEdit is an X11 application and feels second class. I would have loved to find something compatible, but after searching for Brief on a Mac, I finally gave up. I decided to switch. I'm currently trying out TextMate. We'll see how that works.


One thing I realized is that as good as the Mac is for content creation, it is still a Unix box underneath it all. It is the first really good usable Unix desktop. Most users don't realize they're using a Unix box. I'm also quite surprised that after installing a bunch of stuff, I'm using only 90GB! On my Windows 7 box in comparison, after installing just the base OS, 15GB was already used up. After installing my applications, dev tools, 200GB was used. It isn't a fair comparison, I know.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Reading, Doing the Laundry, Missing My Beloved

I wonder where she is and what's she's doing now. Although I bet she's sleeping now. It has been hard to get on these days without her, especially with recent events on the other personal fronts. I got a chance to talk with her on the phone, but it wasn't the same as holding her and have her fall asleep in my arms. I wish her sweet dreams as she sleeps with her family. I had a long day at work yesterday. It wasn't particularly hard, just long. We started the day at noon and I got home around 11:30pm. It wouldn't have been bad except I had stayed up late the night before working on the computer. I knew I had to work the next day, but I couldn't help it. I started getting these ideas In my head and I wanted to get them down and work on them before I forget. On the other hand, I was very productive and got some research done. I guess I am paying for that now. But as I think about it, I would definitely do it again. That's how I know how much I like doing something.