It’s amazing how easy it is to just live with something that really isn’t that great. Case in point, Apple’s recent “crumb-catcher” keyboards have pretty much sucked. Other than the desk-goo aquarium nastiness, the keys have always felt somewhat mushy. There was a certain lack of confidence while using them. That’s changed. I think Apple has redeemed themselves somewhat with the latest iteration, introduced a couple of weeks ago along with the new iMacs.

Someday I’ll probably write something more about the “Drobo”:http://www.datarobotics.com/ but in the meantime, I’ll jump the gun a little show you how I pulled the 500Gb drive from a MyBook in order to use it in my Drobo. This is in no way meant to be a how-to. More like a “how-did.” Make sense? Good. Short version: I bought a Drobo and 2 500Gb drives as a replacement for 2 external drives.

Apple’s Mighty Mouse is my favorite mouse. It feels good, and the little trackball is the best thing ever – when it works. Mine has been acting up for a few weeks now. Suddenly the ball wouldn’t scroll in one or more directions and the rest of the time it would scroll, but with “dead spots.” Tonight it just stopped scrolling downward and no amount of rubbing or yelling at it helped.

I’ve been using Parallels to run Windows on my MacBookPro since the day it was released. Virtualization is pretty sweet, but tends to bring my machine to its knees. And then, after trying “VMWare Fusion”:http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/ for a few days, I uninstalled Parallels without a second thought. The reason? Fusion felt a whole lot faster and more stable. I didn’t have any charts or anything to back that up. But now, “CNET does”:bhttp://crave.

OpenID is a great idea. One that just might not work. “This post”:http://miksovsky.blogs.com/flowstate/2007/08/openid-great-id.html does a pretty good job of summarizing some of the problems. For another example, try logging in to any 37Signals app. I’m reasonably clever but the first few times it took me _forever_ to finally authenticate. Or maybe I’m just not that clever.

The desk in my home office had been attracting clutter for months. I had chords everywhere, unused speakers, unused EyeTV, barely used Mac Mini and 1.25 inches of dust. It’s easy to ignore, and for a while I can. Today however, I snapped. It was with great joy that I yanked every wire, cable, power chord and device and threw everything in a giant pile in a different room. Then, slowly and while taking deep breaths, put only those things back that I actually use.

It’s just so much damn fun playing with web apps. With “Movable Type 4”:http://www.movabletype.org/ released how can a fella resist? **Like:** Static files, thoughtful UI, Multiple blog handling **Don’t Like:** Static files need publishing, Perl can be a _bitch_. Tags, Categories _and_ keywords? Menus should be clicked to open – not hovered. I could not get DBD::mysql to build on the CentOS box my site was on so I dropped a quick Ubuntu slice at “Slicehost”:http://slicehost.

Quicksilver is the best launcher available. It’s got triggers, plugins, every conceivable option you could think of, third party contributions, and it’s free. And yet… Yesterday I switched from Quicksilver to Launchbar. Why’s that, you ask? In this case it’s because Quicksilver’s 43 quadzillion features haven’t stopped it from crashing pretty regularly. Like 3 or 4 times a day regularly. Turns out that LaunchBar is faster, easier to understand and has all of the features I actually use.

After hearing a story about companies making micro loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries, I ran into Kiva.org. Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored.

Stop whatever it is you’re doing and go read/watch Ethan Schoonover’s series of posts on keeping your Mac’s desktop all tidy and distraction-free. After that, do every single thing he said.

I bought Ingmar Bergman’s last film, Saraband, the day it was available on DVD. I never opened it, deciding instead to hold it until Bergman’s death. So now, it is both fortunate and terribly unfortunate that I can finally open the package and watch the final film of a truly great film-maker.

I’ve considered myself a blogger since I first set up jackbaty.com in 1999. At first, I did what everyone else did; linked to things I thought were interesting, occasionally throwing in a sentence or two about them as well. That was it. That was blogging. Then, for a while, I tried writing longer, original-content posts, but that didn’t last. Seems original thought isn’t my bag. What I’ve realized is that I’m still doing pretty much the same thing today as I was 8 years ago – and it’s boring.