International Mac Podcast

What you need to know about me:

Teenager • Proud American, helping us to take the show back from the British (I kid, I love you all) • Lover of free stuff, and well-integrated Mac software • Downloads applications like crazy, currently has 225, and only paid for 2 (no illegal downloads either). • Podcast junkie, I currently have 57, but I have the IMP all shows feed, so that includes IMP Live and Few and Far Betweenz, as well as any future shows (hint, hint) • A native New Englander living in Los Angeles, but I sometimes use British phrasing because the English language and its variations fascinates me • Big book and audiobook fan. My other podcast fetish is Harry Potter • Loath to write until I start, then I'll go on for about a thousand words if you don't stop me • I like parentheses too.

My self-chosen IMP title is going to be: (drum roll please) Freeware Consultant and Resident Cheapskape! I know, exciting, isn't it!

That's just about it. I worked on a site for myself at school, but my Web Design class is using Dreamweaver, so I can't work on it at home for fear of messing it up and can't work on it at school if we're doing another activity. When I bought the MacUpdate 2008 Holiday Bundle I got RapidWeaver (itself a $79 value) and much more for $49, so I made my website at RapidWeaver. Unless and until I get actual real hosting and a domain name (which costs money–remember the cheapskape part?), it's at http://iwillsite.110mb.com/.

I have an iMac, Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo), which until recently I thought was referred to as a G5, but that is now being called into question. For the really curious, this is the model: http://www.apple.com/support/imac/g5/ (So I guess that makes it a G5? Whatever.) It came with a remote, which turns out to be really handy for turning up the volume as you walk into the kitchen to get tea and down as you get back without blowing out your eardrums. I've got the super-comfy Aluminum Pro Keyboard or whatever it's called, and am in love with my Mighty Mouse. Unfortunately, I broke it, and because I'm a starving student and my parents don't see the problem with a secondhand Dell mouse, bless them, they don't want to replace it. Luckily, I won a wireless mouse in the Mac|Life Donors Choose Challenge! I suppose I have to tell you that it's a M$ mouse though. I also took over my mom's old 15-inch Titanium PowerBook G4, then somehow deleted the essential, and usually invisible, /private folder, so it won't boot. Until the time came when I fix it, it became my Time Machine drive, via FireWire. That's how cheap I am. (It's the Yankee in me. If a Californian's toilet stopped working, they'd replace it. When ours stopped working, we just put a wire in to fix the chain, and who cares if we have to retie the wire every month or so. It's free! Sorry you had to endure that.) Then I trashed my Mac's file system, and persuaded my dad that the only way to fix it was to reinstall Leopard, which wouldn't take unless I reformatted, so we needed an external drive. I'm now the proud owner of a Cavalry 250GB drive, and it is SOOO much quieter than the PowerBook! While he was at it, he got another 1GB of RAM, doubling our existing amount. You can figure out what that was if you want, I'm ashamed to say it aloud.

I also have a "Fatty" Product(red) iPod Nano 3G, and when I recently got it replaced (for free-gotta love those Genii! [Plural of Genius, smart one]), I stuck an invisibleSHIELD (that's the proper capitalization) on it. Despite my misgivings on the first day, I now love it to bits. I can thwack it as hard as I can with my house key and the mark literally rubs off. In the Donors Choose Challenge I also won some very, very shiny V•Moda headphones, which normally go for about $79 I think. They're in-ear, causing me to have my volume at 40% of what it used to be, and really comfy. One tip though: although it looks like you can bend the wire any way you want at the jack connector, you really shouldn't. Trust me.

One last thing: Our beloved co-founder, editor, producer, and all-round great guy Stu Helm gave me a Blue Snowflake microphone for my birthday/Christmas/appearance on IMP, so that's one other thing to add to my tech gear list.

Now for the Apple hardware that I have spirit, and am just saving up for in substance. Those new 15-inch MacBook Pros look pretty cool (oh, who am I kidding, I have GOT to get one!!), and I've got $1200 of the approximately $1800 it would cost me. (Love those educational discounts! Especially when they're cut by $100…) My birthday and Christmas just happened, and an Apple gift card was at the top of my list. (Speaking of which, it's right here: http://www.wishlistr.com/willie/ and it's one of the few services I signed up for as Willie.) I now have about $125 to go, unless I'm going to succumb and get iWork '09 for $49. After that, I'm going for the iTouch (which I keep telling everyone refers to either the iPhone or the iPod Touch, not just the iPod Touch), not sure if it's going to be an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Here's the story of Beiju: he's my dog (and a very cute one too). His name is pronounced bay-joo, with a soft j. It means Kiss in Portuguese, and he does like to do that. He's a black Portuguese Water Dog with an Improper Coat, so he looks more like a lab than the poodle he's supposed to look like. That doesn't mean he's not hypoallergenic though, because even though he sheds more than a 'normal' Portuguese Water Dog, it's the dandruff that counts. (That could be so weird taken out of context.) He's also 20 pounds and 4 inches bigger than he's supposed to be, so contrary to our expectations he can wag his tail and knock stuff of the coffee table. He also doesn't like swimming that much, although he does like to wade. He seems to think water tastes better if you can put your feet in it. And of course, everything's better with dog hair.

Now that you've all gotten bored and wondered off into the ether, I can talk about the new show I might do. I've had the idea for a long time to talk about everything I have on this system. That idea is now this: I will do a show about every single application on my Mac, in alphabetical order. This isn't as hard as it seems, I just set the wonderful Hazel to monitor my ~/Applications folder (I set one up in my User folder, because it's not my computer), my ~/Library/PreferencePanes folder, and my ~/Library/Widgets folder, and make an alias of all that stuff into a Not Reviewed folder. Ideally this would be a screencast show, done with Jing because (1) it's free, and (2) it would force me to keep my ramblings under five minutes per section. Now, this show is not coming till I get motivated to do it, which probably won't happen for a while unless you email me telling me I should do it. will@impodcast.tv. One idea for the name is Free4Me, which I like because it leaves the big gaping loophole that I'm counting on, which is that anything I talk about doesn't have to be free for you, just for me. For instance, the copy of Office my dad's work funded (which is double-loopholed, because if he bought it it would still be free for me), or Pixelmator, which I won from mactips.org for submitting an awesome tip a year ago that somehow hasn't made it there yet, or even the trial version of Auido Hijack Pro which I'm still using for whenever I need to hijack audio - usually so I can mute some Flash game's music and listen to iTunes. Another name is MeeWare, or some variation thereof. As I've said, please email me with suggestions.

Well, that's me, and it only took 1,458 words. Told you I was verbose!