Category Archives: Geekery

Technology, Apple, Battlestar Galactica, software reviews, stuff like that

Jul 1 2011

Keep Your Mac’s Desktop Organised with this Wallpaper

I like to use my Mac’s desktop for temporary files, but I also like to keep it organised.  I recently came across some desktop pictures that divide the screen into different areas but couldn’t find one I liked for my Mac, so I’ve created one myself.  This has the ‘inbox’ on the right which is where the Mac plonks items downloaded direct to the desktop.  There are plenty of others out there for Windows users!   It’s optimised for 1920×1200 pixel screens but works on smaller sizes (it’s designed for my 21″ iMac at 1680×1050 pixels, not sure what I did to make it bigger, but looks great).  Feel free to distribute this for non-commercial purposes if you find it useful.

Right click on the image and choose ‘Save Linked File As…’  Then right-click on the downloaded file and select ‘Set Desktop Picture.’

Jun 30 2011

How I Use the iPad 2

Image representing iPad as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

Just over 2 months ago I was given a 32Gb Wifi iPad as a very generous gift by some friends.  Since then I’ve been surgically attached to it and it’s time to share some thoughts.

Geeks often get off on specs which is natural when looking at hardware, but specs are becoming irrelevant as speeds have become so good and ‘the cloud’ is becoming ubiquitous.  The most useful questions are, “Can I justify it?  Will I use it?”  Everyone is different, but in this post I’ll talk about how I’m using it day-to-day and week-to-week.   Continue reading →

Apr 28 2011

Review of STM Skinny for iPad 2 Case

Some lovely people gave me an iPad 2 for my birthday (am I the luckiest guy alive or what?) and I was really keen to get some protection around it. An iPad 1 soft case was an emergency short-term solution – do you know how hard it is to find iPad 2 cases in this city? Anyway, a couple of days later I wandered into JB Hifi, laid my eyes on the STM skinny for iPad 2, and knew that was the case for me.

Continue reading →

Jan 21 2011

SugarSync

Image representing SugarSync as depicted in Cr...

Image via CrunchBase

I’ve been using the free version of DropBox for a while now.  I’ve linked it to my documents folder and sits quietly in the background keeping all my working and important documents backed up and accessible from my iPhone – very handy.  And if the house ever gets burned down and takes my onsite backups with it, at least I have the important stuff online.  I also have my password keeper synchronised between my and my wife’s Macs so that I don’t have to manage two different databases, and my own passwords are on hand if I happen to be using her Macbook.  Sweet.  But today I discovered something even better.  Continue reading →

Jan 18 2011

2010 Blog in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

The Leaning Tower of Pisa has 296 steps to reach the top. This blog was viewed about 1,200 times in 2010. If those were steps, it would have climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa 4 times

In 2010, there were 64 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 14 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 4mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was December 8th with 51 views. The most popular post that day was Stories from India: My Undoing.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, twitter.com, ellenbrookbaptist.org.au, marked35.blogspot.com, and goodbyecouch.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for how tsunamis and floods are the same, goodbye couch, iphone photography, why small groups?, and bento sermon.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Stories from India: My Undoing December 2010

2

Filemaker Bento: a user review August 2010

3

Goodbye Couch! Fitness November 2010
2 comments

4

Being a Small Church Pastor… November 2010
4 comments

5

How Would Jesus Vote? August 2010
4 comments

Jan 14 2011

Mobile Bible Apps

I was really excited to hear my favourite Bible software has finally landed in the iPhone App Store.  Accordance is a real work horse for me when I’m studying the Bible, and having those resources on my iPhone is a real boon.  For many years my main mobile Bible app has been Bible Reader, which is an cross platform excellent phone/PDA app I’ve used since my Palm days.  All of this got me thinking about other options, so being on holidays I thought I’d download a few free apps and take them for a spin.  These are all cross-platform, but my assessment is only for the iPhone and Mac (where relevant).  Scroll to the bottom of the post for my top recommendations. Continue reading →