Steam Coming to Mac!

It might seem like PCs get to have all the fun, but that changes in April.

Steam is coming to Mac, and bringing Valve's game catalog with it. No longer will you have to boot into Windows to enjoy Team Fortress 2, Half-Life, or Portal. Valve has even promised to release Portal 2 on Mac at the same time as it is released for PC.
And the best part? If you've bought a Valve game on a PC, you'll be able to get it free for your Mac. You can even pick up playing where you left off.

Now hopefully the other game companies will also realize that since about 2004 people have actually been buying Macs.

Congratulations!

A hearty congratulations to Brazil on the launch of the state-of-the-art PlayStation 2! It could be yours for a mere 462$.

Thank You, Internet

I came across a little piece of gold on the internet yesterday, and I thought I'd share: Emails From Crazy People. Absolutely unbelievable, you can't make this stuff up.

I don't think I've had this much fun/horror (Forror? Funor? Horfun?) since People of Walmart.

A Brief and Completely Subjective Snow Leopard Review

I bit the bullet the other day and picked up my very own copy of OS 10.6 Snow Leopard.
First of all, despite what Apple initially said, you can get the cheap ($29.99USD/$34.99CDN) upgrade and install it directly over OS 10.4. You don't need to upgrade to 10.5 first, or buy the "box set."

So, with a quiet prayer for all my vital data, I slipped the new disk into my 2006 iMac, and hit "install." Right off the bat, Snow Leopard seems to be an improvement. Just the installation process seemed to go much faster than previous versions, taking about an hour and a quarter from start to finish, including updates post-install.

Second, Apple claimed you would regain at least 6GB of hard drive space (on your system disk) after installation, and they were being conservative. I gained 11.3GB, going from 165.55GB free to 176.85GB. That in itself will be worth something to anyone who can go through bytes as fast as I can.

Once all the updates are installed, the system also boots noticeably faster, in the 45-60 second range, down from about 75-90 seconds in 10.4. Shutdown time also seems to be shorter, but not as significantly.

Visually Snow Leopard is very similar to Leopard, so anyone using 10.5 will feel right at home, though those coming from 10.4 will notice some differences. Coverflow is available in the finder, and appears much smoother than it was in 10.5. Stacks are now much more usable, since you can navigate through folders inside them. Overall, the system generally feels "snappier." Folders and menus seem to open and close more quickly, most programs (especially Apple ones) feel more responsive in general.

Safari 4 may actually replace Firefox 3.5 as my default browser, that's how sweet it is. Again, Apple seems to have gone for something with a "snappier" feel, I don't know the actual numbers, but Safari now just feels faster. Also if an individual tab crashes in Safari 4, only that tab is affected, the rest carry on their merry ways.

A few minor gripes: since the upgrade, I've been having some minor problems with Pages 2.0.2 and Word 2004. Pages crashes whenever I try to open a Word '04 document, and Word '04 takes forever to open. Also, you'll be prompted to download a patch before Word will open, and it won't open without that patch.


Well, I'll update this as I use the system more, but so far it looks like upgrading to 10.6 breathed a little extra life into a (recently out-of-warranty) machine. Is it a complete system-makeover that will dazzle you with shiny new features? Not on the surface (the experts tell me it's really quite different from 10.5 under the skin), but it feels a little bit better in pretty much every way. So, if you're using an Intel-based Mac, and don't have the cash (or credit) for a hardware upgrade, it is absolutely worth it to upgrade to Snow Leopard. It won't take all the age off of your computer (or its measly 1GB of RAM), but it will make it feel a little bit better.

Fuck You, Toronto

I'm on strike.
While picketing today (at the dump), I found out something interesting that would've been good to know 3 weeks ago.
One of the city's demands is that part-time recreation workers (a.k.a. me + 10 000) would be limited to working 20 hours per week, down from the 40 we are currently allowed.

Excuse me?

Twenty hours per week, at 10-12 dollars per hour, minus union dues and pension contribution and income tax.

We're already the lowest-paid city union, and now the city is saying that they won't provide their workers with a living wage. That they don't believe that their hard working part-time staff deserve to be able to support themselves off a city wage.

When David Miller was elected, didn't he say something about how "everyone deserves a living wage, regardless of their education"?


I'm almost better off on strike pay than with that bullshit.

Ohh North Korea!

So North Korea has apparently decided that they are just not isolated enough in the world. They decided to solve this the way any rational nation solves a dilemma. Nuke it from orbit! Or, in this case, from underground. This time they managed to not embarrass themselves with a failed test.

So, how did the world react? Besides feeling jilted that North Korea never calls anymore, the world was offended that the black sheep of the Korea siblings would so blatantly ignore a UN resolution. Yes, the world has apparently been asleep or stoned for the past 50 years. The world did, however, leap into decisive action; promising to get started post-haste on drafting another resolution. Surely that would put the North Koreans in their place!

Where I Live

Hey everyone, just thought I'd toss up this picture I've had kicking around for a while. Took it in winter 2008, during the lunar eclipse.