Digitivity » Mac

GeoGebra: Free Software to Learn Algebra and Geometry

Digitivity — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:42:08 +0000

Posted in Images

GeoGebra is free Java-based software to learn and teach algebra and geometry. Installation packages are available for Windows, Linux/Ubuntu, and Mac. Related posts:

Steve Jobs Dies An American Hero

Digitivity — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:14:42 +0000

Steve Jobs passed away at his home. Regardless of your preference in computers or phones, he had an amazing record of innovation over the years:

He changed personal computers from a hobby to a practical reality with the original Apple computer.
He revolutionized graphic design and brought forth desktop publishing with the Macintosh.
The iMac brought the Internet to many people for the first time.
MP3 players existed before the iPod, but the iPod made playing MP3′s easy.
The iPhone was many people’s first smartphone.
Finally, the iPad made tablets practical and easy to use without a stylus.

People view him as a hero because he went from nothing to being one of the richest men in the world, all the while letting people do computing tasks they weren’t able to before.

Most people don’t know that Jobs was the son of a Syrian immigrant named Abdulfattah John Jandali. He was adopted into a working-class California family. His birth sister was writer Mona Simpson, also considered a genius in her field.

Keep Notes and Stay Organized with Zim Desktop Wiki

Digitivity — Tue, 18 May 2010 18:50:19 +0000

Someone complemented me the other day that I’m pretty organized. I’m going to be sharing what I use to keep organized in upcoming blogposts.

For one, I use something called Zim. It’s a desktop wiki program.

A wiki is a user-editable, interlinked set of information, like Wikipedia, or the Portland Pattern Repository, the first and original wiki.

While there are a bunch of free wiki packages, they mostly require a webserver. Zim, by contrast, runs on your computer like a normal program.

The reason it’s handier than web-based wikis is:

You don’t have to install a bunch of stuff
Your files are immediately available to you (it doesn’t require a database)
You don’t have to press “Edit” to start writing. You just click whereever you want and start typing.
To make a new page, you just right click an existing page and select “New Sub Page”

Here’s just a few of the features:

As stated above, to take notes, you just start typing. When you have enough that it needs to be more organized, just press Ctrl + a number from 1 to 5 to make the current line into a heading from level 1 to 5.
You can make text bold, italic, underlined, and preformatted, as well.
Once you have more text than comfortably fits on a page, just create a new page (Ctrl+N). You can drag and drop your pages to form a hierarchy.
An clickable index of pages is displayed on the left side of the Zim window. All of the notes you see at one time make up a “notebook“. You can create multiple notebooks.
You can search your notebooks, and there’s a task list feature as well (a subject for a future blog post).
Zim saves your notes in plain wiki markup format. You can take the content of your notes files and paste them into a web-based wiki, depending upon the syntax your wiki uses. DokuWiki, for one, is mostly compatible with Zim.

Zim is a work in progress, so keep backups and don’t have your own source of information be your Zim notes. That said, Zim’s a really handy method of organization a lot of information.

Installing Zim

Install Zim on Ubuntu/Linux

Zim is available in the Ubuntu software repositories (make sure they’re all enabled). You can install Zim from the Software Center or click here from Firefox to install it. Otherwise enter the following from a terminal:

sudo apt-get install zim

Install Zim on Windows

A version of Zim for Windows is available here.

The automated installer is at version 0.28. A more current version (0.42) is avaible, but you have to install requirements yourself.

Install Zim on Apple Mac OS/X

First, install Darwin Ports for OS/X.

Then type this in a Terminal to install Zim:

%  cd /opt/local/bin/portslocation/dports/zim
%  sudo port install zim

More information on the Mac port of Zim is here.

Currently it’s at version 0.28.

Install Free Software on Mac OS/X with Darwin Ports

Digitivity — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:11:50 +0000

In case you didn’t know, Mac OS/X is a complete UNIX environment underneath the hood. What this means for you is that there’s a lot of free and open source (F/OSS) software that you can install on on your Mac.

Darwin Ports is a system that lets you do that easily.

A “port” is a migration of software from one platform (like Windows) to another (like Linux).

Normally, you’d have to ask/beg a software company to release Mac versions (like Microsoft deigns to do for Office). And sometimes they don’t (as in Internet Explorer for Mac, now discontinued).

But with open source software, you have the software’s source code, so you can build it into a runnable program yourself. Needless to say, that can be complicated, so some folks have created a system to let you build selected programs easily.

Darwin Ports is a (growing) collection of software which has been tweaked to run on the Mac. You enter a command, and it builds both your desired program, and any other programs which yours may depend upon.

Installing Darwin Ports

First, download the Darwin Ports installer.

Note: the download page asks for your e-mail address. I can’t vouch for how it’s used, so use a throwaway address if you’re antsy.

You may or may not need to install XCode from the Optional Installs folder on your OS/X disc.

After running the installer, update your Darwin Ports by entering the following in a terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal):

sudo port -d selfupdate

Hit Enter and type your password when prompted (hit Enter again). Note: “sudo” means “execute this command as the admin user”.

Installing software with Darwin Ports

Once Darwin Ports is installed, you can install software packages. You can either search for a package in the search box at the Darwin Ports homepage or you can browse the list of ports in categories (also on the Darwin homepage).

To install a software package, you generally change to the directory of that package and use the "port install" command:

cd /opt/local/bin/portslocation/dports/frozenbubble2
sudo port install frozenbubble2

The Darwin Ports site has a little two-line command summary that tells you exactly what to type on each software package’s webpage, for example, see the one for Frozen Bubble.

Other OS/X ports systems

Other Mac ports systems include MacPorts and Fink.

Like many competing open source projects, there’s a fair amount of sparring among them. The MacPorts people think of themselves as the original ports for Mac, and Darwin Ports as an interloper. I can’t settle that, but generally:

MacPorts seems to have more ports than Darwin Ports
Darwin Ports seems a little easier to work with
Fink is supposed to have the most ports of all, but the versions are somewhat older.

Frozen Bubble: A Fun and Addictive Marbles Game for Windows, Linux, and Mac

Digitivity — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:27:06 +0000

Frozen Bubble is a fun game for wasting time while you’re waiting for TPS reports to print.

No long-winded strategy, no enemy aliens, no unwieldy artillery targeting. Just shooting marbles mindlessly.

Playing Frozen Bubble

After you open up Frozen Bubble

Click on “Start 1P Game” (one player game), you’re presented with this:

One player game

You basically have a bunch of marbles (“frozen bubbles”) stuck like icicles at the top of the playing area. Your job is to get them to fall down.

You do that by aiming the shot marble you’re given at the bottom of the display upwards. Marbles of a given color dislodge all continuously touching marbles of that same color. So aim red for red, green for green. The marble beneath your shot marble tells you the color of the next one (for planning purposes).

Left and right arrow keys move the aimer, and up arrow key launches the marble.

Two player game

You can also play a two player game (choose “Start 2P Game” from the main menu):

In this case, there are two sets of key combinations:

For one player, left and right arrow keys move the aimer, and up arrow key launches the marble.

For the other player, X and V arrow keys move the aimer left and right, and the C key launches the marble. Sounds kind of strange, but it’s handy because the XCV keys are all in a row on normal keyboards.

Network play

Version 2 of Frozen Bubble supports playing over networks (both the Internet and local area networks). However, version 2 is not available on Windows at this time.

Installing Frozen Bubble

Frozen Bubble on Ubuntu/Linux

Frozen Bubble originated on Linux, and that’s where the latest version is currently available.

In Ubuntu and Debian, click here in Firefox to install. Or type this in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install frozen-bubble

For other Linux distributions, check this page.

Frozen Bubble on Windows

There are two ports of Frozen Bubble to Windows. Frozen Bubble Enhanced is the one you want to get. This is a direct link to the installer for Windows.

Frozen Bubble on Mac

Frozen Bubble is available on the Macintosh through Darwin Ports.

If Darwin Ports is already installed, type the following into a Terminal:

cd /opt/local/bin/portslocation/dports/frozenbubble2
sudo port install frozenbubble2

Frozen Bubble on Mobile Phones

You can even get Frozen Bubble on your cell phone. Check here for Android, iPhone, Java, and Symbian S60 (Nokia) versions.

One in Ten Computers is a Mac

Digitivity — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:04:44 +0000

People like to say that Apple only has a few percent market share.

But Quantcast has a new survey out that says 11% of online users are using Macintoshes.

The reason for the difference lies in what’s being measured.

Market share means what percent of all the computers (or operating systems) sold in a given year are a particular OS. Quantcast is measuring the installed base, though. Since it’s thought that Macs are higher quality than most PCs, it’s possible they last longer, and people don’t need to buy so often. Since they’re not buying replacements every year, the market share for Macs might be smaller.

Interestingly, Apple has a higher share in North America: 10.9%. (That’s where the 11% is coming from.) It’s installed base in Asia is 2.5%, and even lower in Africa and Latin America.

The fall of Windows

Microsoft Windows is still the biggest OS, but it’s come down over the past few years under 90% to 86% now.

With Windows going down, and at one out of every 8 customers being on a non-Windows platform, it’s going to get increasingly more difficult for Microsoft to lock down the web and the computing world into a Microsoft-only scene. After all, why would you voluntarily give up one of every eight paying customers?

Most businesses don’t have the margins to ignore that number of clients, so I think, going forward, we’ll see more and more cross-platform software applications. Since most cross-platform programming environments (like Java, Python, and Qt) support Windows, Linux, and Mac, we’ll probably see an increase in applications available for Linux/Ubuntu.

I think that’s a good thing regardless of which OS you like to use because, anymore, people are going to demand that their data not be locked up into any one OS or application data format.

Resources

Ars Digita: Mac OS X North American installed base almost 11%

Quantcast Blog: Operating System Share

Track Your Mouse Movements with MousePath

Digitivity — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:19:21 +0000

Here’s a neat little application that makes a picture of your mouse movements as you use your computer. It’s sort of hokey, but I guess you could use it to track how people use your website.

Anatoly Zenkov, a Russian software and website developer, released the MousePath program just for fun. It keeps track of your mouse as you move it around the screen, and creates a line drawing of the result.

Download MousePath

The program is written in Java, so it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Windows

The Windows version is a Windows executable. Download, unzip, and run the executable.

Ubuntu/Linux

Download the Java version and run it. It’s a JAR (Java Archive), so, for example, in Ubuntu Linux, right click on the file in Nautilus File Manager, and choose “Open with Sun Java 6 Runtime”.

Macintosh

Download the Java version and run the JAR.

Running MousePath

When you open the program, it shows a blank window. Just switch to your other windows, and carry on clicking or doing whatever you normally do.

When you think you have enough mouse movements recorded, come back to the MousePath program and press “s” to save your mouse movements. Or you can just save a screenshot of the MousePath window like I did:

Dots record where you pause, not where you click.

Interpreting MousePath

Anatoly has a Flickr page with screenshots of his mouse movements. Not everything has to have a grand purpose, and this is just sort of neat and interesting.

This could possibly be useful for user interface research, though. For example, looking at the following picture of Anatoly using the Java development environment Eclipse shows pretty clearly where the major mouse-based interaction is:

Resources

New York Times Bits blog article
Anatoly Zenkov
MousePath (Windows)
MousePath (Java)

What’s Good Podcast about Why Macs Are Better Than PCs

Digitivity — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:34:43 +0000

The John Chow blog featured a guest article by the writers of a new blog for 20-somethings called the What’s Good Blog.

Their most recent blog entry is a podcast about the “Top 5 Reasons Why Macs Are Better than PCs“.

Somehow or another, it ended up being more than five items.

Here’s what they say:

No need to scan for viruses. I have iAntiVirus, didn’t really use it. Macs = small market share so virus writers don’t target it.
Never seen a blue screen of death on the machine. Worst case is an app has to be killed.
Plugin hardware: wireless keyboard, etc. Automatically starts working or downloads it.
Had to find drivers manually for a networked computer for Windows, but Mac had already installed drivers without prompting.
Little reason for an external firewall. Apple has a firewall. Prompts to allow or disallow programs from accessing the Internet. Windows 7 has a good firewall for incoming, but not outgoing communications. You have to manually set it.
Great for multimedia and communications. Artists prefer it, and the Mac works better for this stuff. iChat, iMovie, Garage Band.
Overall quality of the product. Apple puts higher quality in their products.

My comments

Generally, I think their points are OK. For #4 I would say, you should still have a cheap Netgear firewall/router/switch, though the OS itself should protect itself too.

As for #2, the reason Macs rarely totally crash is simply because Apple controls the hardware and software. PCs give you the freedom of choosing your own hardware, and with that comes the price of risk.

Regarding #1, that, of course, is the reason I moved to Ubuntu (after cleaning a virus infection on Windows).

Dreamvue: A Desktop App to Manage Your Dreamhost Account

Digitivity — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 03:42:11 +0000

Dreamhost recently (within the last few months) released a remote API to manipulate accounts and get account information. They’re holding a contest for the best apps using the API.

Digitivity.org presents Dreamvue, the Desktop Dreamhost Management App.

Click the picture for more info.

Dreamvue Dreamhost Desktop Management Application