Aperture 3

Apple released Aperture 3 today. I've downloaded the free trial and I'm going to try it out over the next few days. There's some really cool new features, Faces and Places have come over from iPhoto but they've been enhanced along the way. You can now import GPX tracks into Aperture and view the tracks right along side your photos. I've been waiting years for something like this. Also, you can add a place to a photo just by dragging it to the map and dropping it where you took the photo. Easy as!

27" iMac

I bought a brand new 27" iMac, just arrived from Apple today. 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, 1 TB hard drive. It's a refurbished model so I got it for $400 off.

The screen on this thing is massive, it's so bright, the colours are so vivid and there's just so much space, it's amazing! Performance too, I haven't done anything processor intensive yet but everyday tasks happen at the speed of light.

If you're thinking of buying one of these, jump in, spend the money because it's worth every cent. I still can't get over how big it is, it's magnificent.

Racist Stereotypes

I need a little help understanding a racial stereotype.

Over here in Australia, we have a series of ads called the "KFC Cricket Survival Guide". One ad in particular is getting a lot of attention for supposedly being racist. You can read more on the story and see the ad here.

I want to know why Negroes eating fried chicken is a racial stereotype. Caucasians like fired chicken, Asians like fried chicken, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't like fried chicken but why is it racist when African Americans eat fried chicken?

MagicPrefs

Wish your Magic Mouse could do more? I certainly do.

When it was released, a lot of people said that developers could potentially make improved drivers for the Magic Mouse so it could perform extra gestures and advanced things like that. There have already been a few utilities that extend the functionality of the Magic Mouse but I've found one that actually does a good job, so far.

MagicPrefs is yet another application that sits in the menu bar (as if I don't have enough of those!) It adds support for extra clicks and gestures, I haven't fully explored all the options yet but there's an option for middle click, two finger clicks, three finger clicks, three finger swipes, you can even program functions to the Apple logo at the end of the mouse.

The coolest feature of MagicPrefs is an image of the Magic Mouse, when you touch or click the mouse, an overlay shows where your fingers are in real time!

So far MagicPrefs is pretty good, I've only got middle click enabled but I haven't activated it by accident yet, everything seems to be working as it should.

Anyway, check it out, play around. It's free so you can't loose.

Internet Plans

I've been having a discussion about the state of the internet here in Australia on another forum and I wondered what it's like in America (and other parts of the world).

I'd like to know which country you're in, which ISP you have, what kind of connection, how fast your connection is, if usage caps are imposed and how much it all costs.

I'm with Telstra, our biggest and evilest ISP.

I have a cable connection that goes this fast:



I have a usage cap of 25 GB a month, if I go over I'm slowed to 64 Kbit/s for the remainder of the month.

I'm paying AU$80 a month, which is about US$74.