Returning to the fold

[davidlevine]

To celebrate the completion of my novel, I am planning to buy myself a brand new iBook. This would be my first Macintosh since I emigrated to Windows in 1996, so I would appreciate some advice. Specifically, I would like recommendations for websites, newsletters, and books about "how to get the most out of your new Macintosh."

I'm a professional software engineer and user interface designer with a couple decades' experience using Windows and UNIX, so I'm not looking for "the gentle introduction to the Mac for newbies." But I will have some newbie questions, like "how do I add a printer?" and "how do I determine my adapter's MAC address?" and "what freeware is must-have?" I am particularly interested in information on integrating the Mac into a Windows-based Wi-Fi network.

What I'm really hoping to find is something like Woody's Office for Mere Mortals... a weekly e-newsletter full of information (and some opinions) that I could use to "trickle charge" my brain. I can't keep up with the volume on Slashdot or most email lists. But I also need a couple of good reference web sites... places to start when I have a question.

Thanks in the proverbial advance.

Comments

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

I always recommend Mac people try out the xjournal client for LJ.

While Safari has built in syndication feed aggregation, spring for a copy of Net News Wire (http://ranchero.com/). You can tell Safari to use it as your default aggregator.

BBEdit continues to be my favorite editor, but you can get a free copy of Text Wrangler from http://web.barebones.com/.

Forwarding Address: OS X (http://saladwithsteve.com/osx/) is a great blog for current and returning users with some sophistication.

[davidlevine]

Thanks for the suggestions!

I currently use the vi editor and ljclive command-line client to maintain my LJ and the blog on my home page, and I use bloglines as my aggregator because it remembers what I've read no matter where I go.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Oh.

I asked what's called a "next transparency" question.

[davidlevine]

Do you still use the term "transparency" at Fermi?

I noticed the other day that all the overhead projectors in the building were piled up by the loading dock, heading out to who knows where. I couldn't recall ever seeing one in use in the entire three years I've worked here. It's all PowerPoint these days.

When I started at Intel we called them "foils."

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Transparency talks are getting scarce, to be sure, but one still sees them now and then. We don't yet have a computer projector in every conference room.

A decade or more ago, I was attending astronautics conferences, for fun, in my spare time. One day I realized how they were different from the physics talks I usually attended: The rocket people had overheads neatly printed, prepared by the Graphics Department, with the corporate logo in the corner of every "foil."

The physics people usually wrote every slide by hand. I realized that this gave me an unconscious, but reassuring, feeling that the speaker had carefully thought through everything written there.

(Some were experimenting with the Macintosh to make fancy-looking slides, but it was tricky to get math to display correctly...)

Without Mike Turner's slides, for instance, cosmology would be a lot less fun. Here's a recent example.

[davidlevine]

Those are amazing. And with all the diagrams and math I can see that hand-written foils would continue to be simpler.

I despise PowerPoint, myself, but there's no avoiding it in the business world.