From the “Life is passing me by” dept.

Hey guys,

Haven’t been posting much. I’ve scanned in some picks from algonquin, and I’m organizing them in an album (still messing with a good layout). Here are some shots:

Samantha (my new cousin) took her first unassisted breaths of air today. That’s a big step for such a small child. My uncle said that she actually lost weight, which is worrisome but not abnormal.

Wow, I can’t get over the fact that she’s only 2 lbs 3 oz. It boggles my mind that she’s so small. I look around my room and there are so many objects that just dwarf her in size and weight. My beloved ET doll is so much larger than her.

Life never ceases to amaze me.

From the “Wrestling with my iBook” Dept.”

So I put down $199 CDN for a new copy of Mac OS 10.2 Jaguar.

This is the actual packaging: Leopard print. How retro.

I actually pre-ordered and received my copy on August 23rd, however, I haven’t had a chance to install it until a week ago.

I’ve been wrangling with it ever since.

The Good:

• It’s way faster thatn 10.1.5 (the previous version). How’s that for an OS upgrade; it actually improved speed on older hardware.
• The lots of UI enhancements, like a reasonable window switching system, better menus.
• It has an address book that I would actually consider using.
• Hand writing recognition.
• Updated UNIX Core.

The bad:

• My unix programs are broken [Just for the record, I’m not very good a compiling programs from source, and my favourite UNIX downloade manager, fink, is broken].
• Some idiot decided to make the default screen shot format PDF [Why would a person do this? What were they thinking?] rather than making it a more widely recognized format like JPEG or PNG [Tiff was the default format in OS 10.1.
• My UI hacks are broken [I use a lot of 3rd party shareware that improves the UI] so productivity is at a low.

All and all, I am very happy with Jaguar. Was it worth the 200 dollars? Yes, the speed improvement alone was worth it. There are so many new features I didn’t even mention, nor am I going to elaborate about them.

For those who are interested, here are some useful links:

• ARStechnica Review of Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar – A good starting point about Mac OS X 10.2 and some if it’s new features.
• TIDbits thread :: “What’s missing From OS 9 in Jaguar” – For those of you who use Mac OS 9.
• Macintouch Reader Reports for Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar

Cheers,
-T