Author: Evan

Decluttering for Geeks: Roleplaying Games

By Evan — — HOWTO

Welcome to Decluttering for Geeks. This is Part II of a four-part series:

  1. Part I: Computer Components
  2. Part II: RPGs
  3. Part III: Books
  4. Part IV: Media

A couple months ago, I was eating Korean BBQ with a bunch of software engineer friends from work. Someone asked, “So what are you guys up to this weekend”, and everyone chimed in with whatever geeky (or non-geeky) thing they had on their calendar. I said, “Oh, I’ve got you all beat. This Saturday night, I’m going to be kicking the tires of the new 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons rules with my buddies.” Lots of chuckles around the table, a few calls of “Nerd!”, etc. Mind you, being called “Nerd” by a bunch of software guys can sting a little, but nothing unexpected.

Except for one fellow who sat bolt upright. “Oh, oh! Can I play?!” The Geek Hierarchy works in mysterious ways.

Anyway, on to Roleplaying Games and Decluttering! Anyone think I can get through this post without making a lame “Bag of Holding” joke? Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.

The Psychological

As with all decluttering problems, the core question is, “How much of this stuff do I really need?” Most RPG stuff falls into the following categories:

  • Core rulebooks. Keep, but only if you are currently playing. Be ruthless about this. If you don’t have a current gaming group, but you “want” to play, put your core rulebooks in a box. If after six months you haven’t played at least one game, declutter it all.
  • Core rulebooks from editions you are not playing. Declutter. Yes, I know these books can tug at the at heartstrings. Wow, a 1st edition Deities and Demigods — remember reading that in the third grade? Unfortunately, it’s worthless (unless it’s one of the rare, semi-illegal editions that include the Cthulhu/Melnibonean mythos). Unless you really like reading through Deities and Demigods on a daily basis so that you can memorize the hit points of the gods (SPOILER: Zeus has 400 HP), it’s best to let these books go. There’s someone else out there who can make use of them.
  • Supplementary and third-party rulebooks of all sorts. Declutter. If there’s a particular rule, campaign setting, or adventure seed that you’d like to use, Xerox it and get it out of the house.
  • Magazines. See “Supplementary rulebooks” above. Magazines often have wonderful tidbits and adventure seeds — clip & save the best, discard the rest.
  • Modules. Keep, if A) they match the game and edition you’re currently playing and B) your group hasn’t played it yet. Otherwise, declutter. Note that like rulebooks, the resale value for modules is often depressingly low. You might think that your classic S3-Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is worth a mint… come on, this one had vegepygmies! But nope, you can easily score one on eBay for just a few bucks.
  • Handmade adventures. Declutter.
  • Old character sheets. Seriously? Declutter. Both character sheets and adventures should be on the computer at this point.
  • Campaign material. If the material is still useful, transfer it to the computer and declutter. Otherwise, just declutter.
  • Dice. Keep, as long as 100% of your dice fit in a conveniently portable box.
  • Miniatures. A tricky one, because miniatures are useful and reusable, but they take up a lot of space. Try keeping miniatures only for the PCs; print out images for NPCs and bad guys on 1″ squares of cardstock, or use coins or other tokens. Lego men work great too. Note that I’m coming at this from the perspective of an RPGer — if you’re a wargamer, you probably need an entirely different decluttering article.

Note that as Michael Harrison suggests below, you can always declutter your physical products and then rebuy your favorites in electronic form at DriveThruRPG.com.

The Practical

Like computer components, most RPG material depreciates quickly, and perhaps for much the same reason. Unless the game is A) out of print and B) still very popular, used game material doesn’t hold its value very well.

  • Well, most used game material doesn’t hold its value very well, but it can’t hurt to look for the odd gem that’s worth separating out. The original Temple of Elemental Evil? It’s a classic, but pretty easy to get, not particularly valuable. Apparently there are a lot of copies still floating around, or not that many people playing 1st Edition, or both. But Monte Cook‘s excellent Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil? Worth at least thirty bucks, maybe fifty or sixty. So you never know. Sell these separately on Craigslist, eBay, etc.
  • For the bulk of your game material, the best option is to go to your Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS). Many FLGSes sell used games, and they might be willing to take your stuff off your hands for store credit or possibly even cash. In the Bay Area, I like Gator Games for this. Note that they’re not going to give you very much store credit or cash. Old gaming material takes up a lot of space on the shelf and might not sell. You’re not there to make a pile of cash, but to get your old game material into the hands of a fellow geek, someone who’s actually going to use and enjoy that material again.
  • If you can’t find a good FLGS, try a second hand bookstore.
  • Do not make the mistake of trying to sell the bulk of your stuff individually. You’ll get bogged down in trying to maximize your profit, your decluttering efforts will fall by the wayside, and at the end of the day, the extra dollars won’t add up to much.
  • Donate your material to a charity, library, or a local gaming club attached to a school. When it comes to helping create the next generation of gamer geeks, there’s no better authority than Tom Lehrer in The Old Dope Peddler:

He gives the kids free samples
because he knows full well
that today’s young innocent faces
will be tomorrow’s… clientele

RPG Decluttering. Because somewhere out there, there’s a 10×10′ room, waiting for someone new to kick down the door, kill the orc inside, and take his treasure.

Next time: Books, Comic and Otherwise!

Professional Norms in SF

By Evan — — SF

In her post about the Helix racist email / copyright kerfuffle, Mur talks about professionalism:

I can’t see the executives of IBM or Coke sending out a racist email, or changing their websites to throw a third-grade insult (or, if they do, keeping their jobs afterward).

Which I guess answers the question of why there’s so much unprofessional action in this field even at the “pro” level: People don’t have to be professional. Readers seem to still be buying SF no matter how much asshattery some writers (and editors?) spew outside of their work.

I think Mur has her finger on it — it’s all about industry norms. In a corporate environment, the Helix editor’s behavior would be totally unacceptable. HR would get involved, he’d be put on a Performance Improvement Plan, etc. At any large corporation there will be people who think the way the Helix editor does, but they know better than to do what he did, spew their views in business correspondence.

Other industries have different norms. If you’re a union steamfitter, you might end up exchanging words with someone else on the job site, and on rare occasions, someone might get popped in the jaw. The foreman generally handles these incidents on a case-by-case basis. Contrast this with the corporate Fortune 500 environment: it’s actually pretty hard to fire an individual in most large companies, even if they’re really, really incompetent. But if you physically strike a coworker, you’ll be out of there that same day.

In the SF writing profession, the norms are different yet again. Unlike being a cubicle worker, unlike being a steamfitter, in SF it seems the penalty for being an unsocialized loon is pretty close to zero.

As for why readers buy SF from “asshat” writers and editors, that’s because industry norms flow from industry workers, not the industry’s customers. When Intel calls the steamfitters in to help build a fab, Intel couldn’t care less that Joe Smith got into a fight at the last site. It’s up to the foreman and the other steamfitters to get the job done, with or without Joe. Likewise, readers don’t care that some editor might be a jerk — they don’t even know who that editor is.

Unfortunately, SF editors and writers can’t enforce their norms the steamfitters’ way. But transcriptase.org seems like a good start.

Captain Hammer Physicists

By Evan — — Science

A day after posting about the innumeracy of intellectuals, Chad Orzel asks about the reverse perspective — does the arrogance flow both ways?

This immediately reminded me of a couple years back, when D^2 and the rest of the Crooked Timber crowd got rather annoyed with physicists. Apparently, bored physicists have a habit of diving other fields with shiny new mathematical models — nothing wrong with that, cross-pollination is great — but the kicker is that they tend to do this without first bothering to read any of the previous research in that area.

This tends to A) irritate the hell out of existing scholars in the field and B) generate papers that at best reinvent the wheel, at worst end up being Not Even Wrong. See:

I’m not sure whether this disease is confined just to physicists, or whether the other hard scientists play this game too. Given my brief experience in the discipline, I suspect it’s the former. In any case, I hereby dub this mentality the “Captain Hammer” approach to cross-discipline research:

Stand back everyone
nothing here to see!
A brand new field of research
in the middle of it — me!
Yes, Captain Hammer’s here
hair blowing in the breeze
This data needs my modeling expertise…

“When… you’re the best / you can’t rest, there’s no use / There’s ass… needs kickin’ / some ticking bomb to defuse” … you get the idea.

Mur Lafferty Interview: Playing for Keeps

By Evan — — Writing

One of the great pleasures of attending Viable Paradise X was meeting the people — and one of my favorite experiences was meeting the powerfully talented and wickedly funny Mur Lafferty. We bonded almost immediately — “Oh, you like Lore Sjoberg’s Bjork Song? Hey I was just chatting with Lore a few hours ago!” — and perhaps because of this, Mur was kind enough to show me the complete draft of the novel she was workshopping, a piece about arrogant superheroes, manipulative villains, and the folks with “unwanted” powers that fall in between. Happily, that draft became the novel Playing for Keeps — first released as a free PDF and podcast, and now going on sale in printed form this summer from Swarm Press. Mur and I spoke recently about workshops, her novel, and writing in the superhero genre.

Evan: I’ll start with the question I’ve been meaning to ask for a while, about time management. I mean, okay, you’ve got your blog, your Suicide Girls column, podcasts, Twitter, interviews, conventions, the Pink Tornado… oh and then there’s this “writing thing.” I mean, at this point you’re basically Cory Doctorow with more and better hair. Seriously, how do you fit it all in?

Mur: Hah! None of those things, even the Pink Tornado, who’s in school or day camp during the day, has to be done ALL the time. My columns are once or twice a month. Podcasts take maybe 7 hours a week. conventions are maybe 15 days out of the year. So I prioritize and do what I can when I can.

Evan: You’re not one of those “Getting Things Done” / Zero Inbox nerds, are you?

Mur: Honestly, I feel like I procrastinate a lot, and wonder how productive I could be if I could focus more.

Evan: I bet Cory thinks that all the time.

Mur: And no, I couldn’t handle all the details with GTD. I do try to keep my emails down though.

Evan: Let’s talk about workshops. What do you think writers can realistically expect to get out of a workshop? And at what point in their career should a writer think about going?

Mur: What writers will get out of a workshop depends on how open they are to learning.

Evan: Do you feel that a lot of writers come to workshops not open to learning?

Mur: I think you need a certain balance in your confidence level to hit workshops — sure, you need talent, but it’s a personality thing as much as it’s a talent thing. First — yes, I haven’t been to many workshops, but I’ve read many anecdotes, and Wilhelm’s “Storyteller” that state that nearly every workshop will have an attendee who is there for validation, for someone to tell them that yes, indeed, they can write, well done, pat on the head. And when that doesn’t happen, they get discouraged or annoyed. So the happy medium in confidence level is you have to have enough confidence to think your work is good enough for critiquing, but you have to be humble enough to accept that you are there to learn what’s WRONG with your story so you can make it stronger. (And then again you have to have the confidence to believe that you can make it better after the workshop.)

Evan: Seems like a tall order. 🙂

Mur: Hah! Well yeah. I’m sure we all had ego blows at VP, regardless of the state of mind we arrived there with. I know I did. 🙂

Evan: Agreed — I was just astounded at how smart the people were, and how much they knew about all kinds of stuff where I was a total novice. I did want to get to Playing for Keeps, before you fall asleep. 🙂

Mur: Oh I’m with you. Go on. 🙂

Evan: About your villains — I think you did a great job showing them as attractive, but ultimately quite dangerous. In other words, you didn’t fall into the trap of showing them as faux “bad boys” — they were the real thing. Can you talk about how you constructed your villains?

Mur: Well, we’ve known for years in comic books (or any storytelling, really) that villains aren’t all: “LOOKIT ME, I’M EVIL” — and a good villain is someone who believes what they are doing is right, that they are the protags in their own story. And despite what side you fight on, good or evil, that may not change the fact that personally, you’re a charmer. Or a jackass. My villain Clever Jack is a charmer who, incidentally, was treated poorly. My hero, White Lightning, is a jackass who fights crime.

Evan: Exactly right. But I think your take was interesting, because yes, White Lightning is a huge jackass, and yes, Clever Jack is a charmer, but you didn’t take the easy way out. Clever Jack isn’t just a cool tough “bad” guy, he really does some bad things.

Mur: Ah, you mean I didn’t make him “misunderstood”?

Evan: Bingo! Yes. He is who he is.

Mur: Right. I will be playing with more concept of villains soon — people with powers that could be considered “bad” inherently, despite the personality behind them.

Evan: So… the guy who raises zombies from the dead … but wants to fight crime?

Mur: Hah! Something like that, yes. I had an argument with my husband once whether necromancy was inherently evil. There will be a third waver character introduced soon who nobody likes because his nickname is “The Earworm.”

Evan: One of the things that strikes me about the superhero genre is that if anything, it’s actually more self-aware and self-referential than plain old SF. Did you have any trepidation about writing a novel in this genre, and in particular, a novel that is really a commentary about the genre?

Mur: Oh yeah. I was terrified. I started then when there was ONE superhero novel (non-licensed) that I knew of: Nobody Gets The Girl by James Maxey. And it was James’ book that gave me the courage to try out this superhero story that was forming in my head and not stress about finding an artist to try writing comics. I mean, I thought I was writing for a genre that didn’t exist. But now that it’s coming out, there are countless books out. From The Notebooks of Dr. Brain by Minister Faust is a good one.

Evan: Perhaps at this point, there really is critical mass here — you’ve got the movies that are wildly successful, and so now there’s room for novel-style commentaries.

Mur: That’s what I’m hoping! 🙂

Evan: Last question about the construction of the book. What do you think were the largest changes you made in response to feedback from your peers and mentors? What made you go, “aha”?

Mur: Debra Doyle helped a lot — I had too many attacks from too many directions, so in rewrite I had the same number of attacks from fewer directions.

Evan: So, fight blocking.

Mur: Well, one villain brings in, shall we say, a new tool to use against the city. Doyle told me it was too much going on. So I had to change the tool, and bring in said tool much much later. And I think that worked.

Evan: “Too much going on” — I think that’s often the case in all the SFnal genres.

Mur: Yes! So that was a major structural change. Beyond that, it was a lot of surface stuff, one minor character changed sex, one changed race. Minor stuff like that.

Evan: Okay, I’ve got one last question for you. Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, or Kyle Rayner?

Mur: John Stewart.

Evan: !!

Mur: I’ve totally lost you as a friend, haven’t I?

Evan: I’ll still post this interview. But I’m going to have to do some hard thinking.

Mur’s novel Playing for Keeps goes on sale August 25, 2008.

Decluttering for Geeks: Computer Components

By Evan — — HOWTO

Welcome to Decluttering for Geeks. This is Part I of a four-part series:

  1. Part I: Computer Components
  2. Part II: RPGs
  3. Part III: Books
  4. Part IV: Media

So after glancing at the current crop of decluttering books, I think it’s safe to say that the subgenre of “decluttering for geeks” is underserved. Which is a bit disappointing, because we geeks have, shall we say, special needs when it comes to decluttering. Sure, some guy like Peter Walsh might give you some general guidelines to follow… but is he going to be able to intelligently advise you whether to keep your old copy of The Temple of Elemental Evil? What about Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil? Is this a trick question? Probably!

Typical decluttering books devote at least a chapter or two about why decluttering is a good thing. To save space, I’m going to assume that you’re already at least partly convinced. Here’s the thumbnail argument:

  • decluttering will save you time (you can find your stuff quickly)
  • decluttering will save you money (you can live in a smaller house, or avoid using external storage)
  • decluttering will save your sanity (you won’t be distracted by constant reminders of abandoned projects and rooms that need cleaning)

And here’s the thumbnail of the thumbnail argument. There but for the grace of God go we all.

Okay, so, computers. Most self-respecting geeks go through a phase of building their own computers. It’s fun to build exactly what you want, fun to compare and contrast different components with your fellow system builders, fun to put together a $500 box that outperforms the $2000 machine of the non-geek. You have powers beyond the ken of mortal men!

But like mathematics and women’s gymnastics, system building is a youngster’s game. Although the truly hardcore might stick with this hobby for decades, the typical geek burns out around their 30th birthday. All of a sudden, debugging overheating problems and scouring the internet for updated drivers becomes… less fun. You’ve reached the magical age where time begins to > money. Maybe it’s because you’re making more money, or maybe it’s because you feel the icy hand of death approaching. Either way, you sell out. You buy a Name Brand Computer, possibly a shiny silver one with a fruity logo. At first you feel guilty, dirty even. Then you get over it.

The end result is closets full of old, decaying systems, plus scads of individual components: Pentium II motherboards, PCI sound cards, and cables. Lots and lots of cables.

The Psychological

Before you can get rid of your computer stuff, you have to convince yourself to get rid of all your computer stuff. This is harder than it sounds.

So we’ll start with an anecdote. When I first started going through my cable collection, I pulled everything out of the desk drawers and tried to save only stuff I really needed. After about fifteen minutes of flailing around, I think I had decided to get rid of maybe two cables.

Sensing that things weren’t going so well, I called my girlfriend in, much like calling in an airstrike. The conversation proceeded as follows:

S: So, what’s this?

Me: Ah… I think that’s a USB A-to-B cable, still in its packaging. Hey, that’s kind of cool.

S: Have you needed this cable in the last two years?

Me: No.

S: Do you think you’ll need this cable in the next two years?

Me: Probably not.

S: Did you even know you had this cable?

Me: Nope.

S: What would you have done if you had decided you did need this cable?

Me: … gone to the store and bought one?

After that, it was pretty easy to narrow things down.

So why is it so hard for us to get rid of our old computer cruft? Here are some of the arguments we make to ourselves:

  • “This stuff is really valuable.” Wrong. Nothing depreciates faster than computer components. With the possible exception of certain cameras.
  • “I’ll save money by resurrecting this old box / building a useful box out of these components.” Wrong. That feeble eight-year-old box does not have enough CPU/watt to be worth powering on at all. Farm those tasks out to a machine that can do the same work for a fraction of the cost.
  • “I paid a lot of money for these components back in the day.” Irrelevant. What’s important is how much it’s worth right now (close to zero), versus how much money it’s costing you to store it (more than you think).
  • “This one is a classic, I’d just be sad to have to lose it.” Wrong. I have a friend, D, who has lovingly restored an original Amiga from his childhood. Maintaining the Amiga and being able to play some of its old games is a source of pride for D. But you are not D. Your “classic” machine is not being set up in a place of honor and shown off to fellow geeks. It’s sitting powered off and buried in a dusty closet. It needs to go.

The Practical

After figuring out what to get rid of, you’re faced with the the second problem: how to get rid of it. Electronics are tricky, because you can’t just toss them in the ordinary recycle bin. And it’s not always easy to sell them or give them away. When it comes to decluttering, I’m a strong believer in the “take time to find things a good home” philosophy… but computer components depreciate so quickly that it’s often hard to find anyone who wants them.

Some of your options include:

  • Donate to schools or charities: A reasonable choice, but only suitable for relatively new hardware that’s in good working order. You don’t want to saddle a school with an IBM Deskstar hard drive that’s mere days away from the Click of Death. Also, most schools and charities are savvy enough not to take old hardware anyway. They don’t have infinite time to tinker with dying machines.
  • Give it away: One geek’s trash is another geek’s treasure. You might know someone who still has the system builder bug. If you work at a large company, you might have a “free stuff” email list, and then there’s always Freecycle.
  • eBay or Craigslist: Getting a little cash for your stuff is always nice. But eBay is a bit of a trap, since once you start thinking about maximizing! my! return! on all this low-value hardware, you’ll end up holding onto it for a long time, possibly forever. The goal of this game is to get rid of the stuff. (It’s like playing Puerto Rico — at the end of the game, money is nearly irrelevant, it’s all about the victory points.)
  • Recycling: The EPA has a list of links for finding electronic waste recyclers and dropoff stations. If you’re lucky enough to live in the Bay Area, GreenCitizen has several locations and excellent rates, or you can drop your stuff off for free at WeirdStuff in Sunnyvale. They’ll go through your broken and crappy stuff, take what they want, and recycle the rest. Highly recommended. Just make sure you leave the loading dock immediately, and don’t make the rookie mistake of wandering through the WeirdStuff warehouse. There’s only one way to win at decluttering, and that’s not it.

Next time: Role-playing games!

Why Learning Old Norse > English or French

By Evan — — Writing

  • ENGLISH: See Spot. See Spot run. Run, Spot, run!

  • FRENCH: Jean est à Paris. Je voudrais un ticket de métro. Où est ma tante avec du fromage?

  • OLD NORSE: Óláfr heitir konungr. Hann á brand. Heitir brandrinn Tyrfingr. Úlf sér Óláfr ok segir: “Hér er úlfr!”. Óláfr tekr brandinn ok vegr úlfinn. En hér er ok ormr. Óláfr sér hann eigi. Óláf vegr ormrinn.

BONUS REASON: you get to study Old Norse with Lucy. English or French, not so much.

Congrats to Mur!

By Evan — — Writing

Last week, I was having Korean BBQ for lunch with some friends from work. We started talking about superpowers, and whatever happens to the people with extremely minor powers. Like, say, the ability to instantly eliminate smells from your clothes and hair, so that you wouldn’t come back from lunch smelling like spicy pork for the rest of the day.

Or, I said, like a waitress who could tap a customer on the shoulder and remove the effects of drunkenness?

Yeah! my friends said. How come nobody tells stories about those people?

Oh, have I got a book for you! I said.

At Viable Paradise, I was privileged enough to see an early draft of Mur Lafferty’s Playing For Keeps, and right away it was clear that this manuscript was a winner. If you can’t wait for the release date in August, you can still get the whole book for free, in PDF or podcast form. As for Mur — I couldn’t be prouder of you and all the hard work you’ve put in to make this happen. You rock.

In tangentially related news: all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ is one of the truly great gastronomic experiences, but having Korean BBQ twice in the span of seven days is… inadvisable.

The Five Stages of Pundit Grief

By Evan — — Tech

Denial

“Wow. I’m shocked Yahoo wasn’t more reasonable. The stock will probably go down at least $5 on Monday. It is surprising that Ballmer walked away instead of trying a hostile bid at $33,” said Walter Price, a senior portfolio manager at RCM fund management company in San Francisco, which had 21 million Microsoft shares and 2 million Yahoo shares as of the end of December.

Anger

Ms. [Laura] Martin also had harsh words for Yahoo’s management’s “unbelievable” actions. “This is management putting its employees and its job security ahead of current Yahoo shareholders’ interest,” she told the news service. She also told Reuters that she expects several shareholders lawsuits to be filed against the company on Monday.

Bargaining

“Had there been a full deal on the table, a hostile deal, at $34 or $35, we would have had to take a look at it,” Bill Miller, a portfolio manager for Legg Mason, told The New York Times. “Our number was higher, but it doesn’t mean we would have rejected it.”

Depression

Microsoft’s disappointing numbers, which sent its stock down 4.5 percent in after-hours trading, will only put pressure on the software behemoth to raise its bid.

On Wednesday, Steve — as in Steven Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive — cavalierly suggested that the company doesn’t need Yahoo and can go it alone. (That’s untrue, by the way. If Mr. Ballmer doesn’t win Yahoo, his failure will be seen as a major management blunder, and shareholders could raise questions about his leadership.) He has also threatened to start a proxy contest by this Saturday unless Yahoo reaches a deal with them.

But Mr. Ballmer’s tough talk now appears to be pure bluster ahead of what he knew was going to be a bad quarter.

Acceptance

“We believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,” Ballmer said in a statement.

I’ve Been Recursive Meme’d

By Evan — — Personal

Here are your rules. (You’ve seen this one before, this is just a ‘recursive’ version)

  1. Pick up the nearest book.
  2. Open to page 123.
  3. Find the fifth sentence.
  4. Post the next three sentences.
  5. Tag five people and post a comment to Garunya‘s blog (your tagees will post to mine, etc.) once you’ve posted your three sentences.

The Five Chosen are:

And my three sentences:

“The tale of Gawaine’s journey through the Wirral in dead winter, at
the end of the year, to keep his vow; his adventures at the castle of
Sir Bertilak, a genial and generous host of handsome appearance and
normal colouring in whom Gawaine does not recognize the Green
Knight, have nothing to do with Arthur. It is a tale of old magic whose
meanings are disputed but related with such visual brilliance and
emotional force, reading it is like experiencing some thrilling nightmare.
Its leading feature is description.”

From The Mystery of King Arthur, long ago borrowed from my friend Wendy’s parents. (Okay, technically speaking, the closest book was the manual for FrameMaker / Mac OS 9, but that’s all sealed up in the box, and seemed like a pain to get at.)

Mac Tricks and Tips and Apps that are Real Good and Stuff

By Evan — — HOWTO

Dru recently won a shiny new Mac. Now he’s wondering about tips and tricks and what he should do with it. I was going to add my advice as a comment to his LJ, but then I realized, hey — this comment is getting so long, it’s totally turning into a free blog post! Ahem.

Dru complains about the menu at the top. I hear you man, it took me about two weeks to train myself to look there, and not at the window itself. Also, closing windows (often) does not close the app. Strange but true.

Tip #1: Yes, you can use a two-button mouse with a Mac. This very minute I am using the Microsoft Wireless Lasermouse 6000, with two buttons, two side buttons, and a clickable scroll wheel. Say what you will about Microsoft, they make some fine peripherals. And no, I haven’t been struck by lightning.

Tip #2: You can convert every file you open in a mac to PDF for free, via the Print menu.

Good mac resources: a bit hard to find, as most mac forums out there are too fanboyish. (Something’s wrong with your Mac? No, something’s wrong with you!)
The only forum I know of with any sense of perspective is Ars Technica’s Mac forum. There are a number of big-name Mac blogs out there but most of the ones I’ve tried subscribing to are vastly overrated. The only other Mac web resource I like is the Macrumors Buyers Guide, which gives you some idea of when the next hardware update is coming, based on historical data.

Software apps. For geeks, the three big ones would be MacPorts (UNIX package manager), XCode (Mac dev environment), and Quicksilver (app launcher plus so much more). Dru is already aware of these, so I’ll move on to my favorite software, almost all of which is Mac-only.

  • Angband: free rogue-like game, incredibly addictive. Not Mac-only, though.
  • Connoisseur: holds your recipes! How awesome is that! Isn’t that why every household was going to rush out and get a personal computer, back in 1980?
  • Delicious Library: holds your book collection. An attractive app, but not terribly useful. It is good if you loan out a lot of books, otherwise it has no real function other than to reduce your OCD.
  • Keychain: comes with the OS, holds your keys and passwords. Most people don’t even know it exists — I didn’t figure it out until a couple years into owning a Mac. I like it just fine, but since Dru is a security professional, there are a number of powerful third party apps.
  • Mail: The default Apple Mail has some drawbacks, but one big bonus is that it works with Spotlight, Apple’s search framework. DANGER WILL ROBINSON: Mail uses a proprietary format for email, so you might be locked in (compared to say Thunderbird which uses mbox). Actually, it’s a sort of bastardized Maildir, so it’s pretty straightforward to convert. Thanks, Sam Kingston!
  • NetNewsWire: excellent free RSS reader.
  • OmniFocus: a very powerful GTD app.
  • OmniGraffle Pro: for diagrams. Like Visio but in my opinion much nicer to use.
  • OmniOutliner Pro: an outlining program. There are a lot of good outliners available for the Mac, but this one is my personal favorite. Though I use it less now, because of OmniFocus.
  • Plaxo: Plaxo is not Mac-only. And a lot of people hate Plaxo because way back in the day they were pretty spammy. However, Plaxo syncs my address book and calendar between my work and home machine, which is just too danged useful to give up. I should note that, Plaxo has borked my calendar and addressbook twice in the past, but it’s been good for the last few months. To be perfectly honest, it’s a love/hate relationship.
  • SuperDuper: Great app for cloning and backups. Leopard now has Time Machine, which obviates some of the need for SuperDuper. But Time Machine can’t do everything SuperDuper can, like making a bootable clone.
  • Spaceward Ho!: excellent old-school space conquest game, with hilarious cowboy sound effects.
  • TextMate: a GUI text editor that happens to be elegant and yet highly customizable and UNIX friendly at the same time.
  • Transmit: a very good GUI FTP client.
  • TurboTax: well, this is available for Windows too, but in any case, it’s indispensable. See, for nearly a decade, I did my taxes all by hand, just like my father before me. But every year they got more complicated. I’m actually pretty good at elementary school math, but checking and double-checking all my tax forms was just getting tedious. Finally, I said to myself, “Man! It would really be great if someone would invent some kind of machine that was, like, really, really good at doing arithmetic and looking things up in tables. That would be just swell!” So. TurboTax. A good idea. And works great on the Mac.