The Critorist Tests Out iWeb: October 3, 2006

The first (and worst) in a series of unpublished blog entries dredged up from 2006.

This is all very nice and pretty. But how the hell do I, you know, stick code in here? I suppose I’d have to open it up in a program actually designed for code, but from what I saw of Dreamweaver, you could switch back and forth between design and code easily enough.

I should probably revisit iWeb sometime after iCloud comes out. If there's an iPad version.

Bananas have a great UI. It's like it was...
designed.

I suppose it’s worth commenting on working on the Mac in general. Obviously, it’s going to take some getting used to. The five (count ‘em, five) different, what the hell do you call ‘em, modifying keys - like Ctrl - are, well, confusing. All a matter of practice, I suppose. And if I can do much more with the keyboard, I can work faster. My main concern is whether the scheme makes sense - do I need to learn a whole new set of command keys for every damned application? That’d be a huge problem.

In retrospect, Windows had 4 - ctrl, alt, shift, windows. I can hardly remember what it was like to be an iVirgin.

Haven’t messed with iTunes yet. Briefly looked at iPhoto, if only to import my photos - now I need to figure out how to use it to organize things well. On my PC, it was pretty well organized into folders, but on a mac, the emphasis is on metadata - tags attached directly to the file. I was using the folders as a way to achieve the same result.

I still feel like my workflow with iPhoto could be much better.

Photo Booth is amusing. Frankly, it’s a toy, but it’s still pretty cool.

All I’ve really used this computer for so far, when you get right down to it, is browsing the web and IM. My excuse is that I’ve only had it a week and consequently not spent much time really digging in.

But I got the Japanese input set up. Works pretty similarly to Windows. でも、マックに全部がユニコード使える。 Doesn’t seem to be a key combo to switch back and forth quickly, tho, which pisses me off.

"Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair."

I haven't bothered pointing out the glaring inaccuracies. Revisiting my first impressions of Mac OS is pretty embarrassing.

Hopefully five years from now I'll have progressed as much as I have from 2006.

Blog archaeology.

Before the dawn of time

Around October of 2006 I obtained my very first Mac.

Well, my only Mac. I'm still using it. It's rapidly approaching the point where I will need a new one, but that's another story.

Precambrian and Cambrian posts

With that new computer, I resolved to explore the myriad new apps that I was confronted with. I thought it would be pretty nifty to experiment with iWeb and write a blog. I didn't want any part of MobileMe, though, which complicated things. So I just wrote things up and didn't bother to publish them.

Shortly thereafter, I went on a cruise with my parents. There wasn't much to do on the ship except read and write. I wrote a travel blog, and put it online, writing posts in iWeb and Pages and then copying and pasting into a crummy web interface. The workflow was terrible, but still, nothing better to do. Which helps explain why I stopped writing shortly after the cruise ended. (Read: I once again had inexpensive internet access.)

Meteorite impact

Does anybody remember blogging sites from 2006? I know for sure I didn't post on livejournal, xanga, blogger, or myspace. But I can't recall the name of the site that hosted the blog. I can't find any emails or bookmarks relating to it. I've tried searching Google for unique phrases from the posts, to no avail.

I never told anyone about the blog, either, so it is irrevocably lost in the space between the Interwebs.

Digging up fossils

"How do you remember unique phrases from the posts?" you ask.

I have copies of what I believe are all the posts, in iWeb, Pages, or both. Also, I do remember that I hosted the pictures on photobucket, and there they have sat.

Now, that blog is quite distinct from this blog, because I've actually told a non-zero number of people about this one. Also, I'm still writing. Partly due to improved workflow - I still like using Blogsy to write on the go, though today I'm at the computer. But also partly because I'm getting better about these things.

To the museum

At last, we arrive at the point, or at the very least, a point.

I plan to restore the old blog posts, and add them to this blog. But it'll be a director's cut, with additional photos, video, and commentary as suits my whims.