Danny Stewart

So, Apple’s tablet has finally been unveiled in the form of the iPad. John Gruber made a post over at Daring Fireball that got me thinking. You should read his post before you read mine.

There are some things he said that resonated with me; more than anything, that “the iPad is what they’ve been building toward all along” and how they’ve invented a totally new UI paradigm with the iWork apps.

Someone on Twitter said the other day that “this is the end of the desktop OS.” When I read it, I thought it was overdramatized, but after thinking about it, I see what they’re saying and I agree with it. This truly marks the beginning of a change in times. Not long from now, the mouse will die off, to be replaced by a keyboard/touch interface. The iPad is the start of that, and I think it’s a pretty big deal.

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The more observant of you may have taken notice of some changes around here recently. Although the site has once again undergone a visual refresh (something I am very pleased with this time around), the biggest changes are happening behind the scenes. For the past eight months, I have been hosting my web sites with DreamHost. Overall I have been pleased with their hosting service, with the occasional exception of some issues with downtime and sluggishness. All in all, it’s easy to recommend DreamHost to someone looking for a shared hosting solution. Their web panel and the services offered for the price are difficult to beat. That said, I have always been a power user, used to hosting my own web sites. Even in my early teens, I maintained web sites on my dad’s IIS server.

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Here are a few simple AppleScripts I’ve written to make my life a little bit easier. They are not saved as “Run Only,” so you can open them up and poke at the code inside all you want. These are posted mostly so people can learn from them; untouched, they won’t be much use as they are written for me. Feel free to customize them for your own purposes. If you want to rerelease your own scripts, some credit is all I ask. The scripts include:

• Startup: A startup script I wrote to launch my most frequently used applications, depending on a few different things (whether I’m connected to the internet, which external hard drives are connected to my computer, etc.).
• Reinitialize: A very basic script that kills the Finder, Dock, and SystemUIServer. A nice way to reinitialize the core components of the system without logging out and back in. It was more fun to make than it is to use.
• Restart into Windows: My most useful script. Sets my Windows drive as the default startup disk for one restart only, allowing me to switch into Windows and then go back to Mac OS X the next time I restart without having to give it a second thought.

Click here to download the whole set.

For the past several years, I’ve been relying on Google for all my online personal information needs. That includes Gmail for my email, as well as Google Calendar and Gmail contacts for my basic calendar/contact needs.

That changed a bit once Apple came out with their new MobileMe service to go along with the launch of iPhone 2.0. In order to have the best experience using my iPhone, I wanted to manage my calendar and contacts through MobileMe instead.

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