This Is Faux

I’ve got a few minutes before I have to be in my LEGL class, so I decided to sit here in Sanford Hall and write a long overdue post on the TiF blog. I buy my Sprite, open up my laptop, and wait for that sweet, free, on-campus wireless to fill up my AirPort bars. Much to my dismay, only the tiny little period at the bottom of the arc is filled, and that’s when I remembered that the wireless signal in Sanford Hall is lacking to say the least.

I figured I would at least get decent wireless sitting in a designated sitting area, so I decided to do a little “snooping.” With so many wireless access points on campus, my computer doesn’t always seem to automatically choose the best one, so I have to do a little work myself. I use a program called KisMAC for all of my scanning. It has a lot of features, but really the only one I use is scan and then join the network with the best average strength.

KisMAC before any scanning

Open up KisMAC and you’ll see an empty box ready to be filled with potential wireless connections. Click start scan and let it do it’s thing. It will immediately start sniffing around for all of the available wireless connections, secured or not.

KisMAC filled

After scanning you should get a nice little assortment of connections to choose from. Because all of these are nice and available to me as a student, I want to click “Average Strength” to sort them based on the strongest signal. I then just “Connect to Network” and voila! I’m using the best possible wireless connection available to me.

I’m currently waiting for friends to get out of class so we can go eat in one of the dining halls. I’m starving and need to get my mind off of it.

The question I’ve been hearing the most in class lately is, “What program is that?” Not that I’m using my computer in class for anything but taking notes of course…but sometimes for some reason they just…pop up? Anyway, here’s a list of the five (Mac) applications I use the most on a daily basis.

1. Vienna - If there is one application I wear out, this is it. It’s the best RSS reader I’ve ever used. How good? When I started using it, I didn’t read any blogs, but it was so easy to use and pretty looking to boot that it actually made me want to pick a bunch of blogs to follow. I open this app so much that it is constantly the center app in Sapiens, which brings me to number two.
2. Sapiens - I’m a little OCD when it comes to my desktop looking clean, so I hate having a cluttered dock. But what about all of the other software I use? A few twirls of the mouse, and those pop up too thanks to Sapiens. You access Sapiens by tracing a few circles with your mouse. Once it pops up, it has the software you use the most right there. The longer you use it, the smarter it gets as to what applications you want when, so go ahead and download it and start using it. At first the circle thing was annoying because I kept accidentally opening it, but I think that’s just because I thought it was cool at first and got in the habit of doing it.
3. Journler - I use this software for everything when it comes to writing. I try to use it as an actual Journal, but I barely ever write in that. I use it for writing all of my lyrics and stories really. A great feature is that while writing a song, if I want to do a quick and dirty recording so I’ll remember it later, I can just record right from Journler and it will attach it to that entry!
4. Candybar - Ever since I’ve had my own computer I’ve been all about some customization. Immediately after I built my own Windows machine I downloaded WindowBlinds for the aesthetics, and soon after went so far as to completely change my shell with LiteStep. When I bought a MacBook Pro to take to college, I hated the fact that I pretty much had zero customization options for my GUI. Granted, if you’re not using Leopard yet there’s WindowShade, but I am a Leopard user so I’m out of luck. CandyBar won’t let me change the appearance of windows and such, but lets me completely customize the dock and all of my icons.
5. Firefox (3)- I debated whether it was silly to put this on the list, but I decided since I still get asked about it enough to this day I would. I used Firefox even when it didn’t look like it belonged in OS X, but now that it fits with everything else it’s that much more beautiful. I tried to like Safari, I really did, but all I use it for now is to grab the occasional “web clip” for my dashboard.

Some of the applications are pay-to-play, but if they are they have a demo of some sort. I’ll get around to registering Sapiens one day…

After nearly 3 months of not coming home, I’ve finally made the trip. It had been so long, the drive almost didn’t seem familiar to me, especially since I was doing it at night. Now that I’m here though, it really hasn’t taken long for me to get back into the swing of things here. I woke up this morning to my nephew whaling on a drum well before my first class on Wednesday would normally start, so surprise, but no sleeping in for me. A few of the old time friends have already called asking if I wanted to go do nothing, which has really made things feel just like they used to. 

In real news, I am always following recent developments on the iPhone. Recently, Vodafone won a court order against T-Mobile forcing them to stop selling iPhones in Germany. Today, T-Mobile has begun selling unlocked iPhones and offering a free unlocking service to those that already own the iPhone. The unlocked phones are not going cheap though, and will cost them about $1500 USD. T-Mobile is still appealing the original decision, and is not happy with the current situation. 

The iPhone firmware update version 1.1.2 was released today as expected. It has, also as expected, blocked the jailbreaks and unlocks that were previously in place, but does not brick an unlocked phone that does update.  There have been reports of people that have been able to downgrade from 1.1.2 using the recovery mode. The only question that remains is, how long will it take for this firmware to be unlocked?