I upgraded to Leopard this past Saturday. Generally a good thing — I love Quick Look and use it far more than I ever thought I would, and I’m a big fan of Spaces as well (Linux window managers have had the same functionality for years, and I’ve missed it terribly — but no longer!). And if my WD Passport external hard drive weren’t acting up, I’d probably be in love with Time Machine, too.

The main downside for me right now is that Blender is now really sluggish, and it blurs the screen at times. I’m not sure what’s up with that — other people seem to be reporting that it runs on fine on Leopard.

Yesterday I pulled open my development site (hosted locally) to work on Blank Slate, but got a forbidden error message. It was rather worrisome (and my Internet connection was acting up at the time), but then I found Working with PHP 5 in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and it solved that problem. Phew. :)

In other news, I finally bought a TextMate license yesterday. Now I just need to immerse myself in the keystroke documentation until I’m as fast as I was in Vim…

Technorati Tags: Apple, Leopard, PHP, TextMate, Vim

Since I never was able to get this box to boot off the install CD, I’ve left it on and have just made my changes from there. (Which has saved some time, I’ve got to admit.)

So, up until a few hours ago I was using Xfce, but I switched to Fluxbox (which I was using back in the old days) and I’m very much pleased with it. I’m flirting with installing idesk or fluxter to give me desktop icons, but I want to see if I can go without. It’s really been interesting going back to a minimalist window manager — I’ve taken so much for granted. :) But the speed is phenomenal. Fluxbox rocks my world.

As far as themes go, I’m using Sleek, which I think I made myself but it’s been so long and I can’t remember anymore. (I love the artwiz fonts, by the way.) Still have to set the Gtk theme to something I like…

Anyway, I was originally somewhat hesitant to going back to Linux, but now I can very easily see myself using both Linux and Mac in the future. Now if only I could get Blender to stop crashing… (It doesn’t like my video card.)

I’m writing this from my “new” Linux box. (I bought a flatscreen monitor off Buy.com and then a computer from a guy on Facebook Marketplace.) It’s Xubuntu 7.04, and at the moment I’m running off the guy’s installation, but as soon as I can get the drive to boot off the install CD, I’m wiping it clean and starting from scratch (with Xubuntu).

It’s nice to have a computer again. Really nice. And while I still plan to get a Mac again — a MacBook or MacBook Pro, most likely — I’ve got to say that I’d forgotten the cool things about Linux. (Being able to configure the window manager so extensively, for example.) I’m a happy camper. And when I do get that Mac, I’ll have the best of both worlds. This is good. :)

And now that I have an easily accessible computer, I’ll hopefully be able to start doing more development from here. And that’ll mean I may even start posting on here more frequently. :)