Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman is dead; I just saw the obits on Google News. I think that in celebration of his life, I’ll watch The Seventh Seal this weekend. I figure I’ll be up anyway and looking for something to do; I’m switching back to days next week (finally!) and will be enjoying the sleep deprivation funfest this weekend while I try to get my body’s clock to reset itself.

I’m bored; here’s a menubar post!

OS X Menubar

I’m bored, which is usually a bad thing. So I decided to post one of these, which should be an all too familiar post for anyone who reads blogs done by Mac users.

In any case:

  • Quicksilver. I use this on an hourly basis (if not more frequently). Especially-favorite function: “Open Terminal Here”.
  • NetworkLocation. This is a nifty app that lets me change my network location on the fly (useful when I connect to multiple static-IP ethernet networks), and has the added benefit of letting me change things like my default printer, volume levels, screen brightness, etc (I also set it up to automatically turn my Bluetooth adapter on & off) when I change between locations.
  • SlimBatteryMonitor. It’s smaller than the OS X battery meter, and lets me change its colors to reflect on-mains, on-battery, and battery-low states. Also lets me customize when the “plug in your stupid laptop” warning pops up.
  • SynergyKM. A PreferencePane that adds a GUI to Synergy. Synergy, for the uninitiated, lets you use one keyboard and mouse to control multiple machines. To clarify, I’m typing this right now using the keyboard on the WIndows XP machine at my desk here at work.
  • Apple’s Bluetooth controller.
  • Airport wireless controller (also stock)
  • Fast User Switching controller (stock). I use this to quickly get back to the login screen; it’s faster than waiting for my screensaver to start, and I didn’t want to set up a hotcorner to do it automatically.
  • MenuCalendarClock iCal. I’m using the “free” version, because I didn’t need any of its advanced features. I like it more than Apple’s menubar clock because it’s (a) much easier to put the date on there, and (b) has a pop-out calendar for quick “what day of the week is that?” lookups.
  • Spotlight. Duh.
  • And that’s it. I’ll spare everyone another post about my favorite applications (most of ’em haven’t changed; look through the archives if you’re really interested).