Larry Grinnell returns to rant about the end of the Xserve and ponders (rants) on what the heck happened to the traditional (print) graphic arts industry; all with his obligatory wild digressions.
Read MoreAuthor: Larry Grinnell
Larry Grinnell has been a Mac user since before there were Macs, first being exposed to his brother-in-law's Apple Lisa 7/7 office system, in 1982 or 1983.
After a nine year stint in the US Air Force, he took an electronics technician job at Motorola, Inc., where he stayed for almost 27 years. In that time, he held additional diverse positions from manufacturing engineering technician to technical writing to print production consultant to department webmaster.
Currently, he's the sole technical writer for a small communications/electronics firm in Davie, FL. He is a member of the MyMac.com writing staff, and recently completed a two-year stint writing a weekly Macintosh and Apple-oriented column for the Palm Beach Business website (http://www.pbbusiness.com). In his copious free time, he does layout and prepress work for the Grinnell Family Association's quarterly newsletter, and runs their website at http://www.grinnellfamily.org.
In 2013, one of his photographs was published in the New York Times.
He just finished editing, layout, and prepress work for an all new Grinnell family genealogy, which promises to be roughly 2,800 pages in size. Publication date is tentatively scheduled for late 2015 or early 2016.
Larry collects jazz guitar recordings, and is currently trying, for the fifth time, to learn to play the guitar.
He lives in Greenacres, FL.
But I Digress, or My Weekend in Chicago
Once upon a time when I was a corporate drone, I traveled a lot on my employer’s dime. My former employer’s policy was to
Read Moreeasy VHS to DVD for Mac – Review
This review could have gone very, very badly, had it not been for Roxio’s excellent support website, and their intrepid PR person, who kept the dialog going when I was ready to wash my hands of the whole thing.
That said, the last thing I wanted to do was start yet another review with: "I really wanted to like this product, but…"
Read MoreStrategic Mobile Design – Creating Engaging Experiences – Review
The mobile devices industry is in turmoil–a statement that could be ripped from the headlines of any newspaper, magazine, or website. Not only is the economy in rough shape (something to which I can personally attest), but the traditional cellphone of yore is also undergoing radical changes.
Visual Quickstart Guide XML (Second Edition) – Review
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) has become the medium to move data in efficient and predictable ways. Derived from a similar markup language, SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), XML is structured, but not as highly as SGML. Structure is what it’s all about. The very loosely structured HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is also derived from SGML. Even the XML markup looks amazingly like HTML, except, as the author explains, HTML defines how information will look, while XML defines how the information is formatted.
Internet Security Barrier X5 Antispam Edition DP – Review
There are only a very few commercial anti-virus programs available for the Mac: Norton AntiVirus and Intego’s Internet Security Barrier X5. There’s also one major freeware product, ClamXav. Today, however, we’re going to talk about the Intego Internet Security Barrier X5 Dual Protection product.
RAIDBank4 – Review
Briefly described, the RAIDBank4 is a 4.85 x 6.5 x 9.1 inch box which holds four SATA hard drives (in this case, there were four decent quality Western Digital 500 GB drives). Micronet bills this unit as the "world’s smallest RAID". While I don’t know this to be true, I don’t think it could get much smaller.
The Ultimate HTML Reference – Book Review
This book replaced Taylor’s Creating Cool HTML 4 Web Pages book as my primary HTML reference at home and at the office. It’s well worth the 45 dollar price-tag. I can only find fault with the fact that it doesn’t have enough chunks of sample HTML and illustrations of how the HTML will render.
MacFamily Tree 5
Review
Most of you probably have at least one person in your extended families trying to find out more about their ancestors so they can share that information with the rest of their family, and if they are doing their work on the Macintosh, MacFamilyTree could be just the product for them.
Newer Technology miniStack NAS
Review
After my disappointing experience with a NAS I tested a few weeks ago, I was really looking forward to evaluating this unit. To recap, a network attached storage (NAS) device is a shared disk drive that uses your internal network, or in some cases the internet to share data with multiple computers. It’s a great place to store backups, large media files (such as for home theater systems), archived multimedia projects, or anything else that requires larger than average amounts of storage space.
A Designer’s Guide to Adobe InDesign and XML – Book Review
This book does a great job demystifying the techniques of creating attractive documents with InDesign using content encoded in XML. It starts with the most basic definition of XML, with many examples of source code.
Adobe Type Library: Reference Book – Review
Larry looks at the printed catalog of the contents of the Adobe Font Folio CD, and definitive reference guide to Adobe font technology. Is it worth owning at $45? Read the review to find out.
Fantom Drives GForce MegaDisk NAS
Review
The idea is that a NAS device securely sits out on your network and makes itself available to anyone authorized to use the network. Typical applications for a NAS include a central backup system, iTunes server, movie server, shared file server, and so on. This is a file server (and more) for the rest of us…or is it? Keep reading.
Octava 4×1 HDMI Switch with 4×1 Optical Audio
Review
I had a problem (I’m sure my brother, Guy Serle, would put that statement into the present tense…). I started putting together a home theater system with a 1.67 GHz Core Duo Mac mini at its heart. That’s when I discovered I was short some inputs.
Creating Cool HTML 4 Web Pages
Review
Not only does this book go into the basics, but also gives excellent detail on HTML tagging, with most of the important modifiers needed for text formatting, as well as special-case features, and they all still work on today’s browsers (except maybe the old Netscape “blink” tag).
Data Backup 3.0
Review
Everyone hates doing backups. I know I do. Like most utility software packages, products like this are ignored until it is too late, and your precious data is gone. It’s funny how diligent I was at work (I suppose my job being at stake had something to do with it…), yet I almost never backed up anything at home. I’ve been playing the odds for a lot of years, and have so far been pretty lucky.
Intego Internet Security Barrier X4 Antispam Edition DP
Review
When John Nemo asked me to review this product, I wound up having to buy a copy of Parallels for my Intel Core Duo Mac mini. I had put it off for a while, but in hindsight, I’m glad I did it. As I reported previously, the Parallels and Windows XP Pro installations went extremely smoothly, as did all the zillions of Windows security patches that had to be installed. Read the full review here
I learned about DTP from that…
How I wound up as a professional technogeek is a long and semi-interesting tale. It involves multiple computing platforms, multiple job shifts, and a whole lotta dumb luck.
Read MoreA delayed look at day one of Macworld SF
When I arrived at San Francisco and met up with my kid brother and fellow MyMac contributor, Guy Serle, I had no idea this
Read MoreDelayed Report: Day 2 of Macworld and Closing Remarks
I’m writing this at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, waiting for my connection back to West Palm Beach, and finally have a moment to reflect
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