As I wrote over at Whitespace, I bought myself a Powermac yesterday (specs below) and am just now learning the ins and outs of OS X. I owned a Powerbook last year for about 6 weeks and never really dug too deep into the inner workings of the operating system. However, now I will be […]

Saturday was a day of disappointment and excitement, all wrapped into a mini package (you’ll get the pun in a bit). I got up super-early—well, for a Saturday—stood in line for over an hour before the Apple store opened (an hour earlier than it’s normal 10am time), and was one of the first few […]

Simon Tatham, creator of PuTTY, has written down his experiences with Subversion. He touches on many topics including security, storage, and migration from CVS.

For those of you who don’t want to read the whole thing, his conclusion:

Although I’ve described some issues above which might or might not be considered bugs in Subversion, in general […]

Everyone has been trying to figure out how to force the Mac mini to be a media center ever since it was announced. It’s small, and it’s cheap, so it does make sense.
Engadget has put together a preliminary guide to getting your mini set up as your entertainment hub. Though it is just a […]

Beyond the Obvious has a couple of nice torrent files that have a collection of 165 Apple TV commercials in .mov format.
Here is what’s included:
49 - Classics
32 - Switch
13 - iMac
12 - Cost Less, Do More
12 - What’s on Your PowerBook
8 - The Future
7 - Misc.
6 - Newton
5 - //gs Commercials
5 - iBook
4 - Think […]

FG is growing and in the process of growing we are looking for 1 or 2 more people to add to our crew to write entries, articles, or whatever you even call the mess of stuff we post daily. Interests should include at least one of the categories you can see on your right.
Also we […]

Now that the Mac has turned 21 years old, it’s about time the home video of its birth is finally released on the internet.
“Kottke”:http://www.kottke.org/05/01/jobs-macintosh-video has the best list of mirrors, including some torrents. I got 300k/sec off of the torrents, so I recommend using those if you can. Also you won’t suck up some site’s […]

Legendary computer hardware/software manufacturer Commodore (of C64 and Amiga fame) has been sold to yet another company, eleven years after the original company filed for bankruptcy.
The new owner - American online music distributor, Yeahronimo Media Ventures - has paid a whopping 24 million Euros for the beleaguered Commodore brand.
In related news: the venerable Amiga could […]

When I was a kid, a favourite uncle of mine (favoured because he was rich and always brought gifts when he visited) showed me something incredible - a digital wristwatch with an LED display (yes, I’m that old)!
The watch face was totally black. But, when my uncle pressed a little button, red LEDs lit up […]

Although this doesn’t mean that they are building the next great browser you do have to wonder what the heck the guy is going to be doing for them. I wonder if it’s still cool to work for Google or is just to corporate like now?
I think I will go work for Google for a […]

I would like to thank the Crew over at Daily Rotation for adding FG to their lists of sites to track. Very proud to be in great company.

ReportLab is a company which describes itself as “the print button for e-business.” Although it sells commercial products for PDF output, it also has an open source toolkit.

Among the open source items available:

The ReportLab Open Source PDF library - PDF generating toolkit
PyRXP - validating XML parser available for Python
Preppy - a text-preprocessor
PythonPoint - a […]

What happens if you take an Open Source PBX system (say Asterisk PBX, for example), add in a group of worldwide users that share their telephone resources a la Napster et al?
Simple - you get The Bellster™ Network’s Phone Sharing Service. Here’s the scoop, straight from the Bellster™ FAQ:
The Bellster™ Network’s Phone Sharing Service is […]

It’s just the thing for a retro-minded geek on the go — a rotary cell phone. I’m not sure that it has speed-dialing, but with an old rotary phone and a few hacks you can sport one of your very own.

Bruce Perens, a Senior Research Scientist at the

Not too many magazines place a focus on Open Source Software let alone Free Software, but Free Software Magazine does exactly that. And they do it pretty damn well. I have only been able to read two of the articles in the first issue, but I am impressed enough with them that I will probably […]