has_many :thoughts

I started to get the iPhone / iPod Touch itch today when I saw iStumbler pop this up on Growl:

Justin was (slacking off and) hacking his iPod touch and so it suddenly appeared on the network. Awesome!

Now, if only I didn’t have to switch to AT&T to get an iPhone.

Let the RailsConf blog begin!

Although I haven’t yet made it out of the airport in Philadelphia, and I’m not sure I ever will with the storm clouds looming over south Philly, I wanted to get the blogging started.

First observation:

There are a lot of people that have MacBook’s around me. Either there are a bunch of other people hopping flights out to RailsConf right now (seems unlikely) or Apple has really gained marketshare (quite possible).

I see several businessy looking people, an older gentleman, and more than a handful of hipster designer-looking types.

Is Apple gaining more ground than I realized? Or is this just another case of that phenomenon where once you are exposed to something, you see it everywhere? Maybe I just never looked for MacBooks before a week ago when I joined the Mac Club?

I’m some what of a OS X app junkie. I’ve ran or tryed almost everything, and love installing new apps. Here’s my list of Mac apps I’ve grown to love (in no particular order). Feel free to comment with any other suggestions or likes/dislikes.

1. Textmate, number one favorite text editor of ALL TIME! Just try it.
2. QuickSilver, A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.
3. Optimized Firefox, optimized versions of Firefox (though I have had problems with this in dual monitor). Its great to have a re-compiled version of Firefox built exclusively for the platform of OS X your on. You can also choose to have the normal Firefox forms and buttons or OS X ones (like Safari).
4. Transmit, FTP/SFTP/WebDAV/etc. For those times you just don’t feel like using the command-line for transferring files.
5. Coda, if it would only support Textmate bundles/snippets it would probably be my next favorite web development text editor. Also check out Desktastic
6. CSSEdit, helps when your learning CSS.
7. Script Debugger 4, Allows you to write OS X scripts in either Applescript and/or Javascript! You can also build them into .app packages for distribution.
8. RDoc Widget, just started using this, it also supports the Rails API (and any other web based RDoc?) Must have if you develop on Rails/Ruby.
9. NetNewsWire, give love to this desktop RSS reader. Though I still find myself using Google Reader until I script my own favorite article feed. NetNewsWire supports massive scripting in OS X!
10. Ruby OSA, start scripting control for all your favorite OS X apps using your favorite programming language!
11. XML/XSLT Cocoa Utility Apps, check the bottom right side, this guy has built some very groovy Cocoa apps for XML/XSLT. XML/RPC Client, XMLmate and XSLTmate Bundle, mark-up validators and more!
12. svnX, Visually see your entire repository using this excellent svn GUI frontend! I’ve also linked the main product page for other useful apps.
13. OmniGraffle, The Omni Group makes probably one of the best graphing tools I’ve ever used, along with other fine products such as OmniOutliner and OmniPlan. Checkout OmniWeb which is a browser with some neat ideas. Also, OmniDazzle seems to be used in many OS X user presentations.
14. Yojimbo, keeps track of every single password and little tidbit of information you keep laying around in different places.
15. SpamSieve, a VERY powerful spam filter for Apple Mail.
16. The Missing Sync, even though I’ve never used it, I hear this is the best syncing utility for Treo, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Sony PSP devices.
17. VirtueDesktop, until Leopard gives us “Spaces” we’ll have to use this utility (development has halted though).
18. SSHKeychain, takes care of loading your ssh keys into memory. Also intergrates with OS X’s Keychain.
19. Graphviz, views graphs of the .DOT file extension type. Great with RailRoad!
20. MacTheRipper, used for copying DVDs that you’ve created and that you own! ;)
21. HandBrake for loading your DVDs into your iPod! Now with Apple TV support.
22. xScope, a powerful set of tools that are ideal for measuring, aligning and inspecting on-screen graphics and layouts.
23. iPulse, graphically displays the inner workings of Mac OS X on the desktop or in the dock.
24. Go go Redball!, a little fun for your dashboard.

Enjoy!