Neatly Sliced

Sometime this weekend, MacHeist 3 started selling its latest bundle. Note, there is no heist game portion this round, but the bundle is for sale.

The MacHeist bundle was introduced last December, 2006, to huge success within the Macintosh community. The software bundle offered 10 of the Mac indie development community’s best offerings, and was available at the end of the MacHeist promotion for one week.

The bundle was called the greatest Mac software deal in history, and has never been available since then. Customers snapped up over 16,000 copies, and donated 25% of their purchase to various charities.

Apps:
Awaken, Cha-Ching (a fun Quicken-like app, $40 value), CoverSutra, DEVONthink Personal, iClip (Hardcore clipboard, $29 value), Overflow (dock remanager), Wallet (account info aggregator, $14.95 value), WriteRoom, XSlimmer (removes parts of Universal Code that do not apply to your machine, $11.95 value), Enigmo (game, $19.95 value), Bugdom 2 (game, $29.95 value), Nanosaur 2 (game, $24,95 value).

Altogether, it is over $250 worth of goodies for $49. An absolute steal. An added bonus - some of the funds are donated to charity and you can choose which charity your portion will support. If you do nothing, just register for a free MacHeist account - you get WireTap Pro for free ($19 value) and some other goods that collect to $54 for free, and a $2 discount from the bundle.

My computer will be so brimming with software that it won’t know what to do with itself.

Support Neatly Sliced and purchase through this link to give me points leading to a discount on my purchase. Thanks in advance.

The cat’s almost out of the bag… Say whaaat? Any guesses on the mystery product?
Via Josh.

According to iStat’s documentation on their battery section, battery health is calculated by the current capacity versus original (new) capacity, although I’m sure they include variables like average temperature and number of cycles in their calculation.

I have read in various forums that average battery wear and tear is 80% health at 300 cycles. As you can see from the photo, I’m at 244 cycles and 70% health. If I sit and watch my unplugged portable, I can see the battery percentage shrink as the minutes pass. It’s as fun as charades, only completely depressing.

I purchased AppleCare on my MacBook Pro because I have a tendency to have expensive things go wrong. I called the AppleCare phone number (1-800-APL-CARE [1-800-275-2273] as of December 2007) and endured about a half hour of troubleshooting by a rather nice fellow who was reading the script the computer was showing him. The possibly unnecessary steps I was forced to take:

1. Ensure that I am using BatterUpdater version 1.3. This is done by navigating to /System/library/SystemConfiguration/ and Get Info on BatteryUpdater.bundle. Of course, I have the latest version.
2. Shut down my machine, unplug the power adapter, and check the battery’s serial number and model number. This is to ensure that you battery is not in the defective range as detailed on the corresponding Apple Support page.
3. Replace battery, plug computer back in, start machine, only to restart to zap the PRAM. This is accomplished by holding the key combination Command+Option+P+R on restart, and waiting for the second chime. (Apple Knowledge Center reference)
4. Open Apple System Profiler (Apple menu > About This Mac > More Info…), and read off to my helpful assistant the information under Power > Battery Information.

After much ado about nothing, my helpful assistant concluded that my battery was defective and promptly mailed me (in less than 48 hours, mind you) a new battery, under the stipulation that I return my depressed chargeless power device.

The moral of the story is, my AppleCare has just nearly paid for itself by replacing my battery that I was using every day. Now I get another two years of peace of mind in case anything else breaks down.

The very first widget of the week at NeatlySliced.com will be ::drum roll please::

The Lost Counter by skia.net.

At 104 minutes (1 hour and 44 minutes), a familiar alarm will sound, you will have 4 minutes (bringing the total cycle to the familiar 108 minutes) to enter the code “4 8 15 16 23 42″ (The Numbers!) and hit “Execute” (a.k.a. “return” on your Apple keyboard), else face the end of the world (or, hieroglyphics where the numbers displayed).

Not only is this immensely fun, but you can use it as a sitting-timer for the workplace. Every 108 minutes, you will have a fun reminder to get up and take a walk to avoid unsightly computer-posture and deathly blood clots.

Currently, the timer still counts down even if the user is logged out or the computer is asleep. This can be quite annoying; once the timer has expired without entering the code, the only way to reset it is to delete that instance of the widget and plop a fresh one in its place. This is fine if going for the Lost experience, but makes it cumbersome to use it as a desk tool.

Proposed modifications:

1. Make the timer pause when the user is logged off or the computer is asleep
2. If not the above, if the timer expires, allow a force reset in the info view of the widget

The widget is freeware, but if you wish to support skia you may buy his wares at cafepress.

I’m always eager for debug tools in different browsers so that I can troubleshoot browser-unique rendering CSS and JavaScript issues.

I am yet to uncover a decent Safari Web Dev toolbar. A simple option, however, is the Debug menu. The Debug menu features User Agent spoofing, JavaScript console (not quite as good as Firefox’s), and a view of the DOM tree, among other things.

To enable the Debug menu, first launch OS X’s Terminal. Then type the following:
defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

To disable the Debug menu, simply replace the 1 with a zero:
defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 0

Relaunch Safari and view your new Debug menu, next to the Help menu. Read a short bit of the JavaScript Console at Apple’s Safari Dev page.

Have you found useful Safari development tools? Leave a comment and let me know.

If you’ve been under a rock and haven’t heard, Ratatouille is Pixar’s newest flick. The past few films from Pixar (The Incredibles, Cars) appeared positively banal and to this day I have not viewed them. Ratatouille features an innovative storyline - a rodent chef working on the sly in a Parisian restaurant, only in cahoots with the kitchen boy. I am anxious for its release date on June 29.

Download the (free!) 9 minute preview (iTMS link) and subscribe to the video podcast.

I installed Safari 3 Beta on my work Windows machine to test some sites. It was running fairly well, but one site that I hit crashed every time I hit a menu option. I did some googling, and the error code I received matched that of an application hitting a bad batch of memory. In other words, this is due to a memory corruption error; Aviv Raff lamented the same issue. In addition to the memory problem, MacRumors.com reports additional security breaches.

In any vein, I’m definitely holding off on installing Safari 3 Beta on my MacBook until a more stable release. Not only do I wish to avoid the problems, but the Beta overwrites Safari 2, much to an over-eager web developer’s chagrin.

Only install Safari 3 Beta if you are using Windows and if you need to quickly see how a page is rendered in Safari. Otherwise, hold your horses.