Article: Being Thankful

It’s the time of year where those of us in the United States say what we’re thankful for and spend time with our families. I’ve decided that this will be our last item published for the week, as our staff is going to be traveling and eating lots of turkey. In this article, I’d just like to list some things that I’m thankful for from the world of tech.

USB and FireWire

These interfaces are great. Sure, they act up sometimes, but nothing is better than having two main types of cables to deal with. No longer am I looking for an ADB extension cable or a SCSI cable in the bottom of a desk drawer when I decide to rearrange my system. Besides that, there’s quite a few adapters that make things easier, too (PocketDocks and FireWire 6- to 4-pin adapters).

iChat

Don’t get me wrong, I still like Adium, too, but I’ve been using iChat a lot lately. Besides a clean, simple interface, the voice chat features make it easy to talk to family members and faraway friends without long distance charges piling up. Give me tabbed message windows and I’ll be a happy camper.

iPods

I love my iPod, even if it is one of the so-called “older” models. What’s better than having almost my entire music library (I need more hard drive space on the iPod) with me wherever I go? Being able to rate songs on the fly is a plus, too. The nice thing is if I want to be antisocial, I can just pop in the earbuds and go about my business.

flickr

Yes, the photo service that geeks everywhere love is on my list. It’s free, or you can get a better version for just a little bit of cash. There are other ones out there, too, but it works well with iPhoto and is very simple to use.

Storage Devices (External Hard Drives and Flash Drives)

I was going to separate these two, but I just couldn’t. I have a few external FireWire drives sitting on my desk, and have really appreciated them lately as I finally took the time to back up all my various video projects and files. They’re rather inexpensive, hold a lot, and are quite portable. What’s even more portable are flash drives (I have a red JumpDrive). In the last week, this thing has been a lifesaver for keeping a few documents in sync between two computers. I’d also like to say that because of these, the floppy disk and Zip disk are officially dead.

CSS

Cascading stylesheets are also on my list. Why? Not only do they cut down on the amount of useless HTML code I have to use, they also help me make this site look pretty for anyone using modern browsers. Plus, there’s all kinds of new additions being added that I just have yet to discover.

Lucida Grande

Finally, I’m thankful for the default system font on OS X. Not only is it not as boring as Arial or Times New Roman, but it’s easy to read and has a touch of class. Best of all, I can use it all over the content-side of things on the web site and only people running Mac OS X can see it. It sure is better than MS Sans Serif or Tahoma, too.

Well, that’s it. I just wanted to say that I’m also thankful for the opportunity to put this site up and to share the experience with others. To everyone out there have a safe and happy Thanksgiving, and don’t get hurt in the big sales on Friday!