Thursday, January 12th.
Six days before tens of thousands of websites blacked out, before thousands would take to the streets of New York and San Francisco, and before the biggest online protest in history. SOPA and PIPA were being rammed through Congress, and it threatened to restrict freedom of information and destroy the Internet as we know it.

I was spending a lot of time on this fight. I had spent the week juggling my full time job and planning a protest rally in Seattle (which ended up getting snowed out), when a line to a song suddenly popped into my head. Sung to the tune of Don McLean’s “American Pie,” it went “the day the lolcats died.”

I’m part of Laughpong, a Youtube channel where my circle of friends make viral comedy videos about popular topics like Kinect or Siri. Most of our videos break 100,000 views, several have broken 1 million. Cumulatively, we have over 10 million views.

As soon as that line popped into my head, I knew we had to make this happen. I sat down, wrote a rough draft of the lyrics, and forwarded it to Rob and Alexander, two of our writers, with the instructions “DROP EVERYTHING AND WORK ON THIS.” We went from idea to final script in less than 24 hours.

Friday, January 13th.
While Rob and Alexander were writing, I contacted Forest, the director. We recruited our friend Chris Parker to sing and play the song, secured a cameo from Ben Huh, CEO of The Cheezburger Network, and set up a shoot for the next day,

Saturday, January 14th.
Chris, Forest, our cameraman Gabe, the assistant Molly, and I arrived on set at 9am to start shooting. It was a cold, rainy, miserable Seattle morning, and we were shooting in a garage. We got there and while Chris was warming up we experimented with the camera, sound, and lighting setup. By 10am we were finally ready to do the first take.

Watching Chris play gave me the chills. We finished the first take, and everyone on set was stunned in silence. We looked around and just thought “Oh my god… this is phenomenal.” It would later be called “The official Protest Song of the SOPA/PIPA Movement,” and remembering how I felt in that moment, I’m not surprised.

We shot a few more takes with Chris, and then we were done with the musical portion. Forest, Gabe, Molly and I then drove down to our “Office” set to get the other shots we needed (Ben Huh and the calendar, Molly tearing up paper, Forest and I on the computer). Ben Huh actually BROUGHT a printed out copy of SOPA (which was MASSIVE), and we decide to have Molly ACTUALLY rip up the bill. It took a little while to get the shot right, but we were pretty satisfied with the final result.

We wrapped shooting for the day around 5pm. Subtracting transit time and lunch, we spent about 6.5 hours shooting the video.

Sunday, January 15th.
Forest locked himself in his room and edited the video together. I recruited our friend Tara to join me as the marketing team, and we made a list of all of the news sites, blogs, and influential people we wanted to reach out to and have promote the video.

Monday, January 16th.
More research, and we started crafting the messaging to use in our outreach., and we started planning the launch.

Tuesday, January 17th.
Launch. The next two days were two of the craziest days of my life. LaughPong has had big launches before, but nothing like this. The video was successful and was picking up steam on a lot of smaller blogs and websites, but then it hit TechCrunch. And that’s when ALL the other sites picked it up. Wired. Fark. The Huffington Post. The Washington Post. The Wallstreet Journal. MSNBC. (Twice) We were trending globally on Youtube and on Twitter. Youtube’s Autocomplete was even suggesting us for “The day the-”. At one point we were getting 30 to 40 tweets a minute.

Wednesday, January 18th.
This was the day of the big blackout. Wikipedia was down, Google’s logo was censored, Craigslist was redirecting. The Internet had gone nuclear, and so had The Day the Lolcats Died. The viewcount was exploding. We were getting requests for interviews internationally. The organizers of the New York City rally wanted to know if Chris could come and play the song at the event for the protestors.

This is the day that our video was played on The Today Show, and the song was played throughout the day on national NPR. It was also the day that College Humor downloaded our video and reuploaded it to their site without permission, linkback, or attribution (under SOPA, we totally could have taken College Humor offline!). When College Humor steals your stuff, that’s when you KNOW you’re successful!

The Next Week:
The Day the Lolcats Died burned across the Internet, breaking 800,000 views in just a few days. There was a never ending stream of tweets, articles, blog posts, and comments saying “This video drove me to call my Congressman.” There were even positive Youtube comments – WHEN HAS THAT EVER HAPPENED BEFORE!?

Many amazing organizations were creating incredible content detailing why SOPA and PIPA were bad and why people should fight it. For the people who are passionate about this and recognize the importance, it was perfect. But for the masses who aren’t in the tech industry or didn’t understand the importance, our video was the catalyst to get them to act. It was video content, it was short, it was funny, it was damn catchy, it was easily sharable, and it had a strong, but simple, call to action.

The video was extremely topical, so as expected once SOPA and PIPA were declared dead and the blackout was over, views dropped off rapidly. But that’s fine – the video served its purpose.

It showed that nine people (Zachary Cohn, Forest Gibson, Molly McIsaac, Gabe Conroy, Chris Parker, Alexander Theoharis, Rob Whitehead, Tara Theoharis, and Ben Huh) could come together in five days with a budget of zero dollars and create something that had a significant impact on the future.

I’m proud of my friends for what we created together, and I’m proud that in 50 years I’ll be able to pull up “The Day the Lolcats Died“ on HoloTube and show my grandchildren that I fought for what I believed in.

Oh, and just wait until you see what we’re doing next.

• Last Tuesday I got involved in the fight against SOPA/PIPA and founded www.SeattleAgainstSOPA.com
  
• Last Thursday night I had a line to a song pop into my head. “The day the lolcats died.”
• On Saturday, we shot a video.
• On Tuesday, we launched the “The Day the Lolcats Died.”
• As of Friday (72 hours after launch), the video has gotten 705,000 views and driven over 4000 clicks to Life After SOPA.

We’ve gotten press coverage from MSNBC, The Washington Post, TechCrunch, The Guardian, NPR, Wired, and many many more. They’re calling this “the protest song of the anti-SOPA/PIPA movement.”

You can watch the video below.

Seattle2.0 has an awesome list of Seattle based startups, but there’s no addresses or location data associated with them.

So last night I wrote a quick google apps script to scrape the Seattle20 Startup Index, run all the companies through Switchboard.com, and then export them to a Google map.

And here is the final product!

View Seattle Startup Map in a full screen map

A few interesting things to note. Of the 476 startups in the Index, Switchboard was only able to find addresses for 155 of them. Of the remaining 321 startups, some don’t exist anymore, and some just didn’t come up in Switchboard (For example, I know the Cheezburger Network exists, and I know their address, but Switchboard couldn’t find it).

So this isn’t an exhaustive map, but it’s still interesting to see. If you want your startup added to the map, fill out this Seattle Startup Map Submission Form and I’ll add you.

One day my manager came up to me and described a fairly complex project he wanted done in Perl.

“But I don’t know Perl.”

“That’s okay. Here’s six books. (He dropped them on my desk) The rest of the O’Reilly books are on the intranet. Take as long as you need.”

3 months later, I had completed the project.

I went to Rochester Institute of Technology to study Computer Science because I really enjoyed programming. I loved problem solving, I loved being able to type some characters, then see something happen. And if I changed a few characters? I could make something completely different happen. It’s like being an architect, but you don’t have to wait years for someone else to build your skyscraper for you. But after a year or so, I realized something.

I wasn’t a particularly stellar developer.

I certainly wasn’t bad – I had a good work ethic, a good attitude, and I really enjoyed programming. I got assignments done in class and I finished a few side projects. But I was solidly in the middle of the pack. And that’s when I realized I had a decision to make.

Did I want to be a mediocre developer, or did I want to be an awesome something else?

I decided I wanted to be an awesome something else.

I started learning about business, marketing, organization, and leadership by actually DOING it through the awesome Rochester parkour community I developed in Rochester. At some point I realized I have a very unique skillset – I understand technology and I can code, but I also understand business, marketing, and how to get shit done.

I walk that line between “tech guy” and “business guy.” And that is something I am awesome at.

Keep your money low (There’s no point in having money if you’re not doing anything with it).

One of the biggest problems newbies in Starcraft have is when they are “floating money.” This is also referred to as having “Facebook money.” You only get to 3000 minerals and 2500 gas if you’re not spending it, and when you’re not investing your money in SOMETHING (production buildings, units, supply, upgrades, whatever!), it means you’re falling behind. Having 3000 minerals doesn’t win you matches, but if you turn that into 60 marines…

How Much Money You Have

How Much Money You Could Be Spending

Real life is like this too! Piling up money in the bank is money you’re not investing! Having some cash is good, but by converting that money into tangible assets you can make it useful.

Expand, but not when you’re spread too thin (Know when to start new projects or activities, and know when to cut back).

In any macro Starcraft game (and Real Life is all about Macro), you need to expand your base in order to increase your income and survive. But if you expand at the wrong time, it’s easy to get crushed. The timing of your expansion is based on a combination of how far into the game you are, your position relative to your opponents, and a few other factors.

Expand before you're ready and you might find yourself overwhelmed.

Real life is just like this! If you don’t expand into new projects and into new income streams, you risk getting contained and slowing your growth. But if you expand when you have too much going on, you won’t be able to keep up and you will end up in a weaker position than when you started.

Have a plan, don’t just do whatever (have goals, know when you want to accomplish them).

A good Starcraft player starts the game thinking Overlord at 10, scout, 14 pool, 15 hatch, drone to 16, get queen as soon as pool pops, then start reacting to the information you scouted. A bad Starcraft player starts the game thinking “Make some drones. I guess I should make a spawning pool. Oh crap, I’m supply blocked, better make 3 overlords. Oh damnit, it’s 6 minutes in and I forgot my queen. Oh damnit, I attacked with 10 zerglings and 6 roaches at 15:00 and he countered with 6 Thors, 30 marines and 4 medivacs. gg I guess.”

This is your path to eliminating the Zerg scourge

Real life is no different. If you wander through life without a plan, you’ll get surprised when 20 carriers and a mothership show up at your front door. But if you know that at 22, you want to be working for A Company doing B, and then in two years you want to have gotten C promotion so you can get recruited by Company D to do E for twice your old salary, and to do this you should join groups F and G and probably get published in H and I publications… then you’ve got a pretty solid plan, and you’ve got a good idea of how to get there. There will always be a hellion harass, but if you’ve got your goals and your plan you can react and adapt.

Scouting is critical (know what’s going on in the world).

A player who doesn’t scout might go mass zealot/immortal when their opponent is going mass Muta. All it would take is an observer or two to see the early lair + double spire and the Protoss player could have adapted and switched to something that can at least HIT mutalisks. In Starcraft, you’re playing with other people. If you’re going to interact with them, you need to know what they’re doing.

Scout and Gain Intelligence - any way you can!

The real world has more than just a population of you. You need to be aware of what’s going on in your city, in your industry, and in the rest of the world. Events develop, technology is released, and laws are passed that can shut you down like a dark templar rush.

Fungal is OP (all your eggs in one basket).

The Terran Marine Marauder push is a powerful force. Extremely high DPS, their units get slowed down, you can lose a few units without losing a lot of firepower. And then all the sudden, there’s green everywhere and all your units are trapped. Seconds later, more green and they’re all dead. You just got hit by Fungal Growth. Thousands of minerals down the drain in seconds.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket

This can happen in the real world, too. You’ve invested all your money in the housing industry: your tactic is flip a house and buy two more. And then it’s 2008, the housing bubble pops, and your net worth is down 90%. And it doesn’t look like the housing industry is recovering. You’ve lost tens of millions of dollars. If you had invested in the housing industry, but also a few technology startups, a local restaurant franchise, and rare metals like gold, you’d still have taken a hit, but it wouldn’t have ruined you.

Disclaimer: This is mostly tongue in cheek, not legitimate financial advice. Please don’t hate me, and please stop trying to cannon rush me as Zerg.

One quick note: I am a big fan of minimalist shoes. There’s a lot of research out there that shows that the more padding and cushioning a shoe has, the MORE damage it does to your feet, knees, and hips. That’s out of the scope of this article though.

Full disclosure: In early 2010 I received some free Ariakes from K-Swiss. This has not influenced my review, but I wanted to be transparent.

K-Swiss Ariake

K-Swiss Ariake Parkour Shoe

Description:
This was the first shoe created and marketed specifically for Parkour. They’re made by K-Swiss. They sent a lot of free pairs out to traceurs a few years ago to help spread the word about being a Parkour shoe. Many people wearing Ariakes got theirs for free, either directly from K-Swiss or from someone who got them from K-Swiss. They also come in lots of different (and crazy) colors, which can be a pro or a con depending on your preference. :)

Pros:
- Pretty good grip on most surfaces in most conditions.
- Pretty flexible
- Flat, solid rubber sole. There’s no dumb plastic arch or anything like that.

Cons:
-Can be very slippery on wet metal objects (rails).
-Durability. The toe will rip open, and the lacing holes will start to rip. You can still wear the shoe, but it will sustain cosmetic and eventually structural damage fairly quickly.

Overall:
Definitely not a bad shoe. I like shoes with less padding, and while this shoe has some, it doesn’t have a ton. The quality is the biggest problem – the shoe will tear itself apart after 6-8 months of moderate use, 2-4 months of heavy use. The shoe is mostly leather, so it’s a nice shoe to wear to keep your feet slightly drier.

K-Swiss Ariake Lite Mesh

K-Swiss Ariake Lite Mesh Parkour Shoe

Description:
The Ariake Lite Mesh came out about a year after the Ariake and solved many of the problems with the original shoe. It replaced a lot of the leather with mesh, which made the shoe lighter and breathier. They improved the durability by redesigning the toe and the lace holes so they don’t get damaged as easily.

Pros:
- All the pros from the original Ariakes
- Lighter
- Much more durable

Cons:
- Slippery when on wet metal objects.
- Since the shoe is mostly made of mesh, it will absorb water rapidly.
- Very difficult to find.

Overall:
The Ariake Lite Mesh is one of my favorite Parkour shoes. The biggest downside is that they’re very hard to find. K-Swiss doesn’t sell them directly anymore, so you’ll have to search elsewhere online or get really lucky in a store.

Fiveten Freerunner

Fiveten Freerunner Parkour Shoe

Description:
I haven’t owned a pair of these shoes, and so I don’t have extensive personal experience with them. I’ve tried on other peoples’ a few times, and then read a fair bit about them.

Pros:
- The rubber is extremely grippy. 5.10 originally made climbing shoes, so this makes a lot of sense.

Cons:
- The rubber is extremely grippy. This is also a con, because this extra grippiness can and will hide problems with technique.
- When wearing them, I found them to be a bit clunky. I had a lot of trouble “feeling” the ground under my feet, which makes me very uncomfortable. The padding was just too thick.

Overall:
- I’m not a big fan of these shoes (which is why I don’t own a pair). I don’t like the fact the thickness of them, and I think the extreme grip is actually a detriment to someone learning parkour. If I was in a wallrun contest, then I’d wear these parkour shoes, but if I’m just training I’d prefer something more normal.

Feiyue

Feiyue Parkour Shoe

Description:
These are really interesting shoes. They weren’t created for parkour or ever marketed toward traceurs. These are originally martial arts shoes, and are often found in China Towns and martial arts stores. They have a cloth top, a thin, extremely flexible, and pretty grippy bottom, and they have simple laces. The most outstanding part of this shoe is it’s price – between $10 and $20. They only last 3 or 4 months, but they cost a fraction of the price of any of the other speciality parkour shoes. Many people buy 5 pairs of Feiyue’s at a time!

Pros:
- Extremely inexpensive.
- Very flexible.
- Very lightweight.
- Very little padding.

Cons:
- You’ll wear through the bottoms of them pretty fast.

Overall:
I love these shoes. They’re comfortable, flexible, light, and extremely cheap. Buy a couple pairs and be set for a year.

Vibram Five Fingers

Vibram Five Finger Parkour Shoes

Description:
I love these shoes. I don’t have a pair yet, but they’re going to be my next shoe purchase. The ultimate minimalist shoe, there is essentially no padding, pretty good grip on most surfaces, and forces you to have perfect technique (in running and walking as well as parkour!)

Pros:
- Extremely minimal padding. Expect your landing technique to improve dramatically.
- As long as you get the right size, expect a very snug fit. They shouldn’t be going anywhere!
- Paying a premium actually makes sense for these foot-fitting shoes, as opposed to other shoes that are basically just shells for your feet.
- Will force you to improve landing and precision technique.
- Will improve running technique, which can prevent or fix some foot, ankle, knee, and hip problems.

Cons:
- Can be dangerous if you don’t take it slow. It’s imperative you avoid big drops and precisions, at least until you build back up to them.
- Very little protection if something gets dropped on your foot or if you stub your toe.

Overall:
The Vibram Five Fingers are really great Parkour shoes. Some people like to “go big” and do big drops – I discourage this because it leads to a higher rate of injuries. If you want to go big, these will not be good shoes for you. If you want to improve your technique, if you want to train and prevent long term injuries, these will be great shoes for you. You’ll pay around the same price as other high end shoes, but these are definitely worth it.

Conclusion
For the dedicated traceur with no budget, I’d recommend the Vibram Five Fingers. If you don’t want to spend that much, but still want a great minimalist shoe, I’d definitely look into (a few pairs of) the Feiyues. If you aren’t interested in a minimalist shoe, the Ariake Lite Mesh and then the regular Ariake would be my recommendation.

That being said, if you’re just getting into parkour, you should ignore everything in this article for a few months. Head over to a general clothing store, find a pair of cheap $35 cross trainers and use those for a while. Technique is 90% of parkour, owning “the right shoes” is only going to get you a bit farther, and until then it’ll just mask problems with your technique.

Things to look for in a cheap crosstrainer:
- No plastic arch on the bottom.
- Bottom isn’t slick. If you have to, put your foot in the shoe and rub it against a few surfaces to get an idea of how grippy it is.
- Not too much padding or cushioning.

Now get out there and start training! :)

The Internet is a Series of Tubes

Massassi.net started in 1997 and was dedicated to editing and modding a Star Wars game called Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight. The game is now 14 years old, and except for the occasional game for “old times sake” no one has played in five years. But everyone was such good friends and the community was so tight that most people have stayed around. I found Massassi in 2001, and have checked it daily since.

The first person I met from the Internet was through Massassi, and was probably Gebhoq. I found out he lived about 20 minutes away, so we saw a play and grabbed lunch together. After that, I visited Rochester Institute of Technology, where I was going to go to school. There were six people from Massassi that, by chance, all ended up there, so we met up and they showed me around. I’ve met a bunch more people from Massassi, but I had talked daily with most of them for years, so it was more like reuniting with a long-time friend.

The next circle of internet meetings is through Parkour. When I first started training, there was no one experienced in my area. I saw on some local parkour forums that a bunch of people meeting up to train in Washington DC, so I drove down to meet them. I showed up in this park to find a dozen teenage boys, mostly shirtless, jumping, climbing, and flipping around. I was a bit nervous at first – I didn’t even know most of their handles, let alone names or anything about them. Five minutes after introducing myself, I felt we’d known each other for years. Since that first parkour jam, I’ve been great friends with Leonn, Psychosis, Doc_Ahk, Kipup, and RPG.

David Belle - Parkour

After that I was 100% comfortable meeting traceurs (people who train parkour) in person, to the point where I traveled for 8 weeks to 21 different cities one summer, and never spent a dime on housing – I just crashed on couches the entire time. I’d post up on the parkour forums for some city I’ve never been to, say I’m passing through, and I’d have people fighting over who would host me. My favorite meeting was stepping off a Greyhound Bus in Minneapolis at 4:15am, stumbling onto the street and looking at this guy standing by a car. I walk up and he says sleepily, “Happydud?” (My online handle for a while), I respond back just as sleepily “Krat0r?” Then we decide to go back to his place, sleep for another six hours, then formally introduce ourselves later that morning.

After meeting Massassians and spending weeks with people through Parkour, I’ve come to fully internalize the idea that strangers from the internet are no different then strangers in your neighborhood. A few weeks ago after a typo’d tweet, I was introduced to @ZacharyCohen (My handle is @ZacharyCohn). He had the middle name I’ve always wanted (Adam, so his initials spell his name – Z.A.C.). He’s interested in a lot of the same things I’m interested in, and he lived in NYC. Conveniently enough, I had an overnight layover in NYC coming up! So last night I showed up at New York Penn Station and went to my doppelganger’s condo. He opened the door and said “Hello, Zac!” I replied “Hello, Zac!” and it was like we were best friends. We hung out for a few hours, talked a lot, and there wasn’t a single awkward “you’re a stranger from the internet” type moment.

Networking - It's Dumb

Instead of networking, I want to make friends. I want to find people who are legitimately interesting to me, and legitimately interested in me. I want to talk to them about WHY they do what they do, what they do when they’re not at their job, what books they’ve read, what they think about the Civil War or China’s concern for the environment or anything. I don’t want to end the conversation with “give me a call, maybe we can help each other out.” I want to end it with “Continue our conversation over lunch next week?”

When I meet people from the internet in person, I guess technically it’s “networking.” But if I thought of it that way, I doubt I’d have half the friends I have today.

Stop networking. Start making friends.

DISCLAIMER: While I’ve had nothing but good experiences with meeting people, there is always the chance you could meet someone with less than honest intentions. Between my decade of martial arts, five years of parkour, and experience meeting people, I am pretty comfortable in these situations. But I am still very aware of potential threats. In the words of Han Solo, “Don’t get cocky.” Be safe.

My original idea was to create a Twitter account (@TunnelUnderWall) and stream every New York Times article through Twitter but I found out someone already did this, so I figured I’d turn this into a “How To Build Your Own Free New York Times Newsfeed” post and show how to make personalized ones just for you.

Step 1:
Head to the New York Times website and scroll all the way to the bottom. Click on the “RSS” link.

Handily, the New York Times has separated all of their sections into separate RSS feeds. Interested in Asian Politics and Technology? You can make a custom feed for just that. More interested in Fashion, Health, and Religion? Got you covered.

Step 2:
Next, you’re going to make use of Yahoo! Pipes. This is a service that reads in RSS feeds (RSS isn’t dead, it’s just sleeping), lets you hack them to pieces, then export it as a new feed. Don’t get intimidated by Yahoo! Pipes, it’s not as complicated as it looks.

Open up a new tab and sign up for a Yahoo! Pipes account (you’ll need a Yahoo account). On the left, open up “Sources” and drag a “Fetch Feed” box into the gridded area.

Step 3:
Switch over to the RSS page of the New York Times you opened up earlier. At this point, we need to choose the categories of news we want. Make sure you right click and copy the target URL, if you actually go to the page it redirects you somewhere else.

Step 4:
Switch back to Yahoo! Pipes and paste that URL into the Fetch Feed. Go back and forth between until you have all your categories pasted over. You’ll end up with something that looks like this:

Step 5:
Okay, before you look at the next picture… Don’t panic. It’s not as bad as it looks. This is what’s next:

Haven’t panicked yet? Good. This is what we’re going to do:

• In Yahoo! Pipes, on the left menu go to “Operators.” You’ll want to drag out a “Sort,” “Filter” and “Unique” operator box onto your workgrid.
• Go to “Date” on the left menu and pull out a “Date Builder.”
• Fill in the information as seen in the above example, replacing the date given with today’s date.
• Connect the blue and grey dots as shown in above example. Placement of the squares doesn’t matter, as long as they’re connected correctly.

Step 6:
Congrats! The hard part is over! Save the pipe, then hit “Run pipe.”

Step 7:
There shouldn’t be any errors if you copied the correct URLs into Fetch Feed. If there aren’t any errors, hit “Publish feed,” “Get RSS” and then copy the URL.

Step 8:
We’re done with Yahoo! Pipes, and ready to move onto our next service: TwitterFeed. Sign up for an account, and put in the RSS feed Yahoo! Pipes gave you. Go to “Advanced Settings” and switch to “5 updates” at a time and make sure it updates every 30 minutes.

Step 9:
Open a new tab, and start a new Twitter account. You can use any username – this is a personalized feed for you. If you’d like, you can set it to publish privately so only you have access to it.

Step 10:
Switch back to Twitterfeed and connect to your Twitter account.

And you should be done! Give the Twitter account a half an hour or so and it will start updating. Follow the Twitter account you created on Twitter, or just reference it whenever you want to read an article.

Have fun tunneling under the New York Times’ paywall!

Thanks to my Doppelganger, Zachary Cohen, for the inspiration.

So in Part 1 of this series, I was talking about how I felt after I ordered my new Macbook Pro, but hadn’t received it yet. It arrived Saturday night, but I didn’t get a chance to open the box until Sunday.

If there’s one thing Apple focuses on (this shouldn’t be a surprise), it’s the experience. Even just opening the box was impressive.

Once I got it out of the box, I scanned through the manual, then opened it up. Within 2 minutes, everything was configured and I was staring at that the desktop.

Aaaand then I didn’t really know what to do from there. I decided to start moving through the System Preferences. I figured the best way to get familiar with a new OS was to see what I could change!

So after an hour or two of tinkering, I have the dock set up to hide on the left, maximizing my screen real estate. I’ve learned about the different multi-touch options, and best of all… discovered the keyboard shortcuts window! This is something I never thought about, but it’s astounding how obvious it is once you see it. Windows doesn’t have a global keyboard shortcuts menu… you just have to figure them out as you go. Windows key + M minimizes, Windows key + E opens Windows Explorer… there’s no way anyone could find a list of all of those in windows anywhere. But on the Mac, there’s just a huge list. So I’ve been learning those, and it’s been pretty sweet.

Installing programs was weird. People say it’s easier than on Windows, but I would argue the whole process is a bit less intuitive. I needed a friend to explain to me that you download a .dmg, then you can drag and drop it to the applications folder, then you have to unmount it to get rid of the icon. On windows, you can just double click on the file
you downloaded and hit next-next-next until it’s set up. I won’t say I don’t like this method, I just don’t think it’s necessarily better.

So far, I’ve downloaded and installed Firefox, VLC, and Flash. The first two were fine, I had some trouble getting Flash to work. It installed fine, but Youtube videos wouldn’t work. I tried a few times and eventually it worked… so whatever. *shrug*

The biggest thing I’ve noticed so far is that IT IS FAST. Part of this is definitely the fact that it’s a new computer with a fresh OS, and another big part is that it’s using a solid state drive. But either way, it wakes up from sleep before I can finish opening the screen, and all applications pretty much load instantly.

I think the best way to describe the colors on the screen would be “vibrant.” Even looking just at individual icons, it’s very impressive.

I think those are most of my initial impressions. All I’ve done on it so far are dick around with some settings and watch an episode of Dexter though. I’m planning on migrating some old files tonight, and if I can get that done maybe make use of what’s running under the hood. I found this project on HN a week or two ago, and I want to try it out.

The only other thing I want at this point would be one of these babies…
That’s a lot of screen real estate I’m sure I could find ways to fill.

My name is Zachary Cohn… and I just switched to Mac.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while. The sleek unibody aluminum design, the efficiency resulting from it all being designed to work together, a unix base under the hood with a user friendly blanket on top. It was pretty tempting.

I threw it all away... FOR THIS!

I’ve been using Windows for all my life. Started with 3.1, then 95, then 98. After a brief stint with ME, I got my first XP box. It was awesome! I knew how it worked, inside and out, I had grown up with it, and life was good. I built a desktop and got a laptop. My desktop slowly became a Frankenbox, my laptop got stolen and replaced with my current one. I graduated college, moved to Seattle, and now only have my laptop. It’s definitely mine, covered in bumper stickers ranging from Streetlight Manifesto to TechTV, American Parkour to Unicycle.com.

But my laptop is dying. It’s old, it’s slow, and last time I tried to install linux on it, it was a disaster (Several pieces of my hardware aren’t supported). A fresh install of XP (won’t run 7) would probably get me another 6 months out of it or so, but recently the battery has gone to hell, it’s been BSODing, fans have been failing, and it’s overheating like crazy. It was time to move on, and I figured with Black Friday right around the corner, I should hold out until then.

I wanted something reasonably state of the art. It didn’t have to be a powerhouse, but I wanted something that wasn’t going to be completely obsolete AND useless in a week. I wanted something with solid state hard drives. They cost a penny or two, but I think they’re worth it. Mostly I wanted something that had a unified user experience, that was sleek and user friendly and all the pieces were designed to work together… so I started looking at Macs.

I spec’d out a specific one: 15″, i5 core, 128gb solid state, 4gb of ram a while ago. Then I waited for Black Friday and watched the Refurbished section on the Apple store. Black Friday came around, and while their deals weren’t that impressive (and didn’t seem to stack with the educational discount), something of interested popped up on the Refurbished section. 15″, i7 core, 128gb ssd, 4gb of ram.

So I bought it. And it arrives later this week. I can count the number of times I’ve used a Mac on my fingers, and now I’m taking the jump. I have no idea how to use one, I don’t know how to install (or even find!) programs on it. But I guess we’ll see how it goes…

I’ll be using this blog series to chronicle my experiences learning to use a Mac. Check back when I receive my new laptop later this week for Part 2 of ???