Luna Tail

I do love my MacBook and I’ll never go back to a windows machine if I can help it. I am wondering one thing, though. I want to back up my photos to my external hard drive and I’m having a hard time figuring out how with just Finder.

I guess I can use the Time Machine software that comes with, but from what I’ve read, it must backup to a disk that has been formatted for the Mac OS. Which is okay.. except that I don’t want to overwrite all the files that are already on my external backup disk in order to start backing up with Time Machine. Hrm…

So maybe instead of wondering what is adhd, I should just resign myself to the fact that I am somewhat ADD and OCD in my backups and my computer organization… and live with how things are. Hrm.. but no, I want to know how it’s done. And so I will keep looking!

Okay so I have been scouring the web looking for ways to convert the AVI files that my EZShare RCA Camera records movies in, into a format that iMovie on my Mac can use.

Dang, it’s been a tough fight. But I’ve learned that AVI is merely a container, it’s not the actual codec. The codec is what’s inside the AVI. And my EZShare camera actually records in HD, the codec it is in is H264 (x264 or h.264 I’m not sure what is the correct sytax).

So I am poor, and I’m really trying to save money, so I have been looking for something free. I read that Quicktime Pro 7 would be able to convert the AVIs to MOV, and I was almost going to buy the darn thing for $30, when finally I found Handbrake.

It works like a dream. It doesn’t convert to MOV, it convers to MP4 which is an MPEG-4 Format/container something. The settings I’ve been using are the Classic ones in the popout menu. Video Codec MPEG-4 FFmpeg (I looked at stand alone FFmpeg and I didn’t want something I had to run command line).

So with time, sweat, but fortunately no tears, and almost putting myself on a stress weight loss diet, finally I am able to convert my AVIs to MP4s and import them into iMovie. Yay! Sound and all. I’m happy about it!

Okay, I’m sold. I’ll never buy another windows machine again. I love my MacBook. It runs fast and clean. Installing and removing applications easily and completely. It doesn’t come with a bunch of junk applications that I have to remove, like windows does. The applications just feel lighter… cleaner. They are not so heavy that they take a zillion system resources and bog everything down. The graphics are clean and amazing on my Mac. And again, they are clean and light and don’t take a ton of resources.

I’m just figuring out iPhoto and iMovie. I’ll post again about converting AVIs to MP4s that can be used in iMovie. But I’m getting there. I need to actually play with iMovie now so that I can learn how it works.

The only thing, so far, that I’m disappointed in is the financial management software. Nothing I have looked at is anything I want to use. And the ones that I might consider cost $40 or more. And I just can’t afford that right now. I miss Ace Money, the one I ran on Windows. I’ve tried some online bank account managers like Quicken online or Mint, but I don’t really like them much either. So I might resort to running Wine on my MacBook an then Ace Money on it. We’ll have to see if I can get that to work. I’ve compiled Wine but I haven’t tried to actually run it using MacPorts, but I’m leaning in that direction.

I love the screen, and I could sit on the couch all day playing with my MacBook… then I’d need the best way to lose belly fat because I’ll get more if I sit around all day! Bleh.

So now I need to blog more, keep up on my poor blogs that are being neglected. And so I’ll try. I’m still having anxiety about updating them. Which is silly, I know, but maybe I’ll get over it soon.

So here is a picture from the hike we went on a week or so ago. Up to Dog Lake up Millcreek Canyon. It was a nice hike, and it didn’t even take me days and days to recover from! I am so pleased about that.

We saw some pretty flowers, and I had to stop and take a picture of this little bee having himself some pollen.

I’m glad I’m feeling better. Though I worry that we have mold in our house that we should really get rid of. And we should have our furnace checked, like my sister did, to see if we have any leaks. All these things take money, and we just don’t really have much… okay okay I know, my husband bought me a MacBook instead, but hey that’s pretty necessary! LOL yeah we should spend more money on serious things and less on play things. But my husband needs a laptop for school. And instead of him buying yet another PC, he bought me a Mac and took my old HP laptop. He’s going to take Vista off and put XP on it so it’ll be faster.

This backlit keyboard in my MacBook is just the coolest!

I am so excited… so much so that I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ve been trying to figure out this darn MacBook on my own! I love it so far. I only have had it since September 5, so only a few days now. When I first turned it on and I tried pressing the track pad… nothing happened. Little did I know that I had to press hard on the trackpad to make it click and then it registered!

I got the bigger hard drive, 250 Gig (or is that 260?) because I have over 14,000 pictures. Though I think when I imported them into iPhoto from my external backup drive, some of them duplicted. I’m not too crazy about iPhoto… I installed Picasa but I’m not too crazy about Picasa on top of iPhoto either. :p I haven’t used iMovie yet but I’m looking forward to it.

I think I found a checkbook software I like, free, so that’s good. I installed Firefox, which I can’t live without, and imported all my junk from my Vista machine so I have it all. I do so love Firefox!

I really like the trackpad on this MacBook. I love the two finger scrolling, how neat! But I think my right arm is getting tired from pressing so hard. I know I can change it to a tap.. and I did that, but sometimes I get twitchy finger and I double tap when I don’t mean to, so I turned it back off. I also like the two finger right click deal. But I’m considering a mouse anyway. I wonder if my Microsoft Mouse would work with my MacBook…

I don’t know where the Home or End keys are… if there are any. LOL. And the command key takes some getting used to. But so far, it’s fast and it boots and shuts down amazingly quickly. It’s more valuable to me than certified diamonds! But I’m a techie geek ya know. So far, so good!