Oh man... Thunderbird and Lightning - not an ideal combination either....

Hm, this really sucks. Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 and Lightning 0.7 and GCalDeamon isn't exactly ideal. In the couple of hours I have tried it, Thunderbird managed to list one mail item twice while missing another item in the same inbox (IMAP). When deleting the double entry, the hidden email disappeared! The multiple tags features does not work. When leaving the mailbox (for any other view), only one of the tags remain (maybe this caused the earlier problem). Lightning, and GCalDeamon seems to have different views of the correct time in my timezone - DST screwup somewhere perhaps? An email viewed in Thunderbird that contained an .ICS attachment had no functionality associated - when clicking it, nohing at all happened. (This really sucks). I am actually better of with a functioning iCal which is integrated with Leopard mail, and having a read only view of my google calendar (and going to google online for editing). Crap. I was hoping for Thunderbird and Lightning + google to provide one set up for mail, usenet news, rss, and calendar.

Working Calendar setup on OS X leopard

After much searching and looking at alternatives, I gave up trying to integrate Leopard iCal with Google Calendar. It worked fine to just read the data, but not update the calendar. Maybe a few releases away then google may support CalDav, or someone interested enough in the combination may come up with a solution... There is a GCalDeamon http://gcaldaemon.sourceforge.net/usage12.html written in java that works well with google calendar, but the Leopard version of iCal uses a different format than the Tiger version, so this particular combination does not work :(. So, I switched to Thunderbird and Lightning (Sunbird) instead, and there it was quite straight forward to install and integrate with google. You have to enter some UNIX commands when doing so, but it is quite simple. Happy for now, but the configuration to also suport offline use is a bit more complicated, and something I will continue working on... Now I also have to figure out how to start the GCalDeamon as part of the OS x start up. (I am sure that is easy, but I have not done this before)

Just found a much better version of Open Office for Mac that runs nativly (i.e. does not require X11). You find NeoOffice here http://www.neooffice.org Tip, you need to move OpenOffice to the Trash to get file associations to pick NeoOffice. I guess  Open Office can be reinstalled if you don't like NeoOffice.

Installing pgAdminIII for OS X was also easy even if the right windows did not pop up automatically - I had to go look for the pgadmin "disk" in the finder.  The pgAdminIII is available from http://www.postgresql.org/

Continued setting up the environment on my mac. Time to get a database - Installing postgreSQL was quite simple once I found this ready made installer for OS X at http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/postgresql/  The instructions worked just fine.

The blogger dashboard widget has some quirks. Try typing a lot of text - it expands nicely, but the text starts to go off screen after a while - and WTF! There is no scoll - so you can't get to the "save as draft" and "publish post" buttons at the bottom... Guess it is intended for shorter messages only....

Calendar I was very happy when I found out that there was a way to synchronize the iCal with google calendar - finally a good solution with calendar + sync I though. After spending hours on downloading, configuring and trying to figure out what was wrong, I realize that the sync software dow not work on Leopard because of a change in the file format of iCal (it is now in a database). Bummer! Ended up at least showing the google calendar, in iCal, but have not decided what to do yet for the final solution. Skype No problems, only issue being that the version lags behind skype for windows. Calculator I am used to having a hex/bin calculator and also scientific functions Found several calculators for the dashboard, and settled on two different - Calculate 1.1.0 that handles scientific calculations and support variables (neat) in a rolling window, and Hex Calculator Widget version 1.5. (There are plenty of semi useless calculators in the dashboard widget listing at apple btw).

I have just converted from Windows to Mac! Having lots of fun setting up my laptop with cool gadgets and useful software. Thought I share the experience as I go along. Firtst, I installed the Blogger dashboard gadget and this is the first post that I have made using this cool tool. Really conventient! Mail Had no problems connecting to my various mail accounts. Worked like a charm. Had some confiuration to do to make the mail client behave like a wanted. Chat Now this was problematic. I have chat accounts in AIM, ICQ, YM, GoogleTalk, and Skype and also want to chat on IRC. Now tell me which client I should use? Turns out that iChat does google talk, jabber, and the mac specific chat only. I spent quite some time figuring out if Jabber was useful. Jabber acts as a gateway and supports multiple protocols. The setting up is a bit messy (a different client (like psi) is needed to connect to jabber servers to configure subscriptions, and I never got it to work with iChat. Then I read somewhere, that iChat perhaps is not the best Jabber client, and to fully make use of Jabber other clients were suggested. Duh ! The reason for setting up jabber was that I really wanted to try to use the software that comes with the mac as much as possible. Ended up doing the following instead: - downloaded Adium with covers all the different types of chat except IRC which is kind of funny as Adium provides support via IRC :) Anyway, Adium recomended Coloquy as an IRC client. - Downloaded and set up Coloquy - which works very well after some intitial problems with connecting with my nick name (I was already logged in from another computer and this caused some trouble).