Yes it's a standard dashboard widget that ships with Tiger.

Interesting enough, the new Tiger widgets are written in Javascript. This one has it's source code available online.

A fancy widget just to tell me it's too hot outside.

Someone pointed out (Thanks Kelly) that I do not need to buy an expensive VGA to TV converter to power my flat screen TV from my Mac Mini. Apple provides a special adapter for converting the DVI output from the Mac-Mini to S-Video.

Apple home page finally announced the release date of April 29th. The web pages background is all black with a huge Spotlight and Dashboard icon.

It's no secret, a lot of developers such as myself are now choosing to program on Apple Computers. One nice thing is if you are a fan of Unix application with X Window System support you can sometime port these to build on the Mac. Since, Apple now ships with xterm, a X11 drawing client, you can run these apps. Likewise, because in Unix you can forward window drawing command's from one system to another, on the mac you can do the same.

For example, in the screen shot found here I am starting Gimp running on a remove server from my Mac through a SSH tunnel. (I did not load gimp on my Mac)

In order to allow forwarding of the X11 windows commands, I edit the /etc/ssh_config file. I remove the '#' in front of the 'ForwardX11 yes' command. Save the file and start a tunnel with ssh:

% ssh -C foo@foobox.com

I use the -C switch to compress data moving back and forth. Likewise, unlike VNC, X11 actually send drawing commands, not actually pictures of the screen. I can operate as though I was on the machine itself.

BTW, there are a lot of cool things you can do with ssh. Read the man page. Also, check out this article from Linux Journal.

If you have any ssh tips, post a comment.

Found in someone's attic in Germany a video found here was released today introducing the first Mac, 21 years ago. Chariots of Fire plays in the backround as a vector art program, a work processor, a spread sheet, smooth type display (from Postscript Type1 fonts, btw), source code, bitmap photo images, a chess game... And finally a computer generated voice introduces itself. In one portion, the computer says in regards to mainframes, "do not trust a computer you can not lift." lol

The program used to create this rad voice over (aka Speech Synthesis Manager) still ships with the OS. If you have a Mac, try this:

1. open Terminal ( or X11 )

2. type at the command line:

   $ say 'do not trust a computer you can not lift'
   

The voice should be your default voice on your preferences. To see a list of all voices available:

$ ls /System\ Folder/Extensions/Voices/
Agnes                   Bubbles                 Princess
Agnes, high quality     Cellos                  Ralph
Albert                  Deranged                Trinoids
Bad News                Fred                    Victoria
Bahh                    Good News               Victoria, high quality
Bells                   Hysterical              Whisper
Boing                   Junior                  Zarvox
Bruce                   Kathy
Bruce, high quality     Pipe Organ

If you 'man say' you will see the the synopsis as say [-v voice] [-o out.aiff] [-f file | string ...]. So:

$ say -v 'Bruce' 'do not trust a computer you can not lift'

This so reproduce the voice you hear in the video. Mac and Cheesy, eh.