mac

When I bought my Mac I made sure I could run Guild Wars, the one online game I play. I booted into Windows every time I wanted to play and it wasn't too much of a hassle. It wasn't ideal either. Then parallels came up with DivX support for Intel Macs and I bought it. I posted something about it a while back. It was painfully  slow. Unplayable.

Yesterday I searched for another solution (don't really know why or what I was originally looking for) and found Crossover, another virtual machine software (that doesn't actually install Windows so it doesn't need a license for it). I downloaded the trial version and installed GW. Then I copied the data file from the Windows partition into the folder in Crossover where the game resided  and ran the game. The process took a while to figure out, I have to say. Graphics were bad. But in the process I had found a page with advice: Compatibility Tips. It worked.

It works great. Graphics aren't as nice as in native Windows on the Macbook pro, but they are as good as they are on my old PC, a Thinkpad T40. It runs pretty smoothly. I now have Guild Wars on my Mac, running Leopard and Crossover. I tried making a video with iShowU, but it lagged the [game] video and didn't make justice to Crossover.

I just say... it's the best solution I've found for running GW on a Mac. I've successfully played Random Arenas a few times.

Yesterday, the blue-haired-girl came back from Tunja. She was invited to be keynote speaker at the Colombian History Conference (Congreso Colombiano de Historia). She presented the Bicentennial project and had awesome responses. The saddest of all: your project is awesome, wonderful, amazing... pitty it comes from the (this) government. Sigh.

Anyway... she listened to a few Ted Talks on the bus on the way back and pointed me to one I hadn't seen: David Pogue, When it comes to tech, simplicity sells. If you get through the lousy song he opened with, you'll laugh like crazy. A few gems:

1. Someone called tech support at Apple and said the mouse was squeaking. It squeaks when I move it across the screen. Why are you moving it across the screen? Well, it said click here?
2. More tech. support: I can't turn off the computer. I got an error and I can't restart even if I type 11. Why are you typing 11? It says "Error type 11".
3. Why do you shut down a Windows PC by clicking a button called "Start"?
4. Why do you have to scroll down a menu at the shutdown screen when there are only four options?
5. PalmOne has empoyees in charge of "tap counting". No task on the Palm Pilot can be more than 3 taps away.