I asked him where he comes from and he replied “Cobblers” I said there’s no need to be rude. After that we went on to talk about kinky boots, as you do on such occasions.

What does a rugby referee tackle with his Mac? All the details in the scrum section of the podcast. The whole family are Mac users and seems that sometimes they have to fight over who gets to use the Mac Book or the Mac Mini. Gary also has a Mac Mini serving up his iTunes on a silver platter. Nice! he was telling me about his MyFi gadget which allows him to share a wifi signal coming in from a mobile network. Sweet gadget and I would really like one too.

Gary podcasts on For Mac Eyes Only with Mike Potter and does a stint now and the on IMP podcast. He even reviews applications for The Mac Reviewcast. I sent in another review of a podcast for that yesterday also.

It was through a recommendation from Gary that I got my hands on Hazel which is a super tool for keeping designated folders in order. If a file gets put in my downloads folder it is moved automatically to the pictures folder. You can set up a number of rules to take care of different types of files. Handy too that new files get a blue label to make them easier to find.

In the podcast I read an email from a listener in Scotland that had a terrible time with upgrading to Snow Leopard. Ended up being a hardware problem and she decided to get a new MacBookPro. Good excuse is what I say to get some new hardware.

The extra music for the  podcast is by Louis Vig a track called ‘Can You Feel It’ You can find his work at louisvig.com

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What got me thinking about the MacBook was this morning I was using it just from the battery as the electric was turned off for the morning. I have to say that the battery life is just brilliant. With a previous HP laptop that was crappy in a number of ways, the worst of it was the poor battery life on it.

Another thing I a chuffed about with the MacBook is the trackpad with the integrated button. I never liked the extra buttons on other laptops and this one doesn’t get me thinking that I must have a mouse connected to be able to do serious work. That is mainly due to the gestures. I find that I can use AmadeusPro really easily with scrolling left and right and also the two fingers to be able to zoom in and out. I was using these features while I was editing the interview of an indie  filmmaker for the Video20Q Podcast.

It was going so well that I even finished the whole podcast on the MacBook even though I could have waited to have more screenspace available on the iMac 24 inch. AmadeusPro is super for the multitrack editing. Shame more people don’t know about it. Mind you I may have put some of that to rights by doing a review of AmadeusPro which is on the latest episode of The MacReviewcast from Tim Verpoorten.

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Mike has a MacBookPro as his main computer and has a Mac Mini connected to the TV. Mike is a writer and had taken the brave step of giving up a job in order to make his way in the world into being a writer. Has been using the mac for about 3 years before the writing he was a coder.
Connected to the computer he goes for wired mighty mouse the nipple scroll button is mentioned regards getting it cleaned. He rubbed the nipple on paper where I have blown into the gap around the edge of the button the get the gunk out,  and has a brother HL5240 printer.

I guessed at Mike using Scrivener and was 100% right. Well he is a writer and it seems that it was coded by a writer that could get what he needed from the word processor route. Mike says it is a cracking bit of software. likes the chaptering and versioning – templates for various things – make it easy to collate it and output the final work, and the price was good too. For script writing you might look at Celtx a free app and free is always good.

Sponsor for the Show is Go To Meeting

Mike has an extensive collection of iPods and it may have had a slight effect on the buying of an Apple computer. Mike is a Firefox person and once in a while will use Safari, he likes the plug ins with Firefox, like the debug tools and sage plugin

Adium is mentioned by Mike because it connects to so many social networks, lately getting more integration added to it. Mike has recently changed to Tweetie for his twittering.

Mike as had a play with iLife ’09 apps but is not a big user because of doing movies in Final Cut Pro 3.0. Found that the faces feature in iPhoto just takes time from him and his writing.

One of his writing projects is ‘Out of Office’ a web drama and has other things in the pipeline. We talk about how level the playing field is for aspiring writers to be able to get work out in front of an audience online. There is content coming out from the top down, as in the BBC’s and other institutions and also from the grass roots level of people like the young woman in the North east of England who has put out videos on YouTube showing people how to put on make up. Good content will always find an audience.

Mike acknowledges the steepness of the learning curve with Final Cut Pro 3.0 and says he learns something new each time he has some editing to do.

Mike like features in Quicksilver and come in there as a favourite application especially when operating with iTunes. Fav for the iPhone is iExpenseit as a way to control what he spends, seeing as he needs to build an income with the writing.

The film Minority Reportwhere Tom Cruise is moving stuff around on a huge screen is something that would be in a wish list of computing equipment. Minority Report (Widescreen Edition)
Sceptics Guide to the Universe podcast. gets a mentions and I tell him about JC Hutchins podcasted novel called 7th Son.

Go now to watch the web drama that is ‘Out of Office’ and have a look at Mike’s personal web site.
Screenwipe a TV program about writers

ScreenFlow an application that I love using to make screencasts. Edits video as well

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Paul also known as iSherbet which is a hark back to childish memories of the sherbet fountain sweet you could get in days of old.

Maybe it is still possible to buy a sherbet fountain and I can treat myself when I am in Dublin next week. Paul is a karaoke type of DJ and encourages people to sing while drunk. At least he can put on the headphones and not be inflicted with the auditory pain of the pub singer. Honestly though, he says he enjoys doing it. Paul has a huge collection of songs which he manages on the Mac and uses an application called Kjams. Which is nothing to do with Jim Jams, or so I am told. Paul is even able to allow the karaoke singers use the iPhone to log in and chose the song they want to sing and get in a proper queue for belting out their tune, amazing I say.

Paul spent the whole of the interview talking on his iPhone, which was all right seeing as he was using the new Skype iPhone application to be interviewed and I have to say I was surprised that the audio was as good as it turned out to be. better than I have had with from some people with the Mac and a microphone.

He listens to loads of Geeky podcasts to be able to do some time travel on his way to work. Makes a commute shorter when you can be distracted by a podcast and some games like Touch Physics on the iPhone.

Last Friday there was a meeting of the Mac 20 Questions in the GoToMeeting and a great time was had by all. For me I was testing the system and was able to show a few things with the sharing of my screen. Quite impressive really. We will have the next meeting in the Mac20Q town hall on Friday the 17th of April. be there or be square. First 15 people in the room.

I recorded the audio from last week using WireTap Studio and it worked for me so this week I will try to have some question set up and record it with a view to making it a podcast.

Next Monday I will be in Dublin and have arranged to meet with the Mac Craic lads if they can get a evening pass from the boss. Looks like we will meet up in the  Aussie Bar in Parnell street. If there are people there I will perjhaps do some impromtu recording. Why not?

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I had an interesting chat with Pat Mahon from Carlow in Ireland about how he uses his Mac. He has  a MacBookPro and a MacMini. We go through the 20 questions and talk about loads of stuff along the way.

Links to some of things we talked about

• SuperDuper for back ups.
• Screensteps
• Tweetie
• SwitchMac
• MyMac
• ScreenCastsOnline

and of course mine which is not up yet! – patmahon.com

I use ScreenFlow to capture video from my Macs and also VideoCue, both from telestream. ScreenFlow has video editing capabilities that make it a worthy purchase. You can do lower thirds and titling really easy. I like the way I can easily zoom into an area of the captured video to highlight something with a video action. I can even highlight mouse clicks. I sometimes record myself with the iSight camera at the same time with ScreenFlow, sometimes with the computer audio as a separate track from the microphone audio. Good for doing narration over clips recorded.

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Had a good chat with Eric in the interview, the serious problem he has like many of us Mac users is “Toy Addiction” That’s obviously going to be a problem when Apple keep bringing new and sexy goodies.

He has a large iMac and is waiting on delivery of the new MacBook Pro 17in. Eric was telling me about Mint.com which is an online way of looking after your finances. More use to US users though due to the limited list of banking sites connected to it. I think I prefer to keep my money info with the bank directly.

Eric is a photographer with a Nikon and is interested in doing some HDR High Dynamic Range photos and we mentioned the applications Photomatix and one called Hydra. Photomatix is my preferred HDR software. I asked if he had, had the urge to get a book of photos printed using the Apple service but was unsure about the quality of the printing, so if any of you have knowledge of that please leave a comment belao.

He has VMware Fusion available if he has to run a Windows program but rarely uses it since changing job. Eric recomends adblock and the translator plug ins for Firefox. He says that Eventbox is worth looking at for us social networking types. I countered with my choice, which is Ping.fm and lately using with Blogo

Soul music is a passion for Eric and he contributes to a blog called Brown Sugar. An excellent resource if you are into soul music.