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Ben Straw is a fellow podcaster on the Tech Podcasts Network and has a Mac Mini with a G4 processor and is short on RAM because he is worried about opening up the beast to change the RAM and possibly breaking the case. This is despite him being a get your hands dirty type of geek that swaps out parts and makes a Dell into a Hackintosh. For example he changed the network card in the Dell and also the video card to be able to get the MacOS working.
Only changed to the Mac properly as he was a Windows fan up until about a year ago. He did have contact with Macs in 2003 with a Bluberry iMac which was sold through Ebay before getting any use from Ben. He tried a previous Hackintosh but was unsuccessful but now for the last 7 months or so has running OSX. Ben even produces a Mac Podcast and it doesn’t make much difference to his approach to the podcast.
Ben has been with Mac OSX long enough now that he finds it confusing to go back to Windows. He was telling me that he was very untidy in the way he arranges his files on the desktop and all over the place. The audio connections baffle Ben for how it works and how is able to record with his Heil PR20 mic connected to a Yamaha mixer. We talked microphones and I told him about my Behringer B2 studio mic I use for the podcasting and the mixer and also about the Shure SM58 which get used with the Canon Vixia camera.
Ben is planning to make a video podcast at some time and is finishing up with a tech based podcast he has been doing moving on to a podcast that he will do with a friend that is a truck driver. It will be stories and tales from the road. His mate is a hoot that loves talking so should be a fun podcast.
Terminator surprisingly gets a mention in the podcast – ‘I’ll be Back’ Automator and Applescript are not part of the staple diet for Ben, he found it a bit fiddly to use. Talking about tagging of files I mention MetaX which is an application that will tag video files.
He gets his Blackberry filled with podcasts and music by bringing in content with an RSS feed reader, and tells me how Windows media player messed things up with bring in some of his music.
Most expensive application he has is CS3 for Photoshop and uses an application that works out colour. The first things that he would put on a new machine would be TinyGrab which is a screenshot application that would be similar to Skitch. Ben also has to have Skype on his Mac along with Text Expander. I like Text Expander too and I have recently upgraded to the latest version. Ben likes to use Textexpander to do some automatic spell checking.
DropBox gets a recommendation, which I wholeheartedly agree with. Filezilla has hot been working as well as he would like so I suggested that he might try Cyberduck for FTP file transfer.
Bens’ Twitter usage gets the Tweetie application and he has recently found it to be not functioning as well as he would like, but prefers if because he doesn’t like Adobe Air applications like Tweetdeck. Memory sucking pile of rubbish, but II have been using Tweetdeck because it has so much more in the way of facilities.
Ben uses GarageBand for his podcasting and has made about 80 podcasts on his Mac. He does other creating things with the Mac too like images creating in Photoshop.
