Winter Solstice

Happy Winter Solstice! Wikipedia will educate you about the solstice itself, which happens twice per year, and also about some winter solstice celebrations.

This doesn’t have much to do with Winter Solstice, but I felt like sharing. Last night I bought a few songs from iTMS you might find interesting.

Breathe is a beautiful down-tempo offering from Télépopmusik.

Departures from Karminsky Experience Inc is just one of many great songs from this group. Loungey downtempo goodness.

Treat Her Right and Mustang Sally from The Commitments soundtrack. Check out the movie if you like these tracks.

If it ain’t baroque don’t fix it. I found Masques while looking for something different for Christmas music. I love their Noël Nouvelet and Où S’en Vont Ces Gais Bergers? is fun and lively.

I’ve always enjoyed Carol of the Bells and couldn’t decide on just one rendition of it so I went with three: US Air Force Band & Singing Sergeants, Boston Brass, and Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops.

Leopard Tech Talk – Boston

Just received my registration confirmation for the Boston area Leopard Tech Talk! I’m very happy to be able to go. I look forward to meeting other east coast developers as well as learning about cool things like Xray. Hope to see you there!

Save MacXword!

MacXword was my first real Cocoa application for Mac OS X. It has been available since 2002, back when the platform was still fairly young. It was one of those applications that allowed people to free themselves from Classic. At the time creating a Cocoa-Java application was the most sensible approach for me as I came to the platform with a strong Java background. Unfortunately, as the years have passed this has become more of a liability. Apple no longer expands the Cocoa-Java API, and with the move to Intel-based Macs it is just plain broken in some ways. One of those ways affects MacXword. I reported the bug to Apple when I first learned of it and even included a simple example application that illustrates the problem. Alas, it has never been fixed.

MacSanta

Act now to save 20% on some great independent Mac software from companies like Advenio, Rogue Amoeba, Flying Meat, Karelia, and many more. MacSanta is open to any developer with no overhead. All you have to do is let the folks who set this up know you want to participate and have the capability to accept coupons in your transaction processing system. For buyers it couldn’t be easier, just buy directly from the developer and use the coupon code MACSANTA during checkout.

I’m happy to see some developers and applications I haven’t heard of involved in this as well as some well-known names.

Update: The count is currently at 80 developers! I am shocked and disgusted that the Mac media are not covering this phenomenon.

Cookie Trees

Cookie Trees

Originally uploaded by srcleaves.

The last treat of the season for Sara’s co-workers. These cookie trees are made of 10 molasses star-shaped cookies (2 of each size star) held together with butter frosting. Both recipes came from Betty Crocker’s Cooky [sic] Book.