Monitoring your Macbook's Health

 

Its important to keep an eye on your battery usage over it's lifetime. In my case, it happens to be a macbook pro. Knowing its capacity, charge cycles and more will help you maintain it, and know if you are having issues that are battery related.

I like to use an application called Battery Health Montior from Sonora Graphics. It's free, and works on Macbooks, Powerbooks and iBooks. Battery Health Monitor provides information on:

• Current Capacity
• Original Capacity
• Current Charge
• Charge Cycles
• Voltage

Checking up on these bar graph values will indicated changes in the lifespan of your current battery. A very important part of extending your battery's life, is to let it run down completely and then fully re-charge it at least once a month. I try to do it once a week, since my macbook is on AC power most of the time.

Coconut Battery is another free application I've used in the past worth noting.

Download - Battery Health Montior

Global Frequency: 3D Set and model

A cool little show called "Global Frequency" that never made it past it's pilot showing. On this pilot episode, I modeled and textured a set extension of a building for a green screen push-in, and for an exterior explosion scene.

On a side note, I was asked to build a little satellite for the show which got cut from the final scenes. Take a peek at the building facade and the satelite in my Portfolio section. By the way, if you search the usual shady places of the internet, you can find the pilot episode.

Portfolio - Global Frequency

TabExpose Application

If your surfing habits are anything like mine, you live inside tab browsing these days. Additionally, if you're on a Mac using Safari all the time, and dig OSX's Expose feature, then you will love this.

TabExpose melds tab browsing and expose into one sweet feature for Safari. One click or key tap, and it displays all your open tabs on your screen to navigate around them. Works on PPC & Intel Macs, on Leopard, Safari 3.x & 4.

Check it out - TabExpose

CG work from "The Dresden Files"

Last year I did some visual effects work on a show called "The Dresden Files". Mostly character modeling of a fiery demon, and building a huge city set of Chicago for a push in shot right up to a hotel window.

Take a look at the demon model and the cityscape in my gallery. Most of the work was done using Luxology's Modo. The final demon was exported to Maya and texture tweaked at Sundog Studios. The city scape had several other composition layers not seen here, where I added fog, rain, z-depth information, and a helicopter for the background.

Portfolio - Dresden Files

Camera & Notebook Bags

I love my DSLR. I love my MacBook Pro. It's HARD to carry both and protect them at the same time. Heck, it's hard carrying one of them with all their accessories. If you have a passion for photography or mobile computing, which sometimes go hand in hand, then you may be fond of backpacks and shoulder slings like I am. Currently I use bags from Tamrac, and Naneu Pro. But I'm always on the lookout for a better combination of style and space.  So if you're in the market, check some of these out:

• Lowepro
• kata
• Tamrac
• Naneu Pro
• Tenba
• Think Tank
• Case Logic
  

There are some good bags to be had there. In some cases even combo bags that carry both your camera equipment and notebook all in one. Now, if you're a rugged traveler, and want to have that ULTIMATE protection for your expensive camera equipment, take a look at Pelican Cases. They make some excellent watertight rugged cases.