Chris Brandrick

Despite being offline for over a week now, I wanted to quickly touch upon the closure of j0n.org. j0n.org for those of you who don’t know was a blog (mainly video entries) run by Jon Wheatley about his various online ventures, be them web development, design or even software development.

I came across his blog thanks to Tyler Cruz, and since then I have even blogged about Jon’s projects due to me wanting to expose them for the good they are, for example the superb Mac application that is GrabUp (which if you don’t have, get!).

But now there is no more j0n.org and despite me being somewhat disappointed at the lack of updates from a personal inspiration for me, he is now blogging over at Indie Startups about “independent startups and entrepreneurs”. The new blog is great, and a superb way to find out about new unique independent sites, check it out.

Sure there are plenty of of image hosting sites out there, but it can often be a pain to take a screen, upload it, get the link and so on. Especially say if your trying to explain something to someone quickly, visual cues sure can help.

GrabUp is a new application exclusively for the Mac which makes sharing screenshots a complete breeze. It’s as simple as taking the screenshot, waiting a second, then hitting Apple + V. No website involved, no clicks, no browser needed. It’s surprisingly fast, and hopefully stays that way over time.

If you want a really, really simple way to upload screenshots, then I can’t recommend GrabUp enough. Congratulations to Jon from j0n.org on such a neat time saving app.

A little personal post today about something which is bothering me, and that Macbook owners should be aware of.

In January I bought myself a Macbook as I was long overdue a laptop. Since then me and my mac have enjoyed a great relationship, where it worked, and I was happy. In fact I am so impressed with the Mac OS I find myself on my PC less and less, but that’s another story.

Over the past few days my ‘Magsafe’ Power adapter has been giving me problems, initially upon plugging in the charger it charged…but only for a few minutes, then charged again. This intermittent state of charging was random, unsatisfactory and more than anything concerning. Last night this problem revealed it’s true side.

The cable had melted, and the inner wire was visible. I stopped using the cable immediately as I would prefer not to burn down my home. After a brief period of research online, I discovered that this was a common problem many Macbook owners were experiencing. Just check out this Flickr set for examples.

An example of what my cable now looks like.

Despite me being under warranty I still checked out the Apple site to see what the going rate was for the power adapter. Unfortunately it was, to my disgust, £59.99 (Which works out at about $120).  I am going to call Apple later today to try and get a new cable. It seems a revision has finally been made to the cables, as seen in this picture from Flickr, so hopefully I will receive one of these newer models.

I have added a download section to the blog today, which obviously enough will feature recommended downloads. So without further a due here is my first recommendation.

Polar Clock is a neat little screensaver from pixelbreaker, it’s currently available for both Mac and PC (and as mac dashboard widget). Essentially it’s just a clock but it has a unique elegant visual style which really appealed to me.

Be sure to check it out (the site has a flash version to preview), worth a download if you are after a new screensaver.

Polar Clock at pixelbreaker