Last weekend we spent a couple nights camping at the Indiana Dunes, about 90 minutes from Chicago. It was awesome – the first time I’ve gone camping this year. Despite it being Memorial Day weekend, it wasn’t too crowded – we snagged a walk-in camping spot friday morning at 10am, which is check-out time. We chose Dunewood Campground in the National Park over the state park cuz Dunewood was surrounded by trees (and we like the yelp info). The state park is closer to the lake and has RV hookups .. but no trees and you’re basically right next to your neighbor.
The dunes themselves were pretty cool, but mostly it was just a big beach, unlike Pismo Beach in California which is more like a desert going back a mile from the water. Friday we climbed to the top of Mt Baldy (second highest spot in the area) and watched the sunset, then ate dinner back at the campsite. Saturday we walked around the Chellberg Farm and Bailly homestead – Joe Bailley was the first in the area in 1822 and traded furs with the native americans. They had some restored homes and structures that were pretty interesting. In the afternoon we went to the state park and had lunch, played frisbee, and hung out. It was warm enough to enjoy the beach but not the water. Apparently Lake Michigan can have very high bacterial counts – you don’t want to go in the water when that happens. Saturday night we played cards, played with the fire, and ate lots of smores. Could not have been more relaxing.
Now that we’ve been to Starved Rock and Indiana Dunes – I want to go camping at Devil’s Lake – do some swimming, hiking, and campfires. My favorites. See more on chicago camping.
Last week a book I made and printed using blurb.com arrived. It’s one of many photo books I’ve made (see qoop books), but my first using blurb. I liked the control i had when making it – There’s an app for the mac that lets you pick a template for each page and add pictures and text accordingly. It took me a while to figure out what pictures to put in there, plus write text for each one.
I ordered a 7×7 book, 200 pages, Hardcover with image wrap (no dust jacket). It was $48 + $8 shipping. see more blurb prices.
I am quite satisfied, the quality is close to that of regular books. My only complaint is that a couple of my pages didnt’ print – the inside flap – I assume its because i opted for no dust jacket. Sigh. Compare cover to blurb preview, also compare to Qoop Books.
I love my macbook pro, as most mac owners do, but if you develop web sites you need a good way to test IE, since 2/3 of the internet uses it (browser stats). Since IE doesn’t run on MAC, you’ll need one of the following solutions:
- VMWare Fusion 2 vs Parallels 4
- Pros: IE running on a real Windows OS (2000, XP, Vista), fast and easy to use IE alongside mac apps (once setup – parallel note).
- Differences: Both are very similar, Parallels 15% faster than Fusion (src), Fusion better (src2, src3)
- Cons: Both around $80 (30 days free), You’ll need 2GB+ disk space to install a vmware OS
- VirtualBox 2.2
- Pros: Free version of VMWare Fusion and Parallels, from trusty Sun. With “Guest Additions” Installed (instructions in user manual), works almost as well as Fusion 2.
- Cons: Longer setup, flew glitches (src).
- Bootcamp
- Pros: Restart computer, booting into a real Windows install
- Cons: must restart computer to test IE
- Xenocode
- Pros: run different instances of a program (ie6, ie7, and ie8)
- Cons: only runs on windows, need fusion, parallels, or virtualBox
- ie4osx
- Pros: free
- Cons: only intel mac, a little buggy, requires darwine and X11,
- Other
I ended up using VMWare Fusion 2, since I had a copy of XP and liked using vmware in the past. Man, do i love it! Fustion 2 is much better than the older version – Installation was super easy. And once installed, you can run it 2 ways – all windows apps (IE7, Firefox, etc) running in one vmware-windows-xp mac application window, or switch to unity mode which lets windows apps (IE7, firefox) run on their own mac application window. I prefer the Unity way – the first time I ran IE the logo appeared on my mac dock and I chose to “keep on dock” to quickly launch and test in IE. Awesome.
In order to test IE6, IE7, and IE8, you can either create 3 vmware virtual machines (XP only likes one version of IE), or better yet, create one XP virtual machine with one version of IE and launch the other IE versions thru xenocode spoon.net (must download/install spoon plugin, only runs on IE). Overall IE on the mac this way is kinda slow, but so incredibly easy it makes up for it.
UPDATE: Virtualbox is working smoothly .. not as good as vmware, but good enough to not buy vmware once my free 30 days are finished.
UPDATE 2: Figured out a good way to debug javascript in IE – use Microsoft Visual Web Developer. Setup Instructions: http://axonflux.com/how-to-get-internet-explorer-j – more options: http://notetodogself.blogspot.com/2008/08/debug-javascript-in-ie.html
Happy Testing!