Rob Goodlatte  

Over the past few days I’ve been filling my new MacBook with my standard run of OS X applications. Most run natively as universal binaries and thankfully the few requiring emulation don’t take the performance hit I was expecting. I’ve assembled a list of my favorites. So what did I miss?

Yesterday, after pleading my friend to drive me to the Apple store, and a narrowly averted SunTrust Check Card debacle, I drove home with a brand new 13.3″ MacBook - in black. I was a bit concerned over the rumors of thermal goop mishaps in the MacBook/Pro lines, but rationality couldn’t restrain me from this purchase. After using it for several hours quite extensively, I’m glad I took the plunge. I can’t give it a perfect review due to some tropical case temperatures, but it’s damn close to laptop nirvana.

Two weeks ago, Rob Malda (better known as CmdrTaco), announced the Slashdot CSS Redesign Contest, a contest to overhaul the 1997-style slashdot.org user interface. The lucky winner shall receive a very pricey laptop, but more importantly, the opportunity to add one of the most trafficked sites on the net to his or her portfolio. The competition is plentiful, but I couldn’t resist trying my hand at redesigning a veritable icon of the web. Plus, I really want a MacBook Pro!

I just wrapped up exams here at Duke with my last final this morning. This semester, in addition to my general courseload of engineering courses, I took a course entitled Introduction to Business in Technology Based Companies. It covered a lot of basics for tech startups and overviewed the process of writing a business plan and starting a company. One of our assignments was to keep a journal over the semester of “what isn’t working” in business and in life. In total, I wrote twenty posts of variable quality, two of which I’ll share now as they’re related to the web.