When I said that I would be devoting this week on Webmacster87.info to coverage of the Mac OS X Leopard release, I wasn’t kidding. Just to help you keep whetting up your appetites excitement for that tasty shiny new cat, here’s a few stories on Leopard that I’ve found via Digg.

Mac OS X Leopard 9A581’s Dock Visual Tweaks
Remember all those people who were complaining about the “3-D” Dock looking really weird on the left/right sides? The latest build of Leopard apparently has a brand new, unique 2-D Dock that still has a Leopard refresh, but doesn’t look as geeky. Personally, I didn’t have that big of a problem with the 3-D Docks on either side, I thought that they looked okay. I’d still like to know how well the new Dock works with hiding on…

16 Coolest New Features In Mac OS X 10.5 That You Didn’t Know About
Well, if you’d read 300 New Features thoroughly, you’d know about these, but these are some cool Leopard features that didn’t get the prominent placement on the Leopard site or in the guided tour.

Apple Answers Leopard Questions
This Apple interview that Gizmodo did doesn’t reveal very much new stuff, but is still a bit of an interesting read.

Now I’m off to find out if iLife ‘06 will be Leopard-compatible and to dream about roast Leopard with barbecue sauce and a side of deep-fried pickle hearts…

Tags: Apple, design, Digg, Dock, features, Gizmodo, interview, Mac OS X Leopard, MacRumors, sidebar, stories

Today is my 16th birthday, which basically means it’s the last day that I can say that I’m 15 years old. Not that I would though, because that would confuse people. However, in reality, I don’t actually turn 16 until 8:33 PM Pacific time tonight, so I’m theoretically still 15 for the next fourteen hours after I post this. WHATEVER. I’M 16 NOW, OKAY?

But just so you can get in on it, I thought I’d highlight some funny birthday eCards for you to enjoy. These come from the wonderful folks at AmericanGreetings.com, the creators of the singing turkey eCards that come out every Thanksgiving. I really liked Midieval Birthday Wish, Old Guy’s Pick-up Lines, and Do Birthdays Suck? Quiz.

There’s some exciting stuff happening this weekend. Not only will I have a long long long to-do list to tackle, but tomorrow, David Lewis and I will be interviewing Eric Faerber (wGEric) on phpBB Weekly, and then on Sunday, I’m hoping that we’ll be able to record a great episode of PreviewCast, featuring a number of reviews of new things! (Subject to change depending on if certain people show up.)

I’m certainly hoping/planning to have a better birthday this year than I did last year!

Tags: 16th, birthday, eCards, funny, interview, phpBB Weekly, Podcasts, PreviewCast

Well, if you know me, you know that I enter various stuff at the San Mateo County Fair every year, and if I recall correctly, this is my 10th year to enter. However, this is the first time where I actually found out what I won before I went to go see it for myself, but sure enough, the San Jose Mercury News apparently reported on one of the brand new divisions this year: Website Design. There were three award-winning entries in the new division, two of which were mine. At least someone else did enter, when I had called the County Fair office a month ago to ask for entry details for websites, I got a “That’s the first time that question has been asked!” response, which got me worried that I would be the only one entering.

Anyway, congratulations to Taylor Hansford who does the website for Pacifica 4-H (it’s the county fair, after all!) and won 1st place. My own Webmacster87.info won the red ribbon, and the 17th District PTA Website, which I maintain and entered under the class “Website for a Business or Organization”, took third.

Thanks, by the way, goes to Larry and Anthony who sent me the link and asked me “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” I haven’t been to the fair yet, so honestly, I had no idea that I’d won until they sent me the link.

There are some things slightly ironic about the San Jose Mercury News article. For one thing, San Jose isn’t part of San Mateo County, but I’ll let that slide since our fair is open to all the neighboring counties as well. However, they said that “Neither boys were available for interviews.” Besides that being bad grammar, I wasn’t even at the fair today, so of course I wasn’t “available” for an interview! The article also claims that they were looking for me and the other kid in the livestock section. I can’t speak for Taylor, but I’m not part of 4-H and don’t spend very much time in the livestock section. I might spend 5-10 minutes in there during the fair to look, but I don’t exactly hang around there waiting to be interviewed, if you know what I mean. Now, I did get a phone call today from the fair saying that the San Mateo County Times wanted to interview me, albeit about my being a judge for a contest in the Culinary Arts division, but they have setup a time to meet me there at 4:30 PM on Monday. So, San Jose Mercury News, if you’d like to say hi to me, I’ll be there on Monday willing to answer questions.

Anyway, I am glad that my websites received the recognition from the judges (hopefully they didn’t try to view this website in Internet Explorer, which doesn’t work that well), and I’m glad to have helped the San Mateo County Fair get their technology entries going. Who knows? Maybe next year they’ll have a division for best podcast. Stay tuned next week when I’ll post a full list of everything I entered this year and how well I did!

Tags: Awards, Bay Area, Blogging, event, interview, News, Personal, PTA, San Mateo County Fair, Technology, web design