Believe it or not, I could have made this list longer. But I need to finish this blog post today (plus we're shipping the May issue, so it would look really bad if I neglected to proof pages because I'm too busy having fun on my Mac). If you're left wanting more, be sure to catch our May 2007 cover story, which will bring you 50 cool things you can do with your Mac or iPod, from dawn until dusk. (The May 2007 issue starts shipping to subscribers in late March and hits newsstands in early April.)

 

But until then, here are 10 things I've been doing on my Mac and iPod lately that have brought me great happiness:

 

1. Replacing the standard OS X icons with custom ones.

 

How freakin' adorable are these custom icons?

 

I know there are lots of websites out there that offer icons for Mac OS X. But my hands-down favorite is Pixelgirl Presents. She (I assume she's a she) has an amazing collection of icons, desktop images, and other graphical goodies on her site. Many are free; most are mind-blowingly well-done. She also runs a little store that sells an array of pop and modern art-y goods like crocheted iPod covers and a lamp with a shade that looks like flower petals.

 

I just replaced a bunch of my regular system icons with Felt Critters (top) and What Whats (bottom).

 

In case you're not into colorful felt...

 

 

2. Belting out "I Love Rock and Roll" with help from Griffin's iKaraoke.

 

Full disclosure: I have not yet had time to test Griffin's iKaraoke. But I will, oh I will. And when I do, the first song I'll sing is my go-to, "I Love Rock N' Roll" by none other than Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. For now, just anticipating the fun I'm going to have this weekend is putting a smile on my face. Our downstairs neighbors probably won't be as happy.

 

 

3. Spinning the plate on the Dine-O-Matic widget.

 

 

Get this fun and handy widget and never agonize over where to eat again.

 

 

This widget is a quick, fun way to decide where to eat for dinner. It's the perfect thing for when you're so hungry you'd eat a piece of cardboard (which impairs your ability to choose a restaurant), or if you're just indecisive, like me. Get it free from Iconfactory.

 

 

4. Tracking and rating my favorite wines in WineCellar.

 

There are quite a few OS X apps out there to track a wine collection. But I tend to drink the wines in my collection, and I care more about trying to remember which ones I liked (and why I liked them) than keeping track of unopened bottles. (And I don't think one wine rack's worth really counts as a "collection" anyway.)

 

That's why discovering WineCellar - a shareware app that lets you track your favorite wines in a database on your Mac and transfer the info to your iPod - brought joy to my heart and made me wish it was 6 o'clock already so I could go home and pour myself a generous glass of Hess California Collection Cabernet Sauvignon. Three more hours to go...

 

 

5. Turning photos into works of art with Corel Painter.

 

See, I made this wood-cut painting all by myself!

 

Well, "work of art" might be a bit of an exaggeration. I'm not very good at using Corel Painter X yet, and since I don't have a pen tablet, I don't have a lot of manual control for sketching and such. But there are a lot of cool automatic features in Painter that let you take images and apply neat effects to them, like Woodcut, for example. It's a way to take your photos (especially those that aren't that great) and make them frame-able. Painter is a serious creative app (and priced accordingly at $419), but they offer a free trial, which I'd recommend if you feel like doing something artsy someday when you have an hour or so.

 

 

6. Backing up using a Terminal command.

 

You don't need a fancy backup utility; just memorize this Terminal command.

 

It's hard to pinpoint why this brings me so much joy. But it does.

 

All you need to do to back up is launch Terminal and type:
sudo rsync -aE --delete --progress ~ /Volumes/name_of_backup_location/name_of_folder

 

"Name_of_backup_location" should be the actual name of the external drive you're backing up to (remember to use underscores in the name instead of spaces, which can cause problems) and "name_of_folder" is the name of the folder where all your backed up stuff is going to. This particular Terminal command will show you a progress report as the contents of your home folder gets backed up to the external drive.

 

When you press Return, you'll be prompted for your admin password. There won't be any indication that it's registering your keystrokes, so be sure to type it in carefully and cleanly. Then press Return again and it should do its thang.

 

 

7. Listening to podcasts of "This American Life" from Audible.com.

 

Ira Glass is an acquired taste. But the stories he and his contributors dig up are almost always engrossing, often funny, and they help me feel less pessimistic about American society. And this way I don't have chain myself to a radio between noon and 1 pm on Saturdays (when "This American Life" airs on my local public radio station) because for 95 cents I can download the episodes to iTunes and listen to it whenever I please, on my Mac or iPod. If you're into audiobooks, Audible.com is the cheapest way to acquire those, too.

 

 

8. Taking stupid iSight pictures of self (or others) with crazy Photo Booth effects applied.

 

Like this one.

 

Or this one.

 

You get the idea. It's hours of totally pointless fun. Oops...better get back to work.

 

 

9. Keeping multiple iChat windows neat and tidy with tab separators, thanks to Chax.

 

I'll admit, I've had a hard time getting used to iChat. As Mac-cute as it is, it's not a very full-featured chat app. (And I know you'll skewer me for this, but when I was forced - forced, I say! - to use a Windows PC at work for so many years, I got used to AIM, which is way cooler and more robust for Windows than it is for Mac. Chax fattens up iChat in some areas, adding some features I never even knew I missed (since they weren't featured in AOL for Windows), particularly a tabbed chat window. I have a very strong aversion to a cluttered Mac desktop, so the option to keep multiple chats in a single window, on separate tabs, makes me very happy.

 

Now I just have one thing on my iChat wish list: a more noticeable (yet still inaudible) cue that someone wants to chat. AIM just pops that new chat window right up into your face, which is annoying in a way, but also impossible to miss.

 

 

10. Surfing the Web while watching TV.

 

It's the ultimate couch-potato experience! And at least I can do it much more securely, now that I'm using the AirPort Extreme to wirelessly siphon off my own DSL connection (instead of siphoning off those of my neighbors' the way I was before - thanks, neighbors!). Like watching TV and doing crossword puzzles (my other favorite living room multitasking combo), browsing the Web and watching "The Daily Show" make me feel somehow more active. Because, you know, I can get those online errands done while listening to Jon Stewart and John Hodgman discuss steroid use among pro athletes.