Update 22/06/10
Jesper has commented that Steam is to update where the contents is located from ~/Documents to ~/Library/Application Support/Steam. Thanks for the little info Jesper!
With the popular Steam client now on Mac, many of us sole Mac owner have the opportunity to play some of the best games on the PC on a Mac without the need of Bootcamp, virtualisation or CrossOver.
One slight annoyance has come of this that I didn’t notice till halfway through the process: Steam stores all the contents (such as games and other binaries) in a folder called “Steam Contents” that is pleasantly located in your home Documents folder. If you are like me, you keep your actual documents in that folder and not settings or any other jazz; I also backup this folder to my SugarSync account that syncs across various machines.
Annoyingly, I only have 10GB that I use and that space is for important stuffs – ironically, games aren’t important enough for me to backup – and this is a huge folder, mine currently clocking in at 2GB. A lot of people maybe using solid-state drives, which space is at a priumum and don’t want a large folder as so on their SDD but rather an external drive.
Luckily there is a solution that the smarter Mac users might have known about but for those who didn’t know *puts hand up* this will be a life saver!
Symbolic Linking
Basically, this will make a shortcut link to any given folder on the system (much the same as Windows “Shortcuts”), allowing you to move the Steam Contents somewhere better suited.
There are two ways of doing this, but first you need to quit out of Steam completely and then move the Steam Contents folder to where you want it to be. Now comes the choice…
Terminal
If you are feeling upto command-lined then give this way a go as it’s possibly the quickest.
Fire up terminal.app and enter the following line.
ln -s /[NEW LOCATION]/Steam\ Content ~/Documents/Steam\ Content
Where [NEW LOCATION] is, replace where the file path is. Now there is a link in the Documents folder that makes Steam think it’s in Documents!
Download SymbolicLinker
If you are lazy like me and think you will be doing this a few times, or rather not mess around in Terminal then you can download SymbolicLinker for free.
Follow the install instructions and then right/alt click on the Steam Contents folder (in it’s new, more favorable, location), go to More context menu and click on “Make Symbolic Link”.
This will produce another folder with a tiny arrow in the bottom left; move this to the Documents folder and Steam will now have access to the Steam Contents folder despite it not “actually” being there.
In Conclusion
Not a perfect solution; it would be nice for Steam to allow you to specifiy a location within the software, but till they do this is the next best thing!
What A Twit(ter)
Often I hear people question Twitter; why I’m on it, what I get out of it and overall what’s the point. So here I’ll try to quickly clairfy thanks to the wonder of those questions put into headers!
Why Am I On Twitter?
I first got onto it as it was the underground geek craze and didn’t really know anybody personally. Probably the only person was my friend at Yahoo!. I just found it interesting but didn’t really “get” what Twitter was about, but I kept it there, and did random ass updates. It wasn’t till probably around a year later I tapped into it’s true potential of networking and getting to know people
What Do I Get Out Of Twitter?
The main appeal of Twitter to me is chatting to people and getting the info before things hit blogs and news sites. I know quiet a few people follow mainly celebrities and speak with them at them, but as much I did that I quickly got bored of the ego rubbing they where using it for, so now I follow those who I find genuinely interesting; video games, music, snowboarding and chat.
There is also the people I met thanks to Twitter and got to know better. It’s a great social tool in that respect if people post beyond “Omg. I ate sausage. Dang it” and contribute something of interest to their network. Granted, we all post crap once-in-a-while but that sparks reaction at times.
I think thanks goes to Twitter that I’m so into gaming scene as I am today. Having the contacts through it and advertising GameAbuser.net from Twitter, I got to know the guys behind The Lost Gamer and now contribute to them. I’ve also learned about gaming journalism and have gotten into events thanks to the advice and links people posted on Twitter.
In my job as a web designer/developer, I’ve gotten the latest news and details on new stuffs happening in the web, as it happens. Hell, even it’s a help tool for me when I don’t know what I’m doing a shoot a question out there and get an answer back.
Once a week I will learn of a new band or artist and get the latest on them, and there are a few out there that will respond to you. For me they aren’t anybody major, but the small local groups that I love.
What Is The Point Then?
Twitter is what you make of it, and what you ultimately want. It’s done so simply that it’s what ever the community decide. It’s a chat tool, a news reader, and on-demand service.
It’s odd in that people who don’t get it but tried will of only done a few tweets and no more. Twitter needs to be played with over a period of time before it really clicks. It does feel like a black-hole at times, but you got to see through that and the celebrities on Twitter to the real people who will read and respond before you get the full potential out of Twitter.
iThoughts on iPad
Apple announced today the iPad; their entry into the “net-book” market that currently doesn’t cut it. Interesting though, wasn’t the Air supposed to a quasi-entry into the net-book/ultra-mobile market?
Let me say this now; I haven’t watch the presentation in full yet and probably won’t till tomorrow so please forgive me if I’m incorrect in my assumptions or mis-information.
So to put it bluntly, it’s an iPhone the size of Steve Jobs’ head. On the offset this is bad as it suffers from faults that the iPhone has but gets away with due to it’s size; one app open at a time. A lot of people may not see this as an issue but lets put the device into a situation.
I take it on holiday and I want to catch up with a few friends and tell them about the holiday; what apps might have I open?
- Safari – to get details and spellings of places I’ve been
- Photos – to sort photos I want to send over
- Facebook – to upload photos and/or chat to people
- Beejive IM – to chat to people and send photos through
- Skype – more chat stuff
So five apps just to tell and show people my holiday. Now although iPhone has push notifications, this is a little bit cumbersome, but forgivable due to the limitations of the iPhone. But here we have a device that will use current iPhone/iPod apps to make it’s current library that where design for a 480-by-320-pixel resolution screen going onto a 1024-by-768-pixel resolution screen. From a UI standpoint (yes, ignoring the actual hardware here), can’t you window the apps quiet easily?
But even having an app open in the background will be better as it will provide quicker access and also save the exact state I was in. I’m just not sure and this could
That’s one thing that annoys me and possibly the only thing, many not be a major thing to many, I’m a man that likes to do lots at once and so it’s a major thing not to be able to multi-task affectively.
Travel
I am a man that likes to travel also and does stay in his share of hotels over the year, but not enough to justify getting a 3G connection to the net for my laptop or tether my iPhone. This is also interesting in that I am often in a different country when I am in a hotel so it would be very expensive.
There is a option to have a WiFi+3G version of the device (opposed to just WiFi).
Now this is very dependent but I like the sound of this as it means no matter where I am I can access the net in a more capable way than I would do on the iPhone. Granted 768 pixels isn’t a lot of width for web browsing (I typically build sites using the 960.gs framework, which means a 960 pixel width), but the iPad does work like the iPhone so you can flip it landscape and get a decent screen width and it will be a lot easier to read and type on than a laptop.
3G is only good to me on two basis
- It’s cheap enough for me to justify having an easily portable device that I could carry around more so than my MacBook
- I can access it world-wide
In the presentation parts I saw, they did mention of world-wide service but I’m not sure if that means to give locals 3G access in their country or to have a 3G service that costs the same world-wide. Have to wait and see what they say about the UK market, but for it to be more a-kin to the Kindle 2 would be awesome.
In-Between
People have said about it being that in-between device of the laptop and phone, that they don’t need it.
I have a MacBook, iMac and iPhone; two of us live in the aparentment. Often we’ll both sit in the front room and one is on the MacBook (namely the Girlie) and the other is playing one of the consoles (moi). I’ll want to check something and there’s a choice of whether I use my phone; which can take a moment due to it being a bit cumbersome; turn on the iMac; time and effort to go to the office; or borrow the MacBook; disrupt the girlie… never a good idea. The iPad would sit in between and act as that device where I can get the clear information without a cumbersome process.
There is also a matter on size; it’s tiny when compared to the MacBook and thin, so much easier to carry and take traveling! Easier to get out on a train and use also where the MacBook also will become cumbersome and wastes the iPhone battery. Also, typing on the iPhone is pain in the ass, the iPad looks like it will that much more easier to use for writing web-addresses, quick-emails and tweets, hell maybe a blog post!
This is all taking into mind the pricing. $629 for a 3G version isn’t bad, more than what you could get a net-book for, but looking at it’s form factor it’s not such a bad price… I think.
Conclusion
This is just initial thoughts; I’m not totally convinced on it yet and I will have to wait till more info comes about UK pricing and 3G services, also trying the device will let me see if it’s good as a quasi-MacBook replacement. It’s just a shame not too see suggestions put foward by Tim Van Damme not being used as that would of really sold the device to me. I think to put it bluntly, it’s a shame for Apple not to surprise us with something exceptional rather than mediocre…