I never thought I’d get so much fun out of making the Mac OSX Dock look nice. But I did today with tips and icons found here.
Sweet. All the organizing freaks (read: “Grace”) would be proud of me.
via [TUAW]
Month: November 2007
Bryan v2.0 Coming Soon
Since we’ve already told our parents, we figured it might as well be a good time to announce to the rest of our friends… And no, we don’t know the gender yet — we are still a couple of months away from knowing. But we saw the heart beating, its little hands, head and body.
Let the good times roll.
Saying Good-bye to Cambridge Again
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輕輕的我走了，
æ£å¦‚我輕輕的來；
我輕輕的招手，
作別西天的雲彩。
　
那河畔的金柳，
是夕陽ä¸çš„新娘；
波光裡的豔影，
在我的心é 蕩漾。
　
軟泥上的é’è‡ï¼Œ
油油的在水底招æ–ï¼›
在康河的柔波里，
我甘心åšä¸€æ¢æ°´è‰ï¼
　
那榆è”下的一æ½ï¼Œ
ä¸æ˜¯æ¸…泉，
是天上虹；
æ‰ç¢Žåœ¨æµ®è—»é–“，
沉澱著彩虹似的夢。
　
尋夢？æ’一支長篙，
å‘é’è‰æ›´é’處漫溯；
滿載一船星è¼ï¼Œ
在星è¼æ–‘斕裡放æŒã€‚
　
但我ä¸èƒ½æ”¾æŒï¼Œ
悄悄是別離的笙簫；
å¤èŸ²ä¹Ÿç‚ºæˆ‘沉默，
沉默是今晚的康橋ï¼
　
悄悄的我走了，
æ£å¦‚我悄悄的來；
我æ®ä¸€æ®è¡£è¢–，
ä¸å¸¶èµ°ä¸€ç‰‡é›²å½©ã€‚
　
　　1928.11.6 ä¸åœ‹æµ·ä¸Š
Saying Good-bye to Cambridge Again
–by Xu Zhimo
Very quietly I take my leave
As quietly as I came here;
Quietly I wave good-bye
To the rosy clouds in the western sky.
The golden willows by the riverside
Are young brides in the setting sun;
Their reflections on the shimmering waves
Always linger in the depth of my heart.
The floating heart growing in the sludge
Sways leisurely under the water;
In the gentle waves of Cambridge
I would be a water plant!
That pool under the shade of elm trees
Holds not water but the rainbow from the sky;
Shattered to pieces among the duckweeds
Is the sediment of a rainbow-like dream?
To seek a dream? Just to pole a boat upstream
To where the green grass is more verdant;
Or to have the boat fully loaded with starlight
And sing aloud in the splendor of starlight.
But I cannot sing aloud
Quietness is my farewell music;
Even summer insects heap silence for me
Silent is Cambridge tonight!
Very quietly I take my leave
As quietly as I came here;
Gently I flick my sleeves
Not even a wisp of cloud will I bring away
Bryan the Trickster
Afternoon Musing 1
Bryan refused to take a nap. So he hopped and hopped on the bed and around the house. So I made a deal with him that he’d get a tic-tac candy only after he woke up from his nap.
So the little mind started tinkering…..
He laid his head down on my laps, made some snoring noise, and two seconds later he picked up his head and exclaimed, “I woke up! I want candy.”
We all laughed pretty hard after that…
.
.
.
Afternoon Musing 2
So after some “intense” negotiation, we decided that Bryan could have one tic-tac before he napped. And I made him promise (like that’d ever hold) he’d go to bed once he had his tic-tac; and he agreed. But once he had the tic-tac in hand, he put it in his mouth and declared he didn’t need to go to bed anymore!
So these are the stories of how I was tricked by a two-year-old, TWICE, in a day.
.
.
.
It turned out that Costco had some free samplings of eggnogs, and Bryan had one too many. Considering how sweet most American eggnog products are, that was probably enough fuel to take another Apollo Mission to the moon and back for a two-year-old…
Oh~~ the hard lessons of parenthood…
Crazy for the iPhone
I express mailed an iPhone for a good buddy of mine in Thailand last week. Even though the phone isn’t officially supported there, he Jailbreak’ed it in no time upon receiving the phone (incidentally, his favorite American TV series right now is “Prison Break”!). His only regret? Not getting the iPhone sooner… He owned a HTC Touch just prior to the iPhone and hated every minute of it.
So what does his Windows-owning sorry butt wants to do next? He might be getting a Mac for the next computer purchase. Hah hah!
It just gets easier to get people on board to use Macs every year. And nobody ever turns back.
Breaking Windows
Windows rant ahead. Brace yourself.
I have no idea why, but my virtualized Windows XP just started bitching about
1 | svchost |
crashing and started acting all weird on me — and this was on an installation that’s only used (or turned on, even) when I needed to test my code on various versions of IE. At first I thought maybe VMWare got corrupted, so I did a fresh install of VMWare. Then I thought maybe I could revert Windows XP back to its previous known good state. None of these helped, of course. So I did what any sane Windows user would do — complete re-install of Windows XP from scratch! Hah hah! I feel sorry for the poor souls who have to deal with this kind of crap all the time.
Thank god VMWare makes Windows installation easy and fast (at least 1/2 the time it takes for a fresh install on a real PC!). The first thing I do is to get rid of all the fluff out of Windows — games, MSN Explorer, Accessibility programs, Windows tour, Outlook Express (officially dead program by Microsoft’s definition)… etc. Then I started installing various versions of IE (5.01, 5.5, 6.x & 7) and other perceived “goodies” including MSN Live Messenger. Then Windows XP complained again in its own cute little way — it’s looking for
1 | msoert2.dll |
… WTF!?! It’s a fresh install! It couldn’t possibly have something missing that MSN Live Messenger needed!
Then Google said it was a library that was removed when I got rid of Outlook Express. So why is it that MSN Live Messenger 8.5.xxx, the latest and greatest from Redmond, needs to depend on a library from a program that’s supposedly extinct? Locating and putting back the
1 | msoert2.dll |
file back to
1 | Windows/system32 |
directory made it happy again though. And that’s all I cared.
I am guessing it’s a hook for MSN contacts to appear in Outlook Express and Outlook so that people who spend way too much time in those programs can start up chat sessions without having to look for the MSN Live Messenger contact list.
All this crap brought back the good old days of Windows tech support and having to decipher cryptic Windows errors. “Good” times.
A Rainy Day
It’s raining today — a rare event in California during most time of the year. I was just talking to a friend about rain and associated memories the other day and how it was raining in Taipei. And now it’s raining cats and dogs in California.
I like rain — just as long as I am not the one getting wet in it.
Totoro, Catbus and Bryan
We introduced My Neighbor Totoro DVD to Bryan for the first time today. He was all excited about the characters especially the famous catbus scenes. There’s so much imagination in Miyazaki‘s stories that every single time I watch them I am at awe, not to mention all the subtle life lessons about nature, courage and appreciation to the simplicity of everyday things. As far as stories are concerned, American productions (even Pixar) are probably still decades behind some of the most advanced Japanese Animes to date.
Grace wants a catbus.
Evolution of Apple.com
Neely was talking to me about the “original” Apple Computer Stores from the 80’s. But I wasn’t able to find any images of them but instead found some old snapshots of the old Apple’s website thanks to Apple Gazette and EMU. All, but the first and the last, captions are direct copy/pastes from Apple Gazette.
The original apple.com from circa 1997.
From 1996 to 1998 this is what Apple.com looked like. By today’s standards this site is laughable (although still better designed than MySpace), but at the time this was cutting edge.
In 1998, Apple updated their look with this much more streamlined design.
In 2000, Apple redesigned the site again. This new design is essentially the “missing link” between the 1998 design, and the layout that is still used today. Notice the red apple at the top of the page.
In 2001 the front page recieved another slight make-over. This time the “News Headline” bar was given an Aqua enhancement, and the Apple at the top of the page turned blue.
In 2002 the Apple in the top corner became gray (which it still is today). The rest of the front page remained virtually the same – only the site features significantly changed.
The current front page design of Apple.com is almost identical to it’s 2002 counterpart, except for the “News Headline” bar, which is now a simple grey, and the addition of the iPod+iTunes tab.
This was snapped just now in 2007. The look and feel has been significantly updated to match the look and feel of Leopard. Also various interface face elements were also cleaned up throughout the site. I suspect this new revision will be around for another couple of years or so until the next cat is out of the cage from Cupertino.
More Shots from My Last Shoot
I have been experimenting with different workflows. Since I am just starting out and charging such low prices with very liberal terms for my images, I figured this is a perfect time to try different things out and see what works best. Unfortunately this was a “failed” attempt in trying to adopt using Fujifilm’s awfully designed Hyper Utility software that they even had to galls to sell separately from the camera.
So next up Adobe Camera RAW! Now I’ll have bout 600 shots from this past Saturday to experiment a new workflow with. What fun! (< -- Insert Sarcasm)
Taking MAMP More Seriously
This is the last draw. I am going to start using MAMP’s local web server solution seriously this time around.
It all started when I decided to upgrade to Leopard. I backed up everything else except for the MySQL database files that don’t exist in the
1 | ~/user_name/ |
directory. So in upgrading to Leopard, I also blew away all of those development databases I was using for clients — great, now I’ll have to go through the motion of having to repopulate those databases manually…
The only gripe I have with MAMP is that it literally forces all the development files to uncharacteristically reside in the
1 | /Applications/ |
folder. I suppose I could move them somewhere else. But I just don’t have the time to deal with customizing it otherwise.
So from now on, literally everything that matters will be within the two places that I back up
1 | /Applications/ |
1 | ~/user_name/ |
I also forgot to save my Addessbook contacts. But thank heavens the address content reside in
1 | ~/user_name/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/ |
so I was able to recover them. But even if that failed, I had all my contacts sync’d to my Plaxo account using its free sync utility for the Mac OSX.
Lessons learned:
1. Backing up files and upgrading to a new OS when one is really tired is not good.
2. If unsure, backup EVERYTHING.
Of Mice and Drivers
I was looking for mouse driver for my old but trusty Microsoft mouse (they do make pretty decent mice), then I came across this “mouse driver selector” on Microsoft’s website:
What a joke!
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out something must be wrong with how the Windows operation systems are written over the years. And apparently nothing is being done to address the issue of how drivers should be written and made compatible across the board like the Mac OS. But I guess this is just another “advantage” when one company gets to control both the underlying OS and the hardware that works with it.