Older blog entries for amars (starting at number 304)

Well, i solved my only complaint with OS X and my powerbook. At first, it was unclear if i could have my main desktop displayed on my external monitor with the LCD of the powerbook acting as the secondary monitor. Thanks to the Apple forums someone pointed out that in addition to being able to drag the desktop orientation in the arrangement tab of the preference pane, you can drag the menu bar to either desktop. So I did, and now have my main desktop on my 20" monitor with my powerbook on the side running iChat and iTunes.

I'm in heaven.

I'll write a review but wait until after i've used it a full week.

I am the latest proud owner of an Apple 12" PowerBook G4. I opted for additional memory bringing it to 384 Mb and the AirPort Extreme card. Going through the process of setting it up the way i like it. Will write a detailed review sooner or later.

I was thinking earlier today how inconvenient the dock (OS X) is to only have a select few applications available unless you have a really bick dock and cram them all in if you need room. So i figured it might be convenient to have a link to my Applications folder so i can go directly to it instead of opening finder and clicking on my applications folder in the toolbar or navigating to it. At first, i was dissapponted because i couldn't drag it onto the dock, but realized i could in the bottom portion, just above the trash can. So, in Apple tradition not only was I happy with the results, there's an added bonus. If i right-click on the folder it will bring up a menu of the folder's contents, so i can instantly access anything in my applications folder by right-clicking on it's icon in the dock.

I tried it with my hard drive, so now i also have my hard drive in my dock which is navigable with the mouse via menus... a la OS/2 style. Hopefully this should reduce the amount of times i have to open up finder and go to a file or application, which can be taxing on this particular machine.

Yet another reason why OS X kicks so much ass. I still only have one icon on my desktop!

Along the same lines so not worth a new update. I just realized there is a native MPlayer for OS X. Bonus!

So, after six months of solid performance and one month of nonstop uptime (a miracle in my circumstances) ElDiablo, my Linux box i use for communications purposes and as a secondary computer when i need to do two things at once, died. It locked up and stopped responding, i rebooted it and i was met with a siren-like post. I opened up the case, screwed in the video card, it booted and all was well. However, Gnome ceased to finish loading.

After having gotten used to setting up a computer to do what i want and forgetting about it, i've forgotten (or no longer care) how to fix it. I had it purring like a kitten and Gnome2 specially customized the way i like it.

So... I'm considering making the switch from Linux to FreeBSD to see what the hype is over FreeBSD 5. All I do with this particular machine is talk with co-workers on ICQ, IRC and browse the internet... and archive my email, and i'd rather not go through the steps involved in troubleshooting a problem and fixing it, i'd rather just use the damn thing.

I'll be making backups tomorrow and installing FreeBSD, hopefully it will go smoothly.

The other option is to revert back to Windows, and we all know *that* isn't going to happen, ever. My days of Windows are over.

I'm normally a fairly patient person, but it's been tough these past couple of days and i'm sure this coming week won't be any different as I get the paperwork squared away, but damnit, I *will* have a PowerBook in my possesion within a week.

I dare to be ambitous and say i'd like to take a stab at hacking up the touchpad driver to implement, possibly, a half-ass right-click functionality. I'm pretty sure that portion is open source, if not, i'm pretty sure x,y,etc information is available and it'd be possible to send some kind of interrupt that triggers the right-click action when they x/y is in a certain region. Seems to be the biggest complaint about Apple laptops (desktops even) is that they have one mouse button. I've never had a problem with my powermac because i've always used the same mouse i've always used, a logitech optical wheel mouse, which OS X (and most apps) are very supportive of, but with, things might be diferent since i won't always have an external mouse avail. If that doesn't work out, i might have to map another key to it, who knows. If i could pull this off (which would take a miracle), i'd probably BSDify it and ask for donations, as it seems like such functionality is what everyone is looking for. It boggles my mind that Apple hasn't at least made such functionality optional.

I'd like to say that with the ability to right-click without control-clicking many people will have one less reason to bitch at Apple for, but those people will just find something else to complain about and find another reason not to buy an Apple computer.

I just need to find time from my horrendously busy schedule to not only implement this but to learn how to do it first, which will be fun and interesting, hopefully.

President Bush: Can we please stop wasting so much money trying to kill foreigners, so we can afford to send people into space safely?

After two years of holding back, i now may have the opportunity to spend the next two years paying for what will soon be mine.

<evil laugh />

Ignore my last post, I know I said I wouldn't post again for awhile, but right now there's an issue I'd at least like to address.

mglazer says a coward is "Someone, not willing to defend their convictions;" yet he's done nothing but talk.

mglazer: until you personally do something (anything) about what you talk about here, according to you, you forfeit any value to your believe. Please, do us all a favor and join the army, and do everything in your power to make sure you're the first pawn in this impending, unjustified war against Iraq. At least then we won't have to put up with your FUD. Until then, you are a coward, hypocrite and a fool.

Consider this my last entry. For awhile at least.

I think I am going to enjoy this semester. I'm finally taking some classes I can really take an active interest in and i've finally gotten past that calculus hurdle that had been holdng me back for so long. Despite the hectic schedule associated with having two jobs and going to school full-time, it feels like i'm under alot less pressure.

Last night, i started writing my own image gallery script, i'm calling it spectacle. I don't really have any plans for distributing it. It's not as automated as one would want, but it works quite well for someone like me who works really well in the command line. Everything is handled by dotfiles. For example, .galleries lists all the galleries within a folder, .title has the title of the current gallery, .desc has the description associated with the gallery and .images lists all the images within a gallery. index_dir.php (PHP shell script) with the help of imagemagick will create a thumbnail for every image in the current directory and add the image to .images, index.php (with the help of spectacle.api.php) reads the dot files and displays the information accordingly. I can also limit access via htpasswd and the apache directives. It really wouldn't be hard to add a web based admin to allow uploading/deleting images, modifying the dot files and creating new galleries but i'm busy doing other work at the moment. In all it's about 300 lines of code, which isn't much, but was a result of one sitting last night while avoiding work.

Spectacle could use a few more features, like having multiple page galleries for when there are too many thumbnails to display per page or support for remote files or some kind of navigation mechanism. But i'll have to save those for another time. I'm not really interested in adding comments.