Think different

Hell yeah. I'm being offered a job at Dell selling computers. Every Winshit I sell, one less Mac buyer. :D

My White iPhone is spawning cracks

Fuck. Just barely a month from my last replacement my new iPhone is spawning hairline cracks all over. Should I replace it again?

EDIT: SingTel gave me a new one again. But for something else, because my screen wasn't flushed to the bezel. I think I'm not going to care anymore, till the new iPhone comes out then I shall bug AppleCare to give me the new model..

MobileMe replacement

I'm sick and tired of MobileMe. I seriously am. $140 a year just to sync my calendars, contacts and bookmarks across my 2 Macs, and to my iPhone OTA. $140 upfront. For a service whose iDisk doesn't even work properly, and does not sync my subscribed cals OTA without some hacking (running a shitty buggy program that I have to PAY for, again)

So, I've found myself some replacements.

Having 2 Macs, I needed my cals and contacts to be consistent across the 2. I absolutely must have calendars and contacts syncing. So how do I do this? Simple. Enter Google, and Spanning Sync. Spanning Sync syncs your cals and contacts to and fro Google. And you still get web access to them, from Google's own web apps.

The only thing you lose is OTA syncing with the iPhone, but I realised that the additional convenience does not justify the battery life I lose at the end. You can actually use Google's new Exchange service for OTA syncing, but it will screw up your contacts as Google stores contacts in a slightly different format than Apple. Spanning Sync sorts it all out for you so your contacts look a-ok on the Mac.

Spanning Sync costs US$25 for the 1st year, US$15 for subsequent years, and US$65 for forever. Google, is of course, free.

Next, bookmarks syncing. This one is easy, Foxmarks. Bookmarks syncing across Safari, Firefox and ShitIE. You also get web access, something ME screwed you over and removed. It also has sync profiles so you can choose what bookmarks go on what machine, if you don't want the porn you bookmarked last night appearing at work. And once again, 3 browsers. Winblows too (fox and shitie only)

Foxmarks is free.

Lastly, data syncing. This is my favourite, Dropbox. I've been using this for nearly 2 months now and I absolutely love it. Although the measly 2GB isn't much, you can pay US$99 to get 50GB, and for the same price from MobileMe, you only get 20. And why the hell would you want to store so much data in the cloud anyway?

And the best part is, it works. Dropbox exists as a folder in my home folder, and the whole Dropbox folder is synced in real-time. It doesn't matter what the directory structure is, it acts just like a drive.

And syncing data barely takes any time, I just put the file into the folder and Dropbox will tell me when it's fully synced and ready to go. I remember back with iDisk I've always had to wait for the f**cking bar that never completes, and most of the time it will just crash Finder because it's just too damn slow.

And guess what? Winbitches can use Dropbox too! And you can do collaboration with this, e.g. creating a folder inside your Dropbox that you can choose whoever to access. This is something iDisk can't do. And it has a public folder too, for you to share your porn or whatever with the world.

Dropbox is free for 2GB, US$99 for 50GB. Just use the free one.

If you ask about push mail, I will slap you. Push anything drinks battery like water. I've set my phone to check my gmail every hour, and it is more than enough. Use Google. Google is free. FREE.

In total, if you go for the cheapest route above, it only costs US$25 for the first year, and US$15 for subsequent years. This, compared to US$99 a year for MobileMe, is quite a huge saving. US$65 for forever still beats US$99 every year. If you absolutely need 20GB of space in the cloud, though, you can still choose to use MobileMe, but if you manage to sync the whopping 20GB into iDisk, let me know, I will treat you to dinner. I was already having problems syncing 50MB.

There you go, if you are contemplating MobileMe but squinting because of the cost, think about these free (or significantly cheaper) alternatives I've listed above. Thank me later if you want.

Fixed? Not really..

After v24-TNG my internet was becoming progressively slower for no reason (1.5KB/s anyone?) so I gave up and used tomato instead. Much better. Awesome control of QoS. Everything else is fuss free.

UPnP FIXED!!

If you are using a linksys router and DD-WRT v24-sp1, you might have realised that UPnP does not work. It never populates the UPnP table and iChat's video chat is always laggy, or it wouldn't even connect.

Here's the fix. Go get v24-TNG svn10431 over at DD-WRT's site. It's under downloads/others/eko/V24_TNG/svn10431

Remember to reset to router defaults before and after you flash, from the main menu, not from the flashing menu. After I flashed my router it was still the old version (confusing, yes). I reset to router defaults from the main menu and then it showed the new version. Weird. But yes, UPnP is working now!

oh shi-

Safari 4 beta is out. And it looks pretty fantastic.

More on it here

EDIT:

First impressions, pretty impressive, but not flawless. But as everything Apple, it makes the old look like antique almost immediately, no matter how much you dislike the new.

Example, here I am trying to accept the tabs that are now all the way on top, being so hard to click and all, going back to my Macbook looking at good ol' Safari 3 I can't help but to feel that the tab area looks way fatter than in Safari 4. Safari 3 actually looks old.

Not all 3rd party plugins work. Inquisitor doesn't work (cry). 1Password works after some .plist hacking, thankfully.

You can finally customise the behaviour of opening new tabs and windows! You can make new tabs load the current page you're looking at like the good old shit of an IE6, or whatever you want, actually! Home page, same page, empty page or bookmarks. Note that in Safari 3 it defaults to empty page and you can't do jack schitt about it.

It's faster than 3, but probably because it's new. Living in an uncluttered location on my hard drive maybe. Can't say much about memory, got to use it for 2 days without closing it to tell. But as it is it's already running 200MB with 5 tabs.

Dragging of tabs is a BITCH. You have to aim. Very well. You can't drag the tabs like before, clicking anywhere you want. Only in the right corner, in a specified place.

I'll see how long I can live with this, but with the impending Snow Leopard, if they are going to stick with this UI, I will need to get used to it, and fast.

Oh and did I say it looks a little like Firefox 3? No? Well ok I just said it then. Shame on you Apple, shame on you.

OMFG THIS IS FUCKING HILARIOUS!!!

The colour of apple

.. is not black, nor is it silver, nor is it bondi blue....

It is White.             

I just realised I have not post pics of my new pedalboard yet..

Tadahh...

It didn't come in such a nice condition tho, so I had to reupholster it.. with this!

INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH! It looks very nice tho, like carpet..

The other side of the pedals are stuck with this..

So yeah, they stick like glue. I can flip the thing around and the pedals won't drop off. If you're lucky you will get to see it next jamming!

(it's bloody fucking heavy tho)

Best Vuze replacement so far

It's been nagging me, Vuze taking up 300MBs of memory and sometimes more, on my old iMac with only 2GB of ram. 2GB is little nowadays, how fast time flies. Anyway, Vuze absolutely kills my iMac. It beachballs my Mac to no end. So today, during spring cleaning, I decided to take up a solution suggested by Jem: uTorrent.

Well if you are an avid pirate, you should know that uTorrent was bought over by BitTorrent, a completely legal, legit company, sometime back. That doesn't make it very safe, but it is the fastest and most lightweight client on windows. So recently, after the cows finally came home (hey, Lunar New Year, happy year of the cow guys) they released a supposedly kick ass Mac version. I remember Jem hyping about it "it has RSS downloading and it's really fast!" so I decided to give it a try.

Then I realised, the hard way why people always say not to follow hype.

First of all, there is no RSS downloading in sight. RSS downloading only existed for a little while on a leaked pre-release alpha build. It's beta now, and it's not there. But what was true, was that uTorrent is pretty damn snappy, and barely took up 30MBs of memory.

So fine, no RSS downloading, I can live with workarounds. Stumbled upon a program called TV Shows, where you just choose what show you want and from which episode you want to watch it from and it will download the torrent files for you, once they are available. The version on that link doesn't work but this dude fixed it. Pretty damn cool, works better than Vuze. +1!

Now I don't only watch TV shows, I watch anime too. So I need something that can handle generic RSS downloading for me, and I found Automatic. Automatic works roughly the same way as how Vuze's RSS downloading works, so that's good enough for me. Oh, both TV Shows and Automatic has options to open your torrent files for you, so they start automatically.

All's well, well almost, till I realised, uTorrent does not have web administration. I mean, what if I need to download something and I'm not at home? I've always loved Vuze's web administration, and I can't live without it.

Then I remembered an old gem: Transmission. It is a BT client that I believe, originated on the Mac. Popped by the site to take a look after this long while, from all the google results of people comparing Transmission to uTorrent.

I must say, I did not use Transmission back then as I couldn't select files within a torrent to download. It's such a simple feature and they didn't have it. But they have it now. And because it originated from the Mac (I believe so) it is the only BT client that fits the UI of the Mac. Simple, sleek and informative. It is also extremely lightweight, much like uTorrent. So I gave it a shot, and WOW. It does everything uTorrent can do, and looks much better. AND, it has a web interface that looks EXACTLY like the Mac interface. Not even Vuze can match that. Also, it has built in peer filtering, with a list that is consistently updated from the intarwebs, just like Vuze can. That's 2 to nil for Transmission against uTorrent. Together with TV Shows and Automatic, Transmission just supplants uTorrent. This solution is better than Vuze too, if any portion of Vuze fails you can't just replace it, you got to live with it.

If you use a Mac, give Transmission a shot. It's pretty damn good.

Please guys, use GTalk

Guys, replace MSN with GTalk. MSN is passe. And you don't even need to create an account if you are cool and already have a gmail account. On Macs, you can use Adium. On windows, I bet there is a windows client. Dump MSN man.

This is amusing and informative at the same time

I never knew there was such a detailed categorization of shit.

"The Bristol Stool Scale or Bristol Stool Chart is a medical aid designed to classify the form of human feces into seven categories." -Wikipedia

Finally a decent contender to the iPhone..

Fuck man the Palm Pre is really sweet.. It aggregates all your contacts from everywhere into a single, simple interface, from Facebook to Gmail to Exchange. It also aggregates all your conversations into a single interface, be it IM or SMS, so you can SMS or MSN someone from the same window and it looks like 1 flowing conversation. Yes it also aggregates your calendars from everywhere. UI wise, it can do everything the iPhone can do- swipes, pinching, etc. And it's actually smoother. And guess what, it can multitask. The only thing that will be lacking will be powerful third party apps because the API is HTML CSS and JS, but that might just change, who knows.

So what is it going to be, to be stuck on Apple as a stuck-up fanboy or go on to something better? Palm was the 1st ever PIM I've ever used and it made my life so much better (before it died on me, and then the company died as well). Now they finally come up with something that is as wonderful and exciting as my Palm V. Funny thing is that it doesn't have the same charm the iPhone gave when it 1st came out.. Maybe it was the Reality Distortion Field..

My newly refurbished room!

Tadahhhh...

It's not as pathetic as before now. Still pathetically small, but at least it's finally pleasant.

A pity I don't have any before pictures to show you how pathetic it used to be, it was so hideous I couldn't even bear to take any photos of it lest the camera breaks. Anyway, try to imagine it without the blinds, without the rug, and with an ugly toilet-like florescent circle-light on the ceiling. Took me quite a bit to get the blinds on, I used cable tie, but the end result is great. Yes, it works flawlessly. :D Blinds, rug, ceiling lamp and lamp shade courtesy of IKEA.

The most beautiful video I've ever watched

Our world is indeed a beautiful place..

I still consider you my friend

Just that I won't trust you anymore. And I hope that after reading and realising what I've said, everyone else will stop trusting you too. Which is fair, since you don't trust anybody anyway.

Do not onto others what you do not want others to do unto yourself.

PS: To all you other readers out there, if you don't understand what's going on, don't worry. You will understand once it happens to you.

PSS: To all those who asked.. what about the friendship? Let me put it this way.. I gave him my absolute trust and friendship, and yet all he did was to wear a mask, pretended to be my best friend, while instigating things to go against me behind my back. So what makes of this friendship? This friendship didn't exist at all, it only existed in my head. It was what he wanted me to believe. He doesn't even consider me his best friend.

But I still consider him my friend, because this friendship did exist once, before everything happened. Maybe about 3 years back. But I guess it's long gone.

D:

I used to think the iPhone was an elitist piece of Apple fanboy-ism. Now it's as common as Nokia 3210s during its heyday. What the heck happened. D:

Betrayal..?

I really wonder how I can be the one that betrayed you, when you were the one who took her away from me. And not only that, you failed to take care of her, failed to keep her in control, blaming the reasons on everyone else but yourself. I was trying to get back with her, to correct the wrongs, but it was too late for me to do anything. And this, to you is betrayal? So when you took her away, when you fail to give her happiness, you didn't betray me? And I didn't even bring it up. I took it like a good friend, that maybe things just weren't meant to be. I didn't blame you. I never did. Now you turn around and blame me instead, on the pretext that I backstabbed you? When it was you who did so to me?

And what about the band. Every single band I have, you tell me it won't make it. Is it your so called intuition, or that you just don't want me to succeed? You destroyed TEG, what we have built up for so long. You planted hate and discord among us so we would fight and destroy ourselves slowly. Made us stop doing covers knowing that we like to do covers. Made us do originals that we can never do. Made us irritated with a sloppy drummer that actually isn't sloppy at all. There's also a reason why we stopped gigging. Cos you hate to gig.

And then when Jason left, you told the rest of the band that TEG is no more, without my consent or knowledge. True that I grew sick and tired of the band, but as we all can see, it was all your doing. And deep inside, no matter what you do, I've always wanted to give the band a chance. I never wanted the band to split.

And what about my new band? That won't make it too? Once again you are trying to plant hate and sow discord among us, telling me how bad gene is, how bad rico is. Trying to influence me to dislike or hate them. Leaving the band and then telling me the band won't make it.

Telling my girlfriend that I betrayed you, trying to paint an ugly picture of me. You try to destroy my bands, and that's not enough, and you have to try to destroy my relationship as well. As though destroying my previous relationship and previous band wasn't enough, you have to try to destroy every subsequent one.

And yet I'm the one who betrayed you.

Random musings..

In order to be successful in what you do, you got to love what you do. If you do something for the sake of being successful or money, then you will never be, because there is no love. If you do what you do just because you love it, without giving a care about the world, life will reward you will success and money. Which is quite ironic.

But this is why crafty businessmen are the richest people in the world, cos their love in life is to fuck with people and earn their money. And as though that is not enough, life rewards them with success and even more money because they did what they love. Nice.

Laziest Mac user of the century

And that's me. Look what I got for my iMac:

So. WTF is this? It is a media center program called XBMC, which originated from the Xbox, and now it's available for almost every single platform. Even the Apple TV. Basically what it does is it categorizes all your movies and TV shows, automatically. Even Anime. Yes, it's AUTOMATIC. So I just put the files at the right places, and it will detect them, and download the cover art, plot synopsis, and episode summaries, and put them sort them nicely, as above. So all I need to do is fire it up, arm myself with the remote, and pig out. Wonderful.

And to top it all up, I installed Quicksilver on my iMac again. Spotlight is just too friggin slow. Yes, I'm the laziest fucking Mac user ever.