iCal Day!

Yes, today is iCal Day, the only day in the year that whether you launch iCal or not, the dock icon is still showing today's date!

How come the icon shows today's date? Because iCal was introduced today a few years ago (I don't want to check it up, but it should be fairly easy to check.)

How to show your special love to iCal? Add more events to it! Or just launch it even if you don't need it. Or check out the list on Hawk Wings on making iCal even better. (In fact it was this post that reminded me of this special day. I'm not very conscious of dates, especially during the summer holidays.)

Edit: I just found this post about iCal Day has been dugg. This blogger advises the opposite - he is keeping iCal closed. Well, I didn't know why I said I would keep iCal open. Just for fun, OK?

HoudahSpot

My review of HoudahSpot as seen on MacZOT.com

HoudahSpot is like a more advanced Spotlight. It is a search utility with those more complicated search criteria like AND, OR and NOT. I like using them on Google so I'm glad I can use them on my own Mac too. After setting criteria for file kind, date modified and size, I can filter the results by entering keywords. So this is a bit different from normal searches. Results return fairly quickly for my tests. So I'm quite fond of this app and I hope I can make good use of it. (Never search a lot on my Mac, I browse more myself. It's hard to change long time habits despite Spotlight.)

NOTE: If you're seeing this on June 16, 2006 head over to MacZOT, you might be able to get a Free copy of HoudahSpot

Search easily in Tiger, Mac OS X, with HoudahSpot

Pzizz

MacZOT.com Fans want Pzizz because 'According to the National Sleep Foundation, sleep deprivation and its effect on work performance may be costing U.S. employers some $18 billion each year in lost productivity. Another study pushes this cost to over $100 billion.' - link to full article

Note: It's BlogZOT again. Can't miss any deal they've got, can I?

What a year!

Finally, the day has come! My Mac arrived at the door one year ago today. No need to say how life's been happier and easier for me ever since. I'd nearly forgotten this important day, honestly. Forgot to dress it up a bit for the anniversary, forgot to sing a song to it, forgot (nearly) to write about it. Ah, good times, it's passed so fast. Can't quite imagine it's been sitting here for a year already. Of course many things have happened in this year. Like Apple decided to use Intel chips. If I had wanted a Mac after that announcement, I probably would waited for the Intel Mac minis. Don't know if this is fortunate or not. What other things … Yeah, you can say I've become tech-savvier with this Mac. Being with the "Mac geeks" even fanboys, makes you that.

Well, it's 24th already! One day pass the birthday. Happy birthday, mate. Thanks, Apple. Wish I'd given you (my mate) a name though. But it won't be too late now, will it?

My Mac is already one year old

Well, I've nealy forgotten it! According to this cute app "coconutIdentityCard" which tells some information about a Mac from its serial number, my Mac has been born more than one year. And I forgot to celebrate! I'll look for birthday desktop pictures now. I'll dust it later. I have to make my Mac happy on 23rd May! Because to me this day is more important than 9-15/5.

Then, another thing, MacBook is here today, of course. I don't like the black colour that much. It looks like any other "cheap" PC models to me. But I've never seen a real MacBook/MacBook Pro/iBook, so I can't say a thing actually. I want any Apple laptop!

Good or Bad?

I've given in to myself. I've done the wrong thing. I hope I'll do the right thing to "compensate" next year. It's all about that thing that I don't want to be taken away. If I did the "right" thing, I'd lose about half of that. I really hope I'll do the "right" thing next year. How could I give it up … I've tried so hard to control myself for nearly a year. But next year, I think I'll find excuses for myself, like "many people are doing this too" or "you've been doing it, so why not do it for a little longer?" I'm bad. I won't tell anyone about this. I'm just posting to remind myself; I'll read this next year, to tell myself to do the "right" thing.

(If you happen to be reading this, please don't try to understand it.)

Cleaned my keyboard

I finally cleaned my dear white keyboard! I popped out all the keys using a small screwdriver, as I read people doing that from various web pages. It was scary at first, but later it's quite fun. Then I took all the keys to clean, using my sister's paint brush. A lot of dust. They dried for a day. And the naked keyboard, I didn't know how to clean it. It was full of dust and greasy. Ugh. Took an old tooth brush and a piece of tissue. It's not really good, but I got quite impatient and stopped.

During the time that I didn't have a keyboard to use, (really, there's no other USB keyboard in the house. We're talking about a house with two computers, and the house has a computer for like 6 years.) I had to open the keyboard viewer in OS X, and click on the keys to type very slowly. Not suitable for IM or any other activity. No more keyboard shortcuts, I had to use menus for doing things. And I can't seem to work with any modifier key. That was all so stupid.

Now comes to last part: putting the keys back. This is a test of my nerdishness, and it was hard. I got most right, but I was pretty clueless about the symbols. I was wrong in the +-*/ in the number keys side. The punctuation were wrong, and haha I got some alphabets wrong! My sister keeps spoiling them for me, (she went to the other computer to look; you thought she's better than me or what?) so I wouldn't know if I could ever put them back myself. Interesting anyway. But then it was really scary to push them back in. Scarier then taking them out. The sound that it made was so loud. Had to use great force to do it. I don't want to do that again.

Talking about MacZOT!

MacZOT is for Mac users who likes to buy shareware since it gives out good deals of Mac shareware every day. The price can be less than half of the orginal.

The creatice bit of this website is about marketing. The BlogZOT I wrote about gave me a free AppZapper. Now they have a BlogZOT 1.1 for bloggers (like me) to talk about this website. This gave them a lot of publicity all over the web. (What's better than being Dugg?)

Than there's MysteryZOT. It's a secret bundle of shareware that is worth more than $60, but now sells for only $15. You don't know what's in it until you buy it, so you have to decide your trust MacZOT or not.

It's a very interesting website and their design is good too! :) Definitely visit it every day to get greaat deals.

I've got free AppZapper

I reported that macZOT wanted to give away AppZapper for free if bloggers write about it. I nearly didn't get it. Yesterday afternoon I used the school PC to check it. Fortunately it was still available. If I hadn't checked, I would have to check when I went back home. By that time the offer has ended! So lucky I remember to get it in the afternoon. Time difference is so bad. I never know what the time is in the US. And they have 4 times for diffecent areas. We arer +8 here in Hong Kong, and they are something like -10! Too big a difference for me to handle.

Today I've zapped many apps. Quite fun, that effect! lol Really funny. It's got a place in my dock. So now for apps that I want to remove, instead of dragging them to the trash, I drag them to the AppZapper icon. Satisfactory.

Rebooted for I don't know how many times yesterday

Yesterday Mac OS X 10.4.6 was released. So naturally I had to reboot. But it was more than that.

First I rebooted because I wanted to solve my issue of the computer not sleeping automatically. Well, it's not solved.

Second thing, I had the hacked Front Row long ago, but an OS update broke that. Yesterday I saw people mentioning that Apple didn't break FR with the new update. And I've been missing FR lately when I want to view a movie. So I decided to hunt for it again. After all, it's impossible for Apple to completely remove the hack. There are many mirrors for it and Apple can never remove their update of FR.

A correct install of a hacked FR requires two reboots, as far as I can tell. I think I incorrectly installed it before I updated to 10.4.4, so the icons of Spotlight and time and other system things disappeared. But this time I got it quite correct and I've rebooted so many times I don't think it will go wrong again.

After that I ran the new OS update. The Mac rebooted twice. I don't know why. But it's normal anyway.

Let's count it. Five reboots! I saw the bootup screen for the highest number of times in my life yesterday.

AppZapper might be free

macZOT is offering to make AppZapper free if 259 bloggers link to it. So this is what I'm doing. It's Dugg, BTW, so it's very slow now. Maybe it won't be free because the bloggers can't visit the site.

Apple, happy birthday!

30 years! Of course I have known Apple for just less than two years, but I know some history too. They're insanely great, right? No one needs me to repeat what Apple has done in these years.

What I'm waiting for is a celebration and new products from Apple. But there's no news yet. I'm quite worried, honestly. They can't just start a party tomorrow. They'll have to get the press ready, and get the fans ready. Next week?

The most comfotable iPod

The most comfotable iPod

My new Doraemon tissue cover purchased from Japan Home City (a great place for finding Dora stuff). I found an alternative use for it. It would be an ideal dock if only I can fix the cable under the hole. Plus this is a tissue cover after all. I can’t really use this. This is only for taking pictures.

A Year of Mac

Now it's nearly 10 months since I switched. 10 months has gone so fast … When its birthday comes (23rd May) I'll have huge celebrations with it. I changed the name and the URL of the blog to reflect this. Now links to my blog are broken! :D If you want to change your links, feel free to do it.

"Fun new products" event

Disappointing. The new things are Intel Mac minis, iPod leather case and iPod Hi-fi. This means my little Mac has become obsolete, of course. (I really want a Remote, so small and cute.) And the prices are increased. I'm surprised.

Anyway, who wants a big expensive hi-fi? With that money you can buy another iPod. Maybe it's really good, but I don't need it.

The iPod case, ugly, useless, unprotective, over-priced. You have to pull out the iPod every time to use the controls or to see the screen. $99? I wouldn't want to pay that even if it's HK dollar.

And the last time I checked, iPod Hi-fi (I keep wanting to say "iPod boombox'. Guess I read too many rumour sites.) isn't on the Hong Kong store yet.

Fun? What's fun? The Mac mini? Don't say it's the Hi-fi!

Google Widgets

Google has made their own widgets: Blogger, Gmail and Search History. In fact I'm using the Blogger widget now. It lets you choose which of your blogs to post to. It can save drafts or publish the post right away. It supports shortcuts like Cmd-N for bold and Cmd-I for italic. It's quite convenient I guess.

The Gmail widget checks new email. It checks every time you open Dashboard. But every thing you do in the widget – open a message, compose, search, and click on the Inbox button – the result is in a new window of your browser. That's not quite nice to me.

Search History displays your recent searches in Google. It has search too, but the results are in the widget itself. Clicking on the links bring them to your browser, naturally.

All three widgets are quite good-looking too. But Google, aren't you too slow for these widgets? Tiger is out for nearly a year.

My first AppleScript

I have been hoping to learn AppleScript for some time, because that seems cool. Today I read an article on MacWorld that teaches how to write AppleScript. So I started to learn.

I wrote a little script that deletes the selected files in Finder. It was not hard because I had the library open and just put words in. But this script is not exactly useful. It's in the sidebar now, but I much prefer pressing Cmd+delete to do the same thing.

Maybe I'll have some better scripts ideas later. Still an interesting learning experience.

Update of iPod Problem

One morning, after letting my friend's iPod to rest for a night or two, it woke up. I was really surprised. So I brought it back to its owner happily. Then she couldn't wake it. But when I tried, it woke! I said it was because of my "magic hand".

Then today she said the iPod has problem again. It's just a bit more then one year old. Maybe it needs restoring. Or I'll try my "magic hand"! lol. It always work. Maybe the iPod knows I'm an Apple person and we have a "connection".

iPod problem

I crashed my friend's iPod.

Or you can say the iPod crashed my iTunes. And then I came to the whole Mac. It ended up I had to force my Mac to shut down.

And I reconnected the iPod to the Mac, now it displays the unhappy iPod icon. Normally the solution is to restore the iPod, but the trouble is my friend doesn't have her music in her computer, so I can't restore the iPod.

Now our solution is to wait for some days for the iPod's battery to drain. That's going to be long because the iPod has charged a lot when I plugged it to my Mac. And we'll see if it'll be OK later.

1 GB iPod nano

It came out today. $1150. The prices of the two iPod shuffles were decreased (512MB $550, 1GB $780). Makes the shuffle more attractive, but they need to have an update of the shuffle or just discontinue it. Good, I'll see more and more nanos in the street, and I can't imagine how jealous I'll be.

Spring cleaning

I cleaned my Mac today, as it's really spring and I haven't cleaned it for a long time (really lazy person here). Now it's much cleaner.

When I cleaned the machine, I found a lot of dust in the holes under the machine. It was horrible. I picked the dust carefully with a toothpick. I smelt something like burnt things. I was afraid that something might be damaged inside. But that was impossible because I used the Mac yesterday and all things were fine. And I cleaned other parts. And the table. The state of the table was horrible.

After all this, I ran the Apple Hardware Test. Foolish of me, because nothing could be wrong. But I was worried all the same. And I'd never tried that before so I wanted to see what it was like. So it was a Classic GUI, and I've never used Classic. I ran the test and there was no problem. Very good.

MacWorld Stevenote

I finally have time to write about the new things from Apple.

Really, I didn't expect an Intel iMac so soon. It was updated only two months ago. At that time I thought iMac would be one of the last models to be switched to Intel. I think everyone else was as surprised as I was.

That name MacBook Pro is quite bad indeed. I like PowerBook so much. But I really like the Remote will the MacBook, this is perfect for presenters (using the latest version of Keynote). Steve said it is really fast, but you can't trust him too much. You have to note those "Universal" things and real life is not like those numbers (he said "4x").

iLife... I want to buy it, but I just don't have money. iWeb seems quite attractive. iPhoto is great, and I don't quite care about the others. But I think I should wait another year for a better version of iWeb (there are many things to improve in iWeb).

iWork doesn't seem like a great update. I don't have iWork now. But I'm not a person who needs to present a lot and make many documents. I still don't need it now. Perhaps next year (when they'll have spreadsheet, though I don't need it).

Overall this Stevenote is not as good as others. It's a bit boring sometimes. My favourite part is probably when Steve made a podcast. Quite funny. People say a big announcement was cut from the keynote. Maybe that's why this keynote is not as good.

Meeting iPods

Today I went to a shopping centre. There's an electrical appliances shop called Broadway there. Like any other places, I went over and searched for iPods. I saw the two 5G iPods (black & white)! That was the first time I saw the real things. I have seen countless pictures but that was the first time I saw them so near. The first time I realised the screen was really huge. I kept saying "gorgeous" to myself like mad. They made me want to own them very much.

Then I finally had to leave them. I walked around the corner and I saw a HUGE iPod ad. Really huge. The ad is orange. In the picture there was a big hand holding the iPod, and there's a screen in the place where the actual screen of the iPod is, showing the Eminem TV ad. On the right hand side of all these was five iPods, 5G iPods (black & white), iPod nanos (black & white) and iPod shuffle. That ad was gorgeous too, and phenomenal. Pity I couldn't get a close look and take some pictures. If I had money I would've rushed in the shop and buy an iPod. I hope many people feel the same way. I've never seen any 5G iPod in the streets.

Flip4Mac Now Free

Many days ago, I read that Microsoft has stopped developing Windows Media Pleyer for Mac officially. (Well, they stopped about 2 years ago actually. There were no updates in more than 2 years.) And they recommend Flip4Mac for Windows Media files. I like Flip4Mac very much, now it's free. I remember it costed some money just a few months ago. But now WMP is over, and Flip4Mac is feel. So it seems to me that Microsoft has made Flip4Mac free. If that's true, that's awsome. But I haven't seen it said directly anywhere, so I can't be sure. Could I be saying thanks to Microsoft for the first time? I don't know. (Hey, I don't really mind saying thanks to them. It won't stop me laughing at them.)

DIY iPod Stand with iPod

DIY iPod Stand with iPod
Originally uploaded by Apple-Candy.

Today I made this stand. Not very hard exactly, but I should have been more careful when I cut the cardboard. Actually I made two, but the first one can't fit the Dock connector, so I had to make this. It turned out quite nice. I'm really hapy with it. Next I'll look for some paper to wrap it so that it'll be more pretty.

Problem downloading podcasts in iTunes

I think it started since iTunes 6. Some podcast can't be downloaded. iTunes always says "Network connection timed out". It's not about the connection. My connection is fine and I can go to the website of the podcasts and download there. Not many people have this problem, from what I see on Apple's discussion forum. I hope this will be fixed soon because I'm really annoyed.

Modern Browsers

Yesterday I tried to go to a website, but I forgot to type ".com". Surprisingly, Safari automatically added ".com" to the thing I typed and went to the website successfully. It's so good. It can save you 1-2 seconds. But for a website that ends with ".net", Safari can't go there, but went to another website that ends with ".com". I guess ".com" has a priority.

Today I tried it with Firefox. It works the same way for ".com". But for the website that ends with ".net", Firefox can go there, instead of going to the ".com" website. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I have went there before in FF. Then it means FF is smarter.

Yesterday I tried it with IE on a PC, it didn't work. Old IE is so bad it doesn't have this handy feature.

That's the difference between good browsers and bad browsers. I would like to know which is the first browser to have this function. I suspect that FF has copied many Safari's feature (like Customise Toolbar, this function appears in many Mac apps, including Finder, so I don't think Apple copied FF.)

Switcher Story

I finally wrote up my story. It's a memorable story for me. Years later I'll look back and see how my life changed because of a little Mac mini.

How I found out about the Mac

In Hong Kong, very few people use Macs. (It's more or less the same in the whole world, of course.) I didn't even know what Macs are. It all started with iTunes I guess. A year ago, I somehow saw iTunes and downloaded it. Then I learned about the iPod and immediately loved it. These was the first times I knew what Apple is. (And now Apple is commonly known as "the iPod company".)

Those times I liked to look around on some websites like WinCustomize.com, and I found some WindowBlinds themes that look like the beautiful Mac OS X. So I used them and made the Windows OS look like the Mac as much as possible. I had ObjectDock too, which works like the dock in Mac OS X. I spent much time playing with these apps. Actually, earlier I didn't know what Mac OS X means. But later I finally found out. And I found out that you have to buy an expensive computer from Apple to use the genuine OS. And this means completely different software too.

Why I wanted to have a Mac

Windows is just very bad. I think everyone knows about it and I don't have to spend time writing about it. And I read so many people saying the Mac OS X is good. I looked at the new Tiger features on Apple's website. I like Dashboard, Spotlight, Safari RSS, iPhoto (for transferring photos to the iPod)... All these apps seemed so good. So I made up my mind. I wanted to have a Mac.

My ideal Mac

Then the Mac mini was released. It was just ideal to me. Like Apple says, it's affordable. I can plug my old CRT display to it. Thought I can't plug the keyboard and mouse because they aren't USB. So I bought the expensive Apple keyboard and mouse too, because they are beautiful. (I regret about it sometimes. I think about what else I could buy with the money saved if I bought some cheap keyboard and mouse. But then I think about when people say they're beautiful and ask where are the buttons of the mouse? These are proud moments.)

Ordering

It was not easy to convince my parents to buy a new computer to me. I told them how good the Mac mini is all day. How small it is. I showed them the Mac mini page on Apple.com. One big PC is the size of at least 20 Mac minis (at least this is what I think. I never tried to measure it.) And they knew nothing about Macs. (Probably they still know nothing.)

At first my mum wanted me to get good results for exams before they buy the Mac. My results turned out not as good as she expected. She wasn't quite happy about it. Then I turned to my dad. He doesn't care much about my studies. He cares more about money I think. It was very hard to make him pay. But I succeeded after some time. So finally I ordered my Mac mini on the Apple store online. I added some more RAM to it because it was recommended by everyone. Along with the keyboard and mouse, the total was near $5000. Not a small sum, but just think about what I've got in return.

Waiting

I had some tough time waiting for it. I checked email every day for many times to look for a shipping message from the store. I checked the store itself every day. It took a longer time then it said in the shopping cart before I ordered it. I was desperately waiting and treasuring the last days using Windows (lol). I even restored the Windows OS.

During the waiting time I thought about buying a USB hub, because the Mac mini only has two. I didn't know the Apple keyboard has two. It was lucky that I didn't buy one. I never need it. I plug the keyboard to one of the ports, and the mouse to a port behind the keyboard. I connect my iPod through Firewire. There is usually one USB port left which is used when I have to print or transfer photos from my camera.

Arrived

In the afternoon on 23rd May, 2005 it arrived. I was still at school then. My mum got all the things and she didn't unpack them! Very good, because I wanted to unpack my very first thing from Apple myself. I was so excited that I didn't find the time to take photos of the unpacking. I set up the Mac to run very quickly. All things were satisfactory. It made me love Apple very much. All things are simple and easy.

The next day I borrowed my friend's iPod to transfer files from my old PC. (I didn't have an iPod then.) It was done pretty quickly. Great.

Exploring the Mac

The first few things I did after I had the Mac working for me was launching some apps. I don't remember which first, but iTunes was definitely one of the first ones, because it was an app that I already knew and loved in Windows. Then there was Safari, a beautiful browser, with RSS reader. I looked at Dashboard, played with the widgets, and downloaded a few new ones. I looked at the Finder too. I felt uncomfortable that there is no address bar like the Windows Explorer. But I have got over that by now. I checked out Mail, iPhoto, iCal, Address Book, TextEdit, the iWork suite, the iLife suite... And System Preferences too. It was all so good.

And then I downloaded MSN Messenger. It was probably the first app I downloaded to my Mac. A shame that it's from Microsoft. But I'm not using it now anyway. And soon there were a ton of new apps downloaded for my Mac. I think I didn't know I had to drag the app from the disc image to the apps folder. But I learned soon enough.

Becoming a real Mac user

Mac people are quite different from Windows people. I've learned to do things "the Mac way". I have got used to the differences between Mac and Windows. I've got used to a one button mouse.

Now I can crash a PC in minutes. Not a useful skill, but a funny one. And I can't use a mouse with more than one button. I would click on the other button accidentally.

I love Mac and would proudly say I'm a Mac geek. I don't think I'll ever go back to "the dark side".