2nd Kernel Panic, and a HDD Panic

I had the second one not long ago. This time it is for no particular reason, so my only guess is it's a software problem. I didn't quite believe it when the panic screen appeared. (I thought it was the screen saver. That one that simulates a KP for joke. I had it but was not using it at that time.) Restarted and did the Apple Hardware Test. No problem found, and it's running smoothly since. So, I still don't know what problem it is.

Next thing is more serious. I seem to be constantly reminded of the fact that I don't have a proper backup of my Mac. I tried to imagine what would happen when the hard disk fails. It would be quite bad indeed. What I want is a hard disk that I can mirror my data to, but I don't have money to buy one.

Anyway, a few days ago my Mac was making some funny noise – symptom that there is a problem with the hard disk. So I was worried. I checked the disk with Disk Utility, and it said there was some kind of problem. Then it repaired it, and I am hoping all is well now. There still exists a need for a proper backup, though.

Kernel Panic …

Yesterday I had my first kernel panic. I didn't think it would happen to me! :( I was panicked. Not really. I read the message (even the worst message on Mac OS X is better-looking than Windows' Blue Screen of Death!), and restarted the Mac, as instructed. Then all is fine again.

But actually I was solving a problem with my printer when this happened. I read the Apple discussion boards and they say OS X screwed up. I guess the recent 10.4.9 update screwed up mine. So disappointing, it's the first OS X update that screwed up anything for me. So I was fixing that, and then the kernel panic, restart and the printer works again. Didn't think I need a kernel panic to fix my printer! :(

Review of iClip 4

I have used it for quite some time now (the trial only, I have no money). Here's a review.

The first thing you see when you use it is that it's pretty. Although it's not a very Mac-like app, it's pretty with those transparency and animation effects. I think it's the best looking clipboard manager you can find. And it doesn't only record the clipboard. It lets you store bits of information in "clip sets". It's convenient to store things there and get it later quickly. But I think it's better to use journal apps like Journler to organise stuff. So I only use iClip to store URLs of articles I want to read later.

It's definitely an app worth checking out. Download it from Inventive.

Update: I thought of a new use of iClip this morning. GTDers can use it as the inbox. Just drag whatever things to iClip to collect them. Then when processing, you can go through the clip set and delete the things one by one. When you delete things, there's a nice effect that you would enjoy.

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.