My Writings. My Thoughts.
What Is The Keyboard Shortcut To Open Folders And Run Programs In Mac
// July 4th, 2009 // Comments // Mac
As a Windows User whom recently ‘converted’ to Mac, I am used to do a certain things the Windows way. One thing that is for me a very fundamental functionality in Windows is if you press the Enter key in Windows Explorer, it will either open a highlighted folder/file, or run a highlighted program.
But, of course, as you’ve probably known, in a Mac if you try to do the same as the above and expect the same result, then you would be ‘very disappointed. Because if you press the enter key on a folder or a file, instead of opening it, or running it, it will enter the ‘rename’ mode. It’s the same as the F2 key in Windows.
This was very annoying for me for a couple months, as everytime I wanted to open a folder I ended up renaming the folder name!
After a while I got used to not to use the enter key and use the mouse instead. But recently my curiosity got to me and I missed the speed of the keyboard shortcut. So, a few questions/answers later, I found out the equivalent of the Enter key in a Mac,
It’s the Command + o (that’s the letter o). I have to admit, it’s not as elegant as the Enter key, but it works find.
Enjoy!
How To Show Folder Size In Finder
// July 4th, 2009 // Comments // Mac
Normally if you look at your Finder, the column ’size’ for folders will show ‘-’. Occasionally, for example when you want to see which folders take up the most space so you can free them up, you would want to see the size of those folders.
So, here is how to do that:
1. On the Finder menu, click on View -> Show View Options (or Command-J).
2. The ‘View Options‘ will be shown as below.
3. Now the only thing you need to do is tick the checkbox next to ‘Calculate all sizes’, and your Mac will start calculating and showing folders sizes.
Enjoy!
Nokia N97 Is Finally Here .. In My Hand!
// June 28th, 2009 // Comments // Mobile
It has been more than 6 months since Nokia launched its lates N-Series mobile phone N97 at Nokia World 2008. Finally the wait is over, at least for us here in the UK. The N97 was launched last Friday for almost all the major mobile Networks, except O2 ! And that for me was a ‘bummer‘, because I have been O2 customer for as long as I had my first mobile phone, and today I had to, very reluctantly, moved to Orange. Luckily, the handset is Unlocked, so I can put any SIM card in it if I wish, and I’ve got also monthly allowance of 500 Mb Internet as well as the usual 1000 free minutes and unlimited text. In addition, I could get free Home Broadband as long as I stay with Orange if I want to, although I am happy with my current Broadband Provider, but nevertheless it’s good to have choices.
So, today I took a little video of what I’ve got. Later when I get a chance to play with it more, I might write more.
What Gender Is Computer?
// June 28th, 2009 // Comments // Jokes
I don’t usually post a joke, but this one really made me ROFL, not just because it’s really funny, but most of all because it’s very TRUE :) But then again, the best jokes usually the ones that mimic our real life, wouldn’t you agree?
To give credit when credit is due though, I’ve heard this joke in Boagworld Podcast (Episode 168). Boagworld is probably the first podcast with topics such as Web Design/Development/Owning etc, that is hosted by Paul Boag and Marcus Lillington.
Here is the joke …
A Spanish teacher explained to her students that Nouns in Spanish have Gender, it could be either Masculine or Feminine. One of the student then asked “What is the gender of Computer then?“. Instead of answering the question, the teacher divided the class into two groups, boys and girls, and asked them to decide themselves whether computer supposed to be Masculine or Feminine, and to give 4 reasons why.
The boys decided that Computers must be Feminine because:
- No one but their creator understand their internal logic.
- The native language they communicate with each other is incomprehensible.
- Even the smallest mistake is stored in the long-term memory for possible future retrieval.
- As soon as commit yourself to one, you find that you spend half of your paycheck on accessories for it.
The girls however decided that Computers must be Masculine because
- In order to do anything with them you have to turn them on.
- They’ve got a lot of data but still can’t think for themselves.
- They supposed to help you solve problems but after time they are the problem.
- As soon as you commit yourself to one, you realize that if you’ve waited a little longer you could’ve gotten a better model.
How to Bulk Unshare Your Delicious Bookmark Links
// April 22nd, 2009 // Comments // Social Networking
I am a heavy Delicious user, and recently I wanted to make some of my personal tags (with many links under them) to be private, so that whenever I save a link and tag it with a specific keyword tag, that link would automatically be private (un-shared).
It turned out (after a few searches) that I couldn’t do that, there is no such a thing as private tag (doh!).
But, what I could do was, instead of making the tag private, I could un-shared all the links under that tag. Of course, I knew already that I could make a bookmark private, but it’s a kind of tedious if I have to check the ‘Do Not Share’ checkbox everytime I want to do it, and expecially if I do this exercise a lot.
Then I saw a link on my Delicious page that says ‘Bulk Edit’ … Aha! This could be the one I was looking for. Clicking on the link gave me a new toolbar on top of the bookmark list with additional link-buttons that say:
- Share
- Do Not Share
- Delete
- Add Tag
- Remove Tag
Moreover, in front of every bookmark, a checkbox was added (presumably to enable selection), and looking up I also saw the last pieces of the puzzle, a master checkbox that says ‘Select All’ … perfect! Ok, so it’s not exactly what I wanted at the first place, but at least I don’t have to edit those bookmarks and un-share them one by one!
Ticking the Select All checkbox, as expected, selected all bookmarks on ‘the current page’. Yes, unfortunately you can only do the operation a page at a time. Then clicking on the ‘Do Not Share’ link on the toolbar made all selected bookmarks private (after a confirmation). Repeat and rinse for all pages.
Vundo Trojan – How to Remove
// April 20th, 2009 // Comments // Windows
Earlier this morning, I experienced something that I haven’t experienced for a very long time … I got infected by a nasty Trojan …. I couldn’t believe it !
The culprit was a Trojan is called Vundo, or at least that’s what McAffee told me when it caught and tried to remove it. McAffee failed, obviously, because as soon as I restart the computer, it found yet another one at the same place!
I believe the symptoms when one get infected are different from machine to machine, but on mine, I simply couldn’t connect to the Internet via any browsers, though my Tweetdeck (Twitter client) was still connected and I could still Tweet (at least).
Luckily I had other machine that is connected to the net, so I could look up for ways to remove the bloody thing.
A few Google searches later, I came across some Forum posts with topic indicating that many people had the same problem. After reading some of the solutions, at the end, in short what I needed to do is to download a small program called ComboFix and run it, make sure that no other Virus Scanner is running in the background, or any other programs in that matter.
On the first pass, ComboFix deleted some files that seem to be the ones that causing the problem. After a restart, I ran ComboFix again just to make sure. This time it didn’t report any more deletions. Restart again, and the moment of truth. I opened my Firefox, and Voila ! It worked ! Thank God.
What I really want to know now is, how the hell I got the Trojan from?
Hope this could help others that are having the same fate as me.
Good luck!
Replicating QuickSilver Functionality in Windows Using Launchy
// April 14th, 2009 // Comments // Mac, Windows
If you’ve just started using Mac, you would be mad if you don’t use Quicksilver, especially if you are a keyboard geek and if you think using a mouse is only for whimps!
Quicksilver, first and foremost, is a ‘keystroke app launcher‘. Here is a basic explanation of what it does (from the documentation):
When opened, it will create a catalog of applications and some frequently used folders and documents. Activate it, and you can search for and open anything in its catalog instantly. The search is adaptive, so Quicksilver will recognize which items you are searching for based on previous experience. It also supports abbreviations, so you can type entire words, or just fragments of each. When not in use, Quicksilver vanishes, waiting for the next time you summon it.
Typically you would bind the Mac+Space keystroke to open QS small interface. When it opens, you can start typing the first few alphabets from the name of the application that you want to launch. QS will try to ‘guess’ the right application, based upon past experience. It will also give you a list of all possible applications in a drop-down list, which you could then choose.
Everything is wonderful. Using QS, I hardly use the Dock, which I set to hidden.
Now, if you are, like me, coming from Windows platform, and still using it for one of other reason (your day job for example), I bet you miss QS functionality so much (I did).
Come Lauchy to the rescue !
Lauchy is an open source application that runs on window and linux. It works much the same way as QS, and surprisingly (for Windows app) works very well.
It is now one of the Windows Utilities in my permanent list of must-have Windows apps.
3 Bloody Reasons Why I Won’t Follow You Back On Twitter
// March 12th, 2009 // Comments // General
I have this ‘crazy’ habit with Twitter, every time I get an email notification about someone following me, I open it and manually checking the profile page of that person. You see, I don’t do Auto-Follow and certainly not Auto-DM, but I do like to know who’s this person following me. After all, we are going to start a Twit-Relationship, so it’s always good to know who is listening and with whom I am having conversation.
Most of the time I will immediately follow back, reciprocity is always good in social networking (note the word ‘social‘ AND ‘networking‘). What is the point of being social if it only flows in one direction! Networking needs two-way communication to work. Of course there is always some exception (News Broadcast comes to mind).
But lately I got really fed up with people who randomly followed me, of whom I absolutely refuse to follow back.
So, if you are one of the followings, don’t be surprised if I don’t follow you back.
1. You still have the default profile bloody picture!
When you meet someone for the first time, what do you see? Her face? Her body? The things she wears? You see, regardless of what people might say, first impression always counts!
What kind of impression do you think people would have about you, if your avatar looks like this:
According to the dictionary, one of the meanings of the word Avatar is “An embodiment or personification, as of a principle, attitude, or view of life“. It’s your Alter Ego, your online personality, it’s a window through which other people can take a glance of who you are, it’s a representation of YOU. This is even more important in Social Networking environment where avatar picture is the first thing that people will notice, not the user-name, not the date of birth or the location. It’s how the person looks like! There is a reason why the Twit Spammers use photo of cute girl who wears next to nothing as their avatar picture :)
So, I don’t care if you put your own (real) photo, or your cat’s, or even just plain white color! Just change the bloody picture!
Until then, rest assure that I won’t follow back.
2. You write absolutely nothing in your online bio!
After you meet the new person, and shake hands, what comes after? You would usually introduce each other, yes? Your name, where you live, what you are studying, where you work, what your hobby, etc. etc.
Imagine, if that person just be quiet and don’t say anything about herself, would you still want to be her friend? What’s the point?
The Profile Bio is the place where you can let people know a little bit more about you, to make them to get to know you better. As an added bonus, the things that you write in there are searchable! Which means that people can find you just by typing specific things in the search box. It’s a match-making mechanism, to bring together people that are like-minded, having the same hobby or interested on the same things. Remember ‘Social Networking‘?
So, I don’t care if you just put one or two words in the bio! Just write bloody something!
3. Your public timeline is either empty, full of marketing ads (of your own stuff), or even worst ‘protected’!
When you finished introducing yourself to that new person, what do you do next? Having Conversation of course! What good is it to know each other’s name and background, if after that you only sit there and stare at each other?!
Which part of Social Networking that you don’t understand! The key is in the word ‘Social‘ and (two-way) Conversation is at the heart of it. Why would I follow you if you haven’t even say a bloody word? What is it to follow? None!
I don’t mind if you once and a while Tweet about your product that you want to promote, or blog post that you just wrote, after all I do the same thing. But, man, not ALL the time! You take some, you give some. Again it’s reciprocal (or karma if you like).
The worst one though, is the follower that has her timeline protected!
If you are so private and so afraid that people will read what you say, then I don’t think this Twitter thing will work for you (maybe Facebook would suit you better). I open mine, and you close yours? Tell me why I should follow you? Actually, I would probably block you straight-away.
So, go and have more conversations before you try to follow 1000 people, and for goodness sake, open your timeline!
Let’s make Twitter a better place to Tweet.
Annoying Rails Error When Running Webrick Server: “Only one usage of each socket address”
// February 11th, 2009 // Comments // Development, Ruby on Rails
So, I was trying to run Webrick server for my Rails project on my work PC, and I got this error:
=> Booting Mongrel (use ’script/server webrick’ to force WEBrick)
=> Rails 2.1.1 application starting on http://0.0.0.0:3000
=> Call with -d to detach
=> Ctrl-C to shutdown server
** Starting Mongrel listening at 0.0.0.0:3000
Exiting
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.2-x86-mswin32/lib/mongrel/tcphack.rb:
12:in `initialize_without_backlog’: Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted. – bind(2) (Errno::EADDRINUSE)
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.2-x86-mswin32/lib/mongrel/tcphack.rb:12:in initialize’
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.2-x86-mswin32/lib/mongrel.rb:93:in `new’ from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.2-x86-mswin32/lib/mongrel.rb:93:in `initialize’
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.2-x86-mswin32/lib/mongrel/configurator.rb:139:in new’
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.2-x86-mswin32/lib/mongrel/configurator.rb:139:in `listener’
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.2-x86-mswin32/bin/mongrel_rails:99:in `cloaker_’
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.2-x86-mswin32/lib/mongrel/configurator.rb:50:in `call’
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.2-x86-mswin32/lib/mongrel/configurator.rb:50:in `initialize’
… 14 levels…
from C:/Dev/Rails/ringleys/vendor/rails/railties/lib/commands/server.rb:
39
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require’
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require’
from script/server:3
I’ve never seen this error before, and looking at the error message and the stack trace, it just didn’t make any sense. Moreover, if I run this same project on my Mac, it works fine. No what ? Off to Goggle then …
Which sent me the this article on the RoR Wiki.
Reading from that article, and I quote:
Today I realized the culprit is Microsoft Firewall Client (an ISA firewall client which is installed on Windows machines on certain corporate networks). Try disabling the firewall client, via right-clicking the taskbar icon, then restarting Webrick. Disabling the firewall client seems to release the port, allowing Webrick to start normally.
had made me realise about something that had been the bane of me with this work PC, it’s the frecking Juniper’s Netscreen Remote ! It’s this piece of VPN Tunneling software that allows me to connect to our company network when I’m working from home. Well, I didn’t think that I could disable this, cause I needed it. So I did the second best solution.
I ran the Webrick server on other port other than 3000 !
Something in the line of :
ruby script/server -p 3001
et voila! It worked.
Hope this helps !
Could Wikipedia be the seed of ‘Skynet’ ?
// February 5th, 2009 // Comments // Book, Featured, Movie, Social Media
Last week I’ve finally managed to start reading Chris Anderson’s much acclaimed book The Long Tail. At some point I arrived on the page where Chris was talking about ‘The Wikipedia Phenomenon’. It tells the story about Jimmy Wales‘ controversial ambition to build ‘A repository of knowledge to rival the ancient library of Alexandria‘. This idea was deemed preposterous in 2001 when it started, but today Wikipedia is the largest Encyclopedia on Earth !
As comparison, Brittanica has about 80,000 articles and Encarta has 36,000, while Wikipedia has more than 1 million articles in English alone (3.5 million if include 75 other languages) ! Sure, Britannica and Encarta could be considered as more authoritative than Wikipedia, as one study reported that for example in 42 entries on science topics there were on average 4 errors per entry in Wikipedia and 3 in Britannica, but the great thing is those errors would be rectified almost immediately in Wikipedia, while you have to wait for the next edition of Britannica to be printed. Personally, I just like the ease of use the speed of searching of Wikipedia, in contrast to opening those big Encyclopedia book (though Britannica has an online version now).
And then the book came to this paragraph, and I quote:
“What makes Wikipedia really extraordinaryis that it improves over time, organically healing itself as if its huge and growing army of tenders were an immune system, ever vigilant and quick to respond to anything that threatens the organism. And like a biological system, it evolves, selecting for traits that help it stay one step ahead of the predators and pathogens in its ecosystem.”
” … And like a biological sytem, it evolves, ….”
What does that remind you of ? SKYNET !!
If there is one place where the ‘machine’ can learn and becoming self-aware it’s here, the well of knowledge of the entire Human Race, inside Wikipedia. This is the place, one can learn about the history, strengths and weaknesses of humankind, and while still on this topic, I just want to say, if I were an alien race gearing up to conquer earth, I just need to check Wikipedia (after Google maybe), to plan my conquest :)
So, anybody seen the latest trailer of Terminator Salvation ? What do you think about Bale playing Connor ?
Recent Posts
- What Is The Keyboard Shortcut To Open Folders And Run Programs In Mac
- How To Show Folder Size In Finder
- Nokia N97 Is Finally Here .. In My Hand!
- What Gender Is Computer?
- How to Bulk Unshare Your Delicious Bookmark Links
- Vundo Trojan – How to Remove
- Replicating QuickSilver Functionality in Windows Using Launchy
- 3 Bloody Reasons Why I Won’t Follow You Back On Twitter
- Annoying Rails Error When Running Webrick Server: “Only one usage of each socket address”
- Could Wikipedia be the seed of ‘Skynet’ ?
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