Monday, January 25, 2010

Internet Symphony No.1 "Eroica"

Tan Dun's conducting made me smile ;)

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Fixes for Slow Startup and Shutdown for Snow Leopard and 'Buttonless' Trackpad Physical Clicking Problem.

Hey there! Here are some of the solutions which you may find helpful to problems which I had previously on my machine.

1. Ever since I had my logic board replaced, startup and shutdown have been predominantly slower.

My search for an answer on forums has proved unsuccessful. However, I finally figured what it was eventually. It turns out that the root account is no longer assigned to the startup volume's root directory, which ultimately causes the kernal prelinking to fail. So very simply, open your terminal.app and type :


sudo chown root:admin /
(type your password and hit the return key)
sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel
sudo kextcache -system-caches

Shutdown is back to the usual 3 seconds for me :)

Oh, if you are afraid to meddle around with the terminal codes, you could try and see if you need the fix in the first place. Open your terminal.app and type :

sudo ls -al /
(type your password and hit the return key)


You'll then get something like this :

total 37197
drwxrwxr-x 42 root admin 1496 Jan 24 16:35 .

The above line with the dot should state that it is an admin, otherwise you will need to type in the commands above :)

1.1 Another possible cause for slow startup and shutdown would be having a copy of parallels desktop 5 installed on your machine. I have no idea why, but it has been reported by users to cause massive delays. The obvious possible fix would be uninstalling and waiting for an update by Parallels(that is if it bothers you enough, heh heh). Oh and make sure you use the uninstall package that was included on your Parallels DVD.

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2. Some of you using the new 'buttonless' multitouch trackpad(applies only to unibodies with removable batteries) may notice that physical clicking tends to fail sometimes, or it requires you to press down much harder than normal. No worries. All you need to do is to remove your battery and you will see the underside of your trackpad. Close to the bottom, you will notice a funny looking screw. Use a flat-head screwdriver to tighten it very carefully, only 90˚ at a time.

Photo courtesy of http://teravoxel.files.wordpress.com/

Happy fixing! ;)

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Monday, August 31, 2009

Jascha Heifetz Plays 'When You Make Love to Me (Don't Make Believe)'


Apparently, Jascha Heifetz has a thing for Jazz and plays and writes for the piano too. He wrote this particularly popular song 'When You Make Love To Me (Don't Make Believe)' under the name Jim Hoyle during the Second World War. Enjoy!

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

2009 Perseids Meteor Shower Update

Hey guys, I just want to inform you that this year's Perseids meteor shower is expected to reach its peak at 1730 GMT on August 12(0130 on August 13 Malaysia local time). Unfortunately this year's visible meteor count may be lower(probably by 50%) due to moon's approach to the last quarter, which is almost certainly going to obscure the fainter meteors. You will nevertheless still be able to see the brighter ones =)

I will definitely be staying up to catch the 2009 shower, will you?











PS: It will be raining across the northern sky, so look north! ;)
Thanks for reading! =)

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

My View on Perfectionism

hallo/hola!/helló!/¡hola!/hallå! readers!
Time is rather something that I have obnoxiously in excess currently due to the rather slow teaching speeds in college(standard intake for my second semester; I took the accelerated course for my first). Anyway, I had stumbled upon an interesting article on the Internet this evening on perfectionism and I had identified to it instantly.

What actually is perfectionism? Perfectionism is actually a belief that anything less than perfect is unacceptable, unsatisfactory. Perfectionism basically branches out into two main subsets, 'Normal Perfectionists' that basically obtain a great deal of pleasure from the labours of a painstaking effort and 'Neurotic Perfectionists' that are those who are unable to satisfy themselves no matter what they do.

I won't go into the details as they will almost certainly bore the living daylights out of you. I think that I am probably leaning slightly towards the neurotic side; which is rather scary and isn't something that I'm proud of. Due to the fact that I will always need to constantly double check so that everything that I do is close to perfection if not at all perfect; it is an extremely tiring, tedious and demanding routine. Everything that I do needs to be closely read, rechecked and rechecked again to ensure that everything is in order, to make sure there isn't a word out of place or a spelling error(which explains why I'm incredibly sensitive to criticisms). This in turn, causes me to be low on productivity as I lose time and energy on the tiny irrelevant details. I find crease on my sock extremely irritating and I abhor the sound of the ticking clock. I'm incredibly fearful of making mistakes which is why, I hardly ever write, or record my piano playing, etc. Perfectionism is indeed an incredibly unhealthy belief in my opinion, but it is not without its positive aspects. For instance, it'll definitely drive a person to achieve unimaginable goals.

Thanks for reading! =)