Winamp + iPod
I am never going back to iTunes again, for all the right reasons.
With ml_ipod, I no longer require iTunes to update my iPod. I can sync with my (currently) favourite mp3 player — Winamp!
I had to wipe the hard drive of the iPod clean and was hesitated to do so because re-transferring everything would take a long time, I thought. But it took a total of about 10 minutes to update 2500 songs! Maybe my experience with iTunes is tainted with unprecedented dislike of corporate abuse to consumers (e.g. the incredible lag of interface and memory hog of iTunes), but transferring songs has never been this fast!
Windows XP on a Mac
As a contestant of the WindowsOnMac contest has submitted — Windows XP on a Mac photos.
While it hasn’t been confirmed that such is a legitimate hack, it seems odd to me that there is a contest for people to install Windows on a Mac, and not Mac on a Windows. I think many would argue that the counter parts of PC hardware compared to Mac hardware are much better (in terms of $/speed). Then why would there be the need to run Windows and Mac on a Macintosh? Why not run Windows and Mac on PC since it is evidently faster?
The OSX86, run Mac OSX on a PC, has been going on for the last year. Not a single straight-forward working hack has been released. And how long has WindowsOnMac been running? 2 months.
The lucky bum who cracked this is getting $12,000, donated by supporters. I would really like to see Mac OSX run on my PC and if there was such a contest, I would definitely contribute to the prize.
Bubble Tea is Overrated
It wasn’t until yesterday that I noticed how incredibly of rip off bubble tea is. For $5 / ~500ml of sugar water and artificial balls that they call pearls, I could get a frappuccino at Starbucks, which is also a rip off.
Think about it — going into a cheap Chinese place, ordering a cup of sugar water looking like you are on drugs, waiting for five minutes while the sugar-addicted drug addict who works there pours sugar and balls into a cup, seals it, and shakes it right in front of you — is that healthy? Not to mention the money you pay, the expense of your health from drinking pure sugar water and eating balls is significant considering you paid $5 for it.
So for the sake of your health, don’t buy bubble tea.
What I Learned from Reinstalling Windows XP
Starting up Windows XP with 500MB of memory already used means reformatting and reinstalling Windows XP. And so I spent the week reinstalling and fine-tuning many programs.
It seems that every time I reinstall XP, I learn something new. This time, I got to know some programs that I knew before but obviously did not know enough about.
WinRAR
I’ve always used WinRAR, despite the fact that it’s a trial. This time though, it caused me hours trying to debug its problems. Under certain conditions, installing WinRAR on Windows XP will create a shell bug in explorer.exe, causing it to crash upon system shutdown or user logoff. It wasn’t until I created system restore point after every installation of a program that I realized that WinRAR is a piece of crap.
7-Zip
Unlike WinRAR, 7-Zip is open source, free, and bug free. The latter two of those three features made me jump up and down. It works just like WinRAR and caused me no trouble switching over. This will stay on my list for the next reinstall of XP.
Winamp
I switched to iTunes about a year ago because it seemed to be the trend (and because of my iPod). But I decided to give Winamp a try — smartest decision of the day. Winamp has a 4MB installation, as opposed to the 70MB installation of iTunes. Winamp uses about 10MB of memory, while iTunes uses up to 100MB. Winamp is fast, iTunes interface is really laggy. Best of all, Winamp supports the iPod too, with the iPod support plugin.
Notepad++
Maybe I’ve been under the rock for the last two years, but I’ve been using Notepad++ 3.0 and never updated. The newest version is 3.5 and damn it shines on my monitor! The UI has improved so much that I doubt I’ll install Dreamweaver. The icons have changed from the ugly oldschool 8-bit bitmaps to shiny gradient PNG icons. Maybe it was because my previous Windows was getting really bloated, but this new version seems to launch really quickly — as fast as Windows Notepad itself.
I spent a couple of minutes checking through the options in each program too. Now with a working computer, the start-up memory usage is less than 110MB!
Adblock for Opera
Many people live on Adblock. Even though many may think that Firefox is the only browser with Adblock, Opera can extend pretty far in terms of blocking certain content. (This will only work on Windows)
Update: As of Opera 9, this custom application is no longer necessary. This technique will do just fine.
I’ve Been Set Up
I attended a psychology experiment today to boost up my hopefully-not-so-dreadful psych mark. The experiment involved two participants to give each other instructions regarding where to put certain objects in a wooden grid.
I noticed a couple of things aren’t right starting from the beginning:
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When I entered the room, the experimenter asked “Are you Oliver?” As I was filling out the consent form, the other person entered; but the experimenter did not try to identify him and the other person went ahead and said “Hi I’m Jim.”
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Both times when either I was giving instructions or given instructions from the other person, the experimenter facing me.
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The other person seemed to understand the rules perfectly and did not look at the experimenter’s face.
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For the second part of the experiment, involving clicking things on a computer, I was given a laptop to work with first. While it was starting up, the experimenter said there’s another computer in the other room for the other person. But she said this to me, not the other person.
Still, I did not realize that I was the one being played until in the end the experimenter told me. Turns out “Jim”, if that is his real name, was just another experimenter, part of their research group. It came to me so much as a shock that I almost said “WTF” out loud.
Lesson of the day — people named Jim are not to be taken lightly.