Six snow photos taken with my cell phone
A really big snow in the city. Commuting was a mess. Hopefully tomorrow will be better, a better tomorrow, that’s a movie’s title, isn’t it?
]]>Accesskeys: Unlocking Hidden Navigation
Fortunately, both Twitter and Facebook use access keys for easy navigation and accessibility:
Twitter accesskeys:
0: Skip Past Navigation
1: Home
2: Skip to Navigation
3: Jump to the sidebar
h: Home
p: Profile
=: Find People
s: Settings Link
?: Help
l (Letter L): Sign out
u: Text area
>: Direct Message
n: New Result Notification
m: Reply
d: Inbox
i: Inbox
o: Send
f: Favorites
r: Retweets
/: Search
Facebook accesskeys:
1: Home
2: Friend Request
3: Messages
4: Notifications
5: Home
6: Profile
7: Account
]]>
Six snow photos taken with my cell phone
A really big snow in the city. Commuting was a mess. Hopefully tomorrow will be better, a better tomorrow, that’s a movie’s title, isn’t it?
]]>The player has YouTube player, Amazon Video player, Google Picasa, but NO Netflix! That’s the biggest issue. I hope sometime later, they will add the functionality through a software update, but it all depends on the business deals between Panasonic and Netflix. In the time being, I just use my computer to watch Netflix, with HDMI and wireless keyboard and trackpad.
Previously, I never paid much attentions to the YouTube account details: Subscriptions, Channels, Playlists, and Favorites. All I need is to use YouTube to find videos and watch right there.
Now after I played with the Panasonic DMP-BD605’s YouTube player, I realized that the best way to enjoy this feature is to populate my favorites and playlists on my computer, then watch the video content on my Blu-ray player. When I log on to my YouTube account with the Blu-ray player, I can directly jump into my playlists, favorites, and subscriptions; it beats searching YouTube video content with the remote control numeric keypad pants off.
]]>
Usually, when you type something in the search box of the System Preferences window, the spotlight will highlight the relevant items, so one can easily open the preference with arrow keys and enter key.
However, in my case, I typed something, the whole window darkened, but nothing was highlighted. Very strange. I created a new user, logged on, no such problem, must be my account settings. Logically, I went to the ~/Library folder to have a look.
The first thing I noticed was the whole ~/Library folder is rather big, more than 500 MB. The Caches occupied the lion’s share, more than 400 MB. Searched the internet, many suggested that it can be safely removed. I made a copy, trashed the ~/Library/Caches folder.
Tested, the System Preferences search box is back to normal.
]]>However, with the advent of the very next version, Chrome 2, the accesskey support was unceremoniously broken. It is a big deal for me to use the accesskey attributes, since my customized GTD PHP and other online applications use a ton of them. I cannot image myself using the web apps without keyboard shortcuts. Life is too short for mousing around, also, screens are too big nowadays.
I promptly switched to Firefox. It supported accesskey attributes exquisitely, with the about:config options, one can easily change the default accesskey from Alt-Shift to a more convenient single Alt key.
Last month, the much anticipated Firefox 3.6 came out. It is faster, better looking, and more Chrome look-like. The new tab opens next to the originating tab, similar to Chrome. Persona is just another moniker for Chrome Theme. The accesskey functionality is intact. I like this new version.
In the mean time, Chrome underwent two more incarnations, version 3 and 4. Both restored the accesskey support, but with some variations. With Chrome 3, one can use the accesskey D, E, F, but with Chrome 4, those keys are used by the browser itself.
Normally, I expect the accesskey overrides the default browser keyboard shortcuts, for example, if Alt-A is used by both web page and browser, the browser should honor the web page first. But a lot of browser treats them differently and inconsistently. For example, Alt-D always put focus on the address bar in Internet Explorer, and Chrome, but Firefox honors the web page accesskey first.
In Internet Explorer, Alt-A goes to the favorite menu, but when web page uses accesskey A, it honors the web page first. But Alt-D is a different story. Maybe Alt-D is too important to mess around, since it puts keyboard focus right to the address bar? By the way, in Chrome and Firefox, Ctrl-L does the same in addition to Alt-D.
Anyway, Chrome 4 chose to ignore the Alt-D, E, F in the web pages. Instead, Alt-D goes to the address bar, Alt-E opens the page icon, and Alt-F to opens the tool icon. If the web page happens to contain D, E, F accesskey links, one must use Shift-Alt-D, Shift-Alt-E, and Shift-Alt-F to access them.
For now, Firefox 3.6 is my main browser on Mac OS X and Windows. Consistency is always good.
]]>Cocoa Application:
$ file /Applications/Fetch.app/Contents/MacOS/Fetch
/Applications/Fetch.app/Contents/MacOS/Fetch: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
/Applications/Fetch.app/Contents/MacOS/Fetch (for architecture ppc): Mach-O executable ppc
/Applications/Fetch.app/Contents/MacOS/Fetch (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386
Carbon Application:
$ file /Applications/Adobe\ Photoshop\ 7/Adobe\ Photoshop\ 7.0/Contents/MacOS/Adobe\ Photoshop\ 7.0
/Applications/Adobe Photoshop 7/Adobe Photoshop 7.0/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Photoshop 7.0: header for PowerPC PEF executable
Out of curiosity, I took a DVD, trying to insert into the slot. Oops, it seemed there was something already inside, and got stuck. Maybe another disc got stuck? But I was sure that I would never leave a disc inside the drive before shutting down the computer.
First, I tried to open the machine up to have a peek. But before doing anything drastic, I’d better check out what people say online. A Google search led me to Apple’s official support site:
Apple Computers: Troubleshooting the slot load optical disc drive
At first sight, it was not helpful. It asked me to reset my PMU, if not working, then contact Apple support. Not now.
Checked another discussion forum article, a user reported that he succeeded by power off the machine, and restart, during the restarting, he managed to load the disc successfully.
I tried, but it didn’t work. Then, I reset the PMU according to Apple’s instruction, then restarted the machine. At first, it did not work. However, I heard some noise, as if the drive trying to eject a disc. So, I repeated the PMU resetting and restarting routine, as soon as I heard the drive noise, I pushed a disc into the drive. It worked!
So I suppose that the drive mechanism got stuck for some reason. After resetting the PMU and start, the drive tried to un-stick itself, but cannot without some external push.
Anyway, I am glad my superdrive is back.
]]>For example, the following article on the T9 text input method:
For some reason, the white text on blue background makes the reading very uncomfortable and tedious for me. Fortunately, the good people at Arc90 lab made a very good tool to deal with this problem:
As indicated on the page, the easiest way to use this wonderful tool is to drag the button to the bookmark toolbar. Of course, you can also put it in your bookmark menu, invoking its function by pulling down the menu. Why one want to do this? Screen space. On my smallish 12-inch PowerBook, I hide all the toolbars, but I activate the full keyboard access within Tiger OS. So I can easily use the keyboard to invoke the readability bookmarklet function.
]]>Two keyboard commands can relieve the pain:
Cmd-Option-T will remove both the toolbar and sidebar, make a Finder window much smaller. However, when you open a folder inside the Finder window, a new Finder window is opened, instead of opening inside the same Finder window as with the toolbar is present. To avoid the resultant screen clutter, press the option key when opening the new window (Cmd-Option-O). The current parent window will automatically close. To return to the parent window, press Cmd-Up arrow. To return to the parent window and close the current one, Cmd-Option-Up arrow.
Cmd-Option-Ctrl-T to collapse the sidebar only, the toolbar is intact. Opening an inside folder with not open a new Finder window.
]]>Constantly switched between these two OSes, some observations noted here, just in case I need to revisit them.
With Windows Explorer in Windows XP, the multiple files are selected, use Alt-Enter (Property command) to show the properties, the result property window will show in a single dialog the summary information of all the selected files. With OS X Finder, Cmd-I (Get Info command) will open one info dialog for each file. If you happen to have 100 files selected, Cmd-I will get you mad pretty quick. To show the summary info in a single dialog as in the case of XP, one need to use the Cmd-Ctrl-I (Get Summary Info command).
Actually, it is better to summarize the following three commands in Tiger Finder:
Cmd-I (Get Info command) to show a static info window for the selected file(s). It will display the same information even when a different file is selected in Finder. When multiple files are selected, this command will display one info window for each selected file.
Cmd-Option-I (Show Inspector command) similar to Get Info command, but the info window is a floating window, which dynamically displays the currently selected file info. Choose a different file, the inspector display changes with the selection.
Cmd-Ctrl-I (Get Summary Info command) will display only one dialog, even when multiple files are selected. It will sum up the size of all the selected files.
With XP, Alt-Enter (Property command) is like Cmd-I and Cmd-Ctrl-I combined.
When showing the Get Info (or Show Inspector) window is open, there is a Spotlight Comments text box. One can tag the selected file, which is very useful for audio and video files, since they usually don’t have text content for the Spotlight to search. Spotlight Comments provide a convenient way to tag the audio and video files.
Although it is not well know, there is a similar text field for XP files:
Select a file, Alt-Enter to open the properties window, click the Summary tab, you will be able to enter the comments for the selected file. You can also display the comments in Windows Explorer Window by select the “comments” when right-click on the column header inside Windows Explorer window.
However, unlike Spotlight in OS X, it is not guaranteed that this filed will be searched in XP. The following link, summarized the difference between OS X and XP very well:
Indexing File Contents & Metadata - XvsXP.com, Mac OS X vs. Windows XP
]]>One problem I experienced with this software is the lack of a convenient way to navigate the photos by using keyboard shortcuts. One must use the navigation buttons to move to the next or previous photo:
Aiming the tiny buttons is not easy, especially when you are using a big screen computer, or on a laptop without an external mouse.
Last week, I looked into the template file for the photo page of Gallery2, made some modifications, so now one can use keyboard to go to the previous and next photo. For example, open the following picture:
If you use Macintosh:
Firefox browser, Ctrl+> (period key) to go to next photo, Ctrl+< (comma key) to previous photo,
Safari browser, Ctrl+Option+> to next photo, Ctrl+Option+< to previous photo;
Windows computer:
Firefox browser, Alt+Shift+> to next photo, Alt+Shift+< to previous by default, (one can change that to Alt+> and Alt+< by changing the value of ui.key.contentAccess to 4, inside the about:config configuration page)
Internet Explorer, Alt+> or Alt+< followed by the Enter key
Google Chrome, Alt+> or Alt+<, without hitting the Enter key
]]>New Orleans Trip Album 1
]]>Halloween 2009 Pictures
]]>Tristan’s Birthday Photos
Tristan’s birthday! The beach, the aquarium, and the zoo!
]]>Social networks, here I come!
What else?
]]>Tristan’s First Bike Ride
Kidz Village
]]>Tristan’s New Bike:
Part 2:
]]>Many years ago, I used Yahoo Briefcase online storage, 30 MB storage for free users. For a couple of PDF and MS Word files, that’s enough. However, Yahoo Briefcase went belly-up a couple of months ago.
Wikipedia entry on Yahoo Briefcase
After that, I am searching for a replacement. At first, I think Microsoft’s Live Mesh is good:
it has 5 GB storage space, and can help you to synchronize files among computers.
Later, I found Microsoft’s another service, SkyDrive, is even better:
It has 25 GB space, but it cannot sync with multiple computers. Along with WinRAR, it solved my online storage problem. SkyDrive has a 50 MB file limits, with WinRAR, one can easily chop large archive files into 50 MB chunks to upload to SkyDrive.
Today, I read an article suggest that Google should provide a similar service:
NYT Article: Online Backups Could Use Google’s Expertise
I had the same though when I was searching for a replacement for Yahoo Briefcase. It’s good to find others have similar thoughts.
By the way, if you want to send someone a big file, check out this service:
a similar site is Drop.io. But it has a limit of 100 MB per file, compare to File Dropper’s 5 GB.
]]>
The man who loved China
Some reading notes:
Joseph Needham was very smart, very talented. A top-notch scientists at his early 30s, elected to Royal Society when 31, wrote a couple of very good embryology books.
An avid nudist, womanizer, left-wing activist (most Cambridge intellectuals were left wing at the time). A wild, if not good dancer.
Met a female Chinese scientist, Lu Gwei-djen (鲁桂珍), fell in love. His wife was OK with it, formed a menage-a-trois. Loved China because of her, learned Chinese (good at it) within 3 years when he was about 38 years old.
Became a diplomat to China in 1943, helped scientists in free China. Traveled extensively in China, especially to Dunhuang, got to know Rewi Alley (of the gung-ho fame). Bought and collected a lot of Chinese books. Interested in the Science and Civilization of China. Want to write a book on it.
Not a trained historian and sinologist, he managed to wrote wonderful and authoritative volumes of Science & Civilization of China, became very famous. His lecture in US about Chinese gun powder triggered Ted Kaczynski, the unabomber.
Elected to be master of Gonville and Gaius college, became a Cambridge don.
A chain smoker, he lived into his 90s, died peacefully, had a wonderful and fulfilled life.
A lot of wonderful history and anecdotes of China and Cambridge, but with some minor errors. For example, there was no People’s Liberation Army in Chongqing at 1943, as the first chapter described. Nevertheless, it is a wonderful read. The author is a great story teller. Had a interesting observation of modern-day Chongqing in the epilogue.
Enjoyed it greatly.
ghost32 -split=2000 -auto
This will split the image files into 2 GB chunks.
]]>