Hi
While I am truly surprised to find neone visiting this page, it seems like an awfully fun thing to do(maintaining not reading, contents always gonna be either 2 mac centric or 2 unix centric or 2 physics centric or 2 robotics centric or 2 programming centric, but then that is me). Well neways this kindda reviews the last 4 or so days, and is probably boring for most of my friends, skip whatever u want.
Well I got deferred at Columbia Univ and well even though I really wanted to get in, most guys say its better than being rejected, well lets hope.
I finally installed Panther, Mac OS 10.3 (well actually 10.3.1) for those of u who don’t use Macs and well it is a pretty big leap from Jaguar (10.2-10.2.8 or so), specially with all the improvments in the shell, preview, mail; but I mostly installed it because of its Fast User Switiching capabilities. However I did a few quirks in the whole damn thing:
1) Most people out there say that iTunes stops playing music when you switch users, well I am using 4.0.1 (not 4.1 as most of the rest of the Mac world is) and well iTunes keeps playing in the background when I switch users (thank GOD!!!). I know for a fact that at least one of my friends is gonna downgrade to 4.0.1 (we can’t use iTMS in India so downgrading makes sense), just to get this really cool functionality.
2) I tried using FileVault and well after the initial encryption time (3 hrs+ in my case, maybe because PowerBooks have slower hard drives than PowerMacs, though strangely enough the iMacs, despite being desktop systems don’t really have fast hard drives, cost cutting at work or something????), I was pretty happy with performance, but that was until last night when I emptied the Trash. Somehow everytime you physically delete a file (move to Trash and empty) FileVault sets some flag, which ensures that when you logout, it goes through a space optimization process and that ends up taking about 20-25 minutes of valuable time (hell, sleep in my case), and that really peeves me off. So I switched it off today. Well FileVault’s a great security feature, but unless Apple comes up with a faster (probably slightly less secure) encryption and decryption algo, and an on the fly space managment system, I won’t be turning it back on.
3) AppleScript studio has improved tremendously, it has finally reached a state when I am not afraid of compiling scripts, and can be sure that compiled scripts will perform flawlessly, everytime I call them into action.
4) The nice little scripts which come with Mail are cute. I specially enjoyed the “Crazy Message Text” script, does nothing useful, but is cute. Cute matters!!!
Sent out application to Queen’s University, and YorkU both in Canada (for the uninitiated), and these most probably end college hunting season for me. Desprately hope I get thru (pls pls pls gemme thru).
Neways while I was at skool today, getting all my transcripts and stuff ready, I saw the new age method of catching and butchering scapegoats. My old skool (passed out earlier this yr) has this nice tradition of marching towards Priya, one of the better movie theaters in Delhi, and well over the years, this tradition has evolved into a rowdy demonstration of our more destructive sides. Well this year the skool decided to film the entire proceeding so that they could get hold of the ‘perpetrators’ of this years march. IMHO this is all gettina little 2 much, and well if neone from DPSRKP (with the power to stop this) is going thru this page, pls stop this thing, its a little extreme.
Neways until later
Ze Panda signing off