I'm helping a friend upgrade her RAM and reformat her HP laptop. And tinkering with it has given me the itch to tinker with my Macbook.
If I'm daring enough, I would like to:
1. Install a region-free drive
2. Upgrade RAM to 2GB
But is this fool-hardiness or foolishness?
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Is it wrong to hack a Mac?
Monday, January 21, 2008
Eee PC
I'm rather taken by the 0.92kg Asus Eee PC. The Eee PC is what they call an UMPC, or Ultra Mobile PC. It is light (my Macbook is 2.45kg), supposedly shock-proof, has wi-fi, and lets you access your documents and gmail. It runs on Linux.
I love my Mac, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I just want something really portable that I can stick in my bag and go for a cycle. It is also going at a decent price — $598 for the 4GB model; although if I were to get it, I would upgrade it to at least 8GB. Popagandhi got one in Taiwan.
The only thing holding me back? iCal. I will need iCal in my UMPC. As my ex-colleagues said over lunch, "She runs her life from her Macbook!" Which is true.
Can anyone figure out how I can get iCal on the Linux-running Eee PC? I'll buy you lunch. :)
Sunday, January 20, 2008
The Very Hot Aamir Khan, who makes 'em swoon
I watched my very first Hindi movie at Jade 2 the other day — Taare Zameen Par. It's about a boy's struggle with reading and writing and how he struggles to overcome it.
Hindi movies are such fun. So much music and dancing. We were five minutes early and already there was dancing music filling the hall. The movie had so many gorgeous looking people in it. There was the very hot Aamir Khan, who makes 'em swoon, and other beautiful people whose names I don't know. Ishaan, the boy protagonist, had a smile that lights up the screen.
And... the movie had an intermission! So that movie go-ers can run to the loo. Heh.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
No time to blog
8 minutes before I absolutely have to leave the house for the 1.5hr journey to school. In 8 minutes, I have to finish this post, shower, get dressed, and pack my bag. My room is a god-forsaken mess, largely because I've run out of space on my bookshelf and my wardrobe. My storage boxes are filled to overflowing.
3 minutes left. Where did all that time go??
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Free stuff I cannot do without: Combine PDFs
What do you do when you have scanned pages from a book and the pages are in three separate files, in every which rotation because that was the way the book fit on the scanner, and all you want is a single correctly-rotated PDF file?
Use Combine PDFs. (Mac-only)
Combine PDFs lets you merge different PDF files, remove unwanted pages, and rotate individual pages within the file to create a single, well-organised PDF.
What you do is to click on the "Add File" button at the bottom left of the start-up screen. Then you choose the PDF file you want to edit. Do this for as many PDF files you would like to merge.
The individual pages of each file will open in the main section. The two left columns indicate the file name and page number of the original PDFs. If you wish you rotate a single page, select the page and click "Command-R". If you wish to delete a page, select it and click "delete". You can change the order of the pages by dragging and dropping individual pages.
When you are done, type in the name of your final PDF and click "Merge PDFs".
It's as simple as that. Now if only it would let me crop the pages too!
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
The Tap Dancer, by Andrew Barrow
Andrew Barrow won the McKitterick Prize and the Hawthornden Prize for The Tap Dancer. The reason I know this is because I found this novel on the "award winning shelf" at the Central Library and decided to borrow it because it says "a comic masterpiece" on the front cover. (See the small red print by the trousers?)
How can a bookworm like me pass by a "comic masterpiece" on the award winning shelf at the library?
Unfortunately, I didn't find it that funny. (Is it because I am not English?) It was almost rambly at certain points, going on and on about the minute details of British living. Nothing extraordinary happens plot-wise, but still, I found it a strangely compelling read. I couldn't put it down.
Perhaps it was the keen and humorous dialogue. Or perhaps it was the weird, off-the-wall characters. Barrow described them so well that I half expected them to climb out of the book and shake me by the hand. The protagonist, the father of the first person narrator, is unforgettable, along with all the other characters from the novel. Barrow is quite the genius at characterization.
Reading the novel also gives the reader a feel of Britain after World War II, where you can get a meal in London for under a pound.
Monday, January 07, 2008
First day back at school
I woke up cantankerous.
Then I got productive.
I had a cup of coffee, ate a slice of cheese bread, printed my timetable, a claim form and a result slip, sent an email I've been procrastinating about, got a quick reply and the promise of payment, added three tasks to my to-do list, made a phone call to arrange an work appointment, sent another email, addressed a birthday parcel to a friend in the US, took a shower, got changed, and am now sitting on the floor blogging and scanning "Sanctum" by Will Eisner.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Invisible People by Will Eisner
I am so impressed with Eisner's ability to pick up an ordinary black ink pen, sketch a few lines, and create such expressive and unique characters that seem to jump out of the book. Eisner is considered as one of the early shapers of the genre, and rightly so, because not only did he draw, he weaved stories.
Invisible People is part story, part social commentary. It is about the anonymous faces in every crowd, the "invisible people" we pass by every day. Eisner tells the story of three "invisible people": Pincus Pleatnik, the man whom the world pronounced dead; Hilda Gornish, a spinster involved in a perverse romantic triangle; and Morris, a man who was blessed with the ability to heal others.
I liked the first story best because of its poignancy and tragedy. What happens when an ordinary man, someone who shunned the limelight, suddenly realises one day that the world thinks he is dead? A curious thought, isn't it?
Invisible People is very readable — I mean, it is a comic book! — but the content is serious. It is like a parable in pictures. It is a great resource for teachers actually. Lit teachers can use the first story to introduce foretelling or tragedy; GP teachers can use it to introduce social issues.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Loose limbs flying
Sometimes when I run, I imagine myself a lanky teenager, limbs loose and flying, totally free. It is a great feeling.
Tonight's run was interesting. I saw a taxi driver urinating into a drain by a fairly deserted pavement. He gave me a furtive embarrassed look as I ran by. I also saw a big double-deck SBS bus getting its tyres changed by the street. Huge wheels the bus had. They had to use a drill to get the nuts out.
I saw runners, shop keepers, teh drinkers, cyclists, pedestrians, taxi drivers, adults, teenagers, children; I saw you.
Distance: 11.6km
Time: 75mins
Speed: 9.3km/hr
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Taking the new year by the horns
Happy 2008 everyone!
Had a bit of a weird moment yesterday when M said that she would consider settling back in Singapore in 2010, and I thought, what? That's ten years away! And then it dawned on me that I've been living on some other planet 'cos it is 2008 already. Where did the last eight years go?
I'm starting this year with fear and trembling.
But I want to take it by the horns, be my own person, and not let my life slip away from me.
So, my double-barreled resolutions.
1. To be more positive and less of a worry wart.
I really need to stop thinking about everything that can possibly go wrong in any given scenario. This super-ability makes me quite a good event planner, but socially, it makes me a wet blanket and just not very fun to be with.
I also need to be more positive and trust God more with things I cannot control.
2. To find myself and look outwards more.
I spent the last bit of 2007 completely wrapped up with my own problems. Life is bigger than that. It is going to be hard to do — in a way, it is impossible to look outwards if the centre is not stable — so I will try to find myself first.
Two double-barelled resolutions should be more than enough for me.
Have a great year ahead. God bless you and your loved ones!
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