7 posts tagged “mac”

To all Mac enthusiasts and curious by-passers, please be on your desktop/laptop with macrumorslive on your browser to follow almost real-time updates from the World Wide Developers Conference [WWDC] in San Francisco, where Steve Jobs will begin the keynote presentation at 10 a.m. GMT -7, which is 1 a.m. GMT +8 [Kuala Lumpur] today / tonight. 3G iPhone? Facelift for MacBooks and MacBook Pros? .Mac revamp? Steve Jobs in a different outfit?!

While waiting, I shall be finishing up the fourth part of 'My MacBook Pro'.

Update: Here's what the both of me think of WWDC. Don't take us too seriously.

A: Hi!
Q: Hello.

Q: So what did you think of the Apple event thing?
A: It was quite a wow thing, especially with the iPhone SDK, although I am not too keen on MobileMe.

Q: What's wrong with MobileMe?
A: For starters, the name and the design of the logo.

Q: It's in blue... and... it looks like a cloud.... and....
A: Yeah. It looks like Skype or something. Represents something fun and lively and... all those positivity.

A: It doesn't look like an Apple product. Blue is never an Apple colour.
Q: I don't remember the last time the colour blue represented Apple...

A: And it looks like it's designed for people who... loves life.
A: Who loves their family and friends, go hiking, post recipes of spinach quiche and lemongrass lemonade, keep lunch appointments... basically sounding like a fun-loving businessman on-the-go or sociable housewife. Or something.

Q: ...
A: ...

A: And it has completely replaced .Mac!!! I want a .mac as a part of my website's name!
Q: But you don't even have a .Mac site, other than that one time you took a trial and had your site named cathoderaytreason.

A: It still sounds better than a me.com! Me. All about me. All about my life. All about the dates I have, the things I need to get fixed, the meetings I have to attend, the lakes I want to boat, the list of Free Trade products I can buy from the grocer's...

Q: You sound like a non-person person.

A: I have all the right in the world to do so!

Q: No one cares.

A: Shut the hell up. Another thing I am not digging is that... what the hell does 'Push' mean?! Push e-mail, Push contacts, Push calendar...

Q: It means that anything [alerts, notifications, changes etc.] that comes into an  application will go up to the 'cloud' [server] and then pushed to any other device [iPhone, desktop, iPod Touch...] that is connected with me.com.

A: Stop sounding smarter than me.

A: Oh look. Me.com automatically directs to the Apple site. Before this it had a link to Snappville.

Q: I'm not listening.

A: Then I'll stop talking.

Q: Good.

...

A: I'm watching the WWDC keynote right now. Well, not really watching and more of hearing because the visual only updates like once a minute.
Q: That's really slow.

A: That's what you get using a mobile broadband modem.

A: Anyway, iPhone SDK seems to be a pretty big thing. It's like... the planet we live in. You have no idea how big it is.
A: Especially the part when the guy shows the medical stuff... shows that iPhone doesn't exist 'just for fun'.

Q: After this, no one will use a Blackberry.

A: But 2. megapixels camera? This isn't 2004!

A: I don't know why I am not convinced that the iPhone 3G is worth buying.
A: With all of those features and apps, I could be on the phone all day and not care about anything else. That's not how I want to live my life.

Q: Right.
A: Unless you're a scientist or someone who is really important and matter to everyone else, an iPhone is just an elaborate communicating device.

A: I'd rather have a brick phone.
Q: Say what you want but iPhone is better than you or anyone else, except Steve Jobs, of course.

Q: Steve Jobs looked skinnier than ever.
A: I want to be like him.

My MacBook Pro is very photogenic. Here are some vanity shots of my favourite object in the world.

I couldn't contain myself.

No more teaser trailer-esque pictures appearing throughout the week.

Greetings, friends. This past week [12.03 - 18.03] has been like rubbish. My plans of going to visit my mother has been foiled by my father! So you can expect no Johorean and Singaporean adventures in the near future.

Anyway.... I've been wasting more time outdoors trying to ease my clogged mind. On Sunday [18.03] I woke up at 9.45 a.m., which is early by my standards. And for the first time in weeks, I took my first shower before noon. I felt really down from a bad ordeal the night before, so I was ready to leave the house and spend money to de-hungry myself. I drove off at around 1.30 p.m. to Food Foundry but only to find out that it was packed! People having a nice Sunday lunch, probably. I asked myself "To where, Aina?" and answered "How about to The fucking Curve?". "Nice idea, Aina. Not the best, but still nice". So I drove on the LDP and got my car parked at The Curve. I realised that their basement car park is quite huge and they have nice... um, signs [all in English], rubbery glossy floors [unlike the floors of typical basement parking lots that are made of concrete] and good lighting [no dodgy dark corners]. I think it's my favourite parking lot ever, because of those reasons and it's only RM 1 per entry.

It has been such a long time since I had a meal at Little Penang Kafe. I had a filling meal of... well, you know. The usuals. After that I roamed around Cineleisure and back on The Walk. I spotted some kids making pizza outside Marché, which is a restaurant / food market. They're having this school holidays specials, and one of them is learning how to make a pizza.

After that, I headed to Borders to look out for the April issue of VOGUE UK [you know, the one with Kate Moss on the cover, and about her TOPSHOP collection] but I didn't see any. I bought the April issue of Mastika, which is this Malay mini magazine that talks about social problems [they are famed for bringing the Black Metal issue to the public, and it got some MPs suggesting to put a ban on Black Metal in this country], mystery stories [haunted houses, people with odd diseases] and several articles that have a religious meaning behind it.

After purchasing Mastika, I remembered of a Swedish inventions exhibition happening at IKANO. If you didn't know, Sweden gave the world Tetra Pak, Volvo [and its three-point seatbelt design], a bunch of screw inserts [don't know the proper name], Electrolux, safety matches [matches before these had a poisonous yellow phosphorus tip, now it's replaced by the familiar red phosphorus], a bunch of tech stuff..... hm, what am I forgetting? Oh right, IKEA! But none of it was exhibited here. Obviously because IKEA has all of their products exhibited next door!

You can still check out this exhibition organised by the Swedish embassy until the 28th of March, 2007. Go check it out! You'd get to collect some leaflets and postcards about Swedish culture, too.

After enough roaming around, I decided to go home at 4 p.m. Oddly enough, I still feel stressed.

Later that night, I discovered a sweet old-school Mac sitting on top of the piano at the hall. That shall be featured in a separate post.

Now, on to today's news. Nothing cool happened.

Oh wait, something cool happened. I received a phone call from Vitagen, informing me that my check is ready. If you didn't know, I won some money from participating in their car sticker contest. I felt quite happy about getting free cash, and immediately went to the bank to stash my check.

I went to Food Foundry to see if anything is edible there... and got disappointed with their own version of fried rice. It had slices of lemongrass in it, which is very very weird. I drank a glass of passionfruit soda and had four pieces of Financier [super-greasy egg cakes] which is kind of tasty.

To keep away boredom, I am including two songs at the end of this post. First song is by Pinback, which is a cover of Black Flag's 'Wasted' [I think] and the second song is by Take That, mega boyband back in the early 1990s, now reunited [and looking quite hot, also]. This song came out more than ten years ago, though.

A little post dedicated to Macs shall follow up shortly [but only if I have the mood to write it].

Hello cool people. I didn't mean to write in so late because there was an electrical wiring problem in my room that prevented me from using my computer.

Alright.

Saturday 03.02.07 was a very exciting day for me. I managed to cross out two items off my 'Spreadsheet For February 2007'. This is how it went:

I woke up very early for no reason, as early as 0930 [very early by my standards]. Drank coffee and ate bread and waited for my father to ask me out. He finally did at around 1300, just after I ironed my hair. I had to drive because my father's car was sent off for servicing. My younger brother followed as well.

I drove to One Utama to check out the books at MPH. I was in the children's section when I spotted these cheap biographies of historical figures. The ones on Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin won a spot in my shopping basket. They are not for serious reading and were quite badly-edited, in a way, it gives me something to read and learn. I also picked up a booklet of alphabet stencils.

I went to see what kind of books they have at the Tintin shelves and discovered two books I have never read before, which were Tintin At Sea and Tintin & Snowy Activity Book [I think]. I wanted to get them but they've got no new copies, and were quite pricey so I just left them and headed to the Hardy Boys shelves. I didn't know which book to get, and then I saw this particular volume which had a psychedelic montage. I was drawn to it, and so it went into my basket. I went down a floor and looked about for a German-English dictionary. I picked up the one by Collins because my desk dictionary is by the same publishers and it's small in size.

I joined my father to let him pay for my purchases and declared that our next stop is The Curve. This is because it has been eons since I last visited IKEA [contrary to popular belief, I no longer visit IKEA weekly]. And I have my heart on this Stephen Law book called The Philosophy Gym, which I bought at Borders. This time, it's for adults but it's still a book on the concepts of philosophy. Still readable by me.

I had my lunch at IKEA, they were kiddie-sized meatball meal because the vegetarian meal didn't appeal to me. I didn't get to shop around IKEA with my father because of a misunderstanding which brought me to tears, but that's not really an issue worth writing about.

We left Mutiara Damansara and I used the Kerinchi Link to get ourselves to Kuala Lumpur. We passed by Masjid Wilayah and came onto this roundabout that can bring you to Batu Caves / Jalan Ipoh / Jalan Kuching. I know of Batu Caves and Jalan Kuching, so I chose to follow Jalan Ipoh. We found ourselves in the Batu Lima area and spotted new luxury high-rise condominiums along the road. My father began talking about old stories of how things were like in this area, because he was born there. He showed me the landmarks, like places of worship, coffee shops, markets and police stations. This whole area is known as Sentul and it was once famous for the Keretapi Tanah Melayu [Malayan Railworks] depot. My father told me that his father worked with them. Now, most of the area have been bought by YTL Corporation, which is a big-time company that owns literally the whole of Bukit Bintang and lots more. One of the railworks buildings have been converted into Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre [KL Pac], which we visited. It's a theatre in the middle of a very huge park, known as Sentul Park. I bet the Seksan people were in charge of the landscape architecture.

KL Pac is a great example of contemporary Malaysian architecture [if you don't count the original structure which was built back during the British occupation, around 1910s-1920s perhaps?]. It is compulsory to have a shallow water feature [not necessarily flowing], trees with no leaves / looking like garnishing parsley / long branchless trunks / 'artistic', glass façade, most corners of everything being at a 90º angle and unfinished cement flooring. Actually, I wasn't being serious, but it's very hard to miss those details in any new building in Malaysia.

There were no plays going on that day, so we took a tour of Sentul Park. It's a pretty place were you can find funny ducks swimming around and resting on a little island, a Koi centre, a Japanese restaurant and rolling green lawns [I learned that this place used to be a golf course, too]. We visited the Koi centre and looked around pools of Koi for sale. But this is no ordinary fish market. One medium-sized Koi [20 cm long] is RM 10 000. And the ones in the pond near the Japanese restaurant are RM 300 000. Those are up to one feet long; they are so enormous that they look like they can bite your head off.

We left at around 7 p.m. and drove into the city centre. I decided to look around this new shopping place called City Bazaar, opposite Kompleks Pertama. We parked at Sogo and my father wanted to use the Surau, so I went to the cosmetics section to search my dream Lipglass at MAC [this is how I fix things up, referring to my statement in paragraph 8]. I am into the mod lips look right now, so I asked for a pale gloss. But then I couldn't keep my mind on what I am supposed to buy and ended up purchasing a four-in-one Lipgelée gift set. I realised later that it didn't give me the mod lips look at all, and got quite upset by my choice. But I realised that "lip gloss = no big deal".

We crossed Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman to get to the City Bazaar and learned that it was quite a boring places that sells... boring things, like clothes and gift items. Nothing that interests me. But I did get this mock-leather keychain that looked like a lizard.

My father suggested that we should have our dinner at Capital Cafe, which is this ancient restaurant that serves Minang Cuisine [Malay], Pasumbore [Indian] and Mee Hailam [Chinese]. I find it very cool to have food from different heritage congregate within the same shoplot. It was already 9 p.m. when we got there and the Minang stall was closed. It was either satay or Mee Hailam. I didn't order anything because I wasn't hungry, so my father and brother both ordered Mee Hailam. I apologise for not having pictures of these super-delicious noodles because when they came, I couldn't help but raid it immediately. It was sooooo tasty. I took some from my brother, which had his in egg noodles, then took some from my father, who had his in vermicelli. Seriously. So outrageously delicious.

After that we decided to call it a day and went back to our parked car in Sogo, and I drove back home. I rate this Saturday a 8.25/10.

Now, on to Sunday 04.02.07. Ashanya told me about this Art Bites workshop happening at Central Market. There were many workshops and classes to choose from and some of them were free. Ashanya took the Creative Writing class [which was conducted by my former lecturer Bernice Chauly] while I checked out the NYKL photo exhibition. It's about old iconic buildings and structures from New York and Kuala Lumpur. After that I met up with Ashanya and her friend Nadia and Hana to have some lunch. We ate at Old Town Kopitiam. I had soupy noodles and coffee. We talked about our lives and wondered which class to join next. Since that we had nothing to do until 4.30 p.m. [the time of Hishamuddin Rais' class], we joined Malay Percussion class, which was free. Our lecturer was Kamrul Hussin, who is a traditional Malay music maestro. He taught us about Malay drums and we learned how they work and had a very exciting jamming session. We got to play the kompang, rebana and gong.
 

After the class ended, we headed to the end of the hall to check out this class conducted by Hishamuddin Rais, who is this controversial activist and crazy guy [there was a policeman on guard]. He has been detained under ISA, I think, and has traveled around the world because the Malaysian government was trying to chase him off for having ideas that they don't dig. This free class is known as History of Philosophy and it's held weekly from now on, every Wednesday, 8.30 p.m. at Central Market Annexe.

In his class, he talks about.... well, a lot of things. Things like how KL's city planners don't have critical thinking, resulting traffic jams in the city and the only way to exercise the mind is through philosophy [refer to video]. Also, historical events, science, religion and society were some of the matters discussed.

After a nice liberating lecture, Ashanya and I went to one of the t-shirt-making stalls to help her with ordering printed t-shirts [which she ripped off from some site, hehe]. We had a discussion with the shop owner at the food court when I came across a tasty snack known as Bahulu Thailand. I don't know what was so Thai about those little cakes, though.

It was six p.m. and we decided to leave. And we both learned something. Never park your car at Central Market for more than an hour. I parked my car for 5 hours and had to pay RM 12.50. That is disastrously too much. It's more expensive than KLCC parking rates!

It was getting dark when I drove to Bukit Bintang. I wanted to check out this place called Little Havana, which apparently is the new 'in' place to catch indie gigs. Two weeks ago some Scandinavian musician named Jens Lekman had a show there, so I assume this is a really happening place. But when I got there, I saw crowds of emo people dressed in black, in conjunction with the Straight Edge gig that was going on all day. I walked around to see the bands, the crowd and what kind of merchandise they were selling [mostly CDs, t-shirts and zines]. Quite boring. I bought a zine as a souvenir and walked along Changkat Bukit Bintang to see the cozy restaurants that are popular among expats and SPGs. I got myself to Lot 10 and finally bought my dream Lipglass. 

It's unfortunate news. You know how annoying it is when version 7 came into the scene and brought a lot of frustrations among hard-to-the-dual-core Mac users. One thing I totally hate was how it made my iPod turns its backlight on each time I connect it to my computer. I mean, I have my goddamn backlight setting always off, but each time I want to recharge or update, it turns itself back on. I didn't ask for it, OK?!

I thought the problem would be solved if I go back to use iTunes version 6. And all the hassle I had to go through - deleting everything that has to do with iTunes on my computer except my music. OK, done. Now I download version 6, and checked on the 'let iTunes manage my music library' option. Suddenly I had 10 GB of music - 4 GB more than I thought I had. All the music I thought I had deleted for the past year suddenly reappeared. Then I deleted everything off my music library and decided to add the songs one by one. Hm, that's a huge task. Then I found out that iTunes wouldn't want to import folders, it insisted on importing songs one by one!

Luckily a Mac geek was online and I consulted him on my problem. He recommended using iPodRip which is this application that sucks all the songs on my iPod and put them back on my iTunes. Hurrah, problem solved! Even though I have lost all of my play counts. But I hope that my iPod won't lights itself up like a moron each time I connect.

But no! It continues being a moron. I think it's because iTunes version 7 is already downloaded into the iPod, and there is no way that it will go back to iTunes version 6.

Ugh. What a waste of time and brain cells.

And that Mac geek still doesn't want me to be his friend.