One month old MacBook Pro
A month ago, I got a MacBook Pro. This is my first mac and the experience has been very good.
The first thing that caught my attention was the contrast coloured keys. Not only do they look nice, the tactile feedback from the keys is very fulfilling. After the CRTs, this is my first computer with a glossy screen. The reflections are noticeable and everytime I move, I have adjust to the lighting which was not a chore with my netbook which had matté display. However, the auto-brightness control is flawless.
Now while booting up, I was asked the usual questions about my name, etc. and within minutes the machine was up and running. Grandpa was very impressed by the screen. We loaded up iPhoto and copied pictures from his recent US trip and they looked simply awesome.
Finally, it was time to get the hands dirty. My account had sudo privileges and the next thing I did was to fire
sudo passwd
to change the root password. Now, in the GNU/Linux world, the distro is bundled with a package manager. So, all you want to do is apt-get install / zypper in software. They download the binaries from their servers (after you subscribe to the repositories) and you are good to go. However, it seems that in the BSD arena, there is a culture of building your own software. I was aware of package managers like Fink, MacPorts and Homebrew. Homebrew seemed to be a popular choice with new people and so I decided to with Homebrew.
To compile stuff on MacOS, you need get developer tools called XCode. It is free and massive download from the Mac App Store. After the download was over, I found a new App in Applications called “Install XCode.” Installation was breeze and within a few minutes, I had Homebrew installed. wget, aria2c, etc compiled and I was happy.
I am not particularly a fan of iTunes. I find it complicated. Previously I used mplayer right from the terminal itself to play music. So I fired
brew install mplayer
It failed. It turns out that Apple has decided to discontinue shipping gcc without llvm with the new XCode. Most of the people who had this issue reported that using brew with “–use-gcc” solves the problem. I suppose that they that previous versions of XCode installed before upgrading to 4.2 but for me I had no choice as Lion was pre-installed.
Finally, thanks to the people who don’t like the bloat of XCode, I found a package that had just gcc related stuff (http://cloud.github.com/downloads/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer/GCC-10.7-v2.pkg). So, I removed XCode, installed this and installed XCode again and viola, I had mplayer…
Also, the default Terminal.app simply sucks. iTerm2 is far better and it has support for Page-Up and Page-Down keys also.
Reflection
Okay, so I am a procrastinator. No doubts about that, all people whom I have ever met (especially the people who taught me) can testify for that. Recently, the problem has got worse. All that I have done till date has been driven either by adrenaline or force. Sometimes, a bad mix of both. So, the start is always good and then I slack the way through. The slack is also full of guilt, want to do better and stress.
On reading pg’s essay on the subject, I found something new. There is also a “Good Procrastination” and most of the great people he met were the good procrastinators. To summarize, there are three kinds of procrastinators, who put off work doing,
A. Nothing
B. Something less important
C. Something more important
Needless to say, all of us want be the C-Type. So, now the definition of “what is important” lies on what is really important! And the importance of something is always fuzzy and depends from person to person. For example, playing Tetris two hours before the exam is less important and completely stupid for a sane student. For me it is not, tetris gets me in the flow! On day of the “Theory of Computation” exam, I did just that and the paper went fine (and was damn easy too!). What I am trying to say here is that the importance of what you do is something that you dont know and will never know. What you do during the time you are procrastinating is something that makes you (slacker/hacker/gamer/blogger/reader/cyclist/etc).
Thus, what I have decided is that I will always do something and not do it if it is not interesting; hoping that whatever I do is important.
peedy's log Nov 7 2010, 2336hrs
Today I got up very late ( at about 1100hrs ). Most of the time of the was spent on the computer doing nothing productive. I also slept in the afternoon for two hours and that explains why I am not sleepy by now. I bought a domain, peedy.in from indiatimes.com. However I find their services lousy as they have not activated it and it seems that they are waiting for realization of the payment. The e-mail which I received from them says that it will be activated in 24 hrs.
I have downloaded “Star Trek I : The Motion Picture” and have seen about half of it.
Again, today I have not done anything work. However, I am determined to start working from tomorrow.
peedy's log Nov 6 2010, 2206hrs
Today morning I had to go for a routine Pooja at the temple nearby and so I got up early today. It was a personal record for me as after almost a week I saw how the world looks like before 0800hrs. Following the Pooja, I indulged myself in killing time by surfing the interweb about idiotic things. That includes exploring the complications that I’d be faced while installing GNU/Linux on my Mom’s HP Mini 210 2011TU. I shall enlist them below for the record.
1) Broadcom drivers would be required to get the 802.11 working.
2) Hack /etc/sysfs.conf to fix the ‘fn’ key problem.
At around 1000hrs, when I went down to read the newspaper, I decided to go out for a movie. I sought permission from Mom and called up Mrugank. I left for his place. However we could not get any seats. The early afternoon was spent in killing time and fruitless calls to Airtel DTH for activation of the free DTH connection that came along with his new LED TV.
We then decided to freak out at Aditya Bungalows as the house was empty (Grandparents on vacation). We got lunch from ‘Gandhi Bakery’ (The food was okay but anything would have sufficed at that time as I was famished).
We spent the afternoon and pre evening watching “The Big Bang Theory”. After listening to Obama’s speech (He is on tour to India), we left. I dropped Mrugank home and left for home.
When I reached home, Mom was out for Meditation. I then watched “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”. I really enjoyed the movie. I found that Spock’s character in the movie had reached the maturity and was concrete. The ending was undoubtedly ‘not happy’. Spock is dead!; That is a real shock but I know what happens next (Thanks to Memory Alpha and I have also seen the next movie , Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, directed by Leonard Nimoy himself). My knowledge of knowing what happended next actually hindered the experience.
“If you know the future, there is no mystery and there is no hope”.
I think that right now I am suffering with some kind of a block. Neither have I completed my term work (4 Java programs and seminar documentation) nor have I studied anything lately. I also want to start working on iSee but nothing is materializing right now.
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Happy Independence Day, my fellow Indians.
Today, the World’s largest Democracy, India celebrates its 60th Independence Day. Like any other yesteryear , every one remembered all the brave souls responsible for this priceless freedom. Still, the trends are changing. On this day of every year, people would revise the film, ‘Gandhi’ but today, ‘Nayak’ and ‘Golmaal’ were on the primetime.
Another soul ported to linux.
Yogesh Shahdadpuri, my classmate bought an Acer Aspire 5738G and decided to get started with GNU/Linux. So, I helped him out with installing Ubuntu, codecs and stuff. The guy is dual booting it with M$ Vista but promises to use GNU/Linux more.
Rained after so many days
Finally after so many dry days, the city got a drizzle. The clouds still do not look promising but the weather today is so very awesome.
Attended college on mass bunk day.
I don’t know why but I love going to college on a mass bunk day. There is only 10 % strength today. Had boring architecture and database lectures. Our math lecturer, Khyati Mam is generous enough to give us a free lecture and so I’m able blog this
