About one year ago I bought a second generation MacBook Pro. At first everything was fine and I didn’t encounter any weird sounds or screen flickers known from previous models. Unfortunately after a few weeks, it started to make some weird sound sometimes when I open it (or switch it on).
Here my journey to get rid of the problem.
Vista constantly accesses my hard drive, here is how to do the exorcism (no, not the format-the-drive exorcism).
One thing I notice whenever I start Windows Vista (I usually rely on Linux) is that it always does something on my harddrive. I didn’t know what it was doing, so I started to investigate.
To keep it short, there are three things to disable to keep your harddisk from working permanently.
First, I disabled the “Indexing Service” which was an obvious candidate for accessing my drive(s). Unfortunately it wasn’t the only process digging on my harddrive.
The second service I disabled was the “System Restore” which was suggested here.
This still didn’t work out, so my quest wasn’t finished yet. The last process I disabled was “Superfetch”. This actually did the trick. I don’t know what it is supposed to do, but the OS didn’t suffer as far as I can tell.
I’ll leave the three processes disabled because I didn’t recognize a negative impact (well, the Index-Service might be important to some people).
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If something’s expensive to develop, and somebody’s not going to get paid, it won’t get developed. So you decide: Do you want software to be written, or not?—Bill Gates
Why, oh why didn’t they choose otherwise?
The challenge-response spam-filter troubles me lately. If you don’t know it, here is how it works if both parties have a challenge-response spam-filter:
So far so good. Three questions pop up:
Windows Vista got a lot of bad press lately. Anyway, I installed it over the last few days. Here are my observations, and some solutions to my problems.
A small comparison of the basic features of Darcs and Mercurial from a Darcs user’s perspective.
You probably heard about MacFUSE (announcement). MacFUSE is an OS X implementation of the popular FUSE project (well known to Linux enthusiasts).
I just found a tech-demo video showing some really interesting features and possibilities of FUSE (of course it’s not limited to MacFUSE).
Apple’s MacBook Pro computers are awesome, at least mine is. But one thing bothers me since I’ve got it: it’s called Laptop when it should be called “Burns your lap”-top.
I’ve found two tools that remedy the heat problem: CoolBook and smcFanControl.
Allan Odgaard, the author of TextMate, still denies to make a Windows version of his famous editor.
He misses a very lucrative market with profits guaranteed (Windows users are begging him to port it), still he won’t do it. Instead he points to other editors copying his ideas, innovations etc!
(He even goes a step further and may drop backwards compatibility for Mac OS X with the next major TextMate release.)
And guess what? Right he is! If working on TextMate wouldn’t be fun, it wouldn’t be such a great product.
Keep up the good work Allan, I never felt sorry for a single cent I spent on TextMate.
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You have to start doing something and trust the muse will follow, not the other way ‘round. —Kathy Sierra
Zooomr (note: three “o”s) offers free pro accounts to any blogger out there, you just have to link one picture, so here it is.
Today I’ve got my brand new MacBook Pro, so I thought I share some observations for those who are tempted to buy one too.
One of my colleagues keeps asking my why I prefer Darcs over Subversion.
The question isn’t easy to answer. I think it’s mostly because of personal preferences and not because of objective advantages. Anyway I’ll try to explain it in this article.
Hobix is the weblog system written by why the lucky stiff. It builds upon Ruby, YAML, Textile and generates static HTML.
Recently I bought myself a Nintendo DS Lite handheld. It’s amazing so I thought I could share a few observations.
Google provides a service to host your company’s (or personal) mails at their servers via your own domain. They currently provide a limited (invitation only) beta test. You can sign up at Gmail for your domain and they’ll send you an invitation. I had to wait quite a time: signed up in February and received the invitation in July.
Wow, that’s a great book! I own over 80 non-fiction books but only few of them excite me that much. The Pragmatic Programmer from journeyman to master from Andrew Hunt and David Thomas is one of those. It’s stuffed full with practical wisdom and tips you can start using from the moment you read it.
They discuss all relevant topics of programming and software development, starting from text editors, IDEs, code generation, command line versus GUI etc… to estimation, handling requirements and documentation. It’s fantastic and really fun to read, too sad it has only 300 pages.
Usually the quotes on the back-flap of any book should be handled with care, but Ward Cunninghams quote If I’m putting together a project, it’s the authors of this book that I want. ... And failing that I’d settle for people who’ve read their book. doesn’t really surprise me after reading just a few chapters.
(The second one equally full of wisdom, but with another focus, is Robert C. Martins Agile Software Development. Principles, Patterns, and Practices. Before buying several books on Design Patterns, Agile Methodologies and Software Development guidelines buy this one.)
Even if these books are from programmers for programmers, they’re extremely well written (meaning they don’t use nested parentheses (like me))!
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An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. —Benjamin Franklin
