Welcome to my personal blog! This is where I post anything I feel like sharing with you.
If you would like to find out more about me, then check out the about section.
Right so after you have the IBM UK standard keyboard layout working, you probably want to swap the Command and Control key. You are used to pressing Ctrl + S to save, Ctrl +C to copy etc. thus having to re-learn how to type it is easier just adapting the Windows way. You can swap the keys in System Preferences under Keyboard and Mouse.
The next little anoyance is how the Home and End keys work. For programmers this is a big issue! When I press home, I want the cursor to jump to the beginning of the line and not the top of the document! I found this little gem called KeyFixer that fixes it for you.
Now the next issue is big problem for me and that is Font Smoothing or known as Clear Type on Windows. I absolutely hate smooth fonts! Yes I use a LCD monitor and I still hate it! To me the fonts look blurry and after an hour or so of coding I get massive headaches.
I bought myself a new mac mini (the ones using Nvidia GPU and chipsets), the 120GB model but with upgraded ram to 2GB DDR3.
Having never worked on a mac before I am quite excited about owning one and getting a bit of a different perspective than what I am use to.
The mac mini is like what it says on the tin, mini! This computer is about the same size as one of my external hard drives.
I did not opt to buy the mighty mouse and keyboard since I would like to use my existing screen, keyboard and mouse.
After booting it up for the first time you are asked to setup a user account and default settings and to register the product with Apple.
The first thing I noticed was that the default keyboard was set to US, so I went to System settings etc. and configured it to use the British keyboard layout. But it turns out that some keys are still like what they would be on a US keyboard. Coming from South Africa I am used to the US keyboard layout since that is the only layout we use there, however having been in the UK for over 3 years now I have gotten so used the UK layout that I don’t want to be using different layouts, especially since I will be using a KVM switch to work on both my PC and my Mac.
So after a bit of googling I discovered that Apple actually have their own UK layout which is not that far off from the US version. So I would like to use the IBM/PC UK layout and as luck would have it turns out that it is actually easy to create your own custom layouts using an application called Ukelele. Even better luck is that Phil Gyford has already created a layout.
There is another layout from Andy Pearce that alot of people swear by, I still need to try it out…since it seems that everything works for my except Home and End, well atleast in the way I expect it to work (unless it is just one more difference between Mac and PC).
Right so now the keyboard is fixed, what else is “wrong”…lets see… the mouse! By default the mouse is pain stakingly slow to move around the screen. After a bit of tweaks I got something that I can be happy with (yes not 100% happy since I hate pointer acceleration. I hated it on Windows and I will hate it on Mac…but I have not found a way to disable it).
So apart from my rants about the input devices, lets get to the good stuff.
Mac OS X 10.5.x Leopard is totally awesome! I am actually starting to like it a lot more than I thought I would have.
The main differences to learn between Mac and Windows is the following:
When you click on the red globe marked X on a window, it does not stop the application. Instead you have to actually go the menu bar and say close, or Command Q.
You windows don’t have menu bars, instead you have one big global menu bar at the top that updates dynamically depending on the application window you have selected.
Instead of using Control to do most things (like keyboard shortcuts) you use Command, which on a windows keyboard is the Windows key.
I have been using computers for about 17 years now (since I was 11) and my first computer was a 286 with 640KB ram. During all of those years I have only ever worked on a PC. The operating systems I know run all the way from MS-DOS 3.x up to the latest Vista for Microsoft and then I have run a couple of Linux distros like Redhat, Mandrake and Ubuntu.
If someone were to come to me that have never touched a computer before and asks me what computer I would recommend, then I would recommend them to get a Mac. My reasons for this would be:
You get easy to use, easy to learn software for most of your needs already included in the OS. (yes yes I know windows is now starting to include more things and yada yada, but the easy of configuring for a noob would be easier on a mac).
You don’t need to worry about drivers! (well I have yet to find a device here in my house that doesn’t just work straight out of the box).
The only reason it has taken me this long before buying a Mac, is the price tag. Generally a Mac is more expensive than buying a PC.
The initial download is about 2MB and after you have installed it, the additional files will be downloaded when you visit the site. I don’t know how big that download was but it was pretty quick.
Took me about 5 minutes from signing-up to playing the initial tutorial/rank level. You are required to play a skill’s test against Crash that will be used to determine your skill level. This test level takes 10minutes and the Bot’s skill increases the more you score frags on her.
After that you are allowed to play online against other people with the same skill level as you.
Quake 3 is one of my all time favourite games and I always find myself coming back to it. Now I don’t ever have to worry again about where I have placed the install CD since now I can just play it online from QuakeLive.com
I can’t believe it has taken me this long before even giving CakePHP a try.
This framework is totally awesome and makes the general CRUD stuff easy peazy!
They follow the MVC pattern and if you stick to their naming conventions for how you name the database tables, your models, controllers and views then life is 100x easier.
If you develope websites or application using PHP you owe it to yourself to give CakePHP a try!
PS. Zend Framework is also very good. But for smaller projects I would recommend CakePHP.
Gerry insisted that I call my first snow man Weeble.
On monday morning we got quite a surprise when we opened our door and saw that it had snowed overnight and that it was atleast a ruler high!
This was the worst snow in over 18 years for England and Gerry and I got to stay at home for 2 days since it was too dangerous to drive and all the public transport was cancelled.
Gerry and I went down to South Africa in October 2008 for about 3 weeks. We try and go once a year to visit my family and friends and to just generaly have a blast!
South Africa’s got a lot of different type of scenery and wild life and each time we go down I try to take Gerry to a different region.
We decided to go on holiday with my Mom and Johnny in Kwa-Zulu Natal and the Drakensberg area.
We stayed about a week and a half in Kwa-Zulu Natal in a little beach down called Amanzintoti which is about 10km away from Durban. Gerry loved the beaches and waves and actually commented that the waves are gigantic!
I taught Gerry how to belly surf in the waves and once she caught on I could barely keep her away from the sea.
My body has climatized quite a lot for the British sh*t weather since I moved to the UK, so much so that I burned badly the one day…even while I was wearing suncream.
We went to uShaka Marine World since it has always been a dream of mine to visit the aquarium. They have excellent activities that you can do, some of which includes Ocean walking, Cage diving and Snorkling and we did all of them.
With the ocean walker you put a glass “bowl” over your head and they pump constant oxygen in to it. The only thing keeping the water from coming in is the oxygen! If your “bowl” fogs up then you have to move your hand in underneath and throw the water at the glass. This was an amazing experience and we had massive Tunas swiming right pass our heads and sting rays almost climbing up our legs.
The cage dive was ok, but once you have done one in Gaansbaai with Great White Shark, then everything else seems pale in comparison.
Of all the underwater activities my favourite was the Snorkeling. I got real close to the fish and even touched one or two of them. There was also 2 massive hound sharks in the tank and we were warned not to make any sudden moves or splashes. Let me tell you it was quite an exciting and scary moment the first time you saw the sharks swim underneath you. They were bigger than me!
Gerry and I always likes to do adventurous things and on this trip we decided we will try a gorge swing. As luck would have it the highest gorge swing in the world is in Oribi which is near Margate.
Here is a video of our gorge swing.
This was very excellerating and the adrenalin was pumping hard! PS. The bastard pushed me off and thus I was pedalling instead of flying like Gerry.
After our time in the Durban area we went to the Drakensberge which is the mountain area of South Africa. We didn’t have great weather and thus we were quite limited to what we could do there.
Once back in Gauteng I took Gerry to the Elephant Sanctuary since we missed seeing elephants on our last trip.
After all of this fun I took Gerry away for a couple of days to a resort called “Die Oog” which is located in the hot spring water area. The hot mineral water was very rejuvenating.
And before we knew it we were back on a plane to the UK
Unfortunetly we couldn’t go visit my Dad and other family members this year since we didn’t account for the price increases of everything in South Africa!
It has been a while since my last post and as you can guess I have been very busy, or just lazy
I am in the process of moving my blog over to WordPress (from Blogger), so excuse the “default” look with the Kubrik theme.
As soon as I have a new custom theme and have managed to setup all the traffic redirection, then I will post an update of what I have been up to and what are my plans for the coming year.
Got my copy of GTA IV last weekend and I have been playing almost none stop! I have always been a fan of the GTA series and thus I just had to play the latest one.
I have to admit a think San Andreas was the best one so far. Don’t get me wrong, GTA IV is very good and I would highly recommend you get a copy. What I liked about San Andreas was that the world was a lot larger and had a lot more variety (cultures, buildings etc.). Also you could do a lot more in the game. I loved having my own airfield that I could just stock up with different airplanes and helicopters.
The latest one have a very good story line and a good set of characters.
I bought myself a new mac mini (the ones using Nvidia GPU and chipsets), the 120GB model but with upgraded ram to 2GB DDR3.
The beta for Quake Live is out and it is totally awesome!
