Oboje są przekonani,
że połączyło ich uczucie nagłe.
Piękna jest taka pewność,
ale niepewność piękniejsza.

Sądzą, że skoro nie znali się wcześniej,
nic między nimi nigdy się nie działo,
A co na to ulice, schody, korytarze,
na których mogli się od dawna mijać?

Chciałabym ich zapytać,
czy nie pamietają -
może w drzwiach obrotowych
kiedyś twarzą w twarz?
jakieś “przepraszam” w ścisku?
głos “pomyłka” w słuchawce?
- ale znam ich odpowiedź.
Nie, nie pamietają.

Bardzo by ich zdziwiło,
że od dłuższego już czasu
bawił się nimi przypadek.

Jeszcze nie całkiem gotów
zamienić się dla nich w los,
zbliżał ich i oddalał,
zabiegał im drogę
i tłumiąc chichot
odskakiwał w bok.

Były znaki, sygnały,
cóż z tego, że nieczytelne.
Może trzy lata temu
albo w zeszły wtorek
pewien listek przefrunął
z ramienia na ramię?
Było coś zgubionego i podniesionego.
Kto wie, czy już nie piłka
w zaroślach dzieciństwa?

Były klamki i dzwonki,
na których zawczasu
dotyk kładł się na dotyk.
Walizki obok siebie w przechowalni.
Był może pewnej nocy jednakowy sen,
natychmiast po zbudzeniu zamazany.

Każdy przecież początek
to tylko ciąg dalszy,
a księga zdarzeń
zawsze otwarta w połowie.

Poor iPhone…

The ability for web browsers to automatically detect proxy settings is really useful when you have to switch between multiple networks all the time.  With Internet Explorer, proxy settings are being detected in both XP and Vista, but things aren’t going so well with Firefox!  If you are using Vista and Firefox happens to be your default browser, you have to manually configure the proxy settings for it to work on our student network…which is NOT convenient at all!  You can use some proxy switching extensions (E.g. FoxyProxy) to save you a few clicks, but still…that’s something you have to do manually!  So…are you sick of doing this all the time and wanted to get the proxy auto detection to work under Vista?  Well…you’ve come to the right place!  I’ve found that by changing one of the “hidden” preferences in Firefox, you could get the proxy detection to work on Vista!  Below is a step-by-step guide on how you could make this happen on your Firefox!

Step 0: Check whether you have proxy auto detection enabled on your Firefox. Open up Firefox, go to Tools -> Options:

And you will see:

Step 1: Click on Advanced -> Network -> Setttings…

And you will see:

Step 2: By default, the No Proxy option should be selected. Since we want Firefox to automatically detect the proxy settings, we select the second option: “Auto-detect proxy settings for this network“, then click on the OK button at the bottom of the window:

Click on the OK button again to close the Options window:

Step 3: Now in the address bar, type in “about:config” and you will see:

Step 4: In the Filter section, type in “dns“, and you will see:

The “network.dns.disableIPv6” is set to false by default!  This preference affects Firefox’s ability to detect proxy settings in Vista…so we need to change it from false (default value) to true in order for Firefox to detect the proxy settings.  To change the value, just double click on the “network.dns.disableIPv6“, and the value will be changed to “true“.  If you look closely, you can see that the Status will also be changed to user set as well, this is because we have changed the default value to something else.  With this in mind, you can feel safe to play around with the preferences in Firefox, and if think you’ve done something wrong, you can always reset the value to the default one. (just right click on the preference and click on Reset):

Step 5: Make sure the value for “network.dns.disableIPv6” is set to true and you are connected to the student network (you can test the network using Internet Explorer), now try to use Firefox to surf the web…the proxy settings should be detected automatically without even need to restart Firefox!  Isn’t that great ☺

Recently I’ve been trying to write a post on Firefox in Windows Vista using my MacBook…but there is this one little problem…my MacBook..and so as everybody else’s…doesn’t have the Print Screen key on the keyboard! Vista does come with a print screen utility called Snipping Tool…its really handy…but still, there are some screen shots you just couldn’t take with the tool. (just try taking a screen shot of the File menu…)

At first I thought I should get another screen shot utility to do the job (some of them can let you set a self timer), but surely…there should be a easier solution right?  Well…it turns out that Apple did map most of windows keys to the built-in keyboard on the MacBooks / MacBook Pros!  For example, the key combination for taking a screen shot is “fn + shift + F11“, if you just want the active window only, use “fn + shift + option (alt) + F11“!

If you want to know more about the keyboard mapping, you could check out the following links:
MacBook / MacBook Pro: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1220
Apple Keyboard (Ultra–thin USB) keyboard: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1216

Actually…these mappings can also be found in the Boot Camp’s help file…I should have read them before I turn to Google for help!

If you are like me who uses Leopard’s built-in dictionary very often, you probably wish / want to assign a keyboard shortcut to the “Look Up in Dictionary” service; by pressing key combination, you will be able to look up a word in dictionary instantly…instead of having to copy the word and paste it in the dictionary yourself. (you can also paste the word in Spotlight, or drag and drop the word onto the dictionary app icon in the dock if you have one…)  Although not all apps (apps = applications;  E.g. iTunes, Word, Photoshop etc.) support the “Look Up in Dictionary” service, its still quite useful if you use Preview to read PDF books / lecture notes; or use Safari as your web browser.  Well, it turns out that by default, Apple do have a default keyboard shortcut for the service, but the name wasn’t quite right….  Just in case you are lost…here is where you can find the “Look Up in Dictionary” service:

As you can see, there is no keyboard shortcut set for the service….but wait…lets have a look at the picture below:

If you look closely, you will see that instead of “Look Up in Dictionary“, they use “Look up in Dictionary” instead!  At the moment, I am using 10.5.3, and this tiny little “bug” is still not fixed…maybe in the previous builds (10.5, 10.5.1, 10.5.2) they’ve got it right…maybe its been like this ever since the release of Leopard…  But no matter what, we will fix this ourselves today :)  Don’t worry if you never “fix” anything in your Mac before…its really simple…trust me…just follow the steps below and it will only take a few minutes!

Step 1: Open up System Preferences; click on Keyboard & Mouse, click on Keyboard Shortcuts; remove the tick in front of “Look up in Dictionary“, and then click on the “+” button at the bottom of the window:

Step 2: You should see a small drop down window that looks like this:

In the Menu Title section, type in “Look Up in Dictionary“.  Do make sure that you get the case right, it has to be exactly the same as the one on the menu!
In the Keyboard Shortcut section, press a key combination that best suits you…I use Control + Command + A.  If you can’t think of any or afraid to mess up others keyboard shortcuts, you can always use the default one (Control + Command + D).  When are you ready, just press the Add button:

ONLY two steps…and you are done!  If you’ve followed the steps correctly, your keyboard shortcut should appear immediately:

It should appear in your apps too:

It would be interesting to see how many builds does it take for Apple to fix this bug

Interested in game design and want to show the world what you’ve got?

Check out the game design contest from Microsoft:

Microsoft XNA Game Studio Contest

It’s not he first time that I hear people saying:

If you install Windows (using Boot Camp) on your (Intel) Mac, it will make your Mac run really slow!

I always thought this is some kind of a joke because they (the two operating systems) are sitting on different partitions…so how can they interfere with one another? Well, it turns out that with / without installing Windows (using Boot Camp) on your (Intel) Mac DOES make a difference…at least it makes a difference on the Restart / Shut Down process. I accidentally discovered this when I decided to reinstall Windows on my iMac…so the first think I did was to delete the Boot Camp partition and give the computer a restart. I was quite surprised @ the speed of the Restart process! This also applies to the Shut Down process as well! At first I thought this is just my iMac’s problem, so I give my MacBook a try…but I can’t delete the Boot Camp partition…I need Windows for my work…so what can I do? Hmm…I could try to Eject my Boot Camp partition like how I eject my pen drive / external hard drives…but I’ve never tried that before…so let’s give it a try…and…it works! Finally compared the Restart time on my MacBook, and here is the result:

With Boot Camp partition: around 40 seconds -_-
Without Boot Camp partition: around 7 seconds!!!

This is certainly a very strange phenomenon…but before I find out the real reason behind this, I won’t point my fingers @ Apple / Microsoft (E.g. I’ve got NTFS 3G installed, the problem might come from that instead)…so for now, if you’ve installed Windows (using Boot Camp) on your Mac and you want a faster Restart / Shut Down process, you could just eject your Boot Camp partition before you Restart / Shut Down the Mac OS X. If you are not sure how to do it, just follow the step by step guide below:

If you’ve got Windows installed on your (Intel) Mac, you will notice that there are two volumes sitting on your desktop…one is for Mac; the other is for Windows. Here is a screen shot of my desktop, take note of the two volumes on the upper right corner. (the icons will look different on your Mac)

The top one is for Mac; the bottom one (Untitled) is for Windows.

Step 0: Select the Windows volume (the bottom one in my case):

Step 1: Move your mouse onto the Menu Bar, and click on File:

As you can see, you can actually eject the Windows volume the same way as you eject your pen drives / external hard drives.

Q. What if I accidentally selected my Mac volume instead? Will it shut my system down immediately?
A. Lets find out

Step 2: Select the Mac volume (the top one in my case):

Step 3: Move your mouse onto the Menu Bar, and click on File:

As you can see, you can’t possibility eject your Mac volume! So don’t worry, you won’t damage your computer if you’ve selected the wrong one

Step 4: There are two ways to eject a volume, one is by using the Menu Bar, the other is by using a keyboard shortcut (the way I preferred):

As you can see, Command + e will also let you eject your volume / pen drive / external hard drive; its much faster as well, because you don’t have to use to your mouse to go through the menu system! Don’t get scared by the amount of keyboard shortcuts offered by Mac OS X, if you learn just one / two shortcuts everyday, sooner or later, you will learn them all! Just don’t try to remember everything in one go!

Gmail is full of features…only recently I’ve started using Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts -_- The article below contains quite a lot of interesting tips and tricks on Gmail. If you are using Gmail as your primary email provider…you might want to checkout the article below

57 Habits of Highly Effective Gmail Users

Gmail has been praised by many as the best webmail option out there, and it is filled with loads of tools and options that make it easy to use, fast and accessible for just about anyone. Of course, with so many features, many people often fail to look beyond the surface of what Gmail can do even though they could be making their lives easier and their emails more versatile. Those who know how to use Gmail well have tapped into all the productivity it has to offer, and you can learn from their discoveries to make your Gmailing experience ever better. Here are some of the habits that Gmail users have employed to make sending, receiving and organizing their emails better and faster than before.

<click here to read more>

From the Microsoft NZ Student Blog

On May 16th, Ryan from Microsoft will be coming down to Dunedin and give us a short demo on some of the latest technologies from Microsoft…and Silverlight 2.0 will be the main focus! Please check out the links below if you want to know more about Silverlight:

Microsoft websites: http://silverlight.net/ && http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

First Look at Silverlight 2 - ScottGu’s Blog

Microsoft Silverlight - Wikipedia

Chaks showed me a really good article on job interview yesterday…if you are looking for a job right now / in the near future, you might want to checkout the article below

Things that never impress me

Being Late - just don’t do it

A Poor CV - you’d think that people would at least put the spell-checker on, or read over it and pick out the glaring grammatical errors. If I get a poor CV on my desk, you’ll be lucky to even get an interview and that’s regardless of how smart you are or what your experience is. In this industry an eye for detail is everything; and most good developers have it. A poor CV is a neon sign to your ambivalence and lack of attention to detail.

Click here to read the full article

Just saw this really funny video from YouTube…thought I might share it with everyone else

Just saw a very interesting post today from cnBeta: [图]鲍尔默选择MacBook Pro做演讲 (translation: Steve Ballmer chooses MacBook Pro for his presentation)

The photo seems really real to me

Hi Michael, Nice to meet your Team. Can you introduce Team Sustainable Systems?
We are Team Sustainable Systems, a team of youth innovators from Auckland University of Technology (AUT), with the vision to establish a platform for smart technologies that enable a sustainable environment, while empowering users to efficiently manage our eco-resources.

Click here to read the full story

Hi Lorenzo, Nice to meet your Team. Can you introduce Team WebStuffDone?
The WebStuffDone team consists of Brady “The Toolman” Thomas who is the Solutions Visionary and Chief Enthusiast; Myself, Lorenzo “Gifted” Green, I have taken on the role of Business/Marketing Director and Designer. Matt “Lover not” Hayter is the Communications Guru and Cheif Executive; Matt “King Kode” Thomas is the Code Monkey and Director of Operations. Brendon “Toast Master” Ford is our industry mentor who was been so inspiring and incredibly helpful throughout this project.

Click here to read the full story

10 of us went to Chrischurch for the weekend…we had a really good time there Here are the photos of the trip:

Trip to ChCh - Day 1 - Part 1 (Allan’s Camera, 40D)

Trip to ChCh - Day 1 - Part 2 (Allan’s Camera, 40D)

Trip to ChCh - Day 1 - Part 3 (My Camera)

Trip to ChCh - Day 2 - Part 1 (Allan’s Camera, 40D)

Trip to ChCh - Day 2 - Part 2 (Allan’s Camera, 40D)

Trip to ChCh - Day 2 - Part 3 (My Camera)

Trip to ChCh - Day 2 - Part 4 (My Camera)

Trip to ChCh - Day 3 - Part 1 (My Camera)

Hi Jed, nice to meet your Team. Can you introduce Team Waikato Rev A?
I’m Jed, team captain and web service / mobile developer, and a second year student. Next up is Paul our hardware engineer (third year), Sam the main application developer (second year), and Beverley the graphic designer (fourth year). We’re all BCMS students here at the University of Waikato. Bill Rogers is our academic mentor, and Hayley Smith is our industry mentor (a developer at Gallagher)

Click here to read the full story.