Its been two weeks now since I have been using OS X and I find it an extremely stable and interactive operating system to use.

One of my gripes while using it was that in Finder window, there was no displaying of the path from the root to the current folder or file, something I find useful sometimes.

Turns out, you have to write the following command in Terminal to activate the display of the path in the top of the Finder window:

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

Press return after typing the above line, hold down the ‘option’ key and right click on the Finder in Dock and click relaunch. To undo the change just replace the YES with NO in the above line and do the whole procedure again.

If a problem can be divided into separate and unrelated parts , those parts can be run separately. That way, The problem is solved faster than if each part is run sequentially from the computer. This approach is known as parallel processing (doing more than one task in parallel to another). Now multi-core processors in a computer can perform this processing very easily.

But true parallel processing is very difficult to achieve. Many tasks have some kind of relationship with one another and can not be easily separated. Object oriented programming helps here because processing for a single object can be separated out from that for the others.

I found this very interesting paper written by ‘Boleslaw K Szymanski and Charles D Norton‘ titled Object Oriented Programming in Parallel Scientific Computing - An Overview of the Special Issue which you can read here. It really explains the topic a lot in detail.

X11 for Mac OS X is an implementation of the X Window System that makes it possible to run X11-based applications in Mac OS X, for eg. Open Office or GIMP. If you are not using any of such applications in your Mac then it’s better to uninstall X11 from your Leopard installation so as to save up on the disk space. If ever you feel like installing it again then you can use your Leopard DVD to do so.

But the standard (move to trash) uninstall won’t work here, so we have to uninstall it completely using the terminal in OS X.

Write or copy & paste the following command in your terminal:

sudo rm -rf /Applications/Utilities/X11.app /private/etc/X11 /usr/X11R6 /usr/bin/open-x11 /usr/lib/X11 /Library/Receipts/X11User.pkg

That is one single line. Be very careful as a small typo can cause problems and you may have to reinstall OS X. Therefore do this at your own risk.

This is in remembrance of Michael Crichton (October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008), one of the most intelligent authors I have ever read.

Image Credit: Time magazine

This guide is for keeping a consistency and code manageability in the open source projects developed by Google using C++.  As explained in the guide:

C++ is the main development language used by many of Google’s open-source projects. As every C++ programmer knows, the language has many powerful features, but this power brings with it complexity, which in turn can make code more bug-prone and harder to read and maintain.

The goal of this guide is to manage this complexity by describing in detail the dos and don’ts of writing C++ code. These rules exist to keep the code base manageable while still allowing coders to use C++ language features productively.

This guide also serves the purpose of making the beginners understand the language’s conventions. Read the full guide here.

MakeUseOf.com is a site which suggests some some cool applications and software that you can make use of. But currently, it has got it’s domain name taken control of by a bad guy! This is what you see upon visiting the site.

The hacker  has transferred the domain’s ownership from the site’s registrar GoDaddy to another registrar and now is demanding USD 2000 from the site’s admin as a ransom!

You can read the full details and updates here at http://makeuseof-temporary.blogspot.com/ which has been put up by the site’s authorities until things get back to normal.

Update: The site is back on. Visit it here.

Chandrayaan-1 took this photo of Earth from Earth orbit on October 29, 2008 at 12:30 PM IST. Near the center of the disk is the northwestern coast of Australia; the Sun glints off the Indian Ocean adjacent to that coast.

It’s breathtakingly beautiful!

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is a 2004 movie starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. This movie really touched me and I think that Winslet and Carrey deliver their best performances till date in it. The following review by Rotten Tomatoes best explains this movie:

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is an unconventional romance told in the abstract, inventive, and comedic storytelling style of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Like his scripts for ADAPTATION and BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, this plot works off of a relatively complex idea that is more easily explained through the language of film than through words. In its most basic description, Joel (Jim Carrey) is undergoing a medical procedure to erase the memory of his ex-girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet). However, while he is unconscious and the procedure is underway, he takes a journey through his mind, reliving moments with Clementine for fear of losing her forever. Read the rest of this entry »

This video is really funny and it also sends a message. As the guys posting this video on YouTube describe it:

Its been eight long years since the boys said wassup to each other. Even with the effects of a down economy and imminent change in the White House, the boys are still able to come together and stay true to what really matters.

So True!

It’s been quite some time that I have been wishing to buy a MacBook Pro, and I eagerly waited for the October 14 refresh of Apple’s top of the line notebooks.  As expected, the refresh happened on the scheduled date and Mr. Jobs, this time (for a change) along with few of his colleagues wowed us all once again with his expert presentation skills, launching a whole new product redesign.

So if everything went right then what’s up with this freaking title?

Actually even though I think that the new MacBook Pros are designed really well, there is not one but two really big problems.

• Super glossy screen
• Button-less trackpad

I had a chance to handle the new MacBook Pro and seriously I couldn’t deal with glare at all. I wear glasses and that much glare really gave me a headache after a long time in front of the screen. I already use a HP dv2519 which is really glossy, but Read the rest of this entry »