Yes, again

Yes, I just can’t let this go. Sorry.

I installed the new Front Row today. The old one just doesn’t play well with Leopard (every once in a while it goes into ‘A problem has occurred’ mode and I have to manually kill its process) and from the very first moments I wanted the old version back.

Let’s say I’m willing to accept the whole music stopping (x2) thing. OK. The new one does have better stuff in it (descriptions for the items, scrolling titles and other small details like these*). But there are some small details* that I find annoying (yes, more details*).

Nitpicking of tiny details* that probably no one else notices or is bothered about starts here:

- if the screensaver activates while FR is on, when you press any key on the remote to deactivate it (the screensaver), the desktop is shown for a brief period, and then the FR interface appears – UGH

- when you sleep the computer from the remote (which I often do) while FR is on (which it often is), the little remote with Zs does not appear (somehow FR is on the topmost layer of the interface), and you can’t really tell if the computer acknowledged your request to catch some ZsYes. 

Yes, I’m weird this way. One day I’ll learn to live with it and let this go. But this day is not the one.

*I guess you noticed that I’m all about the details baby. 

Change of pace

Change of country. Out from the Eastern Europe and directly to France. No, not in Paris, not even in a town starting with a P. It starts with a G if you must ask. Broken free from the shackles of employment and into the warm embracing arms of unemployment. I guess you could call this a life changing event.

I guess I could play it heroic and say that I’m all cool and happy and that’s it. But the fact of the matter is that that is not it. I’m terrified. A nice warm terrific feeling deep inside me. Broken loose from the safety of family and friends. Terrific is not terrifying I hear you say? That’s because I can’t call it terrifying in the true sense of the word. It’s… strange, scary and amazing all rolled into one.

It’s not the first time that I left my home country. But this is the first time I bought a one way ticket. Homesickness will go away in time. What I’m not so sure about is missing the people I broke loose from.

About the change of pace thing: since I’m unemployed and not looking (yet), I’m pursuing my dream (no, it’s not writing, although I do enjoy it). It’s, dare I say, art. I have several problems with the definition of art in our times, but that’s something for another post. So, here I am, at the start of my ‘European adventure,’ which includes but is not limited to: Germany, UK, Spain, Holland (or Netherlands as some of you may be familiar with), and which has the HQ in G-town.

Wish me luck.

All’s well when updates well

Bit the bullet today and installed the much feared Graphics Update 1.0 for Leopard. In case you don’t know about this update, it is responsible for symptoms ranging from blue screens right from the boot (time to break out the Leopard Install DVDs baby) to erratic display behavior and WindowServer lockups (time to break out the Time Machine drive and revert baby).

Your reputation precedes you Graphics Update, I muttered clicking on the checkbox to have it installed. Fortunately it installed fine, and WindowServer doesn’t seem to act up.Now, I usually don’t install problematic updates. However, I did my homework and found the following facts on various forums: the update affects mostly the Macs with the Intel “display adapter” GMA and ATI cards. nVidia doesn’t seem to have any issues. Being an nVidia owner (not that it was a choice, the MacBook Pro came with it), I thought I have a pretty good chance to make it with my Leopard Install DVDs still in the sleeves by the end of the day.

Regardless of the update’s bad rap with GMA and ATI users, it seems to have a slight effect on the interface snappiness and it’s right there with Tiger now (not that it was sluggish before, but I felt it was a bit behind Tiger). Actually, I think it’s better than Tiger now. And the Internets have it that WoW performance is dramatically increased (the WoW is NoW! tee hee*). I don’t play that WoW thing, so can’t vouch for it. I guess it has something to do with OpenGL being optimized. Or something. 

*sorry, couldn’t help myself, must be that Graphics Update high