MacBook1,1 OS X Leopard 10.5.5 slow WiFi

Thanks to this post http://blog.davenicoll.com/2008/12/04/fixed-slow-wifi-on-mac-os-x-1055/, I can now fix my slow WiFi problem in my MacBook (version 1,1--the very first intel MacBook). The problem is so annoying. Sometimes, even if I got maximum signal strength, it seemed to me that I have no WiFi connection at all (I could not even reach my WiFi configuration page in my Router).

Here's a solution I found. It is working well :)

1. Shutdown.

2. Start your MacBook and hold the "shift" key. This will result in "Safe Mode" boot in Leopard.

3. Once booted, login with your username/password.

4. Reboot, and done :)

White balance (or grey balance) correction in iPhoto 6

Point-and-click white balance correction is one of the great features in Aperture and I really want it in iPhoto. However, I did not buy Apple Aperture (whether 1 or 2) as it costs me $199 to do so.

Lucky me, today I found a blog entry at menyheard.net about white balance in iPhoto 6. He (or she) found this function accenditally. It is so simple: just hold command key while you are eiditing a photo and click any point you want to make it white. Actually, after I read the help in iPhoto 6, this function (command + click any point in the editing photo) is called "grey balance". The point that we click will be determined as "grey" (my guess is 18% grey as being used in many DSLR exposure evaluation) and then the program will adjust the picture to match your evaluation point automatically.

And that is it :)

iPhoto 6 export & its color profile problem

Whoever using iPhoto 6 in OS X may have the same problem as mine: exported pictures from iPhoto look pale in the web browser, even they're so vivid in iPhoto or Preview.

This kind of problem upset me for a while -\/-

After google around, I found that iPhoto will only export pictures with Adobe RGB profiles. Even your original images are sRGB or whatever, iPhoto (v.6) will convert and change the color profile of the images (and it will look almost exactly the same--I can't find the difference, actually). And the Adobe RGB profile is the problem for most of the web browsers.

Most web browsers, like Fire Fox and IE, image display will ignore the image's color profile, and assume that the image profile is sRGB or Generic RGB. Because of this misinterpretation of color information in the images, they'll look pale, comparing to the original images.

Holy Crap!!!

However, by googling around (again), I'd found out that an application called "ColorSync Utility" can help you out. This program can convert and change image color profile.

Woo Hoo. The problem is solved.

But (I hate this word "but"), manually changing images' profile one by one is not a good idea (tedious, kind of). New problem, again.

Fortunately, Apple's Automator has ColorSync actions :)
, and we can use this mechanism to help us automatically batch converting the image profiles.

Here's how.

I. Open the Automator application (Applications/Automator)
II. Drag these action from the left panel to the right panel (in the exact order)

1. Get Selected Finder Items
   
2. Copy Finder Items
3. Get Folder Contents
4. Apply ColorSync profile to Images

The objective of this workflow is to convert the iPhoto exported images' profile to sRGB. Then, I decided to use this work flow as a Finder plugin. The first action is to get the finder items, could be files or folders. The second action, copy finder items, is to work safely ('coz I don't want to modify the exported image directly--just in case something happened. I don't want to re-export everything again). The third one is to repeatedly obtain the content of the folders, or multiple files, one-by-one. If you work with one file, this step won't hurt you though. Finally, apply ColorSync profile to the output file from previous step.

And we're done :) The copied images in the step 2 will have sRGB profile (or other profile, depending on you to assign it).

The step 2 and step 4 has an option named "Show Action When Run". If the option was enable, you'll be able to choose the destination location and the image profile respectively.

Hope this would help :)

My free software list

Folks,

I was familiar using illegal program (who wasn't?), and never feel guilty.

(In my opinion, it is quite ridiculous to make a high-school term report with 10,000 THB Microsoft Office)

But then I graduate in computer science, and found that the real software development need a lot of efforts, man works, etc. I kind of guilty a little bit to use those illegal software in any of my productions. However, I did still feel OK to use piracy software for educational purposes. For example, using illegal Microsoft Words or Windows to make some silly term report.

But when you do something serious, like publishing a paper, develop a commercial web site, etc., piracy couldn't be an option as you can be easily caught for using illegal software in profitable productions. (Even you didn't get caught, it's such a cheating to produce profitable works with illegal softwares).

Most commercial softwares always come with high prices. As a reference, Microsoft was selling Windows XP Professional Edition at $299 (see link). Just for you information, Windows Vista Ultimate Edition was amazingly sold at $259.95 (see link).

OS alone could cost us so expensive T_T. Obviously, it would be more expensive when Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, Macromedia Dreamweaver, etc., were included.

The way out for the low software budget people like me is obviously "the free software".

NOTE: In this article, a free software is a software that can be commercially used for free. 

Most of the major free software projects have ports to Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. You might use one of them as your OS. Linux could cost $0. Following by Mac OS X (latest version - Leopard), it cost only $129. As mentioned earlier, Windows Vista cost $259.95.

If you want the lowest cost, I would potentially suggest Linux (I prefer Fedora Core 7).

But if you are considering between Mac and Windows, I would strongly encourage Mac OS X. This is because it is Unix-based OS, i.e. closer to Linux than Windows is. Moreover, after I had experiences on both OS, I love OS X more and unbelievably it cost me less (supposed you use all legal softwares).

OK, no more ads for Mac (they should give me some credit :p). Back to the topic, free software.

This is a list of free software I currently used on my Mac OS X (Tiger).

1. Adium (Mac only) : the instant messaging app implemented a bunch of protocols, including MSN, AOL, Google, etc. (see www.adiumx.com)

2.  Azureus : The Java-based bit-torrent client (azureus.sourceforge.net)

3. Eclipse : The Java IDE (can also be applied to many languages with its extension), see www.eclipse.org

4. Flip4Mac (Mac only) : The WMV quick time component (to decode WMV media file), see www.flip4mac.com

5. FreeMind : The Java-based mind-map software (freemind.sourceforge.net)

6. Gimp : The GNU image processing program (photoshop-like), see www.gimp.org

7. Google SketchUp : The 3-D model sketch tool from Google, see sketchup.google.com

8. Inkscape : The vector image editor (an Illustrator substitution), see www.inkscape.org

9. Journler (OS X only) : I took notes with this program. It can also sync with some blogs, see journler.com

10. LiquidCD (OS X only) : The CD/DVD burner, see maconnect.ch

11. LyX : The WYSIWYM (What you see is what you mean) word processor. We can say LyX is a easier and more user-friendly version of TeX -- the typesetting system created by Donald Knuth. I now use this software to write my term report. It's ability to manage cross-reference, citation and style is great. Comparing to Microsoft Word, this guy might not be as user-friendly as MS Word, but its cross-reference managing capability is way more efficient than that in MS Word. For more info, see www.lyx.org

12. OpenOffice (or NeoOffice for an OS X port) : The office suite program. I substitute this guy for MS Office. ref: www.openoffice.org

13. Skim (OS X only) : The document reader with taking notes (also including highlights, underline, etc.) capability. See skim-app.sourceforge.net

14. VLC : The all-in-one media player. This program support almost all media files. See www.videolan.org for more info.

Some of this guys might require X window system. For OS X, the X11 can be found on the installation CD, or for the most updated, please search in www.apple.com/downloads. For MS Windows, please visit x.cygwin.com for the instruction to setup a Cygwin/X (a port of X window system for MS Windows).

Wish you all have fun with the free software I listed here :)

Regards,

Fug U Man.

Opening Fug's Tech blog

Hi y'all, 

Since I didn't wanna messed my fuggy life stories in my main blog, I decided to open a new one about my technical stuffs I wanna share (mainly on Linux).

Hope y'all be enjoyed with my fun technical stuffs :)

Regards,

Fug U Man