You will become who you think you are. If you think you’re weak, you are weak. If you think you’re strong, you are strong. If you think you’re poor, you are poor. If you think you’re prosperous, you are prosperous. If you think you’re intelligent, you are intelligent. If you think you’re successful, you are successful. “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” (Prov 23:7)So really, as much as possible, think positive thoughts about yourselves and others. “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” (Eph 4:29)

In other news, I have one invitation for Skitch beta left. Although it’s Mac only, watch what it can do: http://www.viddler.com/player/60c71ad/

Drop me an email for the last invite.

The latest draft in PDF format can be downloaded here.

Hope this will be useful for the future generations to come.

Apart from the smooth upgrade, the new features certainly are a great enhancement to productivity, without any impact on system stability nor performance. In fact, possibly psychologically, the operating system feels snappier and less prone to lags due to I/O blocking with its multi-threading improvements in various system components.

Live preview in the icons and quick look is indeed a rather impressive yet small enhancement. Quick look opens and closes at the speed of the tap of the spacebar, providing really quick and almost instant preview of any file you have selected. Certainly, Cover Flow can be used for that, but in my opinion, it takes up too much Finder space.

Time machine is another marvellous engineering. Although the ground concepts are nothing new, the tying up of the various system mechanisms, bundling it into a system level, easy to use, and highly automated backup application is brilliant. It simply trashes any backup mechanism I’ve tried. As Steve Jobs implied, the restore-backup interface, Time Machine, is both a visually appeasing interface and a revolutionary metaphor. Really, user-interface planners and designers should get all the kudos for such an intuitive interface.

Safari is now much more robust under heavy JavaScript and Flash Player loads. Memory usage too has slightly improved.

Although it is pointless mentioning 300 over new features to you as you can read them up from the Apple Mac OS X website, I find it important to highlight some important points worth noting before you upgrade to Leopard from Tiger.

Users of The Application Enhancer are highly recommended to upgrade to version 2.0.3 to prevent system freeze upon Leopard boot-up. Version 2.0.3 automatically disables itself when loaded in Leopard; a new updated compatibility release will arrive in a couple of days. However, do note the implication of having Application Enhancer disabled during this interim period.

Good news about InputManagers for Safari is that the components need to be owned by root and placed in the ‘/Library/InputManager/’ folder for it to function. I found Inquisitor to be working fine. Sogudi, unfortunately, isn’t.

Adobe has announced minor compatibility updates required for selected products; refer to AppleInsider article for more details.

Microsoft Office 2004 Mac functions normally, with no reported compatibility issues. Crossover Mac 6.2 works fine. Leopard requires Little Snitch version 2 beta; version 1 will not work and might freeze the OS.

In all, Leopard is an extremely worthy upgrade, bring greater speed and usability to its users, while being lean on memory.

As a side note, here’s an article on how to install Mac OS X from an external harddisk starting with a disk image file. You might find it profitable to ‘restore’ an Installation disk image onto your Time Machine backup drive so that you have your system cloned and a bootable installer image ready.

Edited: Note on Crossover Mac and Little Snitch.

MURPHY’S TECHNOLOGY LAWS:

Einstein’s Rule:
– Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Principle of Design Inertia
– Any change looks terrible at first.

Cahn’s Axiom
– When all else fails, read the instructions.

Clarke’s Third Law
– Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Belinda’s Law
– The chance of a computer crash is directly proportional to the importance of the document
that you are working on.

Holten’s Download Principle
– The likelihood of receiving an error message during download increases the closer
you come to finishing.

Putt’s Law:
– Technology is dominated by two types of people — those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.

I sit on her bed
He sits on my bed
I don’t know what to say
He looks so nervous
She looks hot
I hope he knows what hes doing
Tonight I get laid
Tonight I make love to him
I look in her eyes
I look in his eyes
I lean in for a kiss
I close my eyes
She presses her lips on mine
He’s kissing me
What do I do next?
I put my hand on his face
Should I touch her chest?
I want him to touch me
I put my hand on her chest
Wow thats good
Our kiss gets more hot
I feel a connection
Should i get on top of her?
I want it to be special
I’m glad I brought a condom
I break the kiss and lay back on the bed
She wants me
“Do you have a condom?”
Oh yeah “yes I do”
“Lets do it”
I crawl on top of her
I take off my shirt
Holy shit she took off her shirt
“Take yours off”
Wow this is really happening
I take off my skirt
Oh my god shes half naked
Damn I hope this doesn’t hurt
I take off my pants and boxers
There goes my bra and thong
Holy shit I’m hard
Holy shit he’s hard
“Are you sure?”
“Hell yes” I’m naked aren’t I?
I put the condom on
This is going way too fast
“Ready?”
I nod
I crawl on top of her
I spread my legs
I kiss her
Wow this is it
I enter her
Fuck that hurts
“You ok?”
“mmhmm” obviously not!
Damn this is alot better then doing it myself
Um ow jackass
She looks like shes in pain
He looks nervous again
“Wanna continue”
“Yes” Oh god get this over with

It’ll be funny to have a commentary on the piece above.

In other news, I found this cool projection application, ProPresenter. It can do lots of stuff that I’d been looking for for a long time.

The problem I see is that those crying students have difficulty thinking on their feet or to reinterpret slightly (only slightly) unorthodox questions. Formula doesn’t always work. Brute-force is not possible without a calculator, so what do you do? Think, obviously!

The first question is certainly a no-brainer. Simple model question which shouldn’t need more explanation than a line: 3 units = 156 – 72, leading to the final answer, 44 kg.

The second question is still a simple model question, just differently worded. It shouldn’t even need a line but for the sake of solving this, 7 units – 6 units = 112 chairs. 14 units = 112 ⨉ 14 = 1568 chairs.

The third question is equally simple. It just required thinking! I solved it by finding the initial volume of tank A. Since the breadths of the tanks are identical, why not just push them together and assume them to be one tank? So, the height can be derived by dividing the volume by the area [(50 cm + 70 cm) ⨉ 40 cm]. Cancel things off and you get easy to manage small numbers, with 25 cm as the height.

And, I have no comments for the retired teacher.

Still, to the students who ended up crying, please learn to take failures in stride.

What God Has Promised

God has not promised:-
Skies always blue,
Flower-strewn pathways
All our lives thro’;
God has not promised
Sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow,
Peace without pain.

God has not promised:-
We shall not know
Toil and temptation,
Trouble and woe;
He has not told us
We shall not bear
Many a burden,
Many a care.

But God has promised:-
Strength for the day,
Rest for the laborer,
Light for the way,
Grace for the trials,
Help from above,
Unfailing sympathy,
Undying love.

Really thought provoking. I’ll write something about this soon.