paul habeeb. blog.

Now that I’ve had my MacBook Pro for more than a day, I have decided to write up a post on all of the programs I have found to be extremely useful to my day to day activities, along with some that I think are just really cool.

The program I would say that I use the most is Firefox 2.0b1. When I was still on my PC I was using Firefox 2.0a3, so this is a great improvement to what I had been using. I do not really have much to say about it other than it does its job perfectly. There are a few random crashes and whatnot, but I could never switch to Camino or Shiira because I am too attached to my plugins.

My second most used program, and a very close second it is, has to be Adium. On my PC I never used the standard AIM client, but I used the Microsoft-manufactured MSN client. I could have used gaim for both AIM and MSN, but I chose to use MSN Live Messenger so I could use features like shared backgrounds and video conferencing. Now that I cannot use those features on any of the Mac-based MSN clients, I decided to just use Adium for both, and I must say I love it. It is much more full-featured that gaim, despite the fact it lacks some basic features for MSN. There are so many extensions available to use with it, and everything about the display of the buddy list and messages is fully customizable. It is probably the best messenging client available for the Mac.

Aside from Firefox and Adium, I don’t use very many programs constantly, so now I will just list them in the order I can think of them.

NewsFire is a great RSS aggregator. Not much else to say other than it costs money, and I didn’t like that. The features are excellent though. Top-notch program.

GROWL! Having those pop ups whenever a new track is played, or when I get a new email, or when a new news item is found in NewsFire, or a new buddy logs on or off is amazing. I really wish there was a comparable program for Windows XP. I highly recommend this for everyone who uses OS X.

Transmission is a great BitTorrent client. It’s not as awesome as uTorrent, but it gets the job done.

Delicious Library is probably the coolest program I have ever seen. You can scan the UPC’s of all of your CDs, DVDs, books, and video games. You can add contacts so that you can check out your belongings to your friends and keep track of who has what. For $40 it’s kind of a rip-off, but it’s just so cool that I had to buy it.

So far, that is all I can think of, but if I remember any more cool programs, I will make sure to add them.

Since this past April, friends had been recommending that I see Le Fabuleux destin d’Amelie Poulain, commonly known as Amelie. I had blown off most of my chances to see it until this week when, while at Blockbuster, I decided to sit down and give it a chance.

The movie begins with a voice-over done by the narrator, and in it we are exposed to the main character of the movie: Amelie. A brief background of her life is given, presenting us with her emotional basis for the movie. We find that the movie is set in Paris, France, and that Amelie is an only child. Her mother died when she was young, and now that she is older, she leads life independently and in an introverted fashion. The story takes off from there, and as I do not want to ruin any of the plot, I will cease from revealing any more of it. It is mostly taken from true stories that Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director and writer of the film, either experienced or was told about. This gives the plot a very realistic sense to it, and makes it excel.

Visually the movie is stunning, and deserves every cinematography award it either won or was nominated for. This is the type of movie that makes me love movies and love creating them myself. The colours in it are outstanding; the colour-correction done in post was well worth every penny that was payed. Each shot is beautiful and different. They are extremely well thought out and executed. I can only wish to make a movie with cinematography such as Amelie.

To be honest, I did not pay much attention to the soundtrack. The only thing I remember about it is that it sounded very French. This is neither a good nor a bad thing - merely an observation. In subsequent viewins, I will make sure to listen for it.

The acting is right on. Audrey Tautou does a perfect job in her role, and I will definitely be seeing the other movie I know she is in, Un long dimanche de fian�ailles. Mathieu Kassovitz and Serge Merlin give other notable performances.

All in all, I must say that Amelie is the best movie I have seen in a good long time. I highly recommend it to everyone, no matter your taste in film, as it is just that good.

Today I got two new toys: a MacBook Pro and a Samsung A990. Okay, the MBP really is a replacement for the one I had last week, but it is still new and I had chills when I opened the box again. The A990 is what I really want to focus on in this post.

I have had my eye on the A990 for a good while - since May at least. It is a cameraphone/mp3 player on Verizon Wireless, probably their best phone. The biggest draw the phone has is its 3.2 megapixel camera. Yes, you read that correctly - 3.2 MEGAPIXELS. In a cameraphone. Seeing as I am going to college this fall and will not have convenient access to all of my parents things, and since I was going to get a new phone soon anyway, I decided the A990 would be a worthwhile investment, and is it ever.

I have only had the phone for five hours or so, but I have liked every moment with it. Well, all except the one when I realized I cannot bluetooth songs from my MBP to it. A separate cable is required for that, and probably a PC. I can live with that if it means I can have free ringtones from quality bands.

I know this was short and choppy, but I did not feel like spending time on the entry. Here is a sample shot from the camera:

I think that when you get to know someone, there are three levels of them to get to know.

the first is everything they like. all their favourite movies, music, books, etc. their “favs”. these can change at any moment.

the second is a bit deeper. these things slowly change over time. one must really know the person to find these out and see them change.

the third level contains the things that never change. they are the opinions and lifestyle of the person. They are what the person truly is, and one must know another person a long time to find them out.

Lately I have taken to locking myself in my room with my guitar and not coming out until I have created some sort of music, no matter how good or bad it be. I have been recording it all on my small digital recorder, so hopefully at some point I’ll be able to put them on the computer and re-record something real out with them. I need to start working on lyrics to go along with the music, but that is not as fun for me seeing as it takes more than just sitting down with my guitar and playing.

I have also been working on playing the piano a bit more. I can read music a small amount better, but I still do not really know what I am doing. I need to memorize where the notes go on the bars and things like that. I need to learn the technical words for everything, too. I’ll get better eventually. Right now I can stick to playing Existentialism on Prom Night and The Scientist.

Today I demoed out three of my songs. One I wrote a long time ago, one was written a few months ago, and the other was written last week. They all turned out pretty well seeing as I did all of the work in about an hour and a half.

As of late, I have been wanting to get back into writing songs, but I just haven’t spent the time to do it. I write other things, but not lyrics. It just takes a bit more thinking to write lyrics, and since I usually do all of my writing at 2 am by flash light, many times I do not feel like putting the required thought into it. Right now is one of those times - I do not really feel like putting thought into this blog entry. However, it is not 2 am, and I am not working by flash light.

Back to the demos: I was hoping that they would turn out a bit indie, but I think the lyrics really killed any chance for that. I do not listen to much indie, or maybe I just do not know what it is. Anyway, maybe I’ll look into it and see what turns up. I should not be aiming for a genre, because nowadays genres are immensely ambiguous, so even if I achieved the sound I thought was indie, someone else could come along and say, “Oh, no - you aren’t indie!” and they would be perfectly correct. If this is a good thing, I do not know.

Last Saturday I ordered a MacBook Pro from Apple, and it came today! I went for the least expensive model, because I didn’t want a 17″ laptop, and since I upgraded my model, it would have been $400 more for just a better graphics card and 160 more megahertz.

Here are the details on it:

• 2.0 gHz Intel Core Duo
• 100 GB 7200 RPM hard drive
• 128 MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1600
• 1 GB RAM
• SuperDrive (DVD Burner)

So far I have the OS X equivalents of all of my Windows programs, and I am up and running quite happily. I think I am converted! Now to work on my family…

EDIT: It looks as if I will be having to send the laptop back for a replacement. The SuperDrive doesn’t seem to be recognized by the operating system. When I put in a disc you can hear it spinning, but it is not mounted on the desktop. Also, in System Profiler no DVD drive is shown (as seen below). I called up Apple support and they said that I could either send it in to be fixed or send in for a replacement. If I sent in for the fix, then even if they could not fix it, I would be ineligible for a replacement. I went with the replacement, as that seemed to be the best way for me to get a working MacBook Pro in about four business days.

Yesterday I bought The Format’s new cd Dog Problems. It reminds me of a circus. The entire disc sounds like it should be played while people jump from trapezes, lions are tamed, and tightropes are walked. This is not a bad thing, either. Dog Problems is probably my favourite cd of the entire year. I highly recommend that everyone go out and purchase it now.

Even if your company has a no-cell-phones policy in the workplace, your boss probably hasn’t resorted to the tactics of one California judge.

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Had some fun setting off fireworks last night.