Lucacri’s Homepage

I’m back, I almost forgot about my blog!

I would like to tell you more about the latest upgrade I’ve done to my MacBook Pro 17″ (Early 2008 version, or MacBookPro 3,1 as in System Profiler).
After a lot of research, I found the best Solid State Disk (SSD) for price/performance. The little beast is a OCZ Vertex 120Gb.

First, I wanted to keep also my internal 7200 rpm 200Gb hard disk to keep all the pictures, songs and movies always with me. To achieve my goal, I also had to buy a “container” for it and I found the perfect one: MCE OptiBay (with also the USB enclosure for the SuperDrive).

In total I spent less than 600 USD but allow me to say that this is the biggest upgrade I had on a computer/Mac in the last 5 years at least!

You don’t believe me? Just to state some nice number, the boot time for Leopard 10.5.6 with my usual programs started at boot went down from a boring 2 minutes and 30 secs to a staggering 38 seconds.
I repeat, 38 SECONDS!

But that’s not all, now every application starts in less than a “bounce” on the dock! For the rest, even when all the applications are open, the overall performance is just.. better! The system is always responsive and snappy!

Some tips:

• In the non unibody MBP, install the SSD instead of the included HDD and then remove the SuperDrive in favor of the HDD. The reason is simple: the HDD of the laptop is connected to a SATA cable while the SuperDrive just to a slower ATA.
• Don’t overload the SSD with useless data (remember, the price per GB is way higher on the SSD and wasting it for mp3s you’ll never listen to is not that smart)
• If you can, update the firmware of the SSD (OCZ forums are really helpful)

I leave you with some picts of the “surgical operation”

Iphone + firmware 2.0 + wordpress app = incredible

There are plenty hidden emoticons in Skype that actually are really funny
Check them out:

Another AppleScript! This time is for copying the lyrics of the current playing song in iTunes to a file. I use this with Proxy, a useful program that can bind actions to keys and show result/doing something with apps/etc. I’ve configured it to display a screen box with the lyric of the song (readed from the file created by this script) just by pressing Control+2

A screenshot:

The script:
on write_to_file(this_data, target_file, append_data)
try
set the target_file to the target_file as text
set the open_target_file to ¬
open for access file target_file with write permission
if append_data is false then ¬
set eof of the open_target_file to 0
write this_data to the open_target_file starting at eof
close access the open_target_file
return true
on error
try
close access file target_file
end try
return false
end try
end write_to_file
tell application “iTunes”
copy (get name of current track) to trackName
copy (get artist of current track) to trackArtist
copy (get lyrics of current track) to tracklyric
end tell

set this_story to trackName & ” – ” & trackArtist & return & tracklyric
set this_file to (((path to desktop folder) as text) & “MyLir”)
my write_to_file(this_story, this_file, false)

Let’s start a new section of my website! In those days I’m looking at the AppleScript and I found that it’s really powerful and integrated in OSX!!

This script I made is for automatically open iSync, syncronize all the devices and close it, notifying the result in a Growl box!
I’m using it with cron twice a day, so I don’t have to remind to sync…
Enjoy it!

tell application “iSync”
synchronize
repeat
delay 5
if syncing is true then exit repeat
end repeat
repeat
delay 5
if sync status = 2 then exit repeat
end repeat
delay 1
set lastdate to last sync
quit
end tell

tell application “GrowlHelperApp”
– Make a list of all the notification types
– that this script will ever send:
set the allNotificationsList to ¬
{“Finito”}

– Make a list of the notifications
– that will be enabled by default.
– Those not enabled by default can be enabled later
– in the ‘Applications’ tab of the growl prefpane.
set the enabledNotificationsList to ¬
{“Finito”}

– Register our script with growl.
– You can optionally (as here) set a default icon
– for this script’s notifications.
register as application ¬
“MySyncNow” all notifications allNotificationsList ¬
default notifications enabledNotificationsList ¬
icon of application “Script Editor”

– Send a Notification…
notify with name ¬
“Finish” title ¬
“Sync N80 Ended” sticky yes description ¬
“Sync ended @ ” & lastdate application name “MySyncNow”
end tell