You may want to read part one of the article here.

It’s been a little more than 24 hours since the incident, and quite a bit has happened:

I found the car, funny enough it was parked only a few cars away today, I waited for about ten minutes, and then saw a guy coming up with keys beginning to open the door. He was sweaty, and on the wrestling team, but I digress.

The car itself was a red Toyota Supra, but it was pretty old, I’d say a ‘95 or so. The scratch marks on his car were so minor I was a little angry because it did so much damage on mine.

I approached him and told him about what happened, and he was just standing there shocked and said that he didn’t even notice that he hit my car. I showed him his car’s front bumper and the scratch marks on there, I then showed him the damage on my car and he said he was terribly sorry.

He looked sincere, like he really didn’t know that he hit my car, but he gave me his name and phone number and I told him that I’d contact him with an estimate on repairing the damage.

I pity him, having to pay for the repair when it can cost a lot since it might have to be repainted. But then again, it is fully his fault.

So now I have to go to an auto repair shop and get an estimate on the repair job.

I’ll give the guy props, he didn’t try to deny it or anything.

Stay tuned, closure is near.

As if getting back into school-mode wasn’t hard enough, I also had the honor of having my car get scratched going home from school! Awesome, yes?

I’m getting ready to pull into the street, waiting for the green light when someone was coming out of the parking lot, getting really close to my car. I was just looking at my rear-view mirror and he was definitely really close. I feel a REALLY light tap, I was just curious as to what it was, but the light was already green so I just went.

Now, I took a photo of my side-view mirror to get a good picture of the car, and this is more than enough to find who did it:

And luckily one of my friends was right there to witness the whole thing. So what’s going to happen? I’m going to find the car, find out who’s car it is, and take action.

I know it’s partially my fault for not noticing that the car hit me, but I was just so tired after waking up at five in the morning for seven classes that I couldn’t tell, but I will find who it is.

What a great first day of school.

Here are the photos of the damage:

The (high quality version of) Ayala Marching Percussion Ensemble (PSW) performing their show entitled “Stuck” @ SCPA Championships 4/12/08.

Click here to download this video (Right-Click -> Save Target As.)

Awesome, an advertisement for Macs disguised as a news article (http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tech/drmac/5937754.html?sr=hotnews).

I’m bored, so I’m going to more or less nit-pick every one of these points.

1. Issues are the last things a kid needs at college and Macs have fewer issues with viruses, malware, and icky stuff like that.

Because you know your kid always clicks those “YOU WON A FREE IPOD NANO” ads.

2. Most Macs sold today have a built-in video camera and iChat software. So it’s easy to communicate by video, audio, or even plain old text chat. Of course this assumes that you have a Mac of relatively recent vintage.

Uh, most PCs sold today have a built-in video camera and chatting software. So it’s easy to communicate by video, audio, or even plain old text chat with people use iChat too. Of course this assumes you know how to use a computer.

3. Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) includes easy-as-pie remote screen sharing that lets you see and control your student’s Mac from anywhere in the world. So, if your kid calls you up, frantic because Microsoft Word has disappeared from the Dock, you can take over the screen and fix it in just a few seconds.

Actually, screen sharing is really easy-as-pie, but if you’re kid gets frantic because Microsoft Word has disappeared from the Dock then there may be something mentally wrong with him/her.

4. Every Mac comes with fast 802.11n Wi-Fi built-in so your student can join most WiFi networks in the library, dorm, Starbucks or wherever — with just one click.

Nope, not until the Core 2 Duo processor was shipped on Macs was Wireless-N included. And since that date every PC laptop has been released with N as well. And it requires 2-3 clicks, douche.

5. A Mac is the only computer that can run both Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows; a Dell, HP, Sony, Lenovo or other PC just can’t do that.

WRONG! OS X86 project buddy

6. Every Mac sold today can run the latest version of Microsoft Office and run it quite nicely, I might add.

Because if it didn’t, then we’d all be stuck with an older version that isn’t different from the latest, at all, I might add.

7. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student Edition (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage) is just $119.99 at www.Amazon.com.

YEAH? WELL I CAN GET IT FOR FREE. Suck it.

8. College students (and faculty and staff members) receive free iPod touches or iPod nanos if they purchase new Macs before Sept. 15. How could you not love a free iPod?

I’ll admit it is a sweet deal.

9. College students (and faculty and staff members) can save on any Mac, selected software and accessories via the Apple Education Discount available at Apple-authorized campus stores and the Apple Online Store for Education.

You’ll need the education discount, because most PCs with equivalent hardware is half the price anyways.

10. Excellent free software for producing masterful movies (iMovie), dazzling DVDs (iDVD), awesome audio (GarageBand), and wonderful Web sites (iWeb), and for managing digital audio, video (iTunes) and photos (iPhoto).

Now tell me, what’s wrong with Windows Movie Maker?

11. Free personal shopping assistance is available at all Apple Stores. I’ve shopped in a lot of computer stores over the years and Apple Stores definitely have the most honest and knowledgeable staffs.

Wrong. A lot of staffs I’ve talked to have no idea what they’re talking about and rely on their superiors for information.

12. Because Macs are cool. You wouldn’t want other students making fun of your kid, would you?

Yeah, because you know, having the same laptop as 1000 other students on campus is cool now.*

I’m sorry Dr. Mac, you suck.

I’ve also taken a break in blogging, but now I feel even more motivated to get back into it, so here we go:

I occasionally surf the MacRumors forums to help those in need, but it makes me want to stick forks in my eyes when I see people asking questions like these:

Really? Honestly? Seriously?

You’re basically telling me that you spent two thousand dollars (possibly more) on a laptop that you don’t even know has a built-in microphone?

I mean, it’s not even in the fine details, it’s a huge freaking icon on the MacBook Pro BOX!

For some reason I just wanted to reply ‘No.’ but some people have already seemed to help him out.

I know it’s stupid to complain about how people spend lots of money on whatever they want, because of course, it’s their choice and money, but when you spend that much money, don’t you think you’d check yourself if it had a built-in microphone? Good grief.

Now someone asked a better question in that same thread, unfortunately for me someone already answered it.

The question was,

My mic picks up a ton of fan noise - it’s pretty annoying. Any suggestions?

Good question, very good question, having a built-in microphone and video chatting capabilities is great, but of course it puts some stress on your laptop’s resource, which is why your fans start getting loud to cool the laptop down.

Cool! At least I know my laptop won’t blow up. But what about all this noise?

Easy, all you have to do is enable OS X’s ambient noise reduction, what this does is analyze repetitive sounds in the background (i.e. the insanely loud fans) and cancels them out, so when you’re video-chatting with a friend they will hear your voice, not your laptop.

To enable ambient noise reduction, go to System Preferences, and under the category Hardware, click Sound.

Now if you’re not already at it, click the Input tab. Under Input Volume you’ll see a checkbox next to Use ambient noise reduction. Check that, and voila!

I’m glad to be back, check back for more posts!

Albeit a very interesting way to get music via your cache, there’s actually an easier way.

Trust me, I didn’t notice that at first either. I don’t understand why it wasn’t apparent that you could just download the music RIGHT off the blog! The only reason why I didn’t notice was because I saw the first video before I knew about Hypem.

But, if you want an interesting way to download the music off of Hypem automatically….then check this video out:

Anyways, Hypem is a very cool site which can help you find some very awesome music. Check it out!

Links:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lSAmr_vdFik

http://www.viddler.com/explore/dimonay/videos/5/

http://www.viddler.com/explore/dimonay/videos/2/

as well as the login screen:

However there was a problem: when using this with a custom admin interface, the plugin doesn’t work, and messes up the header and footer, like so:

So I modified the plugin so that it would only affect the login screen. So now my Leopard Admin interface looks like it should, while keeping the customized login screen:

You can download the original plugin here: http://pressingpixels.com/wordpress-custom-admin-branding/

You can download the modified plugin (login-only) at the download page.

Josh Byers has created a Wordpress plugin that allows you to brand your Wordpress installation by customizing the login screen, as well as the header and footer of the Wordpress dashboard.

All I can say is that this plugin is fantastic! It allows you to customize the look of Wordpress, as well as make it look more professional. It comes with PSD files so you can edit the logo for everything, it’s totally customizable. As long as you have some basic HTML/CSS knowledge, you can use this plugin to its full extent.

However, there are some issues when using this plugin with admin interface plugins that modify the look of the dashboard (that’s another blog post for another time :D):

As you can see, it appears that the plugin modifies the header only for the original Wordpress dashboard, and I’m currently using a plugin that changes the dashboard entirely so the plugin has a little issue with it.

I will be delving into the code soon and I will see if I can fix that issue, and that will be part two of this article.

But if you’re not customizing the dashboard look that radically, then go ahead and download the plugin at http://pressingpixels.com/wordpress-custom-admin-branding/.

Part two of this article: http://dimonay.com/500/wordpress-custom-admin-branding-login-only/

To reset the application is actually very easy:

First, quit Mail.app

Go to ~/Library/Preferences/.

Locate com.apple.mail.plist.

If you want to reset Mail.app, move this file to another directory, or just delete it.

If you want to backup Mail.app, then move this to wherever you want to backup the file.

Relaunch Mail.app, and you start off with a fresh application!

More on that later, I have to finish moving everything over.