EMACS

Here are a few emacs and terminal tricks I picked up today.

C- means hold down control and press the next letter. Example C-x means hold down control and press x.

M- means press and release ESC and press the next letter. Example M-x means press ESC then press x. Also on some systems holding down ALT will work also.

For the mac users, ALT=OPTION.

Terminal:

Lock your command prompt: C-s

Unlock your command prompt: C-q

Minimize emacs: C-z (from within emacs)

Restore emacs: fg (type fg into command promt)

Emacs:

Split window horizontally: C-x 2

Split window vertically: C-x 3

Merge back to single window: C-x 1

Close current buffer: C-x 4 0

Open a file in a new window: C-x 4 f filename

More to come later.

New Sunglasses

After 8 loyal years of service, I've retired my perscription sunglasses. They're old and battered but they were reliable.

In it's place I got a pair of Caribbean Sun's from Wal Mart. They were having a package deal and I was able to get the frames, lenses, polarization and labor for $99 total without insurace. Sure beats the $253 an optometrist shop wanted to charge me.

Here are some pictures. YES they were taken by my Nikon Coolpix 3100. A few days ago it decided to start working again.



They're quite a bit larger than my previous pair, which should help with pinching of the ears. Yes, I got a fat head.




Another angle.



It came with a case (huge compared to my Converse case) and a wiping cloth. Wal Mart also threw in a small bottle of cleaning solution.

Im still getting used to the glasses. They're heavier than my old pair, and almost completely eclipse my vision. They're also a different color. Using these indoors will be quite a bit harder than my previous pair (the lenses are much darker).

I think it might have something to do with the polarization, but I can see vivid color patterns in paints and off glass. It's quite strange, it is similar to light being passed through a prism.

OSX to go to Intel

Well it's official, today at the WWDC, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that OSX was transitioning to Intel x86 chips. He even did the entire demo using a Powermac running a 3.6ghz Pentium 4. Everything seemed smooth. All the major Apple apps were working fine.

I'm still quite a bit stunned at the prospect of it all.

Pros:

1. Parity in processor speeds. This will finally decide the "which is faster" debate, since OSX and Windows will both be running on the same chips.
2. Economies of scale. Intel makes ALOT of processors. Compared to a G5 processor, an x86 chip will be MUCH cheaper. Does this translate to cheaper system? It's too early to tell.

Cons:
1. Intel hardware. Among the OSX people there's always been a disdain for anything PC (that's where the whole "zealot" name came out of). Pentium 4's have an unbelievably deep pipleline, this is what enables them to run at 3+ GHZ clock speeds. This also means it takes many clock cycles for an instruction to finish, and that branch prediction errors are very costly. How this will affect OSX, is again, too early to tell.

2. Migration: Some software will just not work. Especially some of the "Classic" software that people are using just will not work on Intel hardware. Period. This can also mean that many developers might give up on the platform.

Since everything is so early, there's no way to know how things will play out. But I do know that Apple hardware sales will be down this year.