• 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 4GB memory
• 160GB hard drive
• 8x double-layer SuperDrive
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard

I have it for about 7 days + and I can’t say only that I am very enthusiast about it. I am very glad and grateful that finally I was able to make the switch that I was dreaming about for quite some years now. So all the thanks go to my business partner :)

I also bought a Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter for one of my 22 inch widescreens. My Logitech Wave Cordless kit runs smoothly on the new Mac, just as advertised. Performance ? Sky high. Crashes ? Only a Firefox one so far (2 instances, 6+ tabs per instance).

I’ve managed to migrate all of the Windows apps I’ve been using onto my Mac. Great alternatives or even built-in functions took over.

So I’m very happy to say that this will be my only developer machine. Stable, nice and clean, fast and BSOD-free. I like the Apple way of getting things done so I’ll probably buy some more stuff from them in the future. Perhaps the iPad ? Who knows ? :)

Other cool gadgets are my new companions but I don’t intend to write about them right now. Lunch is waiting for me and then work. Just wanted to notify you guys about me finally switching to a Mac.

OK, so here’s a little sneak peek of my new desk (left out other gadgets to keep focus):

Stripped desk

Microsoft saw this coming and this built this great tool called “Program Compatibility” which helps you run applications that were meant to be run on different Windows versions – so this works nicely for all software including drivers.

A huge plus in my opinion was the fact that before I was on my desktop I already had the wireless drivers installed and pretty soon the video ones too. I have a 6720s laptop with pretty much basic stuff as far as chipsets and all that – nothing too complicated.

I will stop here because I will soon write a post about my Windows 7 experience – so let’s continue with how I managed to get a great sound out of my Creative USB Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit sound card on Windows 7.

So when I tried installing the Vista drivers from the CD that came with the sound card it told me that this drivers weren’t compatible with my version of Windows.

So I started the Program Compatibility wizard and pointed it to the setup.exe file from the CD. This also didn’t work because the initial installer launched a separate installer depending on what I wanted to install or leave out from the software package.

So I headed back over to Program Compatibility and pointed the application to setup.exe – this time from \audio\setup folder on the CD. Installed the driver without any problems, restarted the computer. All seemed fine but when I tried to play a song in Winamp I realized the woofer was dead – more than that the system was running in 2 channel mode even though it said 5.1 in the Creative Audio Console.

Next, I launched the Creative Software AutoUpdate application from the Start menu. I downloaded and installed the new drivers with Program Compatibility as indicated above – the path for the downloaded software is c:\Users\All Users\Creative\Software Update\cache\ as the application states.

Same stuff, 2 channel mode but the difference was that this time the Audio Console said 2 channel instead of 5.1. Headed to Creative.com (won’t link to them) and after searching by the classical means you try to find a driver to download from a hardware producer I lost my hope.

In the end I ended up on SoundBlaster.com and there I saw a logo that said “Get the latest beta patch for Windows 7″. Clicked on it, got me to a page where only the header of the site was displayed and under it some VBScript runtime error. Thank god I am a guy that knows how to pull information from sites with such poor navigation and maintenance work.

I ended up clicking on a link which should have pointed me to the download page for that particular file. It pointed me to a page saying “Sorry, your search did not return any results.”. So I copied the file name and Googled it – what every decent minded person would do nowadays.  Found the file ready to be downloaded on a weird site written in Chinese – wouldn’t be surprised to be a warez site.

Downloaded the file, this time I didn’t use the Program Compatibility program because theoretically the software was meant to run on Windows 7. So it did as I am writing this post while listing to Crowded House – Don’t Dream It’s Over on my SB Live! powered audio system :)

Here is the troubled driver to download at your convenience.

Also, the new look of Opera 10 is appealing and the interface is very clean and yet user-friendly. One of the reasons I wasn’t able to use Opera on day-by-day browsing was because I wasn’t just browsing. I was digging through the web with Firebug and some other Firefox extensions for developers and not only. Opera didn’t had that. However, Opera’s Dragonfly improvement is here to kick some ass. Didn’t had too much time to test it around and do a decent comparison between it and Firebug however it is good thing that the competition hasn’t soften.

I think you agree when I say that we are seeing slow but steady progress on Opera’s behalf as far as competition with Firefox. I think now they need to push those Opera Widgets in the next gear and encourage people to develop new ones and create communities around them. Anyway, I think that they are moving a little bit slower on this one because they don’t want to mess up the core of what they have now.

So, for example here is a list of extensions that I am using on Firefox and widgets I’m using on Opera:

For instance, I was just searching the addons portal for “firebug” and noticed that there were actually extensions developed for Firebug itself. How cool is that ? Extensions for extensions. Now that’s just great if you ask me.

I found a delicious bookmarks widget for Opera, however it wasn’t installable on Opera 10. No screenshots maker on Opera as well.

Opera kicks in with some features like the built-in torrent client, Opera Turbo (helps you when you have a slow Internet connection) and the well-known Speed Dial. I will try to stay on Opera for as long as I can to test some more.

What do you think about Opera’s progress so far ? Is it a competitive browser ? Do you know of some more cool widgets for Opera ? Don’t hesitate to tell in the comments.

However, it misses a search function, as well as a import/export option. Of course it would have been awesome for it to be able to store the snippets on the web so that they would be accessible for you by using an account or such. Unfortunately it lacks the HTML syntax coloring. Of course there is a lot of work on it still but thankfully it is out there for us to enjoy so let’s be patient with the developers.

Oh, and by the way, to make up for that import/export thing you could do it manually by following the path to the SQLite database file:

“C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\com.snippely.xxx\Local Store\application.db”. And there you have it; you can now be assured that your precious snippets won’t be lost if you decide to work on another computer or any other scenario.

Here are some screenshots to help you make an impression:

Download: http://code.google.com/p/snippely/downloads/list

As far as the new theme, I honestly tell you that I got bored of the theme that I designed and for the moment I don’t have enough time to spend developing a new one. Besides, as you all might have noticed till now, I tend to have an affinity for developing not for designing. I am also planning to import all my posts from my other blog (SoftRelated.com) by translating them into English. Cheers !

After you start this small app, an icon will be shown in the systray. The magic shortcut is CTRL+TAB. Enjoy.

http://softrelated.com/files/always-on-top.exe

The WordPress Codex directory is way cool and it is maybe one of the best wordpress resources out there. Here’s the link that interests us in particular: Creating an Error 404 Page. You just need to create a 404.php file in your theme directory (in case you don’t already have one). Put the following code in it and customize aiding yourself with the comments:

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<?php get_header(); ?>
   <div id="post-entry">
     <h1>Whoops !</h1>
	     <div class="post-content">
	     	<p>You 
				<?php
				#some variables for the script to use
				#if you have some reason to change these, do.  but wordpress can handle it
				$adminemail = get_bloginfo('admin_email'); #the administrator email address, according to wordpress
				$website = get_bloginfo('url'); #gets your blog's url from wordpress
				$websitename = get_bloginfo('name'); #sets the blog's name, according to wordpress
				
				  if (!isset($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'])) {
				    #politely blames the user for all the problems they caused
				        echo "tried going to "; #starts assembling an output paragraph
					$casemessage = "All is not lost!";
				  } elseif (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'])) {
				    #this will help the user find what they want, and email me of a bad link
					echo "clicked a link to"; #now the message says You clicked a link to...
				        #setup a message to be sent to me
					$failuremess = "A user tried to go to $website"
				        .$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']." and received a 404 (page not found) error. ";
					$failuremess .= "It wasn't their fault, so try fixing it.  
				        They came from ".$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
					mail($adminemail, "Bad Link To ".$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'],
				        $failuremess, "From: $websitename <noreply@$website>"); #email you about problem
					$casemessage = "An administrator has been emailed 
				        about this problem, too.";#set a friendly message
				  }
				  echo " ".$website.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; ?> 
				and it doesn't exist. <?php echo $casemessage; ?>  You can click back 
				and try again or try using the search box in the sidebar.
			</p>
	     </div>
	</div>
 
 
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Easy enough ? I think it is an awesome method. At least for testing if not for permanent use. Hope this helps. Oh, and by the way, if you have a large blog be ready to be bombarded with emails generated from this 404 page.