Month: November 2008

From Pine to Gmail

 

Yesterday, Google released some themes for their Gmail platform … in fact, 30 new themes. Many of them are simply new color schemes but some include beautiful backgrounds. It really spices up my “email world”. I picked the “Mountains” theme as my default Gmail theme for now, but I have to admit the “Terminal” theme is really really cool for old dogs like me. 

It reminds me the good old days back in 1990s when the Pine (Program for Internet News & Email) from University of Washington was my favorite Internet tool.

Try it out !!

Yes we can

There are non-stop news on TV about the historic U.S. presidential win by Barack Obama. And I am still figuring out how to make my Sony Vaio and the new MacBook work hand-in-hand. After days of evaluation, I decided to buy the VMware Fusion, installed the aged XP, and start all over.

So, while the election offices in U.S.A were counting votes, I was checking the outdated VMware installation guide (even though it was downloaded fresh from their web site), installing, testing, failing, reinstalling, twisting etc. etc. I finally made it work … it feels good … Yes we can. Following is a screen shot of the Windows XP running within the MacBook OSX, via VMware.

From Commodore 64 to Apple MacBook

I think most, if not all, computer geeks’ dream personal computer is one with an apple logo stamps on it … they may use a Windows PC at work, on the road or at home but in their dream they want to buy an Apple computer. Windows PCs are good machines actually, but they just don’t have the style, personality and cult. 

I am the same as any other geeks except the fact that I bought mine 26 years late. Because somehow, 26 years ago, I bought myself the Commodore 64 insteal of the Apple II / III. Anyway, no matter it’s a Windows PC or Apple MacBook, I still have the same question – why is it so difficult to make these all work together ?