Random Traffic Through Nick’s Brain

We got off to a late start in order to let Arianna and Dina sleep in. After some lunch, Alex and I hit the town.

• 14:11 train into the city.
• Blue ice cream.
• Toddlers walk slowly when eating ice cream.
• Walk around the Trachtenfest. Basically, people wearing traditional Swiss costumes.
• Buy a glass ball / Christmas tree ornament for Dina. Worry that Alex will break said ornament for the next few hours. Update: Ball made it home. Lasted until 18:37 before Alex dropped it off the counter and onto our tile floor.
• Decide against buying Swiss whiskey (they have many kinds, and yes, one of them is called Swisskey) or honey wine.
• Wash Alex’s face in one of the fountains. Lips still stained blue.
• Explain to Alex that the woman knits with straw the way mommy knits with string.
• See the main church with the red towers. Listen to choir dressed in traditional Swiss costumes warm up. Admire art and pipe organ. Notice that there is a sundial and an astrological sign dial on the side of the church. Spiffy.
• Play with Alex on bench that looks like a dog and snake.
• See the Winterthur Gewerbemuseum (trade/craft museum). Manage to see the clocks part of the exhibit before Alex’s attention span runs out.
• Play with Alex on bench that looks like a dog and snake.
• Quick walk through 3 rooms of the Briner und Kern Museum. Thank goodness for the Swiss Museum Annual Pass.
• Play on the playground. Help Alex throw pebbles up the metal slide. Squee!
• Quickly duck into the Oskar Reinhart Museum. Picasso, Rembrandt, Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, … Having a tired toddler an my shoulders doesn’t diminish it at all.
• Take #3 bus home. Alex falls asleep on bus.
• Home by 16:50.

[Rollerblader passes by]
Nick: Look Alex, he has wheels on his shoes. You know what those are called?
Alex: Dangerous.

In Parallels Preferences, Keyboard, my keyboard profile is set to Windows. Somehow, Parallels does not correctly map Cmd+X to Ctrl+X (or any other combination except Cmd –> Win and Cmd+R to Win+R). It doesn’t work in Coherence, Full Screen, or Windowed mode. The guest OS is WinXP Pro. Though Ctrl+X still works, this is annoying since my fingers know that on this keyboard, Cmd+X is cut, not Ctrl+X. Anyone encounter this before / know how to fix it?

Advice from Parallels Tech Support: Use KeyTweak, a 3^rd party keyboard remapping utility. I’m not that enthusiastic about that answer.

1. One’s water breaking apparently isn’t as big a deal as I thought it was.
2. The Swiss are much more laissez-faire about almost everything.
3. After the mid-wife and doctor checked Dina out and noted that other than the “water breaking” thing, she wasn’t in any imminent danger of giving birth, we got bored and went for a walk in the woods near the clinic. Told you they were laissez-faire.
4. Everyone has their breaking point… as many of you know, Dina insists on reading anything and everything before signing something (there’s always been a chicken-and-egg question about her going to law school). When it came time to signing the release for the epidural, Dina didn’t bother even *glancing* at the print. Just found the line and signed it. And no, that’s not just because the form was in German… she’s tried to read those in the past too.
5. Odd the things you learn when you chit-chat with people. The anaesthesiologist is one of VPRT’s clients.

Other semi-related notes:

1. English: The bill. German: Die Rechnung. Swiss German: D’Rachnig. No wonder we don’t understand the language.
2. We were supposed to have people over for supper on Wednesday or Thursday. We chose Thursday. Wrong.

Open comment to our (totally wonderful) friends: Please don’t send us stuff in Switzerland. You’ll pay more in postage than you will for the gift. Either:

1. Come visit us… that’s gift enough. OR
2. Send us more expensive presents so you pay less in postage percentage-wise (just kidding).

On the visiting note, I’ve been thinking / calculating. At the rate we’re attracting visitors / tourists to this country, Switzerland should be paying us to live here. We have nice friends :-)

Still on our to do list:

• Prepare hospital bag. (Apparently, that can happen very quickly if necessary).
• Photocopy official documents needed for birth certificate. (Apparently, hospitals have photocopiers that they are willing to let you use).

Born 2009-05-28. Everyone in the family is healthy and in good spirits.

Lingering Annoyances (Help Welcome)

1. Biggest issue so far: I can’t figure out how to sync keyboard shortcuts between Parallels, Mac, and Remote Desktop. I’m happy to have Cmd+V be paste in all three… just show me how to remap it so that it works.
2. Can’t figure out the keyboard shortcut for Lock Screen.
3. You can’t make the cursors bigger. Using accessibility makes them an eyesore and it’s difficult to determine which pixel the click is being sent to. I’ve read the “we want aesthetic control” rationale, and it’s BS. Make nice cursors that are big enough for almost-blind people to see please.
4. Inability to change baseline font size. I know how to zoom in and out. That’s not what I want.
5. Keyboard support lacking:
   • Scroll through each value in a combo.
   • Sliders.
   • Alt-letter combos for menus and dialogs. After attempting to use a new program on both Windows and the Mac, I’ve decided that keyboard navigation is just plain slower on the Mac.
   • I have a huge laptop. It’s a shame that explicit keys for Home/End/Page Up/Page Down/Delete weren’t added.
6. Can’t make thumbnails big enough in Finder’s thumbnail view.
7. Lack of any-edge resizing means that I frequently need to move, then resize windows.
8. I loved Firefox on Windows. I love it a bit less on the Mac since it doesn’t support Alt+D (yes, Cmd+L works, but I want consistent shortcuts), and it doesn’t play nice with the Mac’s Services.

Still to Install?

1. Brett Spiel Welt.
2. Sling Box.
3. ?VLC? if I can’t figure out how to get QuickTime to play a playlist.
4. ?WordService

Still to Configure

1. Time Machine.
2. Rate iTunes tracks with the keyboard.
3. Keyboard:
   • Rationalize commands (Ctrl vs. Cmd) across Remote Desktop, Parallels, and Mac.
   • Double-command to swap Cmd and Alt?
   • ?Keyboard shortcut widget?
   • Map Caps Lock to Escape.
   • Learn keyboard shortcuts. Notably accents (ä, ö, ü) and German letters (ß). Also figure out Modifier Key + Arrow meanings.

Hardware

17″ MacBook Pro, Dual Core, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM.

Preparation

1. Partition off 32GB of space for Boot Camp / Win XP.
2. Reinstall OS X.
3. Reinstall applications off the DVD that came with my computer.
4. Mac OS X Software Update…

Windows Preparation

1. Slipstream SP3 into WinXP.
2. Note applications installed on my current Windows box.
3. Install XMarks on old computer.
4. Export Beyond Compare options.

Mac Setup

1. Name the Mac “Morgana”.
2. System Preferences
   • Appearance: Place scroll arrows at top and bottom.
   • Desktop & Screen Saver: Black desktop background (google). Screen saver.
   • Dock: Bigger. Auto-hide. On the right (conflicts with Windows TaskBar in Parallels and Remote Desktop).
   • Expose & Spaces: Enable spaces.
   • International:
     • Show Canadian English.
     • Tweak Region, Formats.
     • Change time format in menu bar (medium time format).
   • Security: Lock down. Turn on FileVault.
   • Energy Saver: A bit less aggressive when plugged in.
   • Keyboard & Mouse: Set repeat rate the way I like it. Don’t display Bluetooth icon.
   • Trackpad: Speed up mouse a bit. OMG! Trackpad swiping is so cool.
   • Sound: Sosumi. It’s a cool sound, and the history is cool too.
   • Date & Time: Point to nearest city.
   • Time Machine: Don’t show in menu bar for now.
   • Universal Access:
     • Turn Zoom (Alt+Command+-, Alt+Command+=) on. Turn it back off. Ctrl+2-finger-scroll works.
     • Make mouse pointers bigger. Turn it back off. You can’t figure out what pixel you’re clicking on.
   • Display Keychain in menubar (for ability to Lock Screen).
3. Dashboard: Customize existing widgets. So far, I use it to show the upcoming weather for Winterthur and the current weather for Montreal/Boston.
4. FireFox:
   • Set up Firefox tabs: GMail, GReader, GToDoDoc, GCal, Joe’s Goals, WebMail.
   • Extensions:
     • Adblock Plus
     • Canadian English Dictionary
     • Faviconize Tab
     • Flashblock
     • No Squint
     • XMarks
   • Make GMail the mailto handler.
5. Adium.
   • Adium: Messages on one line (yMous Message theme).
6. Vuze.
7. Skype.
8. Configure Boot Camp. Install WinXP SP3.
9. Install Parallels.
10. iTunes:
    • Point to /User/Shared/iTunes.
    • Sync iPod
11. Create an administrator account.
12. Copy down media (music, movies).
13. Remote Desktop.
14. TrueCrypt.
15. System Preferences | Accounts | Login Items.
16. Change background on login screen (google). Both colour and graphic.
17. MultiClutch for swiping in Firefox.
18. Witch for Alt-Tab. Configure.
19. PokerStars.
20. Anki.
21. Change date format in Finder.
22. Canon codecs and software for SLR camera.
23. Add an application stack to the Dock.
24. Configure Mail to use GMail.
25. Install SeaShore. Marvel that Mac OS X doesn’t have an MS Paint equivalent.
26. Perian.
27. Flip4Mac.
28. Work VPN Software.
29. Exif Renamer.
30. Software updater (App Update Widget). Lament that there’s no really good software updater for either Mac or Windows.
31. Stuffit Expander.
32. Search Google Service.
33. Use Parallels Transporter to slurp in image of old computer. Holy cow that was simple.
34. Picasa Web Albums Uploader
35. Make IE, Quicken, Password Safe, Outlook favourites so that they can be launched via Spotlight.

Windows Setup

1. Name the Windows installation “Mordred”.
2. Fix accounts in the windows machine.
3. Install VS.Net 2008 + SPs.
   • Import VS.Net Macros, Settings.
4. Beyond Compare 2.x / All Plug-Ins.
   • Import options.
5. Subversion.
   • svn checkout playpen
6. nant.
7. Password Safe + Shortcuts.
8. Office 2007 + SPs.
   • Remove some MS Office components.
   • Compress C:\MSOCache. F*** Microsoft.
9. CCleaner.
10. Handy Registry Settings.
11. Name Clip
12. Path: +Playpen bin directory. +Nant.
13. Configure IE / IE Cache.
14. FileHippo.
15. Tweak UI.
16. Nant.
17. Active Perl.
18. WPP.
19. GPEdit.msc | Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | System | Turn Off Autoplay.
20. Run playpen\tools\Registry\Windows Tuning - Tweaks.reg.
21. Configure Windows Media Player, System Properties, Control Panel, Windows in general.
22. Configure command prompt, subversion.
23. Tweak services.
24. Quicken.
25. Active Sync. Sync phone.
26. Resharper.

… that I can’t seem to find on google…

1. A quick keyboard shortcut to start the first entry in the awesome bar as I type text in the address bar. DOWN, ENTER is cumbersome because they both use my right pinky.
2. A quick keyboard shortcut to search for or navigate to the selected text. Ctrl+C, Alt+D, Ctrl+V, ENTER is too long.
3. A Mac OS X keyboard shortcut for “Search in Google with Firefox”. The existing “Search in Google”, Shift-Cmd-L is a service provided by Safari so it doesn’t support using the default browser. Solution: Search With Google service (Shift+Cmd+>). Sadly, since Firefox doesn’t like services, this doesn’t solve issue #2.

Which reminds me, I need to post my install guide for my Mac.

… means that you can hop into the car and drive to another country (without stopping at the border) to go shopping.

Discovery of the day… Paulaner makes Hefe-Weiß Dunkel beer. (Yes, we drove to Germany.)

With Laura visiting, we took the opportunity to take a ride on the Glacier Express. Saturday, we went from Winterthur, to Zürich, to Wankdorf [snicker], to lunch and sightseeing in Berne, to Visp/Viège (so small that its Wikipedia article is lame), to Zermatt (home of the Matterhorn). Sunday, the Glacier Express home.

On the topic of [snicker]-able names… sadly there is no Motterbötswil near Bubikon.

Only tested on Windows XP. Save this as CapsLockToEscape.reg and merge it into the registry. Not responsible for any issues this causes.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

# Remap CapsLock to Escape
# 3a,00 is CapsLock
# 01,00 is Escape
# 02 = remapping 1 key.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,01,00,3a,00,00,00,00,00

We finally, after 6 months, bought a car (2007 VW Passat Diesel Wagon). It’s name is Blitzen.