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As promised, I made a new design for my website and my blog (if you haven’t seen the rest of my website yet, you can see it here). On my blog, the backgroud image is the default Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger desktop, and on the rest of my site I basically changed the background color from blue to grey and made new border graphics. I also added an icon for each section on the index page. The iMac icon, next to the My Interests section, has been through Photoshop to make it look more “Pixar”, if you know what I mean.
Feedback about the new design will be much appreciated.

I can officially confirm that after 1 and 3/4 months, I’ve completed learning the language of C. On to C++. Then Joseph and I can start a software company. Hey, I wonder if I can write a program to think of a company name for us…

Sneak peek: I’m redesigning my homepage, and it’s going to look a lot cooler, with more graphics, new colors, and hopefully a new design to my blog. Expect to see it in a few days.

Well, we found out the problem is that there’s something wrong with the bottom monitor port, which is what I’ve been using. Also, the bottom port is custom installed, not original. So I talked to Grampa Dan, and he said that he installed the port, and it’s old so it doesn’t work with the newer systems, i.e. Tiger. So everything works now.

A few days ago, I installed an incompatible RAM chip in the G4 tower, not knowing it was incomptatible at the time. So then when I tried to boot it up, the display wouldn’t come on. I removed the RAM chip, and the display still wouldn’t go on. Then I found out that the display comes on after I log in, and not before, so I have to type in the password blindly (which is weird, because I have it set to automatically log in and not display the login window). I tried to reinstall my OS, thinking it was a software problem, but the display still wouldn’t go on when I started it up from the disk. After several restartings, it started up in OS 9.0.4! Yikes! I tried to boot it up from the OS X install CD again, but 9.0.4 is so old that it can’t recognize an OS X install CD. So we took it to the Salem Mac Store (they all recognized me when we walked in!), and they connected it to a display and booted it from OS 9.2, which does recognize the OS X install CD. Then we booted it up from the OS X install CD, and the display came on before the login window, but it still didn’t show the Apple logo that it’s supposed to show when starting up. So that means it’s a hardware problem, because it doesn’t use any of its own software when it’s running from a CD. I’m guessing there might be something wrong with one of the RAM chips or slots. Anyway, they’re diagnosing it right now.

I just posted the C source code of a simple program I wrote that duplicates files on my Software page. It’s all ANSI compliant, so it should work no matter which compiler you’re using.

Well, today was the first day of WWDC 2005 (assuming “today” lasts until I go to bed!), and as some of us feared, Steve Jobs announced that Apple will be switching to using Intel microprocessors. Not that Intel is slower than IBM - we might even see a 3GHz G5, or a G5 PowerBook sometime soon. But Intel has been at high competition with Apple in the past, and as the president of Intel said today, “Apple even set fire to Intel’s Bunny Man in 1996.” Steve said that Apple will start shipping computers with Intel processors by the beginning of 2006. And to address the problem of different binary systems between PowerPC and Intel processors, Apple just released Xcode 2.1, which allows developers to create Universal Binaries. You can watch the QuickTime Keynote here.

We got to go to the new Apple Retail store in Tualatin which opened June 4th, and it’s really cool. The first 1000 people who show up get a free Apple t-shirt, and 1000 people showed up on Saturday. But the Apple Retail guys said they had three t-shirts left over, so they gave them all to us.

Gramma Nini came from Washington today, and Grampa Dan sent an old Bondi blue iMac G3, the PowerMac G4, and a FireWire scanner with her! The iMac will replace the iMac upstairs, and the G4 will go in my room. The G4 is even faster than my PowerBook, though I haven’t tested the processor yet (iPhoto seems to have been deleted, so I’ll have to either reinstall it, or find some other power-hungry application). It has a 350MHz processor, 384 MB SDRAM, and two internal hard drives, one 10GB and one 1.5GB. I know, 350MHz isn’t very much, but it doesn’t really matter because I won’t be using it as much for processor-oriented tasks.
There are now four computers in my room. I’m starting to notice that my room heats up faster.

We had a swim meet in Albany today. It’s a long course pool. My events were 50 free, 200 fly, and 400 free. In the 50 free, my time was 29.37, which is about a quarter of a second off my best time. I still got first place though. In the 200 fly, I got 2:51, which is also a second off my best time. I got second place, and Andrew got first. In the 400 free, my time was 5:05.29, and I’m not sure what place I got. Adam got 5:07. Not very many people were getting best times today, and Kate said that’s how she meant it to be, because we swam 6000 yards last night. She says she wants to get us used to being tired for meets.

Gragh!! Read this entry on Joseph’s blog. Channel 8 better be wrong about this.

Yesterday, as I was listening to my iPod, which was sitting on the desk, the cable got caught around the arm of my chair. I didn’t notice it, so when I swiveled my chair, my iPod was jerked off my desk. It didn’t fall, because I caught it, but it still banged against the side of the desk. I’m guessing the hard drive heads scratched the disk, or maybe something else, but in any case, the hard disk is damaged. It keeps making mechanical noises and freezing up, and when I try to reset it, it either comes up with the folder and exclamation mark icon, or a “sad iPod” icon, which means it can’t recover data from the hard disk. Also, when I dock it with my Powerbook, it slows down the whole computer, which means the computer is having trouble reading the iPod’s hard disk. Luckily, the warranty is still valid, so I think we can get it repaired for free.