Alex Yim

Fixing Textmate's font appearance on an external monitor

A problem that had been plaguing me for a while was my main programming text editor's font appearance was dimmed whenever I launch it up on my Dell 3008WFP. To make things tricky, the problem only showed up intermittently. Sometimes it would look perfectly fine. See the pictures below for a comparison.

(download)

It took me a while to figure out what caused it. It happens when I launch Textmate with my monitor connected. If I launch it on my laptop first, then connect it to the main monitor, then everything is fine. I had wrongly suspected that I had a monitor problem (sorry Dell).

A quick search on DuckDuckGo http://duckduckgo.com/?q=textmate+font+external+monitor+problem shows that OS X doesn't seem to detect the correct font smoothing style for flat panels.

Choosing "Medium" fixed it.

I just had to share..

Posted September 26, 2010

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iPhone 4 ad in Tokyo subway

Posted June 17, 2010

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Why the traffic problem will never be solved

There will always be traffic no matter how much transportation improves. Transportation is an enabling technology but it doesn't change what is fundamentally human nature. People will always seek out the best job they have access to. For example, in a given day, there's a limited number of waking hours. People will tolerate a certain amount of commute per day, let's say four hours. Back then, a farmer may travel two hours each way to sell his goods to the nearest city, which may only be a few miles away. These days, with the same amount of time people can easily travel 120 miles a day for their jobs. The radius of their reach has expanded, but they will always try to find the best opportunity. By extension, if people were able to travel halfway across the world in a super plane that only takes two hours, people would still do that daily commute if it means they can live where they want and work where they want. Because people are always willing to travel a certain number of hours, there will always be traffic as people prioritize their careers instead of just finding the nearest attainable job. In a sense, people are incredibly efficient in maximizing their personal efficiency. So, the next time you see heavy traffic, don't feel sorry for all the people so fast. Realize that they might just be willingly making a tradeoff in the pursuit of maximizing their opportunities.

Filed under // efficiency psychology

Posted June 2, 2010

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Resource allocation of the brain

During one period of my life I wrote a number of computer programs that involved intense manipulation of objects in my mind, for hours each day. I discovered that it was difficult to be social at night when my mind had been manipulating object during the day. It felt as if I were deep inside a cave and yelling to the people who stood at the cave opening. It seemed as if the practice of programming interfered with, or exhausted, the part of my brain that handles social skills.

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/brain_management

I've felt this way too and it happens way too much. I envy the people who don't seem to have this problem.

Posted May 19, 2010

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Absolute brilliant way to secure a mouse

Posted May 14, 2010

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To the people who love to critique websites

Dear Google,
Your core competency has always been simplicity. I watched you grow up with just a textbox and a couple of buttons while your big brother Yahoo was busy creating the busiest web portal he could come up with...
..and YOU came out on top. Now your brother is working the night security shift at the AOL museum - and you're out fixing the world.
Please don't forget where you came from - and please reconsider the fade-ins and redundant space-wasting links that have historically proven to be a Bad Idea. Content is king, leave the cutesy UI gimmicks to Microsoft, and just... be Google.
Yours truly,
Loyal google fan that stopped what he was doing so he could search for a solution immediately after seeing the new search page

random search result

At the risk of sounding cliché, some people need to get a life instead of vocalizing every minor UI/UX change they disapprove of.

This came to mind regarding the new subtle tweaks that http://google.com made (compare with http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=all), but the idea applies generally. To those people, you know the new design has been given some thought. You know a team of UI/UX experts has approved it. You know these changes have gone through a lot of approvals to be where it is today. Yet it doesn't satisfy you, the self proclaimed expert. Because one website, out of the many ones you see throughout the day in your online experience, in the course of your day, in the course of your life, has made some tweaks, it has put a damper in your life. You may choose to write a blog post about it. Maybe participate in some discussions that go back in forth. You may even try to take an altruistic stance that your discussions is on the behalf of a million other people. Think about the time and energy you've put into this. Think about all the times you've gotten riled up and emotional about changes to Facebook, Twitter, or any other websites you use often. This is time and energy you could've spent doing work, volunteering, learning, or even having fun. That would make the world a better place. Not your petty bickering.