Tze Chuen’s Weblog

Recently, a friend asked me if there was a way to access IE-only sites on his Mac. Off the top of my head, there are two options - one is to use IE itself thru virtualization methods and secondly is to spoof your User Agent in Firefox.

Every browser has its own designated user agent that tells the website what browser you’re using. Therefore, you can actually trick the website to think that you’re actually using a different browser such as Internet Explorer.

Enter User Agent Switcher - this Firefox add-on does just that.

This add-on is extremely easy to use. First, download it here

After installing, you will see the option to switch between different user agents in Tools => User Agent Switcher

As you can see, there are 3 different user agents to choose from. The add-on itself is also easy to use.

Here, using IPChicken to check my user agent and indeed the add-on spoofed it to IE7. Neat stuff.

This tip works on any computer that has Firefox. Doesn’t matter if it’s running Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD etc.

Hope you found much use with this tip. Cheers ;)

Looks like Steve B (Microsoft CEO) was using the fastest Vista notebook for his presentation.

Photoshop’d or Real? You decide.

Source: Flickr

So I finally decided to get a new keyboard for my gaming machine. My previous keyboard got me fed up at times especially when the computer goes TOOT TOOT whenever I smash the shit out of it. Also, the W A S D keys are all worn out anyway.

Most gamers would’ve probably went for Logitech G-15. But I didn’t - mainly because my desk keyboard drawer currently is so small it would only fit the keyboard alone.

I finally decided on Razer Lycosa. If you look at the keyboard, it doesn’t look any much different than most generic ones.

Pictured is the Razer Lycosa with my Razer Copperhead on the 5 years old funcpad (gonna replace this when I move to a bigger place later this year)

I have been using my Lycosa for about 2 days now. And I have to say, wow, I haven’t felt such sensation while typing or gaming. The keys are probably so well built it won’t wear out anytime soon. It has some sort of rubber on top of each keys that would make your fingers feel comfortable even when you smash the shit out of it.

If you work in dark rooms, this keyboard is probably worthwhile for you. It has a blue backlight and you can switch between 3 modes - no backlight, backlight on and backlights only on W A S D keys (probably useful for some FPS gamers).

However, while the backlight is a cool feature, if you work in extremely lit rooms I don’t recommend this keyboard at all

As you can see from the picture above, when there’s tons of light the keyboard keys will be extremely difficult to see.

The keyboard also has other features such as macros, usb 2.0 passthrough port, sound and mic-in jack etc.

As you can see, the keyboard lacks macro keys and therefore it uses the function keys to do the macros. You can switch between 10 profiles of different macro key settings. To switch between profiles you just tap the Razer logo on the top right corner where other multimedia keys exist together.

Do I recommend this keyboard? Yes, the rubber coating on the keys make it so much comfortable for long use. My fingers barely feel tired anymore after hours of button smashing sessions. This keyboard not only suits gamers but also people who type a lot (and I mean a hell lot).

What keyboard do you sport?

Previously, I wrote about three different apps that allows you to take control of your iTunes/iPod music here. I stated that I did not have another iPod to test Misu. Earlier today, a friend of mine requested me to fill up her iPod with songs. I saw it as a perfect opportunity to test out Misu. I would like to thank Ollie Wagner for giving me the opportunity to test out Misu’s app at its fullest potential.

Upon launching Misu, you can click on the iPod icons to swap their places. This allows you to choose which iPod is providing the music, and which one is receiving them.

Here, you can see that my friend’s iPod is smaller than the amount of music that I have. Misu intelligently prompts you to choose if you want Misu to stop copying music when the target iPod is full, or you want to overflow the target iPod (I have no idea what overflow does because I chose the first option).

Misu’s progress pie doesn’t seem to be accurate. It was stuck at 100% for quite some time (about 5 minutes). I think this could be due to the “Stop copying when Full” option. Nevertheless, it’s just a cosmestic issue and harmless.

When copying is finished, a pop-up will appear asking if you want to copy Misu’s app into the iPods so you can launch Misu from any Mac. This is a very clever option in my opinion.

The copying of approximately 4gb worth of songs took about 10 minutes for me. After copying, I realised something - the songs are actually copied into a folder inside the target iPod. For some reason, I had the impression that Misu would automatically add the songs into the target’s iTunes library. I think this feature is not impossible and I hope it would be added in future releases.

For the techie geek like me, I would’ve preferred MacFuse + iTunesFS over Misu if I would like to painlessly copy music over from one iPod to another. Misu, on the other hand requires you to do one more step when you connect your iPod to your own computer, and that is to add them to your iTunes library and then sync them to your iPod. In the meantime, Misu is great and easy-to-use for people who don’t wanna fiddle with MacFuse. I believe there is a lot of room for improvement for Misu.

With more and more people getting iPhones and iPods (and storage getting bigger and better), Misu will no doubt be popular in the future because with the snap of a finger, you can have your friend’s music collection.

Interested in trying out Misu?

Misu is available for a free trial (with 15 songs limit) or you can get it for $19 per copy or $29 for 3 copies.

While surfing MacTalk forums, I saw a thread with pictures that I find both funny and true.

I believe these are the installation steps for a particular DJ equipment. Now I know why there are so many DJ’s around using MacBook’s ;)