My Mac is Back!
Finally! After waiting for three weeks, my Mac finally return to me. Finally food will taste nice again, and i won’t wake up after hours of nightmares 
.
Ademac store charged me for the keyboard i ruined with a 270 euros glass of water, but managed to change the mother board under the Apple Care warranty. Sweet, i have to say (otherwise, who knows… maybe i would be writing from an IMac 27 inches right now… )
Now that i am back, i have a lot of articles in mind, about
- Sarajevo, Dubrovnik and Kotor (finally!)
- Google dependency
- how much time and money are related to me
- …
So stay tunes, follow me on twitter, or via RSS, and enjoy your stay!
Nicolas
Google Chrome for Mac
Yesterday was (finally!) released Google Chrome for Mac.
I had heard about Chrome for some time now, but well, i have a Mac, and at work we are behind lots of security rules that prevent us to install anything. So i never really put my hands onto it. But finally, yesterday it came out.
Another Google tool to try out… and add to my collection of everyday Web apps? (GMail, Google Maps, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Analytics, …). Nothing sure yet.
Chrome
Let’s see.
Installation, all good. First launch, all good, all my bookmars and form entries are retrieved from Firefox, i connect to my Gmail, it seems to go a little bit faster. I try Twitter… and surprise, it cannot be accessed. But neither is it possible with Firefox, so…
I run some basic tests: counting the time to fully download a page, Chrome looks slightly faster. It is also less prone to failure and crashes: each tab runs in its own process, meaning that if one tab is blocked, you can just close the tab / kill the process. The other tabs won’t be affected. (so far, with IE or FF, if you have one problem on one tab, its the whole browser you have to close).
Google Chrome for Mac is still in beta. Extensions (plugins) are not available yet, althought i already saw plugins for del.icio.us, IETab, … Apparently, the bookmarks manager is not yet accessible, so you can’t really manage your bookmarks. But all in all, even though i’m missing my favorite plugins, i prefer Chrome.
The main reason is probably that i’m getting more and more Google-addicted… but soon enough we’ll talk about Google dependency.
Twitter… over capacity?!
Here is what i have since 15 minutes when i try to access directly my Twitter account (i.e. not using any Twitter apps) from Chrome or Firefox.
Twitter is over capacity
Interesting…
Soon enough we will know more about this!
Cafe Populart
On monday night, after having heard about it for quiet some time, i finally ended up in Cafe Populart with some friends. In this bar located in Huertas centric area (Calle Huertas, 22), you can find jazz live music almost every night of the week, from 11pm to 2am.
For example, yesterday a music band with a look from the 20s was playing: two vocals (a girl and a guy), one guitar, one piano, one contrebassa…. singing oldies from the 20s or so.
Entry is for free during concerts, but you have to drink : a draught beer is 5 euros for example. I think its pretty fair, since the music and the atmosphere are really charming and special.
Definitely a place where i’ll come back!
Cafe Populart at Madrid
TeleMadrid, Madrid’s local TV channel, has every Monday at 9.45pm a tv documentary called « Madrileños por el Mundo », which you could translate as « Madrid people around the world ».
Basically, some reporters go visit people born in Madrid (even if there were born there 40 years ago) that currently live abroad. Yesterday, it was about Madrid people living in Seoul (South Korea – Seùl in Spanish) and Porto (Portugal – Oporto in Spanish).
We met really different people :
- a rich woman who just followed her german husband to Porto
- an old man from Paseo del Prado who went at the Korean War and decided to stay there afterwards – he had been living in Seul for already 46 years!
- a young girl from Alcorcon doing her Erasmus in Porto
- a young guy who went for one year to Seul to help Spanish companies to expand to South Korea
- a young Korean guy who is Korean from his parents but has always lived in Madrid (… but nevertheless feels a bit like a stranger in both countries: in Spain cause he looks asian, and in South Korea cause he has a weird foreigner accent when he speaks Korean)
- …
We see different views of the cities, different point of views, different rythm of life, different stories as well, and that makes it very interesting. We generally end up seeing people, places, events, situations we would not see if we were just visiting the city as a tourist.
For obvious reasons, i like this tv documentary. I also like « J’irais dormir chez vous« , a french travel documentary, which offers a different version of the same theme: basically, there is that guy that chooses a country, and intents to get invited to people’s home over there. He gets sometimes into embarassing situations, but never loses his french humor and always tries to go to not touristic places!…
