So I went to the facility in which we wrote exams. For my school, it was the headquarters of the Department of Education in Durban. On the way there, I was listening to the news in the car. The speaker was telling the story of how some home-schooled student’s teacher forgot to register them for the exams, and in her panic thought it was a good good idea exams papers based on the government exemplars, and trick her students into writing that. Of course, she’s now being criminally charged, and the students all fail by default, which means they’ll have to endure another two years of school. Poor guys.

Oh what irony when I arrived at the venue and found out the principal had forgot to register us for this paper. It was just an optional extra Maths paper, which doesn’t count towards the final report, but does go on a separate certificate. Unlike that other teacher though, he didn’t attempt to forge anything, for which I am grateful. Instead, he managed to get ahold of a copy of the question paper from another school, and an hour or so of waiting later, we were all writing away happily. (Well, not “happily” - the paper was truly awful)

On the way back, I went to the post to pick my freshly renewed passport. Stupid thing is, I get a new passport number with a new passport, which means I’ll have to phone MacWorld, and 4 different airlines to get my tickets switched to my new passport number, because I registered with the old ID.

When I got home, I had the pleasant surprise of finding a small slip of paper from the post office telling me my MacBook Pro (which I ordered just when they were updated - apparently the upgrades held it off, 2.8GHz, 4GB RAM) had finally arrived. If only I had known this just a few moments earlier, when I was at the post office. Went back, got my parcel, and went to have a nice family supper out at a restaurant.

When I got home - again, I promptly unpacked my MacBook Pro, and was faced with the terribly entertaining task of watching a slow progress bar for 3 hours until the Migration Assistant finished copying my data from my iMac. I don’t know exactly why the migration assistant can’t do this by itself, but I had done the mistake of setting up the new MBP before migrating with the same short name as my account on my iMac. I wanted to keep my short name, but it seems the Migration Assistant can’t help me here. So I chose a different short name, and tried to switch them via Terminal, which resulted in me deleting my home folder with a misplaced “rm -rf”, and having to start from zero.

And here I am now, on by freshly setup MacBook Pro, rambling on.

So, without further ado, the report, in all of its 6-page 2000+ word glory, is downloadable in pdf.

I guess it just doesn’t like having a bad name… Wondering whether it’s worth it really getting them a bad name by sending this info to the press or something.

What Happened: I posted a video of a huge fight that occurred at my school (I wasn’t involved in it, btw, just a spectator) to YouTube so I could show it to a few friends overseas. But this is South Africa… People here have never heard of freedom of speech, and they’re taking example on the government by censoring anything that could potentially give them a bad name. I guess it was to be expected…

[deviantArt] - [newgrounds]

Yeah ! J’ai réussi à me procurer un siège tout à l’avent. Je n’ai jamais vu de sièges pareils auparavant. Ils ressemblent un peu aux sièges qu’on trouve dans les TGV. Elongé. En cuire noir. Ils ont un aspect très futuriste. Je m’assieds, un goblet de Coca-Cola dans les mains. La radio est jouée dans des haut-parleurs invisibles. Au bout de la salle, une façade noire et mystérieuse nous fais face. Les visiteurs sont presque tous entré et assis. Tout à coup, la musique de 5FM s’arrête. Les lumières s’assombrissent lentement, et après une minute, il fait noir comme dans un four. Tout le monde est silencieux. Puis, la façade noire, qui était en fait des rideaux, s’écarte. Un titre est affiché : « Pokémon : The Movie ».

Il m’est impossible de dire sur quoi l’image est affichée, mais ça ne ressemble pas à un écran traditionnel. Le film commence ! Ce n’est pas vraiment captivant. Ça parle d’un petit garçonnet de 10 ans qui reçoit une petite souris jaune pour son anniversaire. Ah, mais ça devient légèrement plus intéressant. Il fait des combats avec sa souris avec des gens qu’il rencontre. La sourie, nommée Pikachu, est furieuse tout à coup. Argh, au secours ! Que m’arrive t’il ? Mes cheveux se dressent sur ma tête. Pikachu envoie des petits éclairs partout.

Oh non ! Un des ennemis à une bête du type « eau ». J’anticipe le pire. BEURK !!! Je suis trempe. Mes pop-corn sont plein d’eau. J’accorde de tout cœur le trophée du film le plus réaliste du monde au réalisateur. De pire en pire, c’est un Pokémon sable qui apparaît. Il crée une tempête de sable. Mon coca s’est transformé en ciment. Grrrrr. Oh non ! Un Pokémon entouré de fume néfaste apparaît à l’écran. C’en est trop ! Je prends mes jambes à mon coup et m’enfuis.

Le cinéma à multiples sens, c’est super, en théorie. Mais moi, je reste à regarder des DVD à la maison.

This is a minor revision which fixes a small bug and updates the About window (which also had a bug).

One of the things I hate about Cocoa is its localization system. The first time you look at it, it looks really great. I mean, compared to REALBasic, or Java, or even Qt… at least it has one. But, you see, the problem is that sometimes it creates more problem than it solves.Let me explain: say you’re creating an amazing Cocoa app. You develop it in english until you get to a Release Candidate. Now’s the time to localize it… right, you do the job (it’s never pleasant to localize nibs). Ahh, okay done… You release your app!

It’s the “next big thing” and you become rich (or not). With all this fame you get wonderful feedback and even get it localized in 15 different languages. Wow, now’s the time for a 1.1. With all the feedback you’ve got you’ve decided to make a few big UI changes. The thing is, not only do you need to modify your english nib(s), but you also need to make the same changes to every other language’s nibs!!! Alright, since you’ve got no choice, you do it. The thing is: there is a high probability you will make a mistake without noticing (it happened to me once). What then happens is you ship with a faulty localizations, you get lots of weird complain email in Japanese, and… you’re screwed!

The only boring and time-consuming solution is to thoroughly test the new UI in every localization before releasing. This is especially time-consuming as you have to change the language settings in System Preferences every time you want to change the localization.
Also, another downside of this is that it changes your whole computer (well, just your session, but whatever…). I personally don’t really like to use a computer in Chinese…

That’s where LangSwitch comes in… It gives you a simple GUI way to switch the localization for only the app you’re testing. It displays only the localizations avaiable for your app. Here’s an easy way to test your different localizations without the hassle.

Oh, and did I forget to mention… It’s Free!

Update: Excellent LangSwitch review!

Download LangSwitch 1.0.1