Alvin Lai

Mac OS X has many many handy built-in features, one of my favorites is to print anything to PDF.

Here’s how.

1. Select File, Print..

   

2. You’ll see the Print dialog.

   Click and hold on the PDF button to select ‘Save as PDF..’

   

3. Then save your pdf.

   

Enjoy! =)

Jen noticed some weird characters in text in her browser, while mine looked ok. It turned out that Western encoding was the culprit.

Use UTF-8 instead of Western encoding in Firefox

1. Previously I was using Western

   

2. After switching to UTF-8 unicode, it worked

   

With Storyteller, it’s so much easier to tell stories! I’m loving my own product =)

“i realized i didn’t have your new number. wanted to ask you, do you know any free software that i can download that’ll allow me to type in chinese? thanks for the help.”

My friend Qixiang emailed to ask how to type Chinese on a Mac, so I used Storyteller to create an online guide with annotated screenshots for every step:

In-built Chinese input support in Mac

Here’s how:

1. Run System Preferences in /Applications

   

2. Select language and text

   

3. Make sure the chinese inputs u want are checked, also check the checkbox to show input menu in menu bar.

   

4. Then you’ll be able to type in Chinese already

   

Enjoy!

How long did I take with Storyteller? 30 seconds.

On my way back home, I’ve stumbled on the podcast of Steve Job’s commencement address at Stanford university while scanning through for a song.

For the 15 minutes waiting for the bus, I went through his speech again and I thought it would be useful for me to jot down the salient points of his inspiring speech.

Here’s it. I hope to make a difference like what Steve has done with his life and I believe you can if you’d like to, too.

1. Connecting the dots

   • Follow curiosity and intuition
   • Find out what’s facinating, beautiful and subtle
     • Might not have any direct practical application
   • Impossible to connect the dots forward
     • Believe that God has a way for you
     • Trust in something, believing that the dots will connect down
       • the road, will give you the confidence to follow your heart
         • even if it leads you off the well worn path
           • that will make all the difference

2. Love and Loss

   • Still love what I do. Rejected but still in love. Start over.
   • Getting fired – heaviness of being successful replaced by
     • lightness of being a beginner again
       • Less sure about everything
     • Freed and enabled one of the creative periods of his life
   • Awful tasting medicine but the patient needed it
   • Sometimes life hits you in the face with a brick, don’t lose faith
   • Only thing that kept him going was that he loved what he did
   • You got to find what you love
   • True for work and lovers
     • Work gonna fill up large part of life
       • Only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe what is great work
       • Only way to do great work is to love what you do
     • Keep looking and don’t settle
     • As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it
     • As with any great relationship, it gets better and better as the years go on

3. Death

   • “If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right”
   • If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?
   • And if it’s no for too many days in a row, I need to change something
   • Remember that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool that I’ve encountered to
     • help me make the big choices in life
   • Almost everything – all external expectations. pride, fear of embarrassment or failure
     • All fall away in the face of death
     • Leaving what’s truly important
   • Remembering that you are going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking
     • you have something to lose
   • You are already naked, there is no reason not to follow your heart
   • No one want to die
   • Death is the destination we all share
   • Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life
   • Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking
     • Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice
   • Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition
     • They somehow already know what you truly want to become
       • Every thing else is secondary

Early morning hitchhiking road, the kind you would find yourself hitchhiking on
– if you’re so adventurous

Stay young, stay foolish.

Recently, Lihao has a few friends enquiring about switching to a Mac, who ask what’s so great about switching to another Operationg System, other from familiar WindowsXP.

Mike has a list here
with the top 10 reasons after his initial switch FOUR years ago (even longer than yours truly!).