November 2007

• LaTeX can be quite picky about umlauts, even if you set inputenc to utf8. Labels don’t treat umlauts correctly and so pdflatex will give you some strange error message.
• LaTeX again. Underscores within your text are also a bit of a problem, but there’s a package you can use (underscore)
• You cannot save transparent gif images with .NET easily (meaning: Bitmap.Save(someStream, ImageFormat.bmp)).
• GDI+ will give you strange error messages wherever it can. Saving a png image to an output stream is such a thing. You need to save it to a memory stream first and then save the memory stream to the output stream. That’s because the png must be seek-able, which is not the case for the bitmap class.
• TextMate is awesome. For real.
• Transparent pngs work surprisingly well in IE7.
• SVG support in Firefox is great, but sucks for Internet Explorer (you need a plugin from Adobe which you cannot install without administrator privileges).

Seems like I had a busy day.

It’s finally here, my shiny new MacBook has arrived on Friday. Overally I can say that Leopard is awesome, as is the hardware. Programs are really snappy, Spaces, Spotlight, Safari (I love the search feature and the resizable textfields) are all awesome.

The only problem I have at the moment is the keyboard. I’ve chosen the german version, which does not have labels for all characters on a key. So finding some strange shortcuts can be quite tricky sometimes.

Pictures and further insights will follow.

Yep, I’ve ordered a brand new MacBook (the one with the Santa Rosa chipset) last Thursday. The Apple website says that it will ship on Friday, unfortunately I have no clue where my MacBook is at the moment (Apple tracking doesn’t seem to work for now). But I will happily wait, read all those fancy Apple blogs which are floating around the web, collecting hints and tips and will be a happy Mac user on Friday (please!).

Update: Seems to have arrived in the Netherlands.
Update #2: On it’s way to Vienna.