4 Easy Ways to Speed Up Your Mac

Source: Mashable

Nobody likes the spinning pinwheel, the rainbow wheel or the Beach Ball of Death. Whatever you call it, you know it’s not a good sign.

Luckily there are simple steps you can take to speed up old reliable, regardless of his age — and most are built right into your Mac.

1. Clear Your Hard Drive

Your device needs breathing room to function properly. Go to About this Mac > More Info > Storage to see how many GB are free and to access a color-coded picture of the files using the most space. (A free utility like Disk Inventory X is a second option.) Find out if photos, audio, movies or apps are your main culprit, then decide where to go from there.

SEE ALSO: 5 Easy Ways to Speed Up Your PC

If photos are a problem, consider transferring old images to a USB or external hard drive, or burning them to a disk. Another helpful tip? Visit your iPhoto’s trash. Just because you deleted a few pics from iPhoto doesn’t mean they’re gone. The application has its own bin that needs to be emptied; you might find 500 pictures just waiting to be purged from your hard drive.

Finally, under About this Mac > Overview, you’ll find a Software Update button. It never hurts to double check that you’re up to date.

2. Monitor Your Activity

Don’t get frustrated the next time your fan powers up and that pesky beach ball starts spinning. There’s a quick way to diagnose the problem using Apple’s Activity Monitor. Find it under Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor.

If you’re unsure how to understand the Activity Monitor, read this walkthrough from Apple. In short, each application and background process needed to run your computer uses a percentage of your computer’s CPU (central processing unit). You can also see how much memory each application requires.

Click “% CPU” once or twice to organize the list in descending order. If something is running above 90%, it’s a recognizable program and it doesn’t say “root” under the user column, close it down immediately by clicking Quit Process.

Consider adding the Activity Monitor icon to your dock. Click and hold, then select “Show CPU Usage” under Dock Icon. Now you can monitor your activity at all times.

One more check: Click the Disk Usage tab at the bottom of the Activity Monitor. If Space Free (the neon green color) is getting too narrow in the pie chart, you should probably clear even more photos and videos off your hard drive.

3. Reduce and Restart

For a quicker power up, go to System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items. See which boxes are checked; these are the applications that boot up every time you start up. If you don’t need them to do so, uncheck them.

Once you’re booted up, take a look at your desktop. If it’s filled with hundreds of icons, you’ve got some explaining to do. Stop saving things to your desktop. At the very least, organize your files into folders. But for best results, clean it up completely.

For any new Mac users out there, be sure to properly close programs. Simply exiting an application or browser does not stop it from running in the background. It basically just minimizes the program. (You can tell if an application is still running by the glowing marker beneath it in your dock.) If it’s a complicated program like Photoshop, you can bet it’s slowing you down. Visit the item on your dock, click and hold, then select quit.

4. Get Rid of the Extras

When it comes to language files, Apple is more than generous. Sure, it’s tempting to keep all those interesting files on your computer “just in case,” but Hrvatski, Svenska, Magyar and Suomi are taking up too much space. Chances are one is enough for you. Download the free app Monolingual to get rid of these unused files.

The “genie effect” is a signature Apple move that applies when you minimize windows, for example. But it’s an unnecessary one. Get rid of animations like these and your windows will open and minimize much faster. Go to System Preferences > Dock and change the “Minimize windows using” selection from Genie effect to Scale effect. Then uncheck the “Animate opening applications” box. This window is where you can turn the magnification of your dock on and off, as well.

Have you successfully sped up your Mac by eliminating waste and improving productivity? Share your advice and tips in the comments below.

Photo courtesy of Flickr, Travis Isaacs

 

 

Siri Comes To Life

 

 

Ujub, Riak & Takabbur di Facebook

This is another interesting article I got from Facebook today. Facebook can be beneficial sometimes Make use of it! In a good way of course.

 

 

Bismillah…

Kita selalu dengar tentang ujub. Ujub adalah suatu penyakit hati yang bermaksud takjub dengan diri sendiri. Ujub merupakan titik tolak kepada penyakit hati yang lebih besar seperti riak (menunjuk-nunjuk) dan takabbur (membesarkan diri sendiri). Sifat-sifat ini tidak layak ada pada manusia.

Hanya Allah SWT. sahaja yang layak memiliki sifat ini kerana Allah-lah yang mencipta sekalian alam dan pemilik segala kekuatan. Maka, tidak salah bagi Allah SWT. untuk merasakan diri-Nya hebat, menunjuk-nunjuk kehebatan-Nya, dan mengagungkan diri-Nya.

Manusia yang ujub merasakan dirinya hebat. Contohnya, seseorang itu berasa ujub apabila dia berdoa lebih lama daripada orang lain, berasa ujub apabila sujud lebih lama daripada orang lain, berasa ujub apabila sedekahnya lebih banyak daripada orang lain. Mudah cerita, bisikan yang terlintas di hati berbunyi seperti “Uishh… aku sujud lebih lama daripada dia…”.

Perkembangan pesat teknologi di zaman ini menjadikan penyebab penyakit hati juga turut maju selaras dengan perkembangan semasa. Penyakit hati ini akan meresap bersama-sama pesakit dan mengikuti perkembangan dunia. Berikut merupakan sedikit sebanyak contoh-contoh ujub atau riak yang telah wujud di zaman moden.

1. Blog dan “Followers”
Kebiasaannya perkara ini hanya menimpa dikalangan “blogger”. Mereka berisiko untuk merasa diri hebat apabila ramai peminat ataupun “followers” yang mengikuti blog mereka. Ribuan atau ratusan “followers” menyebabkan diri terasa hebat dan dikenali ramai. Tidak salah untuk kita berasa seronok dengan ramainya “followers”. Tetapi seronok atas dasar apa? Seronok kerana dapat mencurahkan ilmu kepada ribuan atau ratusan “followers” atau seronok kerana melihat JUMLAH “followers” yang banyak?

2. “Like” di Facebook
Post “status” di laman sosial facebook. Ramai pula yang tekan “like”. Apabila ramai yang “like”, mulalah rasa diri mendapat perhatian ramai. Setiap cetusan minda yang terpapar di laman Facebook dihargai dan rasa bangga dengan apa yang telah dihasilkan. Awas! Tidak salah untuk merasa gembira apabila orang lain suka apa yang kita lakukan, tapi janganlah sampai merasa riak dan berbangga dengan diri sendiri.

3. Komen di Facebook
Mungkin juga kita akan rasa teruja apabila ramai yang memberikan tindakbalas yang memberangsangkan pada “post” kita di Facebook. Apabila ramai sangat, mungkin bibit-bibit perasaan ujub akan mula lahir.

4. Komen Gambar di Facebook
Perkara ni mungkin berlaku pada lelaki yang kacak dan perempuan yang cun sahaja. Apabila cun atau kacak, ramailah yang komen. Tidak kurang juga yang memuji. Apabila banyak sangat terima pujian, mulalah rasa semacam dan seronok dengan pujian itu. Maka, perasaan ujub pun senang-senang boleh diterbitkan.

6. Ramainya Kawan atau Peminat di Facebook
Jumlah sekali lagi memainkan peranan penting bagi syaitan untuk menghasut manusia untuk berasa riak. Ramai bilangan rakan maya di facebook juga membolehkan perasaan ujub diterbitkan. Itu baru kawan, apatah lagi peminat artis yang mencecah jumlah ratusan ribu, malahan jutaan orang. Apabila ramai orang yang meminati artis tersebut, mungkin perasaan ujub akan muncul. Hati-hati!

7. Berdakwah di Facebook
Mungkin ramai kawan kita yang merapu di Facebook. Sebagai orang yang merasa dirinya wajib untuk berdakwah, maka Facebook dijadikan medan untuk berdakwah di tengah-tengah rakan Facebook yang banyak merapu. Maka, jadilah kita orang yang terpencil kerana tidak merapu sedangkan yang lain banyak yang merapu.

Apa yang dibimbangkan di sini, apabila kita berdakwah, kita turut akan berbangga dengan apa yang kita lakukan. Awas, wahai da’ie!

Jadi, berhati-hatilah dengan hati! Semoga kita dilindungi Allah daripada penyakit-penyakit hati ini. Ingatlah bahawa, setiap apa kebaikan yang kita lakukan semuanya adalah daripada Allah jua. Kita tiada hak untuk merasa ujub kerana tanpa izin-Nya ia tidak mungkin akan berlaku. Kembalilah apa jua pujian itu kepada Allah.

Elakkan diri daripadanya, Lindungi diri dari kemurkaan Allah.. Nampak simple, tapi ibadah jadi debu gitu je….. Na’udzubillahi Min Zalik…

Source: Bumi Akhir Usia (Facebook)

p/s: Work for a cause (Allah) not for applause (show off, impress others etc)

 

 

Samsung’s Smart Window

 

Now this is cool!!

 

Stages of Human Development

My recent post on Twins Conversation Inside The Womb received a few interesting feedbacks. The feedbacks were honest and it came from people whom I think are intelligent in scientific matters.  And based on the site statistics, I also noticed that there were many traffics coming for that post. Looks like the twins are going to overtake Justin Bieber LOL.

The feedbacks I got from the post has driven me to sort of revise on the embryology subject, not literally though. The creation of man became a very meaningful subject to me especially since I started to learn Embryology during my first year.

I remember I had to study this book in SUMMER 2010 to pass my Histology retake.

Here are some videos that definitely don’t have any contradictions from what I’ve read so far from the book above. It’s all about babies, baby!

 

 

More on the Miracle’s of The Quran including the orbits, ozone layer, heart massage, expansion of the universe, the rosette nebula, roundness of the earth, formation of rain, female honey bee, honey, preservation of pharaoh’s body and many more.

The Rosette Nebula from NASA