connotea

one of the nuisances in migrating to a different computer is the transfer of data. one way to solve for this is to store data on the internet.

since long time ago i stopped to download new papers to my local disk, but rather bookmarked the interesting papers listed on the archive server. although transferring bookmark list is not a big deal, recently i switched to using connotea to keep my bookmarks for papers online. as this service is provided by nature publication company, i suppose it won't easily go away; furthermore, the archive server conveniently provides a way to bookmark papers with connotea.

if the doi of a paper is known, it can also be added to connotea. it seems that papers listed on ads can be easily bookmarked by connotea.

i think the best feature of connotea (and other online bookmark systems) is to be able to label papers by various tags. a paper usually doesn't belong to one single category, and so it's sometimes difficult to decide which folder to put it in.

os x questions

• how to always open the finder window in a certain view?
• safari: how to configure to open new pages in a new tab (rather than doing command+click)?
• how to navigate to the first and last page of a pdf file in preview? (or, what's the key combination for home and end?)
  

quake!

the first earthquake i noticed since arriving in japan last october...

the epicenter is ibaraki-ken, scale is 3; in kashiwanoha the scale is only 1.

http://www.jma.go.jp/jp/quake/

troubles with macbook

i got my macbook last december, but it already created lots of trouble for me.

about a month ago, a noise started to occur whenever i tried to close the lid/screen; i took it to the apple store and they said it needed to be replaced. thankfully within two days i got the laptop back.

the first backup with time machine after getting the laptop back tried to copy the whole content of the hard drive; probably the time capsule thought it's a new laptop (in some ways). therefore i lost ~60 gb of storage space on the time capsule.

also occasionally when i tried to find some files, although the status bar at the bottom of the finder window indicated that it had found some matches, in the icon view it appeared to be blank; only when i switched to the list or column views i could see the search results.

i googled but didn't find other users complain about this kind of situation. i called apple care and they first suggested me to do a safe boot, that is, shutting down the laptop, then turning on the power while pressing the shift button. the mac will enter a safe boot mode. after booting up successfully, shut down the computer again.

this didn't help; i was then suggested to do a re-installation of os x: using the installation disk, clicking on "install os x", following on-screen instructions until the "select destination drive" (or something like that) step, selecting "option" on the lower left, clicking both "archive & install" and "preserve setting & user account" boxes.

i've just done this (taking about 2hrs), but am not sure if it really solves my problem. hope it does.

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it turns out the above re-installation didn't solve the problem. the blank finder problem (and other graphic-related issues) remained. fortunately the company that sold me the laptop is kind enough to let me get a replacement.

now i have to think how to transfer data, either from the current laptop or from the time capsule, to the new laptop...