Why does emptying the trash in Snow Leopard take so long?

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Since installing Mac OS X 10.6, whenever I empty the trash, it takes about 50x as long as it used to under 10.5. I just emptied about 100 files (totaling 50 megs / all local files), and it was about 20 minutes.

It feels like its doing a secure delete, but I\’m just using the \”Empty Trash\” option (click on bin — choose empty trash). Is it possible that the secure delete is turned on by default?


Go to Finder » Preferences, and in the Advanced tab uncheck Empty Trash Securely.

The default did not change for me, but for some unknown reason it did change for some people.

Portal 2 Announced….

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike and Half-Life) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Portal 2 for shipment this coming holiday season.

Portal 2 is the sequel to 2007\’s Portal, which won 70 industry achievement awards.

Maybe it\’s just me?  But \”Coming Holiday season\” makes me wonder…  Why didn\’t they mention 4th quarter 2010?  Could it be someone is yet again being sneaky?
After all…  I\’m betting on April 1st, April 22nd, or July 4th.  After all, April first would really annoy alot of people, Earth day might just fit the theme of the box art for Portal 2….  And Independence Day, can you think of a better holiday for Chell?  (Fighting for her independence….)
None of these would be too outrageous.

  • Sunday March 14th
    		•  Daylight Saving Time starts
  • Wednesday March 17th
    		•  St. Patrick\’s Day
  • Saturday March 20th
    		•  First Day of Spring
    April 2010
  • Thursday April 1st
    		•  April Fool\’s Day
  • Sunday April 4th
    		•  Easter
  • Thursday April 22nd
    		•  Earth Day
  • Wednesday April 21st
    		•  Administrative Professional\’s Day
    May 2010
  • Wednesday May 5th
    		•  Cinco De Mayo
  • Sunday May 9th
    		•  Mothers Day
  • Saturday May 15th
    		•  Armed Forces Day
  • Monday May 31st
    		•  Memorial Day
    June 2010
  • Monday June 14th
    		•  Flag Day
  • Sunday June 20th
    		•  Father\’s Day
  • Monday June 21st
    		•  Summer Begins
    July 2010
  • Sunday July 4th
    		•  Independence Day/July 4th

    NVIDIA pulls 196.75 driver amid reports it\’s frying graphics cards

    Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

    One of the discussions that arise anytime we bring up a new graphics card from ATI or NVIDIA is about which company has the better drivers. Well, this should help sway the argument a little bit. It would seem StarCraft II Beta players were among the first to notice low frame rates while using the latest drivers from NVIDIA, and further digging has uncovered that the automated fan-controlling part of said firmware was failing to act as intended. The result? Overheated chips, diminished performance, and in some extreme cases, death (of the GPU, we think the users will be okay). The totality of it is that you should avoid the 196.75 iteration like the plague, and NVIDIA has temporarily yanked the update while investigating the reported issues. Shame that the company hasn\’t got any warnings up on its site to tell those who\’ve installed the update but haven\’t yet nuked their graphics card to roll back their drivers, but that\’s what you\’ve got us for, right?

    tbaggery – Smack a Ho.st

    Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

    This is cool.  Now if I just can remember that this alias is available…  I wonder why no one else thought about this….

    Tired of having no choice but to add aliases for localhost to /etc/hosts every time you work on a site that uses subdomains? Me too. That’s why I grabbed smackaho.st and made it a localhost wildcard, pointing *.smackaho.st at 127.0.0.1. If you’re a Rails developer, try visiting http://dontmakeme.smackaho.st:3000/.

    via tbaggery – Smack a Ho.st.

    Sarah Jane Adventures Series 4 (and 5!) commissioned

    Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

    The BBC Press Office have announced that the Doctor Who Children\’s Television spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures has been recommissioned for a further two series. Both series will consist of twelve, twenty-five minute episodes.

    Says CBBC Controller Damian Kavanagh:

    We are thrilled to be making many more episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures. It is been a huge ratings and critical success on CBBC and we hope our viewers are going to be hooked on Sarah Jane\’s action-packed adventures for some time to come.

    BBC Wales Head of English Language Programmes, Clare Hudson, added:

    The idea for The Sarah Jane Adventures sprang from the success of Doctor Who and it has since rocketed in popularity in its own right, thanks to the vision, talent and hard work of the show\’s brilliant cast and crew.

    The fourth series starts production at the end of March (believed to be the 29th), for transmission in Autumn. The new producer has been named as Brian Minchin (former script-editor for Doctor Who/Torchwood), who will work alongside co-producer Phil Ford, with Russell T Davies and Doctor Who producer Nikki Wilson as executive producers; writers include Ford, Joseph Lidster, Rupert Laight, Gareth Roberts and Clayton Hickman, and the series will be script-edited by Gary Russell.

    The show will feature all three main stars Tommy Knight (Luke), Daniel Anthony (Clyde) and Anjli Mohindra (Rani), as well as the title-star Elisabeth Sladen as investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith; however, no mention has currently been made of K9.

    The new adventures will feature the usual mixture of thrills, scares and fun with enemies old and new, including the terrors of the Nightmare Man, the sinister Shansheeth, the series\’ first visit to an alien world, and even a dangerous journey back into history.

    The fifth series is expected to go into production next year.