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Thanks to my graduation exams I didn’t really have too much time to post here, but now here it is:

I bought myself a new Macbook Pro (13 inch Version) and it’s fucking awesome.

It came to me from Shanghai 7 days after I ordered it via apple.com (taking the student discount while I’m still at school). Normally it would have been here earlier, but I opted to get a US keyboard installed (one of the reasons I wanted an Apple Notebook), because the german keyboard layout just doesn’t feel right to me after having used a US keyboard on my desktop for about 4 years now. It’s much better for programming in my opinion.

Also somewhat ironically, my old HP notebook died only a few days before my new Macbook came. Not that I used it in the last two years, but at least now we have some spare parts for my mother’s notebook (same HP model). On another note I’ve modified my living room setup. Also note the TP-Link Wireless Access Point (300MBit!!) on the left hand speaker. Now my room is finally covered with WLan as-well, which is nice, since this way I can take my Macbook to the couch and surf from there without a cable. Plus thanks to the 300MBit support I can transfer files from and to my desktop really fast (although a Cable with GBit would probably be faster still).

I love Gnome 3, but I hate the Evolution Mail Client it ships with. Thunderbird (+Lightning Extension) is superior to it in any way. In fact, Evolution is pretty much the Outlook Express of the Linux World.

However, Gnome 3 has this really nice calendar view when you click on the Clock in the Top Bar, but it pulls it’s calendar data from Evolution and there’s no easy option to get the data from Thunderbird, which I personally prefer. There’s an addon for Thunderbird called “evolution-mirror” which is supposed to sync the data, but it doesn’t seem to work with Evolution 3 anymore.

Another way to accomplish the sync is this:

First we publish the Thunderbird Calendar to a local file.

As you can see I put my Calendars into a hidden directory here, but you can really put them anywhere. After this is done, it’s time to launch Evolution. Add a new local calendar and select the file you just exported your calendar into.

Note the “On file change” option here, so it automatically refreshes when the calendar updates.

The downside of this method is that every time you update your calendar in Thunderbird you need to publish it again. However, Evolution picks up the updated calendar automatically, so that part works on it’s own. And there we go, having all our calendar date in the Gnome Top Bar.

Edit: In the comments there’s a method to “auto publish” calendars using an extension.

Almost every Steam User knows it: Suspended Downloads which just won’t finish. Here are my 2 cents on how to fix them in almost any situation:

1. Downloads will be suspended when you launch a game. If that’s what you did, then just pause them and unpause them. The download should then continue.
2. The Steam folder or some subdirectories are set to “Read Only”. Uncheck that option for the Steam folder.
3. If you are using  a non-english Operating System you can try to set your Unicode Language Setting to “English” (suggestion by Elvis in the comments).
4. Exit Steam, go to the Steam-Folder and delete the “ClientRegistry.blob” file. Now restart Steam (you will have to enter your password again even if you checked to save it).
5. Verify the game cache (this option is found in the Properties of the game in the Steam Interface).
6. Delete a bunch of already downloaded files and reverify the cache.
7. If nothing helps: Delete everything and redownload

Those are pretty much the options in decreasing order in which they should be applied.

If everything else fails and you find out how to fix it, please leave me a comment so I can add it to the list.