With the release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard came a new Exposé selection border and quite frankly the default one was, well.. ugly.

Soon enough, the MacThemes forum was bombarded with several different iterations of newer, sexier looking Exposé selection borders.

The set that stood out to me was created by TheSpaz. Yes, this is old news but I had trouble sourcing the files and thought I’d host them here for anyone who may be looking for them. Install into: System > Library > Core Services > Dock > Contents > Resources

Click to download →

I purchased Personal Foul a few months back after reading the excerpts that were leaked on the internet. At first I was surprised by some of the allegations posted and was in need for more. However, my hopes were crushed when I read that the publisher pulled out in the last minute..

But to the rescue came along another publisher who had the balls and chose to publish the book. In my opinion this is a good thing, because the book is more than just allegations.

Personal Foul is the memoir and story of Tim Donaghy – the former NBA referee who, got himself caught up in a betting scandal. The book tells the story of a young boy growing up who looked up to his father, had dreams and aspirations to play or referee in the NBA some day. Well, he didn’t get to play in the NBA, but he did become a referee.

We are told of a happily married man with kids and a successful career, refereeing in the NBA – who wouldn’t want that job? mingling with all the superstars of basketball and other celebrities. Eventually Tim is introduced to childhood friends who became involved in organised crime and inevitably, that’s where things began. He began living a life as a ‘double agent’ so to speak, providing people insider information about NBA games, who was most likely to win out of the match ups and other advantageous information.

He eventually became a gambling addict himself, betting on anything and everything, daily. From here, we begin to see a decline in his own personal life, increased lies, paranoia and everything that he loved and cherished eventually falling to bits.

I found this book an enjoyable read and an insight of how certain addictions can get you into terrible situations. Recommended.

Tim Donaghy’s website →

When I first saw Kobe wearing these in the ’08-09 Finals, I just knew I had to get my hands on a pair. The only problem is, living in Australia we are generally neglected of all the good shoe releases.

Luckily for me, Footlocker Australia was getting in very limited quantities of this release and sure enough I got my hands on a pair. So, this morning while putting these bad boys on, I realised I hadn’t put them on my blog even though I’ve had them for months and decided to take a quick picture. If you’re a shoe collector, grabbing a pair of these is a must for any collection.. if you can find a pair.

Michael Caine is Harry Brown, and he is a hardass. Watching this movie, I was quite simply enthralled and couldn’t get enough of this thriller.

The movie feels like a UK version of Death Wish → and Gran Torino → rolled into one. Well, on the technical side – I guess it is.

Harry Brown is a veteran who has lived to see his community descend into crime and violence. He sees it night and day, but chooses to simply mind his own business. Early on in the film, his wife passes away in Hospital and he is left a widower. The only person who is left in Harry’s life is now his close friend, Leonard who is brutally murdered by the teenage gang occupying the estate in which Harry lives.

With the Police failing to get anywhere with the murder of his friend Leonard, Harry eventually decides to take matters into his own hands and becomes a vigilante. Here we eventually learn that he previously served in the Royal Marines. Harry starts picking off the drug dealers and surveilling the gang members, trying to find out who really murdered his friend..

I guess I don’t need to elaborate much further as you can see where this is all going. If a vigilante/drama/thriller is your type of movie, definitely check out Harry Brown – it’s well worth it.

Check out the trailer →

I really hate it when a show I’ve been watching finally comes to an end. Without fail, I find I’m always asking myself; what am I supposed to watch now? For now the answer comes in the form of Human Target.

The series follows the life of character Christopher Chance. A unique private contractor who was once an assassin, now turned bodyguard/security expert. He is hired by his clients to protect their lives, but doesn’t do it in a regular way – he integrates himself into their lives and becomes a part of it until the threat is over. Each episode focuses on a different case/client, but one thing that doesn’t change is him kicking the bad guys asses – I guess that’s one of the things that make this show, along with the witty humour.

The supporting characters aren’t too bad either. You have Laverne Winston who is Chance’s Business Partner/Agency Manager. He’s the more serious guy of the three. You also have the token computer nerd/hacker guy, Guerrero. An interesting detail comes about on Guerrero later on in the first season, Which I didn’t quite expect to be honest.

At times the show does feel a bit corny, but none the less it’s an enjoyable watch every week if you’re not too skeptical, enjoy reasonable plots with lots of action. Watch the trailer →

Such a painful task. A while ago, some lovely people wrote an NTFS Driver for Mac OS X that allows you to mount, read and write to NTFS drives natively. It’s great if you just need to transfer a few files off a drive. The problem begins when you’re transferring larger files, it’s painfully slow. Yes, emphasis on the word pain in case you missed it.

So, this afternoon I guess I found a solution to my problem. The only problem within my solution is that it requires Parallels Desktop → or similar. If you have said software installed, the solution is simple. Open up Parallels, go to the Virtual Machine configuration. From there click on Shared Folders, check Access Windows folders from Mac, then check Mount virtual disks to Mac OS X Desktop. That’s all there is to it.

From there, mount the external NTFS formatted drive from within Parallels and you’ll also see it appear on your Mac desktop. Then just simply drag the files over from your Mac OS X installation to the virtual drive. While it’s not the most ideal method and as tedious as this task is, it seems to yield much faster results.

If this method worked for you, leave a comment and let me know if the time taken to copy files over was any better.

Update – Then I found NTFS for Mac OS X → problem solved.

Should really be called NBA Buffer Pass International, because this product provided by the NBA is utterly useless. Not to mention, it’s not even HD as they have labeled it.

Here I was thinking this season I’d be able to watch all the NBA games that I’d miss on TV due to the time differences and being at work, but no.. load up a live game and it just buffers every 15 seconds. Archived games aren’t too much better. It’s not like I have a slow connection either; I’m on a 22Mbit connection at home which is plenty of bandwidth.

I guess this may sound like a bitching session to some, but, I wanted to post this to make other people who may want to potentially purchase it next year to really reconsider, especially when games can be obtained via other methods, much faster and in better quality. Not that I am condoning this type of activity, but the options are there.

The Art of a Beautiful Game: The Thinking Fan’s Tour of the NBA by Chris Ballard is a definite read for any fan of the NBA. It is a great insight to the game, far beyond what you just see on TV.

It’s actually taken me a few days and I’m still not really sure how to review this book.. it has a lot of good elements to it, I think too many to explain really. I kind of wasn’t sure what to initially expect when I purchased the book, as I haven’t read a basketball related book in a while, but lets just say it’s quite engaging and I had many late nights.

Chris Ballard → who is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated takes us behind what we see the players do on TV. In his book, he breaks down and provides analysis of the games fundamental components. From shooting to dunking, blocking and even facets many people may not really care about; rebounding, assists. Sure, players in the NBA are they’re for a reason; they’re skilled. However, skill can only take you so far. Chris also goes as far as explaining the conditioning and training players go through to maintain they’re high level of skill and fitness.

The book also looks to provide analysis of certain players traits, such as Kobe Bryant’s ‘Killer Instinct’ (which I hope gives all the haters some insight), LeBron James’ ‘Athletic abilities’ (which are quite crazy absurd) and Steve Nash’s ‘unselfishness on the court’ to name some.

After finally finishing the book, whilst watching games I actually found myself looking for what was written about, and traits of certain mentioned players were quite evident. I guess if the book actually makes you think and pay attention to details whilst watching a game, it succeeds right?

When I first saw the previews for Sherlock Holmes I got rather excited for some reason. Not that I’m a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, but this movie looked to have a bit of everything in it.

So, I decided to go and watch it the other night and I must say, I wasn’t disappointed. A lot of ‘Sherlock Holmes purists’ seem to have detested the movie and it has received a lot of negative reviews, I’m not sure why. I thought Robert Downey Jr played the role of an eccentric Sherlock Holmes rather well, even down to the accent. The chemistry between Holmes and Watson (played by Jude Law) seemed to work quite well – there were lots of little humorous exchanges between the two throughout the movie.

There were some good action/fight scenes. Lets be honest, if they weren’t there in the movie, it would be boring as shit. The purists need to pull their heads out. Overall, I think the touch of Guy Ritchie, the action sequences, humorous exchanges and chemistry between the lead and supporting roles all mixed in quite well. I’m looking forward to the sequel..

After seeing some previews on TV, I cannot believe people actually found this attempt at a drama/thriller movie scary, let alone credible. I may sound pessimistic, but this shit was retarded.

The movie centres around on a young couple, Katie and Micah, who are haunted by a supernatural presence in their home. The movie is presented using found footage from the camera set up by the couple to capture what is haunting them. It starts of with the sounds of footsteps, loud noises, lights going on and off, doors opening and being shut.. to which eventually Katie is actually dragged out of her room. In the story line, she has apparently been haunted by this supernatural presence for years – yet it only decided to physically do anything to her now? Okay..

If you are literally bored shitless, high off weed or just want to watch a movie that your girlfriend might cling onto you with, then this is for you. Otherwise, save 1.5 hours of your life.