I am still growing into my new Mac, but a friend suggested I download "Monolingual". This is a program that strips out all the multi-language components of all your software. Chances are that you operate 99% of your programs in English. Each program is designed however with the capacity to function in every language under the sun. Monolingual removes the unecessary langages to free up significant hard-drive space. Both my friend and I recovered over 2 Gigs of space by running this simple and free program. I give it an A+. You can find it online here:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/7758

Erste Schritte

Begonnen habe ich mit dem einlegen von Leopard und einem anschließenden Neustart. Für all diejenigen die nicht das Handbuch gelesen haben und es auch sonst nicht wissen, man sollte die Taste C während des Neustarts gedrückt halten, damit startet der Mac nämlich von der DVD.

Dann habe ich fix mein WLAN eingerichtet und erst einmal alle verfügbaren Updates geladen und installiert. Anschließend startet OS X neu (ich gebe zu, ich habe dazwischen noch schnell begonnen dieses Beitrag zu verfassen ;-)) und es kann weitergehen mit der Einrichtung des Systems. Es empfiehlt sich im Übrigen den hoffentlich vorhandenen WPA-Schlüssel des WLANs auf einem USB Stick gesichert zu haben oder ihn auf einem Zettel notiert zu haben.

Erste Apps

Monolingual ist nach den Updates die erste Installation die ich vornehme, um unnötigen Sprachpaketebalast loszuwerden. Es lohnt sich Monolingual in mehr oder minder regelmäßigen Abständen über das System laufen zu lassen, da es die Sprachpakete nicht nur bei OS X entfernt. Mehr dazu werde ich in einem gesonderten Beitrag zum Besten geben. Schon jetzt gespart: 2,4GB! Im übrigen ist es diese Applikation die mich auf die Idee brachte, eine bisher immer belächelte Liste von in meinen Augen sinnvollen Applikationen zu eröffnen. (siehe Hot Apps)

Der nächste Schritt für mich zu iBackup, um meine zuvor gesicherten Daten wiederherzustellen. Auch zum Thema Backup habe ich noch nicht das Gefühl, das Gelbe vom Ei gefunden zu haben und werde mich in Zukunft sicherlich auch mit diesem Thema noch einmal intensiv auseinandersetzen und in diesem Rahmen natürlich auch die TimeMachine, die Backup-Funktion seit Leopoard, auf den Prüfstand stellen.

Auch wenn ich auf Mein Neuer Mac noch für Thunderbird plädiert habe, werde ich nun wohl doch zu Mail.app wechseln. Der Grund? Die Entwicklung bei Thunderbird ist mir einfach zu schleppend und die Integration von Mail.app einfach zu überragend als das ein stagnieren noch lohnt. Tipps zum Wechsel wird es also sicherlich noch in Hülle und Fülle geben. Einen vorab, es lohnt sich bei einem umfangreichen Mailarchiv, dieses in mehreren Schritten zu importieren. Der Import als solcher ist über Ablage - Postfächer importieren... sehr einfach zu realisieren.

Da mir der Switch zu Mail.app etwas schwieriger fiel, da insbesondere mein Ordner mit Gesendeten Mails zu groß schien, musste ich Thunderbird noch einmal Installieren um den Ordner zu teilen. Nun benötige ich als nächstes AppCleaner, mein bisher favorisiertes Tool zur vollständigen Entfernung nicht mehr erwünschter Applikationen. Wenn ich dazu kommen, werde ich mir sicherlich auch mal wieder die Alternativen anschauen. Das steht allerdings sicher nicht sehr weit oben auf meiner Liste.

Da ich nun schon seit mehreren Stunden Online sozusagen tot bin, also in keinerlei Messengernetzwerken mehr vertreten, werde ich nun Skype installieren um mich wenigstens mit ein paar meiner Kontakte wieder austauschen zu können. Abgesehen habe ich meinen Login für Skype wenigstens im Kopf.

Wenn ich schon dabei bin, kann ich auch gleich Adium installieren, nur das ich beim besten willen nicht meine Logins für ICQ und Co. im Kopf habe. Daher werde ich wohl vorher info.xhead installieren, eine kleine, nicht überladene und sehr praktische Applikation um Zugangsdaten aller Art natürlich verschlüsselt zu verwalten. Schnell das Backup der info.xhead DB eingespielt und schon stehen mir alle meine Zugänge wieder problemlos zur Verfügung. Nur am Rande: man muss nach Erwerb und Bezahlung der Software erst noch einen Account bei xhead.software anlegen, das ist etwas komisch. Zu diesem Thema habe ich auf Mein Neuer Mac eine recht umfangreiche Übersicht zusammengestellt die ich bei Zeiten auf MacWork übertragen werde. Interessanterweise habe ich für Windows nichts dergleichen gefunden oder es war absolut überladen. 

So nachdem ich nun noch ein bisschen chatten und damit soziale Kontakte pflegen konnte, freut euch auf morgen weiter mit der Einrichtung meines nun wieder jungfräulichen Macs ;-) Feedback ist natürlich immer gern gesehen!

Zusammenfassung

Nachfolgend noch einmal die Namen und Links der bisher installierten Apps im Überblick für alle, die im Beitrag nicht mitgekommen sind.

Monolingual
Open Source, kostenlos
http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/

iBackup
kostenlos für den privaten Gebrauch
http://www.grapefruit.ch/iBackup/ 

AppCleaner
kostenlos
http://www.freemacsoft.net/AppCleaner/

Skype
kostenlos, proprietär
http://www.skype.de/ 

Adium
Open Source, kostenlos
http://www.adiumx.com/

info.xhead
kommerziell, $15 (entspricht etwa 10€), Zahlung per PayPal möglich
http://www.xheadsoftware.com/info_xhead.asp

In many Asian countries pressures are rising on English teachers to teach through English only. In Europe, the issue is still being debated, with peaks in the early 1900s when a group of Parisian radicals officially enforced the direct method for more than a decade, and again in the 1970s, when foreign-language-only audiovisual coursebooks were made available. Whether the foreign language should be the sole medium of instruction is thus more than an academic dispute. Millions of learners and their teachers are affected. Official target-language-only policies, though inspired by the best of motives, are irresponsible because the baby is thrown out with the bathwater. So:

Should we conduct lessons through the foreign language? My answer is an unequivocal yes. Does this mean the exclusion of the mother tongue from the classroom? The answer is an equally unequivocal no. The solution to this paradox is the sandwich-technique:

• French teacher of English: "What’s the matter? Qu’y a-t-il? What's the matter?"
• German teacher of English: “You’ve skipped a line. Du hast eine Zeile übersprungen. You’ve skipped a line. Or: “I mean the second last word. Das vorletzte Wort. The second last word.”

This technique of sandwiching the translation of an unknown expression can be carried out very discreetly in the tone of an aside or sometimes even whispering. It should be a central technique of any foreign language teacher as it is the quickest way to make authentic classroom communication possible: statement in L2, restatement in L1, and again in L2. The supportive use of the mother tongue is indispensable because of the improvisational nature of much of classroom talk where participants come up with unforeseen problems and teachers are caught unawares and unprepared and must react in an unrehearsed, yet natural manner. The language required is often more complex and beyond the language taught concurrently in the coursebook. That’s why mother tongue aids make it easier to conduct whole lessons in the foreign language and can promote more authentic, message-oriented communication than might be found in lessons where they are avoided. Pupils gain confidence and, paradoxically, become less dependent on their L1.

Foreign language teaching theory needs to make a complete turnabout and accept that the mother tongue is the greatest asset a talking child brings to the classroom. It is also the single most important teaching aid.

More than half of European citizens speak a second language. However, in the U.S. a measly 9 percent of Americans are fluent in a second language. Perhaps it’s due to our geography, or perhaps it’s the global influence and status of the English language; whatever the reason most Americans have not felt the need to learn a second language.  

Have you ever wondered what we are missing by remaining monolingual? Why should we deny ourselves the ability to fully appreciate the global community?  Imagine experiencing a new culture as a participant rather than as a visitor.

Spanish is a wonderful choice for a second language. It is already the most popular second language in the U.S. and Canada. It is one of the easiest foreign languages for native English speakers to learn. There are plenty of similarities between the two vocabularies. Furthermore, written Spanish is simple to pronounce. It is almost entirely phonetic.

You may already know more Spanish than you think. Below is a short quiz. Give it a try.

• rapido
• universidad
• problema
• estudiante
• pantelones
• complicado
• artista
• fabuloso
• geografia

All the terms in the above quiz are examples of “cognates.” Cognates are words that are easy to translate and recognize in English. The answers are as follows:

• rapido/rapid
• universidad/university
• problema/problem
• estudiante/student
• pantelones/pants
• complicado/complicated
• artista/artist
• fabuloso/fabulous
• geografia/geography

Besides the fun and satisfaction derived from learning a new language. There are other benefits to being bilingual: 

*Learning a second language is an excellent way to learn English grammar, for the study forces you to examine how English is structured.

*Spain and Mexico are very popular vacation destinations. While visitors could have a wonderful time without knowing a single word in Spanish, speaking the language multiplies the fun.

*Immerse yourself in a different culture. Almost every Mexican restaurant has Spanish-language newspapers and periodicals available. Pick one up and see if you can translate any words. As you learn more Spanish, you’re enjoyment will grow. The ability to learn about a different culture in their own language is a ticket into a new culture. By the way, I’ve noticed nearly all the workers in the local Mexican restaurants will go out of their way to help us Gringos learn a little Spanish.

*In terms of jobs, learning Spanish can open numerous doors. A variety of opportunities are available to Americans who speak Spanish as a second language. Such employment can be found in the health, education, communication, and service industries, not to mention international trade and tourism.

 Now, let’s try one more quiz. Translate the following terms into English: 

• Asisistir
• Carpeta
• Éxito
• Largo
• Parientes
• Recorder
• Vaso  

This was tricky. The terms in quiz 2 were examples of “false cognates,” words that look similar to English words, but have an entirely different meaning. 

Answers: 

• Asisistir/to attend
• Carpeta/file folder
• Éxito/success
• Largo/long 
• Parientes/relatives
• Recorder/to remember
• Vaso/drinking glass   

This second quiz serves as a reminder that while Spanish is one of the easier languages to learn, learning a new language takes commitment. 

There are a variety of methods to learn a foreign language. Probably, the best way to learn a new language is to immerse yourself in that culture by interacting with native speakers. In my opinion, printed books are the least effective method to learn a new language; the importance of hearing authentic accents and inflections of the spoken language can’t be overstated. You might also enroll in a foreign language course. There are also numerous online sites that are well worth exploring. A few online sights are http://www.loquella.com/learn-spanish/, http://www.studyspanish.com/, and http://www.rosettastone.com. 

Felicitaciones. Usted ha tomado la primera medida.  

Another problem for me has to do with the fact that any time someone speaks to me in Japanese my brain completely goes to pieces. For example, we had dinner a couple weeks ago with one of Mark's Japanese clients who was in Hong Kong. I had my introduction ready and had been practicing it all day long.

Hajime mashite. Cathy desu. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu.

Roughly translated it means "How do you do. I'm Cathy. It's nice to meet you." It's probably the first thing I learned back when I was still taking Japanese lessons last year and I can say it quite well. Anyway, so I was prepared...until I was actually introduced to Hitoshi-san. He stood up and said his name, but the amount of Japanese that came out of his mouth in those two seconds was absolutely mind-boggling and I subsequently lost every piece of Japanese that I knew. The sad thing is I'm pretty sure that he only said his name. I ended up muttering a weak "I'm Cathy" in return.

And the language thing is just the tip of the iceberg for me when it comes to fitting in. I'm absolutely sick with envy at all the kawaii (cute in Japanese. Ha!) Japanese girls walking around Tokyo in their kawaii little outfits and their kawaii little shoes. How my heart aches to be as fashionable and put-together as the entire population of Japan. And let's not forget the food. Oh, to be able to walk into a grocery store and pick things off the shelf without having to constantly reference your little Japanese language book to figure what meat comes from what animal.   To be someone who can effortlessly work a set of chopsticks without resorting to stabbing things, stave off cancer with my constant green tea drinking (which I unfortunately don't really like), and easily navigate the labyrinthine system that I currently know as the Tokyo subway.  Ah me.  The sadness and humiliation of being a monolingual Westerner in Japan.

Many reviews have come out either praising the Macbook Air for its supple shape and light weight properties or thrown it to the curb announcing with gusto that its lack of ports, unconventional absence of an optical drive and under-powered innards make it relatively useless in today's age of multi-tasking powerhouses. Looking at the principles behind the Macbook Air has lead me to reinterpret my use of my own first generation Macbook Pro and consequently how I store information. 

The basic principle of life is that we live our lives and regardless of class, wealth or race we all die. Upon death everything that we have bought, gained and possessed during our lives is useless as it is inevitably left behind in this world. This end to materialism allows one to embrace a much simpler life, one that focuses not on possessions, a lifestyle of minimalism. 

In the age of digital freedom it is easily possible to access and retain multiple and extensive forms of media whether it be music, movies or audiobooks from iTunes or home videos from your family and friends. Apple, with its iLife suite, has made it especially easy to stockpile both your most treasured moments and those you may never normally have remembered due to their plain everyday nature. 

So what has the Macbook Air inspired?

That being a 'digital pack-rat' is not a healthy habit to maintain and the idea of simplicity, minimalism and a clean operating system is a principle I would love to adhere to. It is the Macbook Air's 64 gb solid state disk drive or 80 gb hard disk drive which inspired me to go through the contents of my Macbook Pro's 100 gb hard drive and see what I really need, and more importantly take note of what I was hoarding and wouldn't miss if it was deleted. In most computers files can be easily allocated to one of five categories; videos, photos, documents, audio (or music), and essential system files. These categories can be pruned and can, depending on your individual hard drive usage, be trimmed to half their original size. 

(1) iTunes - After deciding to embark on this crusade the first and most obvious target was iTunes. 

Despite its massive potential as an audio-visual organisational tool it can have the ability to allow one to hoard data in a ridiculous manner. Podcasts are a marvellous invention and I enjoy being able to subscribe to a specific few. What I realised upon opening iTunes and looking at the podcast library through the new critical lens of 'digital minimalism' was that once I have listened to a podcast I very infrequently return to it and listen to it again. All the information I wish to follow up on is gleamed from it the first time around. 

The most obvious first step to reduce my hard drive's size was therefore to delete every podcast after listening to it. Most of the podcasts which I had been 'holding on to' I had only been retaining because of an assumption that sometime in the future I would need to be able to go back to them and gleam some interesting titbit of information which I would not have been able to remember or hadn't had the sense to write down and store the first time around. Deleting the stock piles of podcasts that were stored on my Mac and yet were freely accessible on the 'podcast producers' server was the first step I was looking for in the effort to reduce my 'digital footprint' and consequently erased three to four gigabytes of data. 

(2) Movies - are the next point of call in the digital purging of my Mac. 

It has been common place in the iTunes store to be able to download movies into the iTunes organisational client and these movies whether gleamed from iTunes or from other legitimate sources often fill our hard drives with media which we do not use on a regular basis. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean to say that one should not digitise our movies and carry them from place to place but keeping our sole collection of video media on a laptop defeats the concept of minimalism and fills up our hard drives at an amazing speed. I have found great freedom in depositing the majority of my video media on an external hard drive and keeping only my most favourite few files within the confines of iTunes. 

Apple's Steve Jobs spoke about the simplicity of the Macbook Air while he was giving his keynote presentation at Macworld 2008. Addressing the now often commented on lack of an optical drive Jobs responded by detailing the prevalence of wireless internet in the current digital age and that pairing a Macbook Air with the newly established itunes movie rental service would allow on demand movies and yet free hard drives from the weight of having to carry the weight of a 1 gb movie.

(3) Documents - Being a digital pack rat is something that not only suffocates one's iTunes library but also can seep into the way we store basic documents. 

Searching through the documents folder on your Mac can reveal to you a wealth of forgotten letters, reports and budgets that were useful five years ago but have ceased to stay useful. A fine example, upon sifting through my own 'Documents' folder was the folder containing my school work which, while it may have been interesting and worth keeping while I was at school, ceases to be of any use to me now. For some keeping these files on a disk for the sake of nostalgia may seem tempting I do not wish to break with the mantra of simplicity and minimalism and therefore 'recycled' the lot of them. 

Two topics remain. That of photos and the more interesting topic of files which Apple installs with the operating system and devour a large portion of your hard drive space while doing very little of any use. 

(4) Photos - The advent of the digital age has allowed us to move swiftly from film cameras to digital cameras. 

Nowadays photos are stored electronically on flash memory of various types rather than rolls of film. This gives us the massive advantage of being able to open up photography to the masses and be able to take more photos than ever before but also acts as a quality suppressant. As photos are so conveniently produced and (with the aid of programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Pixelmator) retouched one is given fewer and fewer reasons to discard images that have not turned out to be above average. While we retain the photos which capture the special stories inside and event we also retain the seventeen photos which look similar to the perfect shot. After trawling through my extensive photo album it was easier than I first thought to cull the photos down into smaller albums ("events") that represented my favourite images rather than just a cumbersome collection of similar images cluttering my hard drive. 

The principle of simplicity and minimalism is that rather than having 18 photos cluttering up ones computer and therefore ones life 1 or 2 shots should be kept that perfectly capture the moment and reflect the quality of your photo collection and not emphasise the quantity. This is an alien concept in a post-modern age where it is mainly the quantity of items you possess which labels you as successful and not the quality a few products tastefully displayed.

(5) System files - This is a topic I end with as it is one of the most infuriating and yet also one of the most interesting to talk about when streamlining a Mac.

As those of us which own a Mac already know the operating system comes with printer drivers and alternative language files which together makes up almost 2 or 3 gigabytes of space. This very fact cripples the concept of a minimalist Mac and should always be dealt with. If you are anything like me then you own one printer and you have access to a little less than five more outside the home. Therefore, it is by no great leap of logic that it seems sensible to erase the 99% of printer drivers which will in all likeliness never be used. The ideal time to remove these files is upon installation of the operating system when you are able to navigate to the 'customise' button and select to install only the drivers for the printers your use on an everyday basis. 

Similar to the atrocity of printer drivers is the alternative language files deployed in Mac OS X to allow its operating system to be run around the world. While keeping these languages installed makes one feel cultured and opens the future up to possibilities of how many languages one can master and successfully use in reality they are cumbersome and will never be implemented. A tool for successfully gouging out the wasted language files not only from your operating system but also from your software programs is a tools which I have long been using; Monolingual. Monolingual strips language files from its host software and also acts to purge redundant system architecture from within the first generation of Intel Macs which are still burdened with 'universal' software rather than the much more streamlined Intel-only software. 

What are the benefits to digital minimalism?

Less waste and more quality. These are by far the most desirable reasons to slim your hard drive down. Allowing for a purging of those 17 photos of your friend smiling in an intriguing manner, each one catching a different angle of the joyous moment were entertaining at the time but now only serve to clog your Mac with unnecessary and never looked at images. Secondly, backups are simpler because the amount of information having to be stored, whether offline or online, is smaller. 

This is always a bonus as Amazon S3, 'the next big thing' in online storage charges by the quantity per month. Similarly with off-line, physical storage the bigger the hard drive the more expensive you have to pay. Lastly, with all things minimalist and simple there is a cleanliness and a purity which can even be achieved in the digital realm. The small size of the Macbook Air's storage drive (whether SSD or HDD) has accentuated my need for the simplicity of a small digital footprint. 

I have a Macbook Pro with over half of it's 100 gb hard drive empty and I hope to condense this. 

Simplicity over confusion, quality over quantity, but most importantly, minimalism over materialism.

A good chunk of foreigners somehow manage to eke out a living doing something the average person never dared dream as a youngster:  teaching English.  The last time I checked, a lack of English was a good thing if you're in the business of let's say....teaching English! 

In addition to being great for extending your careerexistence as an English teacher, Koreans' lack of English provides yet another bonus:  the opportunity to learn a new language!  That's right, learn Korean!  It's shocking to see the number of foreigners that have lived here for a year and still can't count/read/order food/etc.  Oddly enough, not all of them are American!  Some of these monolingual mammoths call themselves...Canadians, Kiwis, Aussies and even Brits.  If you're in Korea and you happen to meet one of them, they'll most likely be heading towards Itaewon, the mecca for non-Korean speaking foreigners in Korea.

One bonus of learning Korean is that most Koreans will fall all over themselves if you manage to say "hello" or "thank you" in Korean.  They will be overly impressed by your complete mastery of their insanely difficult language.  If you're a foreign man, and she's a Korean woman, you probably can score some digits.  Note:  Adoptees and Kyopos are not considered real foreigners when it comes to speaking Korean, therefore regardless of how good their Korean is, it will never EVER  be good enough. 

To use Monolingual, you need to be logged in as an administrative user or as root. When Monolingual starts, you will be asked to choose the languages you wish to remove from your system. Once you make your selection, press the Remove button. To confirm your decision, enter your administrator password. Once you remove the localization files, the only way to restore them is to reinstall Mac OS X.

Monolingual requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 and higher and is distributed under the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. I recently installed a fresh copy of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) on my laptop and recovered 849 MB from my drive after running Monolingual.

The most recent version of Monolingual is available at http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/. If you like Monolingual and want to support its development, you can donate a small amount via SourceForge's donation page.