Cover art
Saturday, Sep 1 at 11:52 PM #
Bouncing between browsers
My man Joggl just pointed me to Bon Echo... and Neal of course has fully embraced the Shiira goodness.
And of course my blogging tools need to be improved... posting this, way too hard! But that's another topic.
Friday, Aug 31 at 5:56 AM #
video chat
Character Code Mapping Table Directory
;)
Ha another opportunity to be the #1 "I feel Lucky" hit on Google... today I tried installing a font on MiniRW that I've used successfully on RobBook... but FontBook is telling me, in no uncertain terms, that serious problems have been found recommending (nay, commanding) that I don't use the font.Rather an unacceptable bummer since I already used the font and can hardly just choose another now -- it's integral in who I am, to the degree that BitBlaster is Rob Leachman and Rob Leachman is BitBlaster. It is the font I used to create my logo graphic!
Hmm. I might be able to track this back to the source I used. Or go find a fresh copy of it on the net and pay (again) for the priviledge of using a proper version. Pretty sure I know which Nifty Font Pack it came from so that's the first task...
...right after I tell my little story. Feels like I'll post this blog entry and then go think about something else, as I have no immediate need to resolve the problem and do have plenty of other irons in the fire demanding attention. More soon on one or more of these :)
Tuesday, Aug 28 at 7:00 AM #
Drool
Sunday, Aug 19 at 8:20 AM #
Say it ain't so
Wednesday, Feb 14 at 10:16 PM #
Audio Power
Pause and resume OS X apps
`kill -s STOP pid`
`kill -s CONT pid`
... and of course we use `ps -ax` to find the pid of the program.
Wednesday, Dec 27 at 10:33 AM #
iPod: Two of most everything, 'cept playlists and ratings
The bad news, it's a one-shot thing... or rather, a manual process. There is (apparently) no way to configure iTunes to connect in an ongoing, seemless way to multiple libraries. Instead one must carefully, manually and periodically import from the shared library to her own library. I think it can work but seems a bit perilous... especially in the environment that I'm testing this for.
...and actually, the biggest concern here isn't Apple's software, but the fact that two users are going to be building separate, somewhat-shared libraries on the same machine (cool) which is a laptop (cool) with a limited amount of disk space (bad). I personally have enjoyed a giant iPod for a long time and been somewhat OK with knowing that my limited (also laptop) hard drive space has been the gating factor to filling up the thing and living the digital dream writ large. I can't imagine it will be any different for iPod users A and B; A likely is already wishing he had more disk, and as much as he'll want to try to make B happy and accomodate her needs, the fact remains that his laptop won't have a lot of extra space for B's music.
Enough blabbing here about this, for now. I need to get on the phone with these people, and will do so soon.
Monday, Oct 30 at 4:59 AM #
Two iPods, two ratings, one library
iTunes: How to share music between different accounts on a single computer seems to provide the answer. More later after I give it a try.
Wednesday, Oct 18 at 4:47 AM #
Linux thru Parallels on OS X
Big Parallels Fun
I'm ready for the next phase of my grand plan: Ubuntu is downloading even as we speak. Things seem to be coming together, shortly there will be no reason to switch machines (or even log out, ha!) just because I want to work in a different desktop operating system. I was uncertain about Apple's move to Intel but lately have been very very happy about it.
Go Apple! Go Parallels!
Sunday, Oct 8 at 3:59 AM #
Virtualization: enabled!
One key part of this is Intel's Virtualization Technology. I can't be bothered to read the article but there's more than just emulation happening here; apparently all the way down from the Windows app, through the operating system and down to the chip -- it's nearly two computers in one!
I just followed the simple instructions (though a bit scary) to enable VT on miniRW. Seems great. My long term plan is to not need Windows for anything, ever, nor allow any copies of it to run on the computers I own and have to maintain or use, but today that's not realistic. Instead I'm now embracing this inferior OS in hopes of finding a way to do all I need without it.
Consider it a cyberspace sort of "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" sort of thing :)
Tuesday, Oct 3 at 4:21 AM #
Got it!
1. Finalize the DVD-RAM and make it into... um, something.
2. Run some Windows shareware that I don't want to talk about which reads the DVD-RAM and produces DVD.
3. Transfer to OS X.
4. Selah
5. Read the DVD using Handbrake and write the video out as .mp4
6. Read the .mp4 into iMovie HD and edit as required.
7. Share the iMovie project over to iDVD
8. Embellish, and burn a DVD
So easy!
Friday, Sep 8 at 5:46 PM #
Yikes, DVD-RAM sure ain't MiniDV!
This morning I seemed I'd have to start "trying things" and I didn't want to mess with the vital production data, so I made a little test clip. I can now see three files on my new DVD_RATV disk: VR_MOVIE.VRO which I could guess is my movie, plus VR_MANGR.IFO and VR_MANGR.BUP and this link seems to suggest we might be making progress... but also higlights the difference between the test and prod data.
DVD-RAM ain't MiniDV, and it ain't DVD-RW either! The camera apparently supports two kinds of discs. DVD-RAM seems to mount as drive E and could be pulled over to the PC... DVD-RW, I don't know why Windows is telling me "incorrect function" when I click the drive, but that's where I'm at.
Hmm. Enough said here and for now.
Friday, Sep 8 at 4:54 AM #
Can't be that difficult, but...
Your mission Rob, should you choose to accept it, is to connect a Panasonic VDR-D105 to your PowerBook and successfully download the video from the camera into a format suitable for burning to DVD.
Would seem easy enough, right? 10 minutes in and... I'm queuing up Mission Impossible because there's no happy easy Google hit. I'll have to work a bit harder, later.
Thursday, Sep 7 at 7:47 AM #
OS X Torrent Fun
All fine well and good, and I've sampled a bit of content here and there... but I want infrastructure that just doesn't exist to make it all a lot better. So here's a note and reminder to myself, by way of some links to some nice software...
...back to less interesting things which are more pressing :)
Follow-up: the very next day, Digg linked to this review of these clients and more. So check that out!
Saturday, Sep 2 at 6:33 PM #
Screenies
Friday, Sep 1 at 8:21 AM #
Battery Fun - NOT
;)
After pointing Kyle to yesterday's entry which mentioned X-Charge he told me he's using a widget and probably won't be interested in a Dock-based battery monitor app. I recently saw a Macworld review 4-star recommendation for a widget that provides an alert when the power cable is unplugged, which seemed kinda cool... so I went shoping for wigets....I landed on MiniBatteryStatus and am really happy with it. Low overhead and a nice Growl notification interface which should help a lot with one of the problems I'm experiencing.
My main battery is badly calibrated. Look at the silly picture if you want, it's almost magic how long the thing runs with 0% charge. X-Charge's log tells the sad story that made me think it's time to do something:
2006-08-23 21:39:15: --- System going to sleep... (battery charge = 100%)
2006-08-23 22:18:02: Charger unplugged
2006-08-23 22:18:03: --- System waking up... (battery charge = 99%)
2006-08-23 23:05:30: --- System going to sleep... (battery charge = 51%)
2006-08-24 00:04:17: --- System waking up... (battery charge = 50%)
2006-08-24 00:13:26: --- System going to sleep... (battery charge = 0%)
That was a few nights ago, working with Dr. Bart... first I was surfing around as we chatted from 22:18 to nearly an hour later at 23:05, some 50% of the charge used. Fine. Then we got into something at 00:04 and in less than 10 minutes the other half of the battery was used up? Made no sense, irritating and embarrassing...
...so this morning I tried to recalibrate but it didn't work out as planned. I'll have to come back to this eventually but for now must move on. Too many projects and now this, grr!
Saturday, Aug 26 at 10:40 AM #
Spring 2007 can't come soon enough
I guess I'm blogging here because I enjoyed the presentation and recommend you watch it too if you haven't yet... as I told a friend recently, the first two minutes are worth the price of the click :)
Saturday, Aug 26 at 7:39 AM #
Two great programs
When times are tough I often turn to WhatSize to tell me about disk usage. There are others that are more pretty but this is spot-on for the data.
I discovered X-Charge not long after it was written. If you can find better please let me know. It's still 1.0 after all these years but sure seems to be the rare case where the initial release version is just fine for all time.
Enjoy!
Friday, Aug 25 at 8:14 AM #
Not too shabby!
And check this out: I got a free hard disk upgrade in the process! OK not really, but... when I loaded Panther I also set aside some of my drive and loaded Linux. Once it was working, however, I never booted into it (because OS X is where you wanna be of course). In fact, I forgot all about it until it was time to backup the iEverything and send RobBook off to the factory for repair.
Tonite when I restored my backups, I added the 4 gigs back into OS X filespace... sweet!
Wednesday, Jun 28 at 9:13 PM #
Sixteen weeks!
Part ordered!
Meanwhile I've tweaked miniRW (cleaned 71 icons from my desktop, oof) and it seems to have helped, a little. I've never had to spend time tweaking or even paying attention before, but I obviously would do well to master it now!
Friday, Jun 23 at 4:17 PM #
Settling in for long haul
I faxed my receipts and AppleCare agreement number to Apple on Wednesday. They alerted me Friday, somehow the agreement was attached to a machine with serial number one character different than mine. I'd have liked to think with a S/N as long as X12345ABCDE that there'd be a checksum in there somewhere such that Y12345ABCDE wouldn't be valid, but apparently not. I replied with the correct number and hopefully they'll soon mark this incident under warranty.
As I blogged earlier, I showed the symptom to a local Mac Store tech who confirmed my suspicion that the problem is on the graphics memory on the main logic board. And also as I blogged earlier, the problem "went away" while I was doing backups (same as the first time). So I wasn't surprised when I got the call from the technical support group today...
They don't see any problem with the machine! Further, they seemed surprised I erased the hard drive prior to sending it in for service. We discussed and agreed, they'll restore a basic system to the drive and see if they can make it fail.
Meanwhile miniRW does keep me going. I've pulled all the non-essential stuff out of the startup group and it's better. Not great, but better.
So that's what I know on Day 8. To be fair, it's only day 1 in the hands of tech support and I really hope the numbers don't get so big that this discrepancy doesn't matter.
Monday, Jun 19 at 12:12 PM #
Word to the wise
RobBook has left the building. I hope I see it back before July 4. Somehow it seems a long-shot.
Wednesday, Jun 14 at 3:47 PM #
How to make MiniRobWorld not happy
Step one: Flood the disk channel with activity. One way to accomplish this nicely is to fire up Disk Utility and choose one of the secure erase options. Perhaps you'd use an ailing PowerBook as the target, in preparation for sending it in for AppleCare
Step two: Do nearly anything useful. You'll want to consume all available memory and force the system to start paging out. I had no trouble with this step.
Step three: There is no step three. By this point you'll see the beachball, significant Dock hesitation, Application Switcher nearly failing to display, etc.
NOTE: Be sure to fail to set the Energy Saver from default settings (not carried over in Upgrade From Old Mac) and instead allow the computer to sleep ENTIRELY after 15 minutes of idle keyboard. This will allow the experiment to run a very very long time. You'll likely want to set Never Sleep on the computer before going to bed because after a full day of operating this way you'll want to move on to a new experiment when you wake up.
[And yes, my PowerBook symptoms did "go away" overnight... seems fine now, as near as I can tell with blank hard drives. Firewire mode looks just fine. I hope this doesn't slow the repair process]
Wednesday, Jun 14 at 9:28 AM #
My Newest Mac
Yesterday morning it failed again and I executed the first part of the plan: went out and bought My Newest Mac, a delightful 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo Mac Mini. I really tried to convince myself to get the lesser unit but in the end the Double-layer SuperDrive seemed very important. And dual CPU's will make it nice too perhaps. Anyway I've got a new machine which will either be just for fun but can provide the necessary fall-back to my PowerBook, or a new primary desktop ride to supplement the laptop... not sure which. For right now, it has allowed me to produce a solid snapshot of where things were at before the laptop failed.
Now I need to figure out just what I need to do in order to keep going after I nuke the laptop's contents and send it off for repairs. This is extra tricky because miniRobWorld is an Intel chip and the "Upgrade From Old Mac" option will cause everything to be converted to run on the new CPU. I don't think this could make any difference for the key data but who knows. I definitely don't want this to be a one-way trip, but I also don't want to confront reinstalling every application and setting right now. I need to get back to iProductivity.
Things would be more obvious if I could afford the memory upgrade soon to bring miniRW up to the 2 gigs that I enjoy on RobBook but I'm over-extended as it is so it might be a long time for that. Instead, well I'm doing the most obvious thing (aforementioned auto-upgrade) for the next 1.5 hours and I hope I'm back online soon... and if indeed something doesn't want to return to the PowerPC I guess I'll figure that out once RobBook comes back factory fresh and ready to go again.
More soon. I will say in closing, the Mac Mini sure seems sweet. Fast and quiet and just really nice!
Tuesday, Jun 13 at 6:42 AM #
Tasty Rodent
A lot better.
Friday, May 12 at 8:05 AM #
Stuff I need to do with my Mac
Etc etc I've got 1000 things I could add to the list. But no time.
Tuesday, May 9 at 6:21 AM #
Time is analog...
The answer is revealed here (and the older article here). Seems very good, and then add a bit of flair from here and it's quite choice. And unlike a lot of this sort of hacking, this seems a very stable thing to do (though it did wig out my system once as I was fiddling it in).
The only outstanding issue now is how to start up in analog. I've got the script in my Login Items list and it's all good except I have to manually switch from digital (the menu bar default) to analog. Check back later and perhaps I'll have an answer!
Sunday, Apr 2 at 11:25 AM #
Misc
While I'm thinking about it, at home I use (linux-based) DNS cache for all the machines on my network (including the PowerBook of course). Powered by djbdns and it rocks.
I noticed Costco has the last of the 20" G5 iMacs and man is it making me think. Sometime before end of next year I want to upgrade my ride from the 15" PowerBook plus an external monitor, to a 12" laptop and a super power desktop system. For a few minutes yesterday I was considering calling the 2.1 GHz iMac super powerful enough but... I don't have the money so it's pretty easy to pass. Costco includes free AppleCare ($170 value) so it seems a good deal.
I do have enough allowance saved up to max out the memory on my laptop so I should just go and do that. Except my iPod died last week and had to be replaced (I chose the 1 gig Nano, sweet) and my piggy bank isn't flush. Hmm.
Wednesday, Mar 22 at 8:34 AM #
About software
Also, I'm nearly ready to go on a rant about web browsers. So watch out.
Saturday, Feb 25 at 6:54 PM #
Open Letter to my Dad: OS X security concern
Well I told you I'd let you know when you need to worry about virus scanning on OS X and I don't think that day has come but I wanted to share a concern with you. Right now there's a security vunerability in OS X Safari that makes me wonder how much longer before we should take action.
If you care to read the article Apple Safari Browser Automatically Executes Shell Scripts feel free. In short, you click a link and it opens a process that could delete all your data. There is some disagreement about the scope of this issue but it seems just that clear to me.
The risk can be somewhat mitigated by opening the Safari Preferences panel and on the General tab, be sure the option to Open "Safe" Files After Downloading is turned off. Safari will no longer open the files automatically, but we still need to be concerned about opening the file manually after the download completes.
Hopefully Apple will release a patch soon for this, but it's not clear just what they can do to make it a lot better. Bottom line: I'm not advising any third-party solution yet but it makes me nervous enough I wanted to pass the word (and mark the date).
Tuesday, Feb 21 at 11:47 AM #
Glitches
Paint program
Specifically, Core Image Fun House and Seashore caught my eye and will need some follow-up. I've never regretted shelling out for a Photoshop license but I haven't used it in so long it will take some time to get back into it (not that I ever approached mastery of course... way too much there).
Monday, Aug 29 at 11:18 AM #
Having more fun
Anyway I wanted to link to Senuti which I just discovered and am using now and which seems quite excellent for the task at hand. I've had this blog entry marked Keep New in Bloglines since it was posted (in November of last year, sheesh) but I never got around to actually trying it. Never needed to copy files direct from my iPod, before today.
Now I need it, as I'm about to try something perhaps amusing myself but first need to "pick up the toys" from some previous fun.
Tuesday, Jul 26 at 11:05 AM #
Freaking out
I thought I wiped everything up and had been lucky nothing spilled into the guts of the thing, just on the aluminum case. But then I booted up and the LCD failed to come on. Flickered a bit and failed. The external monitor port and everything else seemed fine. So, figuring I had (will have) to take it in and get it serviced I started making a backup. My last backup was when I installed Tiger. Grr. Fortunately I've got plenty of external FW drive space so I aimed Disk Utility at it and crossed my fingers.
That was a couple hours ago and it seems to be working 100% fine now. The backup will be done shortly and I'll take it down to my local service center for an opinion, but the LCD is bright and seems happy. Maybe I got luckier than I thought.
During my freak-out mode I found Jeff Geerling's excellent Backup Strategies for OS X article which pointed me to Disk Utility's Restore tab... I didn't know it could be used to take a backup! Nice!
Thursday, Jul 14 at 11:39 AM #
Building my podcasting kit
Anyway it's not much but didn't cost much either, and should prove better than the internal microphone (too much fan noise) or the headset microphone (too much breathing noise) I've been using. Especially for those times when I want to interview somebody in person.
Thursday, Jun 2 at 1:54 PM #
Tiger Tips
It bugs me, two in a row on this upgrade I purchased and installed the weekend it was released. I mean, I saw the Tiger hype and didn't think I bought into it... then went and got the thing just to participate in the release party, but when I got there I was more in a mood to take it and go home. And then when I got home, I was all about making a current backup since 1) you gotta do it before installing, and 2) you can only run naked for so long, ha ha.
And then of course, I had just completed a good backup, so why not install the thing! Whoot! Except, there was no whoot just some issues I dealt with and then... no much to explain. Or much to explain in this exciting blog entry.
Time for a Tiger Cheese Sandwich!
Friday, May 27 at 12:31 PM #
Tiger - spotlight on Spotlight
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050427030707455
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/9
http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/how_to_execute_raw_spotlight_queries_in_the_finder
and generally speaking Tiger:
http://www.macgeekery.com/os/10_4?from=10
What an ugly blog entry... oh well I'm in a hurry.
Tuesday, May 3 at 5:01 PM #
Tigerized
Sunday, May 1 at 3:07 PM #
Faster, better disk image mounting
Quicksilver
Tuesday, Feb 1 at 3:34 PM #
How to use
First, I agree with most everything he said. I haven't tried TigerLaunch but you can bet I will be giving a spin soon. Definitely agree with the thrust of his points about the Dock -- it's a lot better as a task switcher than a program launcher. The rest of the tips are good too, great in fact, so here's the one place where I disagree:
He suggests Start Things in the Same Order. The intent is clear enough, but for me I'll leave the programs I (nearly) always start right on the Dock the way Apple intended. I use the "launch at startup" feature to get a few things running, and expect to start some more on most days but perhaps not all days -- but why not leave these in the Dock and know exactly where they will be if they're running? The effect is the same, "everything is always in the same place and you develop muscle memory for switching...", also "...when you’re running something new or that you don’t usually use, it’s going to be at the same end of the Dock."
The difference is slight (the Dock could contain programs that are not running) but if you follow my advice, those programs that are not running now but will be soon, will be exactly where they belong. I see his last-updated date is nearly a year ago and wonder if he still follows the plan he outlines.
And I could do better with this entry too but no time just now.
Monday, Nov 8 at 4:11 PM #
Dad's gonna switch!
Friday, Oct 8 at 6:08 AM #
What happening?
Not that I don't miss goofing around with new stuff for it. Actually the news of the day, CCC broke and I'm running naked. I need to figure out how to make it once again provide me a good backup, or find another answer.
Well back to the hacking.
Saturday, Sep 11 at 12:07 PM #
Apple Mail Rules
I've got more to say on the subject but will save the links now. Well, here's one more but it's not quite as nice (and it requires server-side code to add X-Spam-Status headers).
Tuesday, Jun 1 at 12:41 PM #
iPod Dynamic Playlist Fun
12.5 listening hours later I've identified 10 I'd definitely like to have in my collection and hear again often (or try to get more of, find the albums), 63 more that I want to hear again, 79 "just OK", 21 "probably not" and only 2 "definitely not". As I list these statistics you might be thinking I was a bit too bothered (maybe that's not the word you'd choose, ha ha) by this sorting project. The point of the entry though -- iPod/iTunes makes it SO easy!
First I marked each track in her mix with albumname "jmix2". Then I created a smart playlist, album=jmix2 and rating=unrated. Then, over the course of a couple months and only when my mood was right, I'd play music from this playlist. As I listened to each track I'd rate it using the definitions above, and it would be removed from the playlist. It was fun, a whole bunch of new music I wouldn't likely listen to, and some real gems for future enjoyment.
And yes, doing this did provide a certain wonk-flavored satisfaction. The technology works, very well!
Saturday, May 1 at 9:34 AM #
Introduction to Applescript
- I'm nearly done with a script to submit to Doug's AppleScript for iTunes -- a great site, especially since not only are there tons of scripts, but excellent tutorials like this one.
- I found AppleScript for Absolute Starters a great reference manual.
- Here's a great reference on Subroutines in AppleScript.
- This seems to be *the* place for AppleScript discussion as it relates to iTunes/iPod.
- Another place to ask and answer questions about Apple Software
- Of course Apple has their own reference information available... here's their page on Try.
- Finally, it's just a matter of time before I'll want to invoke AppleScript from the Unix shell, with osascript.
Learning AppleScript was time well spent and so easy! I'm getting things done and loving it!
Sunday, Apr 25 at 5:00 PM #
Yet another distraction...
I bought an iPod this week. Yep, I'm a proud owner of a 10 gig "hard drive in hot pants" and thus far it does seem way cool. Leisa says I did well with the matching speakers, and now all I need is a car charger and I'll be all set. Oh, and a case. And I really would like to hack it... at least master the bi-directional sync/copy mojo. And then I'll be all set. Oh, and I need a PDA that talks firewire. That's all I need, and then I'll be satisified. Heh.
I got the "third generation" version, the last one they sell with no docking station (saved $50 which I applied to the speakers, which include a built-in dock and seem more than adequate for the office). I couldn't be comfortable with buying more. Considered buying less, but wanted the first-rate design (and the tight integration to the King of Computers seems important too).
So, no more laptop distractions during my daily mega-commute... and another toy to play with... we'll know I've really got something when Monica starts talking about wanting it as a hand-me-down when it's time to upgrade.
Well that's the news here. There are any number of hyperlink opportunities above but no time now, watch for more RSN.
Friday, Jan 23 at 5:24 AM #
Stream capture update
Apple provides a nice library of downloadable Applescript for iTunes routines, including one that solves an issue quite nicely: I can open Finder, find a list of files to import, switch to column mode, and add the files to the library in the order they are broadcast.
Short of this Applescript, the files would be added in random order which not near as good. I figured I'd have to write my own solution here but no, Apple comes through again! I'm adding files in the order they were ripped, yay!
Also, that download includes a number of nice fonts so it's neat even if you don't want to enhance iTunes with Applescript. And finally, Font Book (included with Panther) rocks! Apple should figure out how much software license fees are included in their upgrades -- I know I saved money by buying Panther and not buying Font Book from whatever vendor wrote it and marketed it before Apple decided to include it in their offering. Nice!
Saturday, Jan 3 at 7:28 AM #
StreamRipperX
Today's pick is StreamRipperX, the OS X version of StreamRipper... quite excellent FREE software. So I'm goofing around with it this morning and WOW this could be quite choice, check it out:
So I installed the Unix command-line version to BitBlaster, picked a radio station and started it ripping some tracks. I set the proxy mode to include an outbound port I can use for monitoring. Immediately the "rebuffering stream" thing got much better, since I'm streaming from my slightly-loaded server only a few hops away instead of the radio station itself. And I'm developing an archive on my BitBlaster hard drive of the great music the station is broadcasting 24x7.
Just now I'm amusing myself typing as a first test completes, but it sure looks like shortly I can tie a couple crontabs to this and achieve the following goal:
Every morning at about 3:00AM or so, a job runs on my laptop which downloads 24 hours worth of fresh MP3's to a temporary directory. During the day I can start iTunes and listen to any old item in my library, or if things seem stale: just import the tracks from the temporary directory and enjoy sampling some tasty new music.
Cool? Cool! Well my initial test just ended and it's close but no cigar, so I better quit blogging and see what I can do to make this work.
Thursday, Jan 1 at 9:14 AM #
Tomcat and WebDAV on OS X
Working with Tomcat, getting my development environment back online... and once more I notice WebDAV support built into the tomcat servlet environment. This time around I took a moment and installed Cadaver, seems to function but I don't know enough about what I'm doing to make it work.
WebDAV *might* be important technology but it hasn't ever stayed on my radar long enough for me to know if it is or not. I don't question it must be a good thing, as there's enough effort posted on the web about it, but I personally haven't ever taken the time to learn what it is all about.
...and I should, RSN.
Thursday, Dec 25 at 6:01 AM #
Photoshop CS Rocks
I don't have time to comment... I'll have to come back and edit this later. Photoshop CS, and the rockin "Photoshop CS Down and Dirty Tricks"... wow!Well I guess I better throw a few more words here to mask the crummy layout of this page. I wish it were better, but nope, not today.
The book is really, really good... I'm glad I bought it. And of course Photoshop is sublime, and now I'm all legal and stuff and enjoying the latest version. Now I just need to get really good with the software.
...and here's me taking a step!
Saturday, Dec 13 at 9:08 AM #
Followup
Sometimes when I plug in my camera, iPhoto starts and lets me import the pictures, but there is no mount point for the memory stick so I can't eject it when I'm done pulling the pictures over. Instead I have to just turn the camera off and get that ugly message about device disconnect.
Anyway... Mr. Apple was ready and willing to help, so it was cool to be able to try.
And the other part... I've got a new 15" Powerbook on order, and have been patiently waiting for it for awhile now. On Friday I stopped in at the Mac Store here in town to see if they had a new expected ship date, and they said next week! Yay, I can hardly wait!
Sunday, Nov 23 at 5:33 AM #
How cool is this?
Tuesday, Nov 18 at 11:53 AM #
Panther Upgrade News: printing again
In a previous blog entry I recorded the easy steps to configuring CUPS for Samba printing but didn't share my SMB connect string (it's not really anybody's business). But this AM I needed it, and found it in the backups in the file /private/etc/cups/printers.conf
So I went and found the old connect string, put in in the appropriate config, and voila I'm printing again. Time for a cheese sandwich!
Wednesday, Nov 5 at 6:42 AM #
Panther's Zoom Even Better
Go to System Preferences > Universal Access and make sure it says "Turn Off Zoom", if it says "Turn On Zoom" you need to click that box. Then click "Zoom Options" and flip the lowest radio button to "Only when the pointer reaches an edge".
Wow so much better! Option-Flower-<+> zooms in, Option-Flower-<-> zooms out, same as Jaguar... but now I can control what's being displayed a lot better than before. NICE.
Monday, Nov 3 at 4:28 AM #
Another good tip: Dock and Hidden Apps
Applescript & Menu Bar Goodness
Friday, Oct 31 at 9:00 AM #
XCode
Wow, there's a lot on this disk. X11 SDK, cool beans. Benchmarking stuff, neat. Ant and XDoclet? Huh. JBoss? WOW!
Well that'll jog my memory some day that I need to try to get into even more of the nifty potential I purchased with the Panther upgrade. Just now I need to focus on getting back all the apps I had before, then once more tackle local (laptop) development platform for HPTB, then take care of about 5 projects that are sitting waiting for me to get back to work.
Speaking of, I guess I should quit blogging.
Tuesday, Oct 28 at 6:30 AM #
Folder Actions
If there's help provided on Folder Actions it sure isn't obvious. Help runs a lot better than it did with Jaguar, BTW :) Oh look, Apple does provide a lot of doc about what this feature is about, on their website. Coolio, I'll have to go read about it sometime.
Monday, Oct 27 at 8:20 PM #
Panther +Linux
Per the Yellow Dog Linux (3.0) instructions I fired up my Mac OS X install CD, used Disk Utility to create 2 partitions, left the first blank (I sized mine at 4 gigs) and formatted the other as Mac OS Extended (jounalled, mine is 36 gigs), saved the partition table.
Installed Panther. Booted YDL and split out the free space to be the Apple Bootloader, a swap part (I used 256megs), and the rest as /
Went ahead and let the (broken?) installer put yaboot out with just Linux /dev/hda5 as the only boot option. Installed a nice set of packages, eventually YDL finished installing and I booted it, got to a terminal as root.
Used `pdisk` to print the partition table, determined my OS X build went to /dev/hda4
Used `vim` to add one line to /etc/yaboot.conf:
macosx=/dev/hda4
Executed `ybin` to write the new yaboot menu, and rebooted.
And lo and behold... menu choices for linux and also panther. Yahoo!
Well there's plenty to be done to finish the YDL setup, and it can wait for another day... time to reinstall all those fine OS X applications and get back to work! Some day I'll probably dive into Linux again but for now I'm just happy to know I can do so. KDE does seem much improved since the last time I saw it, but just now I believe Apple's kicking glutious maximus. Time will tell :)
Monday, Oct 27 at 9:49 AM #
Where from there
YDL boots and looks pretty tasty... but even with a different partition scheme (suggested by the YDL install guide) yaboot seems to not like Panther, either that or something's just dorked in YDL 3.0 install step 5 or 6.
Spent a bit more time, determined fdisk is apparently hopeless but instead pdisk is the answer. It clearly indicates my OS X build is on /dev/hda4... so now if I figure out yaboot.conf I might be off to the races.
Huh... `man yaboot.conf` provides a sample that sure makes it look like the required OS X entry is very simple. DUDE, it worked! Sweet!
Monday, Oct 27 at 9:32 AM #
YDL: yaboot hates me
I should be able to simply click the button and add OS X to the yaboot loader... but apparently I have no device labeled "macosx". And there's no way I'm gonna continue.
I even tried renaming the partition I believe I need to be selecting for OS X... it was called "Apple_HFS_Untitled_2" (I think) and now it's called "macosx" but no luck, didn't seem to change yaboot's mind about my build.
The good news (and I know you were as worried as I), I didn't mess up OS X but instead just killed the YDL install process and booted back to Panther without trouble. I'm not sure where I go from here, so stay tuned :)
Sunday, Oct 26 at 9:24 PM #
System Preferences and the Menu Bar or the Dock
My goal this morning was to get Display to be on the Menu Bar, like I enjoyed with Jaguar. I wasted a bit of time Googling for a solution and even flipping through pages of the Missing Manual... and then noticed the "Show displays in menu bar" checkbox on the panel. So easy, too easy, I was trying to make it harder. Heh.
Sunday, Oct 26 at 7:45 AM #
Hosts File and NetInfo Manager
Seems to work, I seen to recall from the first time around that there's more to it than this, but for now I got what I need.
Saturday, Oct 25 at 9:01 AM #
The morning after
Or not... the point being, I don't absolutely have to fix this today. So I'm not going to, but instead just plug away at the rebuild. Weak? Perhaps. Necessary? Absolutely :)
Let's see.. thus far my Panther postings have been about as useful as telling you about the (infamous) cheese sandwich. How about... oh, the next thing up is configuring this build to know the other machines on my network. I like to put some aliases in for a couple machines on the net (like my BitBlaster server) and must configure some names for the other local machines (no Rendevous there, yet). Hmm how did I do this at 10.1?
Saturday, Oct 25 at 8:43 AM #
Doh!
One of the wins I'm hoping for with the new version is better performance from Eudora, and particularily in how I use it. I'm so mad at myself I can barely type. The way I run Eudora, well it's not great but it works for me... if I open a message and decide for whatever reason to let it age a bit before I reply or take other action, I just leave the message open. When I'm done for the day I close Eudora, and somehow it records the messages that are marked as read but opened, and when it starts again it opens those messages.
Fine? No, not really, it can be a very expensive proposition... Eudora launches and first must open 10 or 20 or more messages before it can go check for new items on the server. Gobs of memory and time wasted (or required, since it's not wasted if it works, and it does).
Well... I forgot to clean things up before I saved my last Jaguar snapshot. And now I've restored Eudora into Panther, and those all-important messages are not opening. I have no idea where Eudora saves this informaition between sessions. Googling isn't helping. I don't know what I'm going to do.
The thing is, I had enough items in process that it's not really an option to just forget this and move on. Those notices from netsol to make sure my DNS contact information is all correct and stuff, sure I could let that junk go. But I'm certain there are any number of other very important threads where the "reply ball" is in my court.
Guess I stop for the night. Really not very happy. I can't even blame Qualcomm, even though perhaps a case could be made for them being so tricky about where this info is stored... it's (apparently) not in the Eudora Documents folder with everything else. GRRRRRR
Saturday, Oct 25 at 12:48 AM #
Night of the Panther
The Corvallis Mac Store threw a great party, and the install was smooth as silk. This is a crash-and-burn funzies build and I need to figure out where I go from here... I'm anxious to see if all my apps work. I'm anxious to get past this "funzies" phase and start enjoying the excellent Panther environment for daily work... but there are things I should do now while I don't have a lot invested or at risk.
So I better quit blogging and start doing some experiments.
Friday, Oct 24 at 10:43 PM #
Morning of the Panther
Friday, Oct 24 at 7:48 AM #
HELIOS Xtar
I hope to post more later about this.
Monday, Oct 20 at 7:02 PM #
Panther Drool
Anyway, so I'm going to install it soon, and I expect X11 to be cool, Expose to be cool, various and sundry other things to be cool... and FAST! A lot faster! I hate to get my hopes up on things being much faster, but at least some faster. I can't wait.
Tuesday, Oct 14 at 9:37 PM #
Offtrack
But the linked article does provide an answer to that, so... I might be a bit offtrack on my quest to get ready for Panther, but perhaps not. Anyway, that seems a good tip worth mentioning!
Tuesday, Oct 14 at 12:10 PM #
How to back up giant files in OS X
I've got some large files on my system that I don't want to take forward to Jaguarland. One such file is an iMovie work folder. I made a compressed tarball from it:
cd ~Movies
tar -vcf myMovie.tar myMovie
gzip -9 myMovie.tar
I did it this way out of habit. I learned this chop on HP-UX, where there's no compress flag for tar. Perhaps better, do the tar with compress all in one fell swoop:
tar -vcfz myMovie.tgz myMovie
OK now there's one file, compressed and checksummed, all ready to burn to CD. Oh, but it's too big. The file I'm working with is 1.6 gigs and of course the CD only holds 650MB. I used `split` to handle the problem, there might be a better way.
split -b 650m myMovie.tar.gz myMovie-
This produced two 650 megabyte files and one more at about 253 megs. Come the day when I want to resume work on this project, I'll reload the pieces and join them with:
cat myMovie-aa myMovie-ab myMovie-ac > myMovie.tar.gz
And then unpack the tarball:
gzip -dc myMovie.tar.gz | tar vxf -
I think the problem is solved, but wonder what other ideas people might have. Oh, and I should say, I'm not certain where I got my `tar` and `gzip` and `split` but I think it was Fink. Now I'm off to burn the CD's... and have another cheese sandwich :)
Sunday, Oct 12 at 7:50 PM #
Panther
Ah yes... a bad element broke stuff for a bit. Now it's fixed. On to the next task, cleaning off as much as I can. I like to create folders with names like "BurnThisCD"... time to go and do that. And eat a cheese sandwich.
Saturday, Oct 11 at 11:05 AM #
Securing RobBook
Anyway, to security... this MacInTouch article points to an article from Apple How to Set up Open Firmware Password Protection and also an excellent O'Reilly article Securing your TiBook. Together these two articles appear to provide sufficient information to let me quickly and easily add a "boot prompt" to RobBook.
I don't need to do this. I don't have time to do this. But it would be a good idea next time I find myself in an environment where I need to set my screen saver password. Meanwhile, there are some other juicy tidbits in these articles, so thus I'm blogging the topic and will come back to it another day.
Friday, Mar 21 at 7:44 AM #
Cool!
Isn't serendipity wonderful? Maybe a more appropriate word would be synchronicity. (OS X users, you are using Searchling aren't you? awesome, but I digress).
Just as I'm starting to write an article for CMUG on the power of OS X and multiple accounts -- I stumble into this rocking article on sharing everything with multiple users on one machine! I don't think I'll crib his notes, but the URL will be excellent for the article. And I need to try what he suggests, because it's an obvious way to double (square?) the power of the technique I'm writing about.
Finding stuff like this, it is no wonder I can't get anything done. Must... find... focus...
Monday, Mar 10 at 9:16 AM #
Answer a Question?
Right now, my question is... is there a current version/equivalent of this list of open source software for OS X?
Is there value in something like this? I'd love to see it, but have no time to create it myself.
Sunday, Mar 9 at 9:21 PM #
AtomicLearning
Thursday, Mar 6 at 9:18 AM #
Make it last with opt-shift-k!
But the folder contents is sorted A-Z and I wanted something to be at the bottom of the list, past Z. Tonite I found the answer to this problem.
Just start the name with the apple symbol, entered by holding down option and shift and then tapping "k". So easy!
Wednesday, Mar 5 at 6:22 PM #
Fun with tracing
MacJanitor, etc
I just saw this on his support board:
sudo periodic daily
sudo periodic weekly
sudo periodic monthly
... is another way to get the job done. Good to know, but I'll prolly still fire up MacJanitor because it's so cool.
Tuesday, Mar 4 at 3:37 PM #
Eclipse
Bloody hell
Darn it. Now I'm going to have to figure it out.
Nah, it wasn't about anything Mac at all... we reinstalled Monica's printer drivers (something went wrong with her *Windows* printer drivers, heh) and the name of the printer changed. So I changed it back, and we're back in business.
Thursday, Jan 23 at 5:22 PM #
Bugs
Weird.
Thursday, Jan 16 at 11:13 AM #
Startup
Searchling is quite a bit more handy than opening Chimera, going to dictionary.com, and entering the word I want to look up.
WeatherPop probably won't get me outside any more than usual, but it's kinda cool to know what's happening out there.
Just a couple rockin' free apps for your Mac. Enjoy!
Thursday, Jan 16 at 11:11 AM #
Success!
I followed some instructions I found on Apple's support forums, and I'm network printing like a charm, baby! I haven't rebooted yet to make sure it will "stick" but things have "just worked" amazingly well, so I am actually optimistic!
Now if I could only get the Quicken upgrade bits to download. Heh. My printing stuff is a done-deal!
Here is the article I found, to enable SMB from CUPS and then configure CUPS to see the printer. I think I'll steal the important parts, in case I need them later and they aren't available at Apple's site.
THANKS APPLE YOU GUYS CONTINUE TO ROCK! Here are the clues, again this is copied from their discussion forums, and I hope I don't get in trouble:
Open a terminal window on the Mac and type su (you will get a password prompt here, type it in)
If you now get a prompt that ends with a # sign, you are root.
Now we have to add a link in CUPS to allow it to use the smbspooler (which will allow it to send print jobs to the pc printer).
type:
ln -s /usr/bin/smbspool /usr/libexec/cups/backend/smb and hit return.
we need to stop and start the cups deamon now to make it read the new info we just put into it. You can restart your machine to do this or just kill and restart /usr/sbin/cupsd.
Now we need to add the HP printer to cups. To do this, open your browser and go to http://127.0.0.1:631 (this is the cups admin interface, running on the Mac).
in the top menu bar of the page that comes up, select printers, then click add printer on the page that comes up. A new page will come up with three fields in it. You now need to put in a name for that printer (no spaces). This is the name that will show up on your mac when you print to that printer. The other two fields are optional.
Click continue and you will be asked to select a DEVICE (I call it a service) to use to print with. Choose "Windows Printer via SAMBA" from the pull down window. This is the new capability we enabled in cups above.
There will now be a screen where you have to enter the DEVICE URI of that printer. This is the last step.
On the screen, a field should be there with "smb" in it. Put the following info on that line:
smb://
So my smb URI looks like this:
smb://pat:
Saturday, Dec 21 at 2:15 PM #
Printing-Works!
Right on! Next steps... let's see...
Well, first, I'm not at all happy that the All-in-One programs are cluttering my Dock. I've got THREE items, just for the joy of printing. Might not seem like a lot to some, but I don't have that many things in my Dock.
Which reminds me of another thing I need to work on. [And later, wow look, I'm totally wrong! The "HP Director" thing can just be moved from the Dock, and the print manager of course it not on the dock unless we're printing... and there was a third one, but I don't see it... PERFECT].
I better focus on the things that count:
1) The laptop must behave properly with no printer attached.
2) Monica's PC must work properly again, now that I've fooled with it. I didn't change anything on her ride, just unplugged the printer and plugged it into the laptop, so there's no good reason why there should be any trouble here. Well, no good reason except it's Windows, heh.
3) Network printing. Again, much fear and trepidation, but I'm on a roll now!
Making paper, gotta love it.
Saturday, Dec 21 at 12:19 PM #
Powerbook Airport Range - Increased!
So if nothing else, I got that done today. Now it's time to give this printer driver a whirl.
Saturday, Dec 21 at 11:42 AM #
Here goes nuttin'
...and only now do I really, really wish I would have taken a backup as step one in this plan. I've already installed the new Mac bits. And moved some HP files to the trash. And lord knows what else.
I'm going to pull the trigger, go wire the laptop up to the printer and see if the drivers install and do anything good. I'd have been more aggressive about doing a good sysadmin job, except for the hugely unknown state of the system when I started.
So instead I'll just hack around and hope I don't waste too much time. Or ruin this build and have to start over. With no backup. I would stop now and take a backup of the current state, except I can't imagine things will be so fried I couldn't spin out of a death spiral later.
Hope I'm right.
Saturday, Dec 21 at 11:13 AM #
Worry
I hope so. I'm downloading the newest HP drivers now.
Saturday, Dec 21 at 10:49 AM #
Printing details
Anyway, so she's on the network and offers print sharing. This works fine from the "gaming machine" AKA "public access terminal" AKA "computer in the family room", another WinME PC.
I want to use the sharing over the network from my far-superior Mac. At least, I'll feel superior when this part "just works" too.
The 10.2.3 patch is nearly installed. Soon we'll know. Oh, one final detail, I don't know just what is installed on my Mac right now. I am sure there is some sort of CUPS action, and some old HP stuff. So YMMV if you try to do what I'm doing :)
Saturday, Dec 21 at 10:27 AM #
Printing
I've attempted this sort of thing before. And it went very badly. But not with this printer. And, maybe gimp-print or one of the other projects is farther along.
Or maybe I'll get lucky and find the HP software is up to snuff. Funny thing, there's a new OS X upgrade available, less than a week old, and it addresses printing. I'm installing it now.
We'll see, wish me luck!
Saturday, Dec 21 at 10:16 AM #
Not the king anymore
I'm still really, really satisified with my 800 MHz action though. I wish everybody I knew was living this large. Yesterday my boss's PC locked up hard in the middle of a long email draft... I was sad for him, but happy about my TWENTY FOUR days of uptime. And the record is still climbing.
Love the Mac!
Wednesday, Nov 6 at 9:40 AM #
Using the @-on-a-spring icon
;)
I don't know if there's an easier way to do this or not. If not, then I feel pretty good about figuring it out. I have had no need for the "Apple-Mac OS X" URL icon on my dock since about 20 minutes after booting up for the first time, but haven't wanted to pull it from the dock because it wasn't clear how I'd ever get the rockin' icon for use with something else. Today I tackled the problem, and and as you can see from the screen shot I was successful. I used up all my available time getting this far with the documentation and I believe there must be an easier way than what I did... which summarizes as "use the Developer tool to make a new .icn file from the URL.png file that is hidden in the Dock's resources files, then use [some freeware tool] to get it usable in the finder, then normal cut and paste to the target icon".
I guess now you can see why I don't want to write a bunch of instructions, there are a lot of steps and again I'm sure somebody will say "oh, that icon? it's in ... X", I looked hard but could not find it.
Sunday, Sep 8 at 4:02 PM #
Desktop Icon Size
I had to Google for the clue... and stumbled across this interesting tidbit, not sure I'd be that brave but it's a moot point anyway as I can't get Classic to load. Shrug.
Sunday, Sep 8 at 1:24 PM #
Some perl fun today
Now I should be testing and following up, but instead I'll blog this for later and go work on more important tasks.
Thursday, Sep 5 at 10:28 AM #
Jaguar includes BASH
I need to finish configuring it up. I found a good article which appears to document most everything I need to do.
All I've done so far is change my user account shell (using NetInfo Manager)... which is only the tip of the iceberg.
So, watch for more soon on this!
I finished (the most important parts of) configuring my account to use BASH. Jim's tips (see above link) got me off the dime... turns out it's pretty simple:
- Create ~/.bash_profile with the following:
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
source ~/.bashrc
fi - Create ~/.bashrc with the following:
source /sw/bin/init.sh
#Fancy prompt PS1='\u@\h:\w\$ ' - Use NetInfo, change tcsh to bash in the user settings (more doc needed here?)
Friday, Aug 30 at 11:26 AM #
Font smoothing style
So, you can change the drop down, but what must be done for it to take effect? I broke out the Pixie utility and kept trying stuff, and determined the answer: if you don't want to log out, bring up the "Force Quit Applications" panel (with Command-Option-Escape) and relaunch Finder.
When Finder restarts, your selected "Font smoothing style" will take effect.
Thursday, Aug 29 at 10:16 PM #
Zoom
Works like a charm, and sometimes it's just what the doctor ordered!
Thursday, Aug 29 at 10:11 PM #
Linkage vs This Page
About Calendar: I've got the Palm desktop running all the time so I do have access to a calendar... and for sure, events are nailed.
But sometimes it's nice to just see a crispy calendar, and Sailesh has provided just that. I just found it and am really happy with it, YMMV but give it a look!
Thursday, Aug 29 at 4:22 PM #
Wow, it works!
Thursday, Aug 29 at 12:52 PM #
Getting going...
Thursday, Aug 29 at 8:47 AM #
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