Paint the Tiger, Carve the Swan

I’m about to create a small application that uses Sparkle to do updates - not to publish anything, but just to see how it works, and make sure I can. I read a couple of things before beginning. One was an argument against Sparkle, or rather, an argument for an Independent Software Update…

ISU would allow all applications to be upgraded at once

[From Stoneship > Thoughts on Sparkle]

Now, I have quite a few applications on my machine that I don’t use very often. Even something like Acorn, which I use maybe once a week, right down to stacks of apps I almost never use.

Some of these get updated quite often. I don’t really care to download every update on a regularly updated application, when I’m probably going to have multiple updates before I use the application again. So, I quite like that it checks for updates about as often as I use it.

Which means applications like Changes.app, which I use virtually every day, and ExpanDrive, which I use virtually every hour, are kept up to date, whilst Acorn, which I just used a couple of minutes ago for the first time for ages, are only updated infrequently.

This can be taken with a grain of salt - I don’t know much about Sparkle other than it is pretty cool.

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Or how to make a single-display Mac Mini Media Center even better.

I have a Mac Mini that records all of my favourite programs (almost) automatically. It runs EyeTV (by default), and can play movies stored on either a local FireWire hard drive, or a LAN server (running OpenSolaris, and using ZFS, incidentally).

One annoying thing is that to set up a new smart playlist, or edit a movie, or do anything on the machine, whilst I can remote in and do stuff, this all displays on the TV.

However, using ScreenRecycler, it seems like I can trick the Mac Mini into thinking he (his name is jens!) has two monitors. Thus, with some swizzling, I can have the EyeTV full-screen display on the “real” monitor, and the desktop on the other one.

Doing this means that I can happily edit a movie (say, to remove advertisements), whilst the TV still displays the live TV (or being viewed video).

Run ScreenRecycler on the Media machine. You may need to restart if this is the first time you have run it, as it installs some driver. I’m hoping it’s pretty safe…

After running ScreenRecycler when the system has the driver installed, I needed to run JollysFastVNC to get ScreenRecycler to give me a second display. I was using ARD (and still do), which when I then reconnected showed me the whole desktop, with a menu enabling me to choose which display (or both) to view. I chose to view both displays for now.

I then loaded up the Displays preference pane, and moved the menu bar to the ScreenRecycler display.

I made the ScreenRecycler display run in a higher resolution (1280×960, so that it fits nicely onto my external monitor on my laptop at full-size). I then went to the EyeTV preferences, and made sure the full-screen display went onto the “real” monitor. This apparently has the side effect that quicktime movies will also play on this monitor, so that’s quite good.

Finally, I made new Live TV and Recording open in a new window. This enables me to edit a movie while Jaq is watching another. It does, however, mean that it is a little cumbersome to switch between tuners (need to view both monitors, and do some more swizzling), but it’s workable. It was always hard to switch tuners anyway, at least with the Apple Remote.

This makes for a fairly cool setup. I’m fiddling a little more before I buy ScreenRecycler (like, does it work better upon startup?), but it looks pretty promising.

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Well, not mine, exactly.

Flinders Learning Online doesn’t render properly in Safari 4 (Developer Preview). It doesn’t display the sidebar, which has quick access to topic information.

It basically makes it unusable.

I think the system is the Blackboard Learning System, or something similar.

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I can’t post this in ecto - I think the Safari 4 DP is fucking with that too.

Anyway, if I log into the BLS using any application that uses WebKit as its renderer, I see the following:

If I resize the window, it fixes itself:

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By default, Safari in Leopard doesn’t show tabs.

defaults write com.apple.Safari AlwaysShowTabBar 1

Now, it does.

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I’m reinstalling OSx86, and these are notes so I don’t have to learn it all again if I ever have to do it again.

1. Install from DVD. Installation will fail. Perhaps try to notice which bits haven’t been installed yet. Restart.
2. (Possibly not required). Boot from DVD again, but don’t install. Get to a Terminal/shell prompt. Type in:
   bless -folder '/Volumes/volume-name-here/System/Library/CoreServices' -setOF
3. Using Pacifist, extract the following files from the DVD, and copy them to iPod (on another Mac, and do it in this order, this is important.):
4. 1. 10.4.8.intel.pkg
   2. 10.4.4.loginwindow.pkg
5. Boot from the DVD, and get to a shell. Quickest method is to go to safe mode. You might have to do some work to mount all of the required volumes, but it is much faster than waiting for the installer to load, and then getting a Terminal.
6. Copy the files over from the iPod to the boot disk.
7. Reboot.
8. Installers required for AppleIntel8255x.kext and NVidia GeForce FX 5200.

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Playing with ecto 3 alpha - looks pretty good so far.

Hopefully it handles the RTF/HTML conversion process a bit better than ecto 2.

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I came across a strange issue today. I have written a script that adds acronym tags to a post created in ecto, and another that adds the currently playing iTunes track, as nice links to iTMS.

However, the problem that arose is that the script wouldn’t run. I had the shebang line, and everything, but no joy.

Then I noticed that I have upgraded my python installation to 2.5, but for some reason the /usr/bin/python was still pointed at 2.3 - but my interpreter run from the bash shell, or from Komodo was 2.5. This itself wouldn’t be too much of an issue, except I was using appscript, and I had only installed appscript into the 2.5 Python installation library.

So, it was failing (way too silently, for my liking), and I couldn’t tell why.

All fixed now, though.

Fly Me Away • Supernature • Goldfrapp

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Don’t, under any circumstances, even try to install VMWare Fusion if you are running OS x86. That is, on a non-Apple machine.

I think it happened with the last beta too, but this one causes a Kernel Panic on installation, after it has managed to install the files that cause the panic. Which means a reboot also causes a panic.

If you find this happens to you, boot in Single User mode (-s), and, after running fsck and mounting the root partition as readable, move or delete one or both of the following things:

• /Library/Application Support/VMWare Fusion/
• /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.vmware.launchd.vmware.plist

Then, reboot, and run the Uninstaller.

Lazy River • Louis Armstrong • This is Jazz 1 ★

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I am a registered user of Missing Sync for PalmOS, but it wouldn’t install on my Dell running OS X.

Easy to fix: copy the installer package somewhere writable, and then open the package, find the file Contents/Resources/InstallationCheck. Edit this file in a text editor (luckily, they made it a bash script!), and before the final line (exit $RETVAL), insert:

exit 0

Crude hack, but it gets it installed. Now to reboot and see if it will actually run!

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