Archive files to G-Mail

Was looking to move a whole bunch of old files that I was tired of carrying around to G-Mail. I tried gdisk, gdrive, didn´t work. Then I found Gspace a firefox extension that looks like an FTP client and allows you to upload bunches of files to g-mail. Add a filter to label and keep out of the Inbox and you got a stew going.

http://www.getgspace.com/

Box.net iPhone App Update

The Box.net app no longer requires the 2nd Generation iPod Touch. What took them so long to fix it?

Goodbye Mac Mini

I had one of the original G4 Mac Mini’s, and by original I mean I ordered it the day it was announced. It was my first Mac. Sadly, yesterday it died quite suddenly. I got the dreaded “disk0s31 I/O error” in the console which is a fancy way of saying “hard drive dying”. Fortunately with my syncing strategies and external drives holding the important stuff I didn’t lose anything. I tried running Disk Utility from the Leopard DVD but it kernel panicked (not a good sign). Then I couldn’t eject the DVD even using “eject CD” in Open Firmware–also not a good sign–so I think it’s problem was more than just a bad hard-drive. After over 3 years of non-stop service and pushing it to do things way beyond its capabilities, I’m not going to complain. As a result, it looks like I’m finally going Intel.

Stream iTunes to iPhone/iPod Touch with Personal Web Sharing

Since it is equipped with WiFi, it occurs to me that it would be great if iTunes could stream to the iPod touch just as it does on the Apple TV. Sometimes I’m in bed and want to listen to an AudioBook or watch a Movie/TV Show I don’t have synced to my iPod Touch. With a little bit of work, you can with Personal Web Sharing since the iPod Touch has the Safari Browser and embedded Quicktime Player.

 

1. Turn on Personal Web Sharing: System Preferences –> Sharing

 

2. If it doesn’t already exist, create the following file /etc/apache2/users/<your username>.conf. If it does already exist, make it look like this:

<Directory “/Users/username/Sites/”>

Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks

AllowOverride None

Order allow,deny

Allow from all

</Directory>

 

Note: You will need to edit in either nano via the Terminal.

sudo nano username.conf

 

Or edit a copy and copy it back

 

sudo cp new_username.conf /etc/apache2/users/username.conf

 

If you create the file or copy over it, you will need to set the permissions:

sudo chown root:wheel /etc/apache2/users/username.conf

 

Restart Person Web Sharing by turning it off and on again.

 

3. Create a symbolic link in your Sites Directory (/Users/yourname/Sites) to your iTunes Music Files (Typically /Users/yourname/Music/iTunes\ Library/iTunes\ Music\ or folder inside iTunes Library (e.g. Movies)

 

The easiest way to do this is in Terminal:

ln -s /Path/to/iTunes /Users/yourname/Sites/itunes

 

Once that’s done you should be able to hit the iTunes Library folder via a web browser

 

http://your-macs-address/~yourname/itunes

 

..and you should see a directory listing. Browse the folders. Select a file and it should start playing.

 

For extra credit, I am going to try installing iTunesFS with MacFuse and point the symlink to the mounted iTunesFS so I can browse Libraries and Playlists as if in iTunes.

 

Cat in Christmas Tree

Cat in Christmas Tree, originally uploaded by seanjmcg.

I’m sure there’s a great LOL Cats joke that I can’t think of right now.

The Cat

Cat Nap, originally uploaded by seanjmcg.

Despite my wanting to name the cat “Cat” (seemed appropriate) we decided on Ripley.

 And yes I have now become one of those people who posts pictures of their cat that I have made fun of all these years–ironic if you like that sort of thing. 

I want a transparent Menu Bar so I can complain too

The transparent menu bar in Mac OS X Leopard is perhaps one of the two most controversial “enhancements” to the Operating System. One could say it’s a backhanded compliment to Apple when the biggest gripe anyone has with your brand new OS is the Menu Bar and the Dock. Anyway, I had gotten used to it, even ran Menu Shade in Tiger to make my MenuBar transparent to get accustomed to it. On Friday, I get my copy of Leopard and what do I get, a slightly gray, maybe off-white, non-transparent MenuBar. What happened? No one seems to have a definitive answer

 

I have a 1.5 GHz PowerBook G4 which I believe has an NVIDIA GeForc Go5200 which was on Leopard’s supported hardware list (and Apple has a pretty good idea what video card is in every machine I think). In Tiger System Profiler reported the card as Core Image Supported. In Leopard it says its Core Image Hardware Accelerated. At the time this seemed the most likely issue, but doesn’t make any sense. I get all of Leopard’s other eye-candy, and you can’t tell me that a transparent menu bar takes more GPU horsepower than reflections in the Dock, or Time Machine. Also, when MacBooks which also show up as Core Image Hardware Accelerated have a transparent Menu Bar it makes even less sense.

 

Anyway I perused the forums and found this and this. A lot of people reached the same conclusions I did that it was Leopard scaling back for older hardware, but it also sounded like some older less powerful machines than mine were getting the menu bar and newer more powerful machines weren’t. There was even an anecdotal story of someone in the Apple Store playing on a new iMac with Leopard and no Transparent Menu Bar.

 

Anyway, I’m not going to complain too much, since for every forum post about “where did my transparent menu bar go”, there are about 5 which ask “How do I turn it off?” I’d just like a bit of an explanation for it.

 

While I’m on it, I thought another feature of Leopard was that drives by default don’t appear on the desktop (they are not there in all the screenshots), yet in my Clean Install I got drives on my Leopard Desktop.

Leopard — It’s cool cause I waited in line for it

Just wanted to jot down a few thoughts about the new Mac OS X. I waited in line for about 40 minutes on Friday at my nearest Apple Store, more so I would get a shirt than be the first to have Leopard. My upgrade was mildly disastrous (probably my fault since I’ve been running the same factory install and have done God knows what to my machine) so I eventually did a clean install. I’ve been moving this weekend, so have not spend as much time as I would have liked on it. As I notice things, I’ll drop a note. It feels faster than Tiger even on my 1.5 Ghz Power Book G4 with 1.25 GB RAM. Quick Look, CoverFlow in the Finder are worth the price alone. I thought it was rather silly at first, but it’s amazing how useful it is. The new FrontRow has the same interface as Apple TV.

Detailed (read lengthy) of the Leopard upgrade experience below:

5:20 Arrive at Apple Store and get in line with 250-300 other people

Apple Employees were pushing the free water and coffee really hard

5:59:50 Apple Store staff start counting down from 10 and then go into hysterics at 6:00 PM

6:00 Apple Store starts letting people in 5-10 at a time

6:05 I get in. I was in the middle of the line. I get handed my free shirt. I pick up Leopard, iWork 08 and a drive for Time Machine. Apple Store employee comes over to me, asks if that’s all, and rings me up with the portable scanner/credit card gizmo. Sees the hard drive and she says ‘Somebody’s using Time Machine!”

6:10 I leave Apple Store to applause as Apple Store staff congratulate me. One gives me a high five.

7:30 I get home and start 3rd Tiger Backup (just in case)

7:50 I start the first Leopard install. Several reliable sources said that the upgrade process was much improved and reliable. I decided to give it a shot since I really didn’t feel like rebuilding this thing.

9:30 Install done. Reboot is fine. However, if I log into my user account I get a Spinning Beach Ball of Death for an hour and still can’t do anything.  A brand new user account works fine, so something in mine is borking it. Unfortunately I can’t get into it to see what it is.

I decide to go for a clean install. I backed up my junk 3 times, so no big deal.  Clean install goes fine. .Mac brings all my bookmarks, calendars, and mail settings in. Aside from the annoyance of having to re-install everything–no complaints.

Two weird things– Leopard seemed to install iTunes all by itself a few hours after I installed. Not that I mind, I needed it anyway, but it was weird. Also, I don’t have a transparent menu bar, which may not be a bad thing since most people hate it. No one’s sure why. The forums seem to think Apple turned it off on older hardware but some people are reporting that they have new Macs that don’t have it, and in some case the low powered Macs have it and the higher powered Macs don’t (more on that in a bit), like I said most forum posts are “How do I turn it off?”All the apps are much improved–Mail is nicer, iCal is nicer, Spotlight seems much faster.  Time Machine may be the greatest thing ever. I can’t wait to accidentally delete something so I can use it. The new system voice Alex is really good. I wish there was a female version, but oh well .

Thank the Maker! GMail Now Supports IMAP!

I’ve been waiting for this day for quite some time. GMail now supports IMAP. For some time I’ve been forwarding my GMail to my .Mac so I could take advantage of IMAP. Now I’ve gotten used to .Mac, but I’ll figure something out. Anyway, if you’re interested check your GMail settings and you should see an IMAP section under the POP settings. If you see it, point your IMAP E-mail Client over to imap.gmail.com (the Outgoing is still smtp.gmail.com) and see if they’ve set you up. I got in right away (even though in my GMail settings it said IMAP was disabled). If not, be patient it might be a gradual rollout, but I was by no means the first GMail subscriber and mine was all set to me when I went to look. By the way GMail supports SSL for both IMAP and SMTP–turn it on.

Warner Bros. Gets It Right…Almost

Here’s the conumdrum for the 21st Century Movie Consumer. That great new movie you like just came out to buy. You want the DVD so you can watch it in 5.1, see 5 hours of fluff pieces on how wonderful everyone is, listen to inane commentary and watch those animated menus that take 5 minutes to start are unskippable and just aren’t that impressive anymore. But you’re going on that business trip tomorrow and would also like a (non batterty sucking) way to watch it on your notebook computer on the plane or (heaven forfend) an i(Pod Touch, Phone, etc.) You’re also a DMCA abiding citizen. What do you do? Pray it’s on iTunes so you can spend another $10-15 on a movie you already bought or say DMC-what and introduce yourself to Handbrake.

However, wouldn’t a better idea be for the Movie studio to remove two or three of those inane puff pieces and put the frickin video file on that 9GB disk for you?

Well, Warner Bros is going to do just that. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which admittedly sucked quite a bit, will have a video file for use on computers and portable media players. Genius! Well, almost genius. Word is that it will be protected by the quite sucky Windows Media DRM which means it will only play on a Windows Computer or one of those devices that 5 people have (I don’t even know which ones they are) that can play Windows Media Protected content.

So the other 85% of people who have iPods can’t Trash their copies of Handbrake quite yet, but this is a step in the right direction.