Life as an Apple switcher

More hash key fun: The hash key when using RDP on a Mac with a UK keyboard

2010-07-19T16:47:00.003+01:00

Following on from the continuing fun of trying to find the hash key codes when using a UK Mac, here is a tip for anyone needing to write a # when using Microsoft RDP on a Mac with a UK keyboard - use the following combination:

CMD + \

Keyboard shortcut to turn on Mirroring of displays

2010-03-25T23:25:00.003Z

I got a projector as a christmas pressie this year and I love it! I found this useful little tip in my travels which is very convenient when you have settled yourself in with a wireless keyboard only to realise that you haven't turned on mirroring of your displays, doh! You can easily turn on the mirroring of displays in OS X by using the following command:

cmd + f1

(this assumes you haven't changed the configuration of your fnumber keys, in which case, i imagine the command would be):

cmd + fn + f1

However, i don't know about that last one!

Problems emptying the Trash folder after deleting Time Machine backups

2010-02-20T00:36:00.003Z

Yesterday i found that my 1.5TB external drive was running short on space so my first thought was that the i might have some old backups that could be deleted - I have used the drive also as my Time Machine backup for the last year. What i did next was bad i recommend you avoid! I went to the 'Backups.backupdb' folder, saw a bunch of timestamped folders going back into last year and dropped them into my trash folder - i didn't realise how unwise this move was until i tried emptying said folder - after 2 hours of trying to delete it's content, i was still getting nowhere so i had to turn the machine off, stopping the trash emptying didn't cut it. I tried fixing the problem by putting back the backups and deleting them individually but the machine wouldn't let me do that because the files were backup files and they apparently couldn't be put back. I then did some rummaging and found an article that proved to be useful:

Emptying the trash: an epic journey
http://wordmunger.com/?p=1165

Here, Dave let the machine take it's time - 13 hours later he was done...

there needed to be another way, surely? In the blog post, Dave mentions that using the terminal to trash items takes ALOT less time, i did some more digging and found this invaluable article:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10357452-263.html (Trash problems in OS X? Reset it!)

I found that the following command soothed my woes:

sudo rm -rf /Volumes/insert external disk name here/.Trashes

PLEASE read all of the cnet article before you try this though - it notes a word of warning that if you put a space before '/.Trashes' in your command, you'll nuke all the data on the disk so be careful but it does seem to have done the trick for me!

Note, if you need to delete individual things from Time Machine in the future, follow this path instead of deleting it directly from the Finder!

http://blog.adamnash.com/2008/03/02/how-to-delete-individual-backups-from-apple-time-machine/

Viewing EXIF Data in iPhoto '09

2009-11-21T19:07:00.004Z

I was tearing my hair out, trying to find where I could see the EXIF Information (Shooting Data) about pictures in iPhoto - thanks to this blog post by Kevin Carter on the MacCreate website, i found it (http://iphoto.maccreate.com/2009/10/24/how-to-reveal-exif-data-in-iphoto-09/)

1. Choose a photo in iPhoto
2. Go to Photos -> Show Extended Photo Info

I had been rummaging in the get info menu with no luck but it is available - just not where I expected it :)

Getting Apple Magic mouse scrolling to work in Windows 7 via Bootcamp

2009-11-19T09:51:00.003Z

After three years, my Apple Mighty Mouse finally gave out on me so I took the opportunity to buy myself a new multi-touch Apple Magic Mouse - while it was a doddle to set up in OS X (assuming you're running OS X 10.6.2), I had some problems with it in Windows. I was able to set it up to let me use the basic moving and clicking but i could get it to scroll. Some digging on the internet found that Apple have recently released an update to the bluetooth drivers for Windows XP and Vista:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL952

However, on trying to install these drivers on my 64-bit Windows machine, I got the following error:

'This update is not intended for this computer and will not be installed'

Fortunately, Rich G at wedigital.com has found a solution. He extracted the appropriate drivers from the install and conveniently put togther a 32 bit and 64 installation which seems to work pretty well for me:

Link to Rich G's blogpost about this

64-bit Windows 7 Compatible Apple Magic Mouse Driver

Thanks Rich G!

Hash key on an Apple a UK Mac Keyboard when using Bootcamp

2009-10-28T11:32:00.003Z

The most successful post I've ever posted on a technical subject concerned where the heck to find the hash (#) key on a UK Mac keyboard - for some reason, Apple UK must have thought us Mac users in Blighty don't code or use Twitter ^_^

I worked it out in the end but encountered a similar problem when I started using my Mac via Bootcamp - the keystroke proved not to be the same, doh! So, having done some digging, I found that to create a # sign on a UK Mac keyboard that is running Windows via bootcamp, use the following keystroke:

Ctrl+Alt+3

Hope that helps!

Taking screenshots using a Mac running Windows via Bootcamp

2009-10-22T17:45:00.002+01:00

I've recently switched jobs and now find that i need to use Windows 7 regularly via a Bootcamp partition on my shiny '09 Macbook Pro – it is a great little setup but i did find a small snag when trying to take screenshots using a Mac keyboard via Bootcamp. Mac keyboards don't' have a print screen key but i have learned that you can get the same effect by using the following key combinations:

Take a screenshot of the entire screen:

FN+SHIFT+F11

Take a screenshot of the active Window:

FN+ALT+SHIFT+F11

Hope that helps make y'all happy 'campers ^_^

Tethering your iPhone via Bluetooth using Windows 7

2009-10-15T12:50:00.003+01:00

I seemed to be getting complaints from my iPhone when I tried tethering it to my Windows 7 Boot Camp partition on my MacBook Pro - the issue was that the system was looking for a driver for the Bluetooth Peripheral Device and couldn't find one. Luckily, some clever devil at the CoNetrix website found the solution to the problem - once the initial pairing has been set up, go to go to the properties of the phone in the Devices and Printers screen and click on Services tab. Uncheck “Wireless iAP” - don't worry! This doesn't stop it working as an Access Point, it just stops it asking for an inappropriate driver. Then right click on the Phone, choose 'Connect Using' and then choose 'Access Point' and voila! You have a happy, working tethered connection between your iPhone and your Windows 7 machine.

Upgrading RAM in a Intel Mac Mini

2008-03-13T17:00:00.003Z

Just a very quick post (it's been too long!!!). I recently upgraded the RAM in my Mac Mini to 2gb thanks to the very reasonable pricing of RAM at crucial.com at the moment. They now have a cool little scanner app that shows you the exact memory for your machine and their prices are very reasonable (£30 for 2gb of RAM!!!!). With the ram in hand, i went to http://www.methodshop.net/gadgets/tutorials/macmini-ram/ which provides a comprehensive explanation of how to change the ram in the Intel Mac Mini (note that the process for changing RAM in the Power PC model is quite different...substancially easier in fact!)

After the intial insanity of taking the case apart (which is a truly terrifying task), the walkthru made the task fairly straight-forward. By the nature of the machine's size, it is fiddly work and not advised for a complete newbie but it isn't rocket science either - a moderately experienced hardware geek should have no trouble.

The difference in performance is immense. If you have the cash and the nerves to take this little beastie apart - i highly recommend it!

Parallels with Coherance

2007-03-23T15:38:00.000Z

Just a quick post about the success I've had with the new Coherance technology built into the PC Emulation program, Parallels. When I heard about Coherance I thought it was a bit of a gimmick: Why do I really need to be able to treat Windows apps as native Mac progs? However, I have found that since I have started using it that it has made a big difference to the way I interact with Windows on my Mac. I have started working on a porject in the last couple of weeks that has required that I use TOAD and a couple of Orcale Forms apps that just don't work properly in Safari and Firefox on my Mac. With Coherance, I now have my Windows start bar fitting snuggly on top of my Dock bar and, while it is just an aesthetic change, I find myself using the Windows side of my Mac a lot more. While I'm not a huge Windows fan anymore I would say that Coherance has improved the convenience of the Windows-side of modern Mac life and that can only be a good thing.

Dreamweaver on the Mac: JavaScript problems

2007-03-08T10:27:00.000Z

I encountered a problem with Dreamweaver today - when I started the program I was met with the following errors:

"...ColdFusion.htm has configuration information that is invalid"

"...DWScriptsExtData.js dwscripts is not defined"

After a moment of panic, I did some google searching and found that the problems can be due to a variety of things, as specified by the troubleshooting link (http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_19105#site_cache). For me, I was able to solve the problem by doing the following things:

1) Reinstalling Dreamweaver
2) Delete the filecache.dat file in Mac HD/Users//Library/Application Support/Macromedia/Dreamweaver 8/
3) Delete the MacFileCache-BFE7CE2E.dat (example) in Mac HD/Users//Library/Application Support/Macromedia/Dreamweaver 8/Configuration/

Taking screenshots on a Mac

2007-02-09T14:18:00.000Z

Just a quick post about taking screenshots on a Mac. Other Windows switchers may lament the loss of their old 'print screen' button but fear not! There are 2 options to replace this Windows feature. The first in the following key combination: shift-command-3 - this will output a png image file to your desktop. The second is the 'Grab' feature, which in an Application sitting in the 'Utilities' folder. This little program offers you the capacity to grab single Windows and entire screenshots, depending on what you need.

Administering a MySQL database in OS X

2007-01-30T23:56:00.000Z

Quick suggestion for those that might be new to MySQL databases. If you find administration of MySQL rather tedious from the command line, I throughly recommend you check out the official MySQL Administrator program provided free by the nice people at MySQL AB:

http://www.mysql.com/products/tools/administrator/

It is a truly wonderful tool and has opened up MySQL to me - if you are looking for the download page, it is here:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/administrator.html

Problems with code generated by Dreamweaver 8.0.2 and Postgres

2007-01-16T20:05:00.000Z

A cautionary tale about updating to Dreamweaver 8.0.2 if you use Postgres. Yesterday I decided to upgrade my copy of Dreamweaver 8 to 8.0.2 because it kept on telling me there was an update available. I didn't expect any problems and, if anything, hoped that the process would help resolve some of the problems I have encountered when using Postgres against Dreamweaver. While you can generate code for Postgres in Dreamweaver, it tended to complain about not understanding what a 'serial' or 'int4' datatype is. However, I found that once I had updated my Dreamweaver, I could no longer generate code to update records in my Postgres database. Instead I got an error like this:

ERROR: column "status_id" is of type 'integer' but expression is of type 'character varying'

We compared the code generated before and after the Dreamweaver upgrade and noticed that the code generated by the upgraded Dreamweaver was attempting to push data into the database as a literal (so the string in my page was being pushed as a String into my number field). While there could be another explanation for all of this, the process of deduction has pointed the finger at this new Dreamweaver upgrade (the pages I made in Dreamweaver pre-upgrade worked fine). If you NEED something provided in the new upgrade then you need to investigate this problem further, if not, then I highly recommend sticking to your pre-upgraded version of Dreamweaver 8.

Apple's iPhone is tasting a bit sour

2007-01-15T13:16:00.000Z

More and more details are coming out about the Apple iPhone and I'm afraid to say that the more I hear, the less I'm impressed :( David Pogue (of the New York Times) has been posting an interesting set of blogs about the iPhone's capabilities (see link above) and he has found some infromation that is making it less and less likely that I will be able to buy one of these guys:

The biggest gripe is that developers will not be allowed to make products on this phone - this hits me like a sack of Bricks - I'm going to have the most advanced phone in existance, which contains an streamlined copy of OS X and I'm limited to using it as an iPod of iPhoto viewer?!?!? I'm a geeky software developer/webmaster - I want to be using this puppy to VNC into things, open up X11 windows, telnet into my OS X Server, mess with my FTP site, check my MySQL database and other things that are useful when you are on the move and your boss is yelling at you. Sure, I could get out my MacBook to do these things but if I don't have a Wi-Fi connection it's useless. How about using my new iPhone to act as a Modem for my MacBook? No, according to Pogue's blog, that ain't going to be possible either.

No Java support and only the possibilty of Flash Support? What about YouTube? Jobs' answer is to make a deal with YouTube but that is a cheap way around the problem if you ask me. What about the rest of the net's websites that use either Java or Flash???

No Stylus support: Call me old fashioned but I can work a charm with a stylus and a proper keyboard (my HTC Wizard is close to perfection in that respect) - according to Pogue's report, the iPhone will ONLY respond to skin touch. I'm sorry but this bites - I don't want to be chained to this gimmick.

PIM support for Windows: I don't use Windows at work any more and I try to avoid it at home but Apple need to allow people to Sync their contacts on Windows machines - it is not enough to allow people to sync their iTunes - we need PIM access as well!

grrrrrrr. I'm annoyed. This is a very cool phone but I'm going to have trouble being able to justify buying it some of these issues aren't resolved (my chief one being locking developers out)

Reaction to KeyNote 2007

2007-01-09T19:34:00.000Z

Ok, so the iPhone and appletv have been announced but what impact will they have?

Well, I think the short answer is alot for the first and limited for the second.

The iPhone looks damn impressive - I have just checked out the Apple website and it's features do look very cool. However, it is not without caveats. The iPhone has, on paper, everything needed to kick the ass off of everything on the market. It has a touch screen, bluetooth, wi-fi, an iPod and OS X. Wicked? Well it is, but I am worried as to whether Apple will be able to make the European deals with providers to make this gadget affordable. I like the idea of an OS X phone but is it actually a streamlined UNIX distribution? This will be important because much of the third-part apps that could make this phone king will benefit greatly from an actual distro of Darwin. Think of it - a machine in your pocket capable of running all your fav OS X progs. If not, it could mean that you will be limited (for a while, at least) to what Apple has provided. 'That isn't a problem?' you say? Well, it isn't for a lot of things. Apple make darn good software and I'm sure this phone will be able to provide a better musical interface to anything else on the market. Equally, I imagine the iPhoto functions will be grand too. The basic phone functionality looks very sexy but I want to know whether I will be able to run TomTom? I use a Pocket PC for just about everything except for music (my 60gb iPod handles that) and I will need to be able to use an iPhone as a GPS navigator as well. In relatino to my iPod, I won't be replacing it for an iPhone - it is too small. I like having my record collection in my pocket at all times and I won't be able to do that with this device, sexy as it is. I also want to see how this new phoen handles a stylus - while Steve says that we won't need one anymore, I would find life very difficult without a stylus now. I am VERY excited about this device but I want to know more before I put money down (not that that will be a problem, there is a wait until the end of the year for the European release)

Now, I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed with appletv - it is a wicked idea and it looks great but I just wish they had put a TV decoder card in. In it's current state, the appletv can not replace my Media Center - I need to be able to record live TV, get at emails etc. I don't want to be restricted to view what it on the Apple Store (neither do I want to have to pay the quite high prices). It is a nice idea, but I think it won't suit my needs.

I was hoping for some more info on Leopard but it can be wait - there are enough things to get our teeth into for the moment :)

MacWorld KeyNote 2007

2007-01-09T14:50:00.000Z

Before my introduction into the cult of Apple, I never quite understood the salivation that followed Steve Jobs' Keynote speeches. However, over the last year I have found myself going further down the rabbit hole of Mac fandom and now find myself, like many others of the Apple Legion, waiting with baited breath for Mr. Jobs' announcement. It still amazes me how well Apple plays these things - as consumers, we are just dying to know about the new toys Apple are going to offer us - I can't say I've felt that way about Microsoft since I was 11 and Windows 95 was just on the Horizon.

Anyway, I thought I'd give my 2 cents about this years coming Keynote speech. I am in two minds as to the rumored iPhone - it could be the greatest gizmo since Bread with Bluetooth functionality or it could be just an iPod Nano with a GSM chip. As a Pocket PC user, I would like to see Apple produce a PDA phone with a touch screen, a streamlined UNIX based OS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPs functionality (ideally with TomTom producing a port of their software for it). However, this is a lot to ask of an item on release 1.0. While it is possible that an iDA (or something of a similar name) will appear later today, I think it is far more likely that we will see an iPod Nano with GSM functionality. Most phone on the market at the moment are aimed at 'flash & trash' with very little movement on the functional technology front since 2004. The iPod has since become the killer item to own and I think that mixing up a non-smartphone with a Nano and giving it a GUI similar to that of the iPod would hit it off with the majority of consumers.

Leopard is another item we are all awaiting. I have to say though, I don't see there being an enormous amount for me in it. I'm sure I will upgrade but it isn't an enormous leap forward for OS X (the server functionality does look VERY good though - wiki's and ZFS on the horizon).

iTV could be a big deal depending on what is inside the package. I have spent a lot of time and money on my Windows Media Center so I don't know if I will be upgrading anytime soon, but if it comes with a Hard Disk and a free EPG then I can see Microsoft being booted out of my Living Room within the next 3-4 years.

Finally, iWork and iLife. I don't use iWork so I can't really comment on it - from what I've seen of it, it is a good package but I live in an MS Office-based world so I don't see my picking up a new suite any time soon (unless it has seemless integration with the new version of Office (think: new Office XML formats). In terms of iLife, I am waiting with baited breath for the new version of my favourite program, GarageBand. It would be very cool if we could be given time/key changes in the new version.

Anyway, the keynote starts in 2 hours, 2 minutes and 36 seconds (time courtesy of a dashboard widget another cultist put together :D) - we'll know the toys of tomorrow soon!

Hash key on a UK Mac Keyboard

2007-01-08T13:19:00.000Z

This is for all Mac users in the UK, if you are having trouble finding the hash key on your Mac keyboard, I'll put you out of your misery, it isn't there. For some reason it was seen as expendable. However, hash signs can be written in abundance by holding the Alt key down and then pressing the number 3. #enjoy!

CSS Heaven on a Mac

2007-01-08T10:48:00.000Z

First off, Happy New Year. I hope you had a great time at the holidays. This is just a quick blog to bring your attention to a cool little app I found in my travels. It is called 'Style Master' and it is a WYSIWYG CSS editor for the Mac and PC. It is available free for 30 days and then costs 60 bucks there after. If you work with CSS on a Mac, it's worth checking out - I found it made amending one of my CSS sheets a doodle.

The link is: http://www.westciv.com/style_master/index.html

Windows Vista: A Switcher's Perspective

2006-11-30T13:53:00.000Z

Today Windows Vista has offically been released to the wild - or at least to businesses. This will be the first time that I witness the release of a new Windows Operating System without Windows being my primary, day-to-day OS and it has got me thinking.

I try my best not to be a Mac Zealot (although I'm sure that I am) - Windows did me well for many years but having seen the Mac way of living in the computing world - I'm not looking back.

I installed Windows Vista Beta 2 (Ultimate Edition) on one of my old desktops to get a taste for what was coming out of Redmond these days and found the experience a mixed bag. the first thing to strike me about the new Windows is that it is rather pretty - the transparencies look nice and the black coloured look and feel to the UI is far more stylish than the freaking TeleTubbie blue/green mess of Windows XP. However, this is nothing new - pretty transparencies are available in Linux distributions and, of course OS X.

Pretty pictures and colour schemes are worth nothing without an intuitive user interface. This is a difficult issue to be objective about - I've used Windows all my life and switched to using OS X as my primary OS earlier this year so I know how things work under XP and OSX. Any new OS takes a while to get used to (especially if you were adept at using the previous release). However, I can draw on my experience of how easy it was to switch from Windows XP to OS X. Switching to OS X was a doddle and, even fun, experience - it was cool to learn how Apple viewed the world. From the perspective of a OS X/Windows XP power user, I found found Vista a bit difficult. The paths of use that I am accustomed to with Windows XP are not there, but the OS is sufficiently similar for me to expect them to be. My absolute biggest gripe with the new UI is the lack of the 'List' view when looking at your filesystem - this alone is enough to put me off switching to Vista. I just don't understand why this has been removed (and if it exists in the newer releases, someone please tell me!).

Onto my next observation - Vista wants a lot of juice to run pretty. Fair enough, I was using the Ultimate Edition on a machine that is about 2 years old but the processing overhead needed to run these pretty transparencies is a bit of a joke. I can run Ubuntu on the same machine (with similar GUI prettys enabled) and the machine runs very fast. I just don't know where the extra processor power is going. Even my very old iMac G3 is able to handle most of OS X at a reasonable speed. I guess this could be due to my version being the Beta release but, having seen the system specs needed to run full Vista, I don't think that is the whole story.

I had some other teething problems but I put these down to the Beta nature of the release I was using - vista didn't recognise my Wireless Card. Also, the software Update feature had a tendency to bomb out. I can't really hold this against them though...unless I have the same problems on the production release.

The one thing I do still use Windows a lot for is as a living room PC - I think XP Media Center edition is a very tasty lil' program. However, I will not be upgrading my living room PC to Ultimate Vista for the simple reason that the new version of the Media Center software is not compatible with XP-based Media Center extenders. Having fought long and hard to get a U.S. Xbox and the U.S. Media Center software, I will not be decommissioning it to the bin for Vista. This does kinda grill me a bit, I can't believe that keeping a compatibility layer in Vista MCE could have been so difficult?

So, having played with Vista for a while, I guess my big question is - why should I upgrade? Besides the improved graphics, I couldn't see much here for me. Microsoft have touted security as being a good reason to switch but, when using my Mac, I've yet to encounter any security problems. Short of the pretty pictures, I don't see what is on offer (even to non-Mac users). Despite having taken 5 years to make, this seems more like a facelift rather than a new OS - it certainly not like the switch from 98 to XP (where MS-DOS was finally sent down stream) or the Apple switch from OS 9 to OS X. From what I can see,a similar comment can be made about OS X Leopard - there just doesn't appear to be that much new on offer. However, Leopard is going to be a darn sight cheaper than Vista and hasn't taken 5 years to make.

I have been quite hard on Vista - don't get me wrong, I don't think it is a step BACK from XP (an OS which I'm happy to work with) but it only seems to be a small shuffle forward...a small shuffle that will cost up to £224.99*

*price from amazon.co.uk

Using Apple X11 to access CDE/GNOME/KDE/etc. on a remote machine

2006-10-19T13:11:00.001+01:00

I've been playing around with solaris servers in the office this last week and came up against a problem when I wanted to access one of our machines remotely. I installed Apple X11 onto my machine (see earlier posts) and was found myself with an Xterminal command line and the question: How do access my remote machine? I know nothing about Xterminals so the following info. maybe ovbious to a frequesnt *nix user but I didn't know what to do. After much digging on the internet I found the answer.

1)Open X11.app (in Applications/Utilities)
2) In the Xterminal command window that appears, type the following:

Xnest :1 -query (hostname/ip address)

So, for example:

Xnest :1 -query 192.168.0.37

i'm sure there are other ways of doing this that give you more options but this should definately get you started if you're having trouble getting it to work.

If you want to set up a shortcut to this command, go to 'Applications' in the X11 app and choose 'Customize...'. From here, you can add the command line to open any X11 application. A word of advice though, if your remote connection isn't working properly, open up an Xterm window and type the command direct into there rather than using an application shortcut. this is because when you run Xcommand from the Xterminal command line, the terminal command line window acts as a log so you can determine where your X11 is experiencing problems.

Installing a Media Wiki on Mac OS X Server (Panther)

2006-10-17T23:37:00.000+01:00

I decided it would be cool to set up a Media Wiki (ala Wikipedia) for a project I'm involved in at work and set about installing it on my OS X Server. I tried installing version 1.8.2 only to find that the PHP it needs to run is version 5. Seeing as Panther is distributed with PHP4, I went on a long crusade to try and install the new PHP5 module into my OS X Server so I could run the new Wiki version.

My advice? Use an older version of the Wiki!

I went through hell and high water trying to install PHP5. An installer has been made to install PHP5 into standard OS X pain free. The URL is:

http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/php/

HOWEVER, I found that it didn't install happily on my Panther Server. I tried a whole host of other methods as well, spent a good 3 hours on it and then started fuming with defeat. I went back to the Media Wiki page and found that there is actually a relatively recent version of the Media Wiki that can be install pain free on a Panther OS X Server:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.6.8.tar.gz?download

Media Wiki 1.6.8 will install happily provided you've got your Web Server & MySQL server running (and have created a database & user for the Wiki to install into).

Installing Apple X11 from Tiger install disks

2006-10-17T23:33:00.001+01:00

Simple thing but I found installing this little puppy a pain in the behind for 5 minutes. On the disks that came with my Macbook, the installer is contained in the package contents on disk 1. I found the installer by typing 'X11' into spotlight and it came up as 'X11user' in the applications section.

Dreamweaver for Mac won't allow 'Web Services' Components

2006-10-04T16:07:00.001+01:00

Just a small annoyance - I recently installed Dreamweaver 8 on my MacBook only to find that it doesn't support Web Service-based components. The Windows version of the same software does, grrrrrrr. I have resolved this problem by installing Dreamweaver 8 (Windows Version) in my Parallels installation of Windows.

Mac OS X Server: Apache Web Service won't start

2006-10-04T15:43:00.000+01:00

My Panther OS X Server-running iMac (long blog to come) was working wonderfully until I started playing around with the Aliases for my one and only site. After I did this, I noticed that it seemed to randomly create additional Aliases. I next noticed that my website was unavailable in Safari so I went back to the Server Admin app and found that the Apache Web Service wasn't running! I clicked 'Start Service' and it thought about for a moment and then simply brought up the 'Start Service' button again. I couldn't get my web server to run and I was starting to get a bit peeved. I rummaged the Internet and found someone suggesting that I try unchecking my website from the 'Sites' list in the Web Service config pane - I did this and tried loading the Web Service and it worked! Of course, with the website unchecked, it wasn't getting me very far in practical terms :) I chose to create a new site in the 'Sites' panel (with the same config as the old site, minus the Aliases) and clicked 'Start Webservice' - hey presto, I was back online!

FTP in Finder is Read-Only

2006-10-02T16:55:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post. I've been battling with FTP via the Finder interface for the last 2 hours only to find that Finder will only ever be able to open FTP sites in Read-Only mode:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107415

There are FTP clients out there on the Mac, personally, I recommend Fetch

P.S. I am writing a long article on eresurrecting old G3 iMacs into servers...should be finished soon.

Changing MIDI transmission channels in Garageband

2006-08-08T01:08:00.000+01:00

While I have focused this blog on using the Mac in the world of work, I thought I'd write a quick post on a problem I experienced (and was able to resolve) with Garageband. I write music and had a little ditty that I had started demoing in Garageband. I wanted to put some drums to the piece and thought that it would be nice to write the drum track in MIDI and then output it to a sound module once the drum part was written. I have a Roland TD-3 VDrum set which has some great built-in drum sounds so I wanted to use them in my recording but still have the freedom to edit the MIDI in Garageband. I recorded my drum part and then tried to play it back through the sound module. Nothing happened :(

I checked my setup and the MIDI out of the Mac was plugged into the MIDI in of the TD-3. I did a quick try in Logic Express (a more powerful tool but one I don't understand as well as Garageband... plus I don't have the universal binary for it) and it worked! Why then was there a problem?

The problem was due to the MIDI transmission. the TD-3 will ONLY receive MIDI sent to channel 10 (the traditional MIDI channel for drums). However, from reading on the internet, I discovered that Garageband (by default) transmits on Channel 1. I sighed and moped that I wouldn't be able to get the setup I wanted and then found a cool little plug-in for Garageband called 'midiO' by Retroware (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23227) that allows you to set MIDI transmission channels for MIDI tracks in Garageband. It isn't perfect but it's definitely worth investigating if this is a problem that you are encountering.

Accessing Databases on a Mac

2006-08-02T10:41:00.000+01:00

One of the first tasks I faced when setting up a Mac in our workplace for the first time was to get it to access a number of Oracle 9i databases that we use. I investigated the Oracle website to find an official client and came away with my head spinning - they appeared to have one but it seemed incredibly complicated to set up and without a clean installer - I wasn't very impressed. My colleague suggested I try a DBMS called 'Aqua Data Studio' (www.aquafold.com) which is open source, available for a whole host of platforms and provides access to a variety of different databases.

I really can't say enough nice things about this program - plain and simple, it rocks. In a few minutes I had this guy's Mac accessing the Oracle databases. I was astounded by the number of databases you could interact with using Aqua. We use a home-grown test-case management system that we built in PostGres and I was able to get access to that easily as well. The program also has a lot of nice features like 'Pretty Printing' (Function-B) and excellent display options (Grids, Text Files - all of which can be exported to a variety of different file types). I was also very impressed with it's predictive code-writer.

My only complaints are that it is written in Java which means that it is a bit slow and it doesn't completely conform to the standard Apple interface (e.g. Preferences are under 'File' like in Windows rather than the title menu option) but these are small things that don't bother me much (My MacBook handles the performance issue pretty well)

All in all, I thoroughly suggest you check out Aqua - an essential for Mac users and a very nice option for Windows users as well.

XML Editing on a Mac

2006-07-20T11:35:00.000+01:00

My job requires that I analyse and edit XML documents frequently. I thought I'd share a couple of things I've learnt about XML editing on the Mac.

1- Software: First thing is XML editing software. With my old VAIO, I would use XMLSpy Free Edition - a Windows only program that allows you to validate and 'pretty-print' XML among a whole host of other features for free. Unfortunately, I have not found an equivalent program for free on the Mac. However, I did find a good XML editor called 'oXygen' (http://www.oxygenxml.com/) which has a Mac port. Again, it allows validation and 'pretty-printing' but expires after about 14 days.

2- Browsers: To test the XML is create, I submit XML text to a website which then returns a response in an ASPX wrapper. I found that Apple Safari tends to reformat the ASPX response returned by then system so that I can't see the tags relating to the data in the response. As a result, I have found Apple Safari was not particularly good for my line of work and switched to using Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/) for my XML tasks.

Remote Desktop Connection for Macs

2006-07-18T13:35:00.000+01:00

today I discovered a cool tool available from Microsoft. As 'The only Mac in the village' it is important that I can interact with Windows users and wondered if there was any way of me being bale to make a remote desktop connection to a Windows machine without going through Parallels (which, as cool as it is, does put a strain on system resources). I found that I can using a piece of software that is free on Microsoft's 'Mactopia' site:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=remotedesktopclient

In 5 minutes, I was able to be maintaining the Windows server on the other side of the room. The only downside is that the colours are in a low resolution but it doesn't matter if it allows you the ability to make some important config change remotely.

Hats off to Microsoft on this one!

Using 2 Buttons with Mighty Mouse

2006-07-18T09:35:00.000+01:00

I went to a gig the other day and got talking with a guy I went to uni with. We got talking about Music tech and I asked with whether he had tried any Mac programs. He replied by saying 'sorry, I just can't give up my right mouse button!'. I think my friend has a point - as much as the Mac seems to have been built on the principle that 'one button is enough', Windows users (including myself) find it hard to give up that 2 button thang.

When I got my Mac Mini, I bought a Mighty Mouse because I wanted to use a KVM switch between my Mac and my Windows PC and the Mighty Mouse has 2 buttons recognised by Windows. Funnily enough, it never crossed my mind that I could use the 2 buttons in Mac OS! While that might sound a bit silly, my belief did have logic - when you plug a Mighty Mouse into a Mac, by default, it will function as a one button mouse with a scrollwheel (oh, and dashboard/expose buttons). However, you can have 2 buttons:

Go to 'System Preferences'-'Keyboard & Mouse' and go to the 'Mouse' tab
You will see that an image of the mouse appears with labels for all the functions. By default, a Mighty Mouse sets the right label to 'Primary Button'. Look at the drop down list and you will see 'Secondary Button' as an option!

Once you have saved this change, your Mac will seem like a far friendlier environment for users with a background in Windows.

Tabbing to a button

2006-07-17T14:54:00.000+01:00

Ok, to start things off, I thought I'd mention the issue of tabbing. I was used to tabbing my way through the data entry websites i use everyday for my job. One of my pet peeves about using my Mac was that I couldn't just rely on the keyboard - whenever i would come to a button on a website, I needed to use my mouse to click on it. I thought this was strange as I wondered what some users with accessibility issues would do under this situation. I then found that this was actually a config option and Mac OS X just comes with tabbing to a button as disabled. You can resole this by doing the following:

Click on System Preferences-Keyboard & Mouse
Click on the 'Keyboard Shortcuts' tab
Under 'full keyboard access' choose the 'All controls' radio button.

Thats it! Now you should be able to tab through Forms and webpages with ease :)

My introduction into the world of Apple technology

2006-07-17T13:08:00.000+01:00

Hello! My name is Martin and I recently switched to using Apple Macs. My encounters with Apple technology started when I was a kid and my mum worked for the local university. My first encounter of software development was at 7 when I made a little game in Hypercard. My mum changed jobs and the Mac went byebye. I continued being interested in computing via Windows and enjoyed learning how to maintain and build Windows machines. I studied computing, psychology and Spanish at university where I next encountered the Mac. I have to say we didn't get on very well - my catch-phrase over my time using SPSS for my psych stats coursework was 'Fucking Macs!!!'. I then forgot about Macs for the next 2 years until they were brought to my attention via the iPod. I bought an iPod but didn't really experience the fabled Halo effect concerning their computers. However, the iPod DID make me aware of Apple again. I was later required to configure a Powerbook for a colleague of mine at work. It was then that I began to appreciate how good Macs were. Within a relatively short period of time, I had his machine doing all the basic tasks needed of the job and within about a month he was WIndows free. during that time I found his Mac to be a quick machine with an Operating System that was intuitive, clean, reliable and fun.

My birthday rolled around and my parents very kindly bought me a Mac Mini. I am a musician and was quite curious to try out some of the music tools available for the Mac like Garageband and Logic. This was it - I was sold. I was blown away by Garageband. Having used PC sequencers all my youth, I was a bit jaded because I had not found any tools that were powerful, reliable and easy to use. Cakewalk was pretty good but always crashed on me. I began recording music and fell in love.

Having had pleasant experiences at home, I wanted to return to working with a Mac in my professional life. In my time at this company I have brought to laptops to their knees. They would work fine at first but then, with time, they would get slower and slower because of what I can only term as 'Windows Bloat'. It's pretty well accepted that Windows PCs need rebuilds to keep them running tight but that is very disruptive in a professional environment. I don't load crap on my work PCs and always used anti-virus and anti-spyware but still found that my laps would eventually run like dogs. My first one (purchased 2004, with 1gb ram) now takes 10+minutes to load. I knew it was possible for it to do everything I needed at work but didn't have to use in the office!

That all changed about 1 month ago when I was given a Macbook by the company as they knew I was lusting for one.

So what do I want to do with this blog?

Well, I've learnt quite a bit over the last year about using Macs in the workplace (either via my own or by maintaining others) and I wanted to share the knowledge I have acquired. I am no guru but there are lots of little tidbits that I hope will be useful to people who have spent their life using Windows.

I want to make it clear that I am not a creative professional and use my Mac in a software testing organization. I hope to think that while I am very happy with my Mac, that I am not a zealot and still happily work with Windows. I have not qualms with Microsoft and hope that my opinions are relatively balanced. Insecure defence of myself over!

I hope you find something useful on this blog and I would really appreciate any additional input people can add to the topics I bring up.

Good luck in MacLand!
Martin BG