So how's the music? The Pat Metheny Trio with Pat on guitar (what else?), Christian McBride on bass, and Antonio Sanchez on drums is stellar. If you're a jazz fan you're sure to love it.
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Artist Josh George's Cool Album Art
Monday, June 01, 2009
Rick's Picks (weekly)
Rickie Lee Jones: Interview about The Magazine
Interesting in-depth interview of Rickie Lee Jones in Musician, about her wonderful album The Magazine. -- Rick Cogley || The first reason I called it The Magazine was because the opening line of the song, the first lyric bit that came to me-"Homeboys calling from the corners, station to station, for the magazine..." That line was so important, because in terms of mood it set up everything that was about to happen. Homeboys is a street community drug term; homeboys are lookouts on the corners, and the magazine was the type of dope that they sold. But that's not what it was when I wrote it. It wasn't these guys on the corner, selling drugs. It became the poetry of hope. The words continue: "but her pages are turning out the lights in the windows," so immediately I made the song something else, something less down and out, more forward looking.
Purposeful mispronunciation of Sotomayor - Bitch Ph.D.
Loved this rant by M. LeBlanc on Bitch Ph.D. about purposefully mispronouncing Sotomayor. -- Rick Cogley || From the site: The idea that your name is somehow the property or the business of others, and that not only should they not be required to pronounce it correctly, they should purposely pronounce it incorrectly is one of the more brow-furrowing and staggering assertions I've heard come out of a conservative in months. It would be one thing if Krikorian was complaining about people getting lambasted for pronouncing it incorrectly, but he's not. What he's saying is that, despite knowing how to pronounce it correctly, people should nevertheless say it in a way that sounds wrong to the bearer of the name because to pronounce it correctly would be displaying too much "adapting to the newcomer."
blog:Cogley - Restoring Mail but not via Mobile Me
So much for MobileMe backing up my Mail account data! I had a another weird crash, which has been plaguing me since I upgraded OS X Leopard to 10.5.7. The crash happens when I wake the computer from sleep, and plug in my firewire then USB hard drives. When the USB hits the socket, sometimes I get the grey screen of death, in which the only way to recover is a hard reset. This happened again today, but this time, the hard reset broke Mail. After booting up, I started Mail and the only account I had was my MobileMe account. My Google accounts were gone. I thought, ah hah!, I'll recover from MobileMe's copies of my Mail Accounts. No dice. It must have quickly pushed to MobileMe, the change that happened when the system crashed, so syncing MobileMe did nothing to recover. Searching the web a little, I found various information about restoring the entire mail folder and so on, but it turned out that my mail data, in ~/Library/Mail, seemed intact. So, I decided to try to restore my Mail plist file first, from Time Machine backup, and see if that would fix the problem. Here's how to restore it...
More insane, zany bike designs, c/o Tom - Rick Cogley || From the site: Designers with a deathwish are pushing the boundaries of bicycle design far beyond the realm of practicality into preposterous new worlds. The following 10 bikes are some of the most outrageous concepts to spring forth from this movement, and should only be operated in a controlled environment by stuntmen and circus folk.
Photo Essay: 20 of the Freakiest Custom Bikes on the Road
My brother Tom sent me this wonderful photo essay of the freakiest bikes on the planet! Awesome! -- Rick Cogley || From the site: Tall bikes, choppers, cargo bikes, freak bikes, art bikes, clown bikes…much more than just two wheels, two pedals, and a chain.
Kaki King rocks out to "Pink Noise" | Video on TED.com
Wow, Kaki King is quite the guitarist! -- Rick Cogley || From the site: Kaki King, the first female on Rolling Stone's "guitar god" list, rocks out to a full live set at TED2008, including her breakout single, "Playing with Pink Noise." Jaw-dropping virtuosity meets a guitar technique that truly stands out.
LibriVox is a useful service that makes recordings of public domain books available via PodCast or download. -- Rick Cogley || From the site: What We Do - LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain, and then we release the audio files back onto the net for free. All our audio is in the public domain, so you may use it for whatever purpose you wish. Volunteering for LibriVox is easy and does not require any experience with recording or audio engineering or acting or public speaking. All you need is a computer, some free recording software, and your own voice. We accept all volunteers in all languages, with all kinds of accents. You don’t need to audition or send us samples. We’ll accept you no matter what you sound like. We operate almost exclusively through Internet communications on our forum, where all your questions will be answered by our friendly community. We have a flat structure, designed to let people do just what they want to do. For more detailed information, see our FAQ. We’d like your help. Click to learn about volunteering for LibriVox.
If you want to succeed, don’t tell anyone. | Psychology Today Blogs
Interesting article about the reverse psychology involved in failing at someone if you tell people you'll do it. I've believed this for years. -- Rick Cogley || From the site: They suggest that when people announce an intention to commit to an identity goal in public, that announcement may actually backfire. Imagine, for example, that Mary wants to become a Psychologist. She tells Herb that she wants to pursue this career and that she is going to study hard in her classes. However, just by telling Herb her intention, she knows that Herb is already starting to think of her as a Psychologist. So, she has achieved part of her identity goal just by telling Herb about it. Oddly enough, that can actually decrease the likelihood that Mary will study hard.
Photo from WikiPedia Commons - Death Valley Milkyway
This is the milkyway as seen from death valley.
The catch phrase says it: "Real time collaborative shopping with friends".
Hysterical: Roger McNamee and Jon Rubinstein on the Palm Pre | AllThingsD
A hysterical video describing the benefits of the Palm Pre. Worth your time! :-D -- Rick Cogley || What can the Palm Pre really do? Watch Jon Rubinstein and Roger McNamee figure out the right marketing message for the Pre. Published on 5/28/2009
Moblin v2.0 beta for Netbooks and Nettops - It's here... | moblin.org
Moblin v2.0 Beta makes me want to buy a netbook! -- Rick Cogley || From the site: * New, visually rich user experience, optimized for Netbook and Nettops, building on the latest open source graphics technology, such as Clutter, DRI2, and KMS. The user experience is provided mainly through the toolbar and panels, available at the top of the screen. * The m_zone, acting as the 'home screen' panel. It provides instant access to your synchronized calendar, tasks, appointments, recently used files, and real-time updates from your friends on social networking sites. * Aggregation of your social networking content. This provides you with the ability to see your social networking activities on one screen, easily interact with your friends, and update your status and site information. Twitter and Last.fm are the currently supported social networking sites, with more to come. * A web browser optimized for the Moblin 2.0 Netbook user interface. Based on the latest Mozilla browser technology revised into a Clutter shell, the browser gives you access to the whole internet, as well as advanced features, such as video embedding and the latest Flash plug-in, while integrating seamlessly into the user interface. * A 'Zoomable' media player. This player brings your media collection to life as you zoom from viewing all media down to focusing on an individual picture, movie, or audio track. The media player can detect and index media on external USB devices, as well as UPnP devices on your network. * A user interface for connection management and an updated connection manager (ConnMan). * And, of course, support for Linux desktop applications. Moblin is built using GNOME Mobile Technologies and supports existing Linux desktop applications. From here on out, we will focus on performance, bug fixing, fine tuning, and polishing. We post beta builds weekly in the download area. Moblin images should work on Intel based Netbooks and Nettops, we've been testing with the following platforms: Acer Aspire*One,
Squared 5 - MPEG Streamclip video converter for Mac and Windows
If you need to convert AVI files to MOV (i.e. something authorable in Final Cut or iMovie), you can use MPEG Streamclip from Squared5. -- Rick Cogley || From the site: MPEG Streamclip is a powerful free video converter, player, editor for Mac and Windows. It can play many movie files, not only MPEGs; it can convert MPEG files between muxed/demuxed formats for authoring; it can encode movies to many formats, including iPod; it can cut, trim and join movies. MPEG Streamclip can also download videos from YouTube and Google by entering the page URL. You can use MPEG Streamclip to open and play most movie formats including MPEG files or transport streams; edit them with Cut, Copy, Paste, and Trim; set In/Out points and convert them into muxed or demuxed files, or export them to QuickTime, AVI, DV and MPEG-4 files with more than professional quality, so you can easily import them in a DVD authoring tool, and use them with many other applications or devices. Supported input formats: MPEG, VOB, PS, M2P, MOD, VRO, DAT, MOV, DV, AVI, MP4, TS, M2T, MMV, REC, VID, AVR, M2V, M1V, MPV, AIFF, M1A, MP2, MPA, AC3, ...
mophie - Juice Pack air for iPhone 3G
I need to get this cover-cum-battery-pack for my iPhone. Cool-looking product that seems to be sold out! -- Rick Cogley || From the site: The juice pack air™ is a rechargeable external battery concealed inside of a protective form-fitting case for the iPhone 3G. It offers you the full protection of a hard-shell case while providing virtually twice the battery life of the iPhone alone; all in an ultra-thin, light-weight, low-profile design. • The world’s thinnest Apple certified “Works With iPhone” external battery for iPhone 3G! • Rechargeable 1200mAh lithium polymer battery virtually doubles your time to rock, talk, surf and send. • Pass-through USB charging and sync with iTunes • Extended smart battery and full case protection • On/Off switch offers choice of battery or case • Integrated 4 LED charge status indicator
Linpus set to debut first Moblin 2.0 distribution for end users
This mobile linux "moblin" from Linpus makes me want to buy a netbook! -- Rick Cogley || From the site: While we've been getting a pretty good look at Moblin 2.0 as of late, we haven't been hearing much about the end-user distributions that'll actually be winding up on netbooks and nettops as the Linux-based OS moves out of beta. Linpus now looks set to change that, however, with it announcing that it'll be showing off a Moblin version of its Linpus Linux Lite OS at Computex next week, which is apparently the first such end-user distribution to emerge. What's more, while the initial batch of screenshots don't exactly offer many surprises, Linpus says that it has indeed put its own touch on the interface, and that it's version will boot in just 15 seconds and give users access to a live desktop that'll let them quickly access a range of websites and applications. Not many more details beyond that, unfortunately, but we're sure this is just beginning of Moblin talk that'll emerge out of Computex.
A Grand Exposition for Yokohama’s 150th Year - Official WebSite
One hundred and fifty years after the opening of the port of Yokohama, the city is putting on the "Y+150" exposition, a series of events from 18 April to 29 Sept, 2009. -- Rick Cogley From the site: Theme Events Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Opening of the Port of Yokohama A Grand Exposition for Yokohama’s 150th Year Experience 150 years of Yokohama at our grand exposition celebrating the past and the future. A full program of events will be held to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the 1859 opening of the Port, based on three themes that are the lifeblood of Yokohama − the sea, the city and nature.
It's time for the FTC to investigate Mac security | Security | Macworld
Ira Winkler's interesting article on why the FTC should investigate apple's security claims in regard to security. -- Rick Cogley | From the site: I have come to the conclusion that either the FTC must investigate Apple’s advertising claims with regard to security, or people must begin releasing proof-of-concept code on a regular basis. European Union and Canadian regulators can certainly step in as well. With Apple selling more Macs, its attitude is putting more people at risk. And just to be clear, it is not that Apple’s software has security vulnerabilities that is the problem; all commercial software does. The problem is that Apple is grossly misleading people to believe otherwise.
The Video Shell Oil Desperately Doesn't Want You to See | Take Action | AlterNet
Thought-provoking article and video about Royal Dutch Shell oil working with the Nigerian military to oppress the Ogoni. -- Rick Cogley | From the site: For over thirteen years, multinational oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has done everything in its power to stop a trial from taking place at which the company must answer to charges that it colluded with the Nigerian military to commit serious human rights abuses to quell peaceful resistance to its operations in the Niger Delta region called Ogoni, including conspiring to bring about the conviction and execution of Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight of his colleagues.
The TEDxTokyo site.
About "TED" | Technology, Entertainment, Design
TED sounds like quite an interesting organization. -- Rick Cogley | From the site: TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
Automating Twitter via OS X Automator | Mac OS X | Macworld
Use OS X's Automator to automatically send Twitter status updates.
Consumer Videocam DIY Mic Wind Cover 家庭用ビデオカメラの「風雑音」防止小物の試作 - スキー大好き「TV業界・音声オジさん」のブログ
A Japanese site that has instructions on how to make a DIY wind cover for a flush-mount mic. -- Rick Cogley
TechCorner » Migrating New Blogger to WordPress 2
Another post on migrating from New Blogger to Wordpress 2. -- Rick Cogley | From the site: Import your posts with comments from New Blogger to WordPress 2. New Blogger Import tool is ease and simple to use; no more manual pains.
Case Study: Moving a Business Blog from Blogger to WordPress | Small Business Trends
Post describing why Small Business Trends made the migration from Blogger to Wordpress. -- Rick Cogley | From the site: Small Business Trends started out using Blogger software. In the summer of 2003 when I was first experimenting with blogging, Blogger was one of the better options. It was simple to set up and use. Both the software and hosting were free. And with Blogger having been acquired by Google earlier that year, my business intuition told me it might be an advantage for getting the site indexed and ranked in Google. Blogger seemed like a deal I could not refuse.
Moving from Blogger to WordPress: Best Practices - jotsheet
Another blogger-to-wordpress migration plan. -- Rick Cogley | From the site: I recently moved a friend’s medium-size blog from Blogger to hosted WordPress (on DreamHost, not WordPress.com), and I thought I’d share a few tips for making the transition smooth.
The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress | MamaBlogga
Good guide to migrating from Google's blogger platform to self-hosted Wordpress. -- Rick Cogley | From the site: I made the move from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress more than a year and a half ago. At the time, I wrote the original ultimate guide to migrating, but a few things have changed in the intervening months. So I present the fully updated, all new, ultimate guide to migrating from Blogger to WordPress!
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Restoring Mail, but not via MobileMe Account Backups
I thought, ah hah!, I'll recover from MobileMe's copies of my Mail Accounts. No dice. It must have quickly pushed to MobileMe, the change that happened when the system crashed, so syncing MobileMe did nothing to recover. Searching the web a little, I found various information about restoring the entire mail folder and so on, but it turned out that my mail data, in ~/Library/Mail, seemed intact. So, I decided to try to restore my Mail plist file first, from Time Machine backup, and see if that would fix the problem.
How to Restore Mail.app
Here's how I restored it:
- Close Mail.
- Plug in the Time Machine drive.
- Press option while clicking the Time Machine icon in the menu bar, select "Browse Other Time Machine Disks" and choose your Time Machine disk. You can display this icon in Time Machine preferences. Note, if you use Path Finder, a Finder replacement, like I do, start Finder before you do any Time Machine work.
- Enter Time Machine, and find your last Mail plist backup. In Time Machine, just click a folder or two "back", and see what the date on the file is. The file is ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist where ~ is your home folder.
- Affirm the overwrite, when the restore process asks if you want to replace the file with an older version.
- Start Mail.
This worked. All my mail was present and accounted for. If my mail had been damaged, I could do the same procedure, but after stopping Mail, just rename the Mail folder ~/Library/Mail to something else like ~/Library/Mail-Backup, and restore both the Mail folder and the plist file from your Time Machine backup. It will take quite a bit longer to achieve, but it should work.
I hope this helps someone. Enjoy, and good luck recovering.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Rick's Picks (weekly)
Informative Site on Bicycle Lighting Systems
A very informative site on bike lighting systems. With nudity, lol. -- Rick Cogley From the site: Not everyone can afford to buy a commercially manufactured, very bright rechargeable lighting system, which Ken Kifer accurately describes as the best light for commuters. While prices have come down, a good rechargeable lighting system is still over $100 when you add in a good tail light. Adequate dynamo powered lights will cost you over $350 in the U.S. (6 watt dynamo plus front and rear lamp). A lot of people settle for less expensive 3 watt generator light sets which are not suitable for commuting, at least in the U.S.. Others buy el-cheapo handlebar mount lights which are not very bright, and usually not very reliable. This site describes how to build a high performance, rechargeable. lighting system without spending a lot of money. You can spend as little as $40 to construct a system, complete with a sealed beam headlamp, xenon strobe tail light, rechargeable battery, and charger. All components are available from retail or mail-order stores. I don't sell anything (except Flash Flags), this is purely an informational site. This site contains my informed opinions, as well as the views of other groups and individuals. There are many different solutions for bicycle lighting that meet the criteria of "seeing and being seen," and there are many solutions that do not meet these criteria. Choose wisely and use common sense. You don't have to spend hundreds of dollars for an adequate lighting system. A lighting system is not rocket science, it's basically connecting a battery to some lamps. The challenge is in sourcing the proper components and mounting them to the bicycle in a secure and reliable manner.
YPK Innovations Cafe 2.0 4-D116
I got a new YPK bike lock, that allows you to lock front and rear wheels simultaneously. My last YPK's plastic housing degraded and broke, and the steel collar around the hole in the lock that the sliding post goes into started to rotate, making it hard to lock. This new one seems to be upgraded - heavier-duty plastic around the lock itself.
Snap!Japan - Salaryman Haiku Winners
Dai-ichi Life Insurance has announced their latest Sarariiman Senryuu (Salaried Worker Senryuu, サラリーマン川柳) competition winners. It's the 22nd year for the competition, and people vote on the best humorous haiku that come from the daily life of salaried workers and the news. You may recall that haiku are the poems with a cadence of 5, 7 then 5 syllables. Check some of the sara-sen winners out with my translations. -- Rick Cogley
Avoid Looking Like an American Tourist | ReasonPad
Careful. This site reasonpad dot com is indicated by Safari and Google as being infected with malware. -- Rick == Interesting list of dos and don'ts for the loud, obnoxious American tourist. Funny, but I think difficult for most Americans to follow. -- Rick Cogley | From the site: As an American traveling in a foreign country, the last thing you want to do is stand out like a sore thumb. Not only do you have a greater chance of getting sucked into tourist traps, but you’re also a more obvious target for getting mugged or even kidnapped. So, are you aware of the things you do, say, and wear that make you look like the stereotypical tourist?
15 Terminal commands to supercharge OS X | News | TechRadar UK
TechRadar UK's favorite terminal commands for OS X. Long live CLI. -- Rick Cogley | From the site: Although you can replicate the results or functionality offered by most Terminal commands via various bits of freeware and shareware, it's simpler to fire up the command line and paste in a handy command. Below are our favourites, centring on workflow efficiency and system streamlining and improvements. Note that if Terminal becomes a mess at any point, 'clear' removes everything from the current window or tab.
New Search Engine Wolfram Alpha is interesting but not quite ready for prime time. -- Rick Cogley | From the site: Making the world's knowledge computable - Today's Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. You enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer.
Camper.rb, a ruby script to link Campfire to Jabber - SuperJared.com
Campfire to Jabber proxy script written in ruby. -- Rick Cogley | From the site: At work we use 37signals’ Campfire group chat for our office discussions, as well as customer support. This web-based chat is great for teams to intercommunicate as well as keep the channel open for our customers to speak with us. However, I am not a fan of keeping a couple tabs open to the same pages all day. One reason is that it becomes a RAM hog after a few hours. It also adds another chat program to the list that I have open.
Cool cellphone-strap gadget that lets you connect by exchanging SNS info via your "poken". -- Rick Cogley | From the site: With your poken you instantly connect with new friends across online social networks when and where you meet them.
Sheldon Brown-Bicycle Technical Information
An amazing and encyclopedic body of knowledge about cycling and bicycles. Sheldon Brown's site. -- Rick Cogley
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
New YPK Innovations Lock
There were two problems with the old one, that cropped up after 18 months of daily, outdoor use at the train station:
- The plastic bezel around the lock broke, exposing the metal lock.
- The metal collar inside, around the lock itself started to rotate, covering up the hole that the post was supposed to be inserted into.
Here are photos of the problem:
I think the one I just bought is a generation old, but it still seems better than the first one. These YPK "cafe" locks are nice because you can make two loops for flexible locking.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Rick's Picks (weekly)
Saboten no Hana Lyrics - Kazuo Zaitsu
Kazuo Zaitsu (kanji: 財津和夫) of the Japanese band Tulip, is the singer of a favorite song of mine, "Saboten no Hana" or The Cactus Flower, which is a song about hope despite love lost. It was the theme song of an enormously popular 1993 drama called "Hitotsu Yane no Shita" or Under One Roof. Zaitsu san has a unique and pleasant voice that I like, and this song always brings a tear to my eye. The song features a simple piano solo in the bass register, which to me is the man's sad voice mixed with hope. I thought I'd translate the lyrics so others could understand it too. You can see Zaitsu san sing it and see some stills from the drama on YouTube. -- Rick Cogley
Best Tokyo Subway Map: Vollmer Design
Vollmer Design's superior map of the Tokyo rail and subway system is a must for any visitor to or resident of Tokyo. The map is printed on A3 paper, but is folded small to the size of "3 x 1 2/3 matches" according to the nicely-designed Informa website where the map is available. Very affordable, even inexpensive, at JPY 270 yen online, it's less than the cost of a Starbucks latte, or maybe a typical iPhone app. The map is thankfully bilingual, so a visitor can show it to a Japanese speaker and get help, while reading the romanized versions of the names. It also has clear icon markers of major tourist sites like the Tsukiji Fish Market near Ginza, and the Tokyo Tower. -- Rick Cogley
http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com
Just like the URL says: these are awkward family photos. Really, really awkward!
Mobile Opportunity: A quick history of software platforms: How we got here, and where we're going
An excellent article on software platforms, by Michael Mace. -- Rick Cogley | From the article: Intuit and Stanford recently asked me to give talks on computer platforms and what makes them successful. (By platforms I mean software with APIs that third party developers can write apps on top of; Windows and Macintosh are both platforms, as is Java.) Platforms are a hot topic in Silicon Valley these days. The success of the iPhone app store in mobile, and Facebook on the web, have forcefully reminded people that you can grow a tech business more quickly if you get third party developers to help you. Almost every tech company I work with is trying to expose some sort of API or platform offering in its products.
"Drag, Drop, Disco." Good alternative to Toast for disc burning.
blog:Cogley - Disc Media Burning with "Disco", a Toast Alternative
Disco is a polished, inexpensive (USD 29.95, currently 10 dollars off as of 13 May 2009) alternative to Toast Titanium. I've had mixed results with Toast, and did not want to pay the upgrade fee, so I started looking for alternatives. I've done a few burns in Disco so far, and it seems to work quite well. No problems or "coasters" yet, at this time.
blog:Cogley - Collapsing All Folders in Path Finder
I could not find this information in the help file or on the CocoaTech forum. If you use CocoaTech's Path Finder, the Finder replacement that has a lot of extra functionality that is missing in the normal OS X Finder, you may be browsing around in a folder with many subfolders, and wish to somehow "collapse" the folders you opened, to clean up the view. Clicking the disclosure triangle of 100 open subfolders is rather tedious, so isn't there an easier way? I stumbled on a method. Here it is.
blog:Cogley - Updating Leopard OS X 10.5.6 to 10.5.7
I updated my MacBook Pro's OS X from 10.5.6 to 10.5.7 today, and there was a little hiccup. Here's what happened.
Snap!Japan - RIP Kiyoshiro Imawano - translation of "ameagari no yozora ni"
Kiyoshiro Imawano, the hugely-popular lead singer of RC Succession died of lymphatic disease at the age of 59. He'll be dearly missed. One of their hits, "Ameagari no Yozora ni" is representative of his music, and you can hear it on YouTube. I thought I'd translate the lyrics to it. The original Japanese is followed by romanized Japanese, followed by my English approximation. It's full of double-meanings, of course.
blog:Cogley - Migrating User Folders on OS X Leopard Server
I did an experiment on my test Leopard Server to migrate User Folders from the default /Users to another direct-attached volume based on some questions that came up. The problem is, OS X Leopard Server defaults to using the system disk as the Users partition, and this disk is not often your largest disk. It can fill up quickly if users start storing their photos or music. Long story short, the trick is to use Workgroup manager to auto-create the User directories, but, before that there's some things you need to do for prep.
blog:Cogley - Does my Mac's SuperDrive do Dual Layer
If you are wondering whether the SuperDrive in your Mac is dual-layer capable, or whether it can store 8+ GB of data on a data DVD rather than 4+ GB, have a look at the System Profiler app (you can Spotlight it to easily find it if you use Leopard), and check Hardware, Disc Burning, DVD-Write. If you see the tell-tale DLs in the description, you're good to go. Just buy the appropriate media.
StillTasty: Your Ultimate Shelf Life Guide - Save Money, Eat Better, Help The Environment
StillTasty.com is a very useful Web site that lets you check the shelf life of common foods and ingredients. Know your "best before" from your "expires on". Searchable database, and various tips. www.stilltasty.com
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Disc Burnin' with Disco
Here's some highlights:
- Disco supports spanning of a backup set to multiple discs, and lets you know how many discs you will need to complete the backup. Very convenient, and you just feed it the disc media when prompted, while it works.
- Disco stores a discography for created media or disc images, so you can easily search for files on your media.
- Straightforward workflow, assisted by what the publisher calls "Crossroads" technology. It's unnoticeable, and I had no problems following, so in a way I guess it works!
- Creation of CDs or DVDs with Hybrid, HFS+, UDF, PC Joliet, or ISO 9660 file systems, which means you'll be able to read the media most anywhere.
- Burn to all Apple-supported in- and external drives, and enjoy CD multi-session support, burn and erase for rewritable media, and support for dual-layer DVDs.
- If your audio is supported by Quicktime, you can create an audio CD or easily switch to a MP3 data CD. Also, you can drag-and-drop to change track order.
- You can create disc images from files and discs in the CDR, ISO or DMG formats, as well as create CDs from ISO, DMG, IMG or CUE/BIN.
Oh, I almost forgot that it "smokes" when you burn, provided a new-enough Mac. Pretty cool effect!
Assessment after Some Usage
I used Disco for a few burns (the demo allows you 7, gratis), and I found the program to be a tag buggy here and there. There's times where restarting Disco will help it detect discs, or, where it mis-detects the burner you want to use. I have a San Disk Cruzer USB stick, which for some reason Disco thinks is a burner, and it gets "stuck" on it until I go into Disco Preferences and change it.
Path Finder - Collapsing All Folders
I could not find this information in the help file or on the CocoaTech forum. If you use CocoaTech's Path Finder, the Finder replacement that has a lot of extra functionality that is missing in the normal OS X Finder, you may be browsing around in a folder with many subfolders, and wish to somehow "collapse" the folders you opened, to clean up the view.
Clicking the disclosure triangle of 100 open subfolders is rather tedious, so isn't there an easier way? I stumbled on a method. Here it is.
How to Collapse All Subfolders in Path Finder
- In list view, select all. Command-A.
- Press Option-Left Arrow.
- Sit back, amused, but don't do anything boneheaded like pressing Command-Delete.
And voila! Collapsed folders.
Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.7 Update
I updated my MacBook Pro's OS X from 10.5.6 to 10.5.7 today, and there was a little hiccup. Here's what happened, but see UPDATES below:
- I noticed there was an update available, so I shut down all the user applications and things like ExpanDrive and Plaxo, then tried Software Update from the Apple menu. Software update started to work, then stalled at around 150 MB of 450 MB downloaded, claiming to take another 8 hours to download. It's not my ISP because everything else is fine. Everyone must be hitting the server at once. Stopped the update during the download.
- Intending to use the "combo updater", which is just the full update download, I found the update on Apple's download site. There are two updaters: the Delta Updater, and the Combo Updater. The 450+ MB Delta is just labeled as "Update" and is for updating from 10.5.6 to 10.5.7. The 700+ MB Combo is for any 10.5, to 10.5.7. Decided to try the Delta.
- Apple Installer offers to run the updater when it downloads, so I chose to do that. It seemed to work, then offered to Restart so I did that.
- After the restart, the process froze on a blue screen with a mouse pointer.
- I force restarted, then after the restart, the system auto-rebooted.
- After the second restart, the expected normal grey Apple Logo screen with the progress spinner appeared. It took a long time, but it finally came to the login screen, and login was normal.
- I confirmed that the system did indeed it had been upgraded, by checking Apple menu, About this Mac. It's indeed updated to 10.5.7.
When I started Mail and iCal after the upgrade, there were no "please wait while we update your database" type of messages, as there have been in the past when Apple has made database changes to these applications.
I'm going to do an OnyX run, to clean things up and reset permissions and so on as a matter of maintenance, and I'll report back here if there are any other problems related to the update.
UPDATES
13 May 2009, 23:55 - the system worked snappily all day, but this evening I got the grey kernel crash screen. The "You need to restart" in multiple languages one. Ugh. Apparently, Apple recognizes the problem and will issue a fix. Recommend waiting.
14 May 2009, 11:41
The 10.5.7 update is definitely much snappier. A lot of things are running very fast. This is nice. Now, just don't crash on me again, please!
15 May 2009, 10:30
Crashed after waking from sleep. Had to force reset. System worked well after that.
16 May 2009, 9:30
Flock crashed and could not be force-quit. Activity Monitor would not start. Terminal kill command would not kill.
What's in the 10.5.7 Update
FYI, here's what Apple says is in the update:
Address Book
• Improves reliability of Address Book syncing with iPhone and other devices and applications.
AirPort
• Improves the reliability of AirPort connections, including improvements when roaming in large wireless networks with an Intel-based Mac.
Client management
• Improves reliability of synchronizing files on a portable home directory.
• Fixes an issue in Mac OS X 10.5.4 and 10.5.5 in which managed users may not see printers that use the Generic PPD.
• Client computers that use UUID-based ByHost preferences now respect managed Screen Saver settings.
iChat
• Addresses an issue that could cause an encryption alert to appear in the chat window.
• Setting your iChat status to "invisible" via AppleScript no longer logs you out of iChat.
• Resolves an issue in which pasting text from a Microsoft Office document could insert an image rather than text.
Graphics
• Includes general improvements to gaming performance.
• Includes graphics improvements for iChat, Cover Flow, Aperture, and iTunes.
• Includes fixes for possible graphics distortion issues with certain ATI graphics cards.
• Includes overall performance and reliability fixes.
• Improves Connection Doctor accuracy.
• Fixes an issue that could cause messages identified as junk to remain in the inbox.
• Fixes an issue that could cause Mail to append a character to the file extension of an attachment.
• Addresses an issue that could prevent Mail from quitting.
• Improves reliability when printing PDF attachments.
MobileMe
• Contacts, calendars, and bookmarks on a Mac automatically sync within a minute of the change being made on the computer, another device, or the web at me.com.
Networking
• Improves Apple File Service performance, especially when using a home directory hosted on an AFP server. Important: If you are using Mac OS X 10.5.6 (client) to connect to a • • Mac OS X Server 10.4-based server, it is strongly recommended that you update the server to Mac OS X Server version 10.4.11.
• Improves the performance and reliability of TCP connections.
• Improves reliability and performance for AT&T 3G cards.
• Updates the ssh Terminal command for compatibility with more ssh servers.
Printing
• Improves printing for the Adobe CS3 application suite.
• Improves printing for USB-based Brother and Canon printers.
Parental Controls
• Addresses an issue in which a parentally-controlled account could be unable to access the iTunes Store.
• Includes general fixes for time limits.
• Resolves an issue that prevented adding allowed websites from Safari via drag and drop.
Time Machine
• Fixes issues that could cause Time Machine to state the backup volume could not be found.
• Improves Time Machine reliability with Time Capsule.
Safari
• Improves compatibility with web proxy servers.
General
• Includes Mac OS X security improvements. See this website for more information.
• Addresses inaccuracies with Calculator when the Mac OS X language is set to German or Swiss German.
• Improves the performance and reliability of Chess.
• Improves DVD Player performance and reliability.
• Performance improvements for iCal are included.
• Fixes an issue when running the New iCal Events Automator action as an applet.
• Adds a Trackpad System Preference pane for portable Macs.
• Improves compatibility with smart cards such as the U.S. Department of Defense Common Access Card.
• Updates time zone data and Daylight Saving Time rules for several countries.
Mac OS X 10.5.7 is available via Software Update and also via standalone installers.
Does my SuperDrive do "dual-layer"?
Monday, May 11, 2009
The Human Body, Understood
A random and very funny list circulating 'round the Internets. Understand your own body.
The Human Body
It takes your food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.
One human hair can support 3 kg (6.6 lb).
The average man's penis is three times the length of his thumb.
Human thighbones are stronger than concrete.
A woman's heart beats faster than a man's.
There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.
Women blink twice as often as men.
The average person's skin weighs twice as much as the brain.
Your body uses 300 muscles to balance itself when you are standing still.
If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it.
Women reading this will be finished now.
Men are still busy checking their thumbs.
Lol.
Rick's Picks (weekly)
Adjix is an URL shortener that uses HTML redirects instead of 302's. From the site: Short Links. Tiny Ads. Big Payoff.
From the site: With all the talk of URL shortening services, I decided to add a quick service into Snook.ca, which is run on CakePHP, to redirect a short URL to a post. Because my static content already has short URLs and all I have are posts, creating a short URL handler for it was very easy.
Build Your Own Url Shortener For Free! | NetHackz
From the site: Build Your Own Url Shortener For Free! - URL shorteners are awesome. The less characters, the better! But what happens when that server goes down or some network issue prevents people from getting to your links? Nothing. Blank pages. Better yet, why would you want to brand someone elses domain name? Think about all the traffic and notoriety you’re giving tinyurl and is.gd? Can you use that same traffic to your advantage?
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Monday, May 04, 2009
Rick's Picks (weekly)
Snap!Japan - English Bookstores in Tokyo and Yokohama
My list of some English bookstores in Japan, but mostly in Tokyo or Yokohama where I live, for the visitor or resident.
Snap!Japan - Social Media Acceptance in Japan
I agree that Social Networking Service acceptance, or lack thereof, is not a simple matter of Japanese being "shy". Just go to Shibuya, Harajuku, or Kabukicho to prove otherwise! I think SNS acceptance is driven by the marketing of the SNS, by whether it "feels right" and "fits right" for Japanese people, and by whether other people are using it. I think that's what Thierry is saying anyway, but my perspective is that SNS's like Mixi are Japanese to begin with and not a localized version of an application like Facebook or MySpace.
blog:Cogley - Enable Color Managment in Flock or Firefox 3
Don't suffer with color management off. Turn it on now. If you use anything but IE 7 you are still out of luck, but Safari users have had this functionality for quite a while. I refer to "color management", which is the concept of adjusting the color properties of devices, like displays, monitors, printers or scanners, so that colors mean the same thing across devices, and more importantly look the same. The adjustment can be done in the operating system itself, which is what Mac OS X does (and one reason it is superior to Windows), or via International Color Consortium "ICC" profiles and other software trickery.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Migrating User Folders in OS X Leopard Server
I did an experiment on my test Leopard Server to migrate User Folders from the default /Users to another direct-attached volume based on some questions that came up.
The problem is, OS X Leopard Server defaults to using the system disk as the Users partition, and this disk is not often your largest disk. It can fill up quickly if users start storing their photos or music. Long story short, the trick is to use Workgroup manager to auto-create the User directories, but, before that there's some things you need to do for prep.
How to Migrate OS X Leopard Users Folder from Default to External
In Terminal, you can either sudo bash or use sudo in front of every command. I like to use sudo bash, but remember to exit out of your sudo'ed bash shell later, to avoid risk. Don't use sudo bash if you don't know your way around a Terminal. If you are not sure, don't use it, and just go for sudo in front of each command you want to use.
sudo bash Password:
Create the containing Users folder on the external drive, which we'll call "EXTHD" here. You can confirm its POSIX permissions using ls -la.
cd /Volumes/EXTHD mkdir Users ls -la
Start Server Admin, select the server in the left-hand list, then select the File Sharing section from the toolbar. Copy down all the attributes of your existing Users folder Share Point, for example to auto-mount as "User home folders", protocol options to share via AFP, SMB, FTP or NFS, and base ACL and POSIX Permissions with whether to inherit or not.
Now, you can Unshare the Share Point in Server Admin. Click Unshare and Save. Click another Share Point to make the list refresh.
After you confirm the Users Share Point is gone you can create a new Users Share Point on /Volumes/EXTHD/Users, your external disk. Reset all the settings you wrote down for your original Users, then Propagate Permissions using the Gear dropdown.
Start Workgroup Manager, and specify the new User share for each user. Multi-select users, select your new share, and click "Create Home Now" to create.
Now you can migrate the contents, which is probably the most tedious part because there's unfortunately no automated way to do it. Use the mv command, and you may need to reset permissions after the move. Users can try connecting and accessing their files. Here's one way, which involves using the su command from root's shell to mimic any given user, in this case John Allen Smith or "jas".
bash-3.2# su - jas mysrv:~ jas$ whoami jas mysrv:~ jas$ ls Desktop Documents Downloads Library Movies Music Pictures Public Sites mysrv:~ jas$ pwd /Network/Servers/mysrv.mydomain.com/Volumes/EXTHD/Users/jas mysrv:~ jas$ cd Documents/ mysrv:Documents jas$ ls About Stacks.pdf mysrv:Documents jas$ mv /Users/jas/Documents/* . mv: ./myfile.txt: set owner/group (was: 1034/80): Operation not permitted
If you get errors like the "Operation not permitted" above, deal with those permissions separately. Use the exit command to exit to root again, and use it again to get out of the "sudo bash" root shell. I hope this helps get you started migrating user folders to an external hard drive, in OS X Leopard Server. Enjoy!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Color Management in Flock (and Firefox)
If you use anything but IE 7 you are still out of luck, but Safari users have had this functionality for quite a while. I refer to "color management", which is the concept of adjusting the color properties of devices, like displays, monitors, printers or scanners, so that colors mean the same thing across devices, and more importantly look the same. The adjustment can be done in the operating system itself, which is what Mac OS X does (and one reason it is superior to Windows), or via International Color Consortium "ICC" profiles and other software trickery.
Let me keep it very simple for this post, though. If you use Flock, which is at the time of this writing based on Firefox 3, or Firefox 3 itself, color management is disabled by default. However, you can easily enable color management, so that photos on photo sharing sites like Flickr or SmugMug will render with the color profile embedded in the photo, which usually means they will look much better than the default, using no profile. In my opinion, these days you will get far better results by turning color management on, in your Flock or Firefox 3 browser.
How to Enable Color Management in Flock or Firefox 3
The easiest way to enable the settings is by using the Color Management Addon for Firefox which will work in Firefox and should work in Flock. Alternatively, you can enter the secret "about:config" code in your address bar (where you type the URL), and enable color management yourself:
about:config
Be very careful about what you change in here, because you can break your browser easily. That said, scroll down until you find:
gfx.color_management.enabled
gfx.color_management.display_profile
You can double click gfx.color_management.enabled to enable Firefox to use whatever profile is embedded in the photo you are viewing, and, you can specify an ICC profile by entering its path in the gfx.color_management.display_profile parameter. If you are not sure what that means, just enable gfx.color_management.enabled.
Restart Flock or Firefox, and you should get much better colors on sites like Flickr or SmugMug. Finally, please check out Deb Richardson's excellent introductory post on this topic, for a clear depiction of the difference of using profiles or not, and how different applications render color. Don't waste time with color management turned off - turn it on now and enjoy much richer color.
Flickr Video Now 500MB
Flickr has increased their maximum video size from 150 MB to 500 MB for Pro members. How do these sites handle the continually expanding capacity needs? Flickr charges only 25 dollars per year for pro accounts so they must have scads of users.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Rick's Picks (weekly)
Camcorder Info - How We Test Camcorders - Reviews
Good site with CamCorder reviews. -- Rick Cogley | From the site: Exacting standards and the scientific method are at the heart of Camcorderinfo.com, and rest of the sites in the Reviewed.com network. We don't believe in the so-called "golden eye" or the "expert review board." Both of these methods allow too many opportunities for subjectivity and personal preference. Our objective, scientific analysis, in conjunction with our strict ethics policy, makes our reviews the fairest and most transparent online.
New Canon PowerShot D10 Point-and-Shoot - blog:Cogley
Yesterday, I purchased the new Canon PowerShot D10 to take over for an old Canon IXY 500. The IXY has served us well and works OK still, but the waterproof and shockproof nature of the D10 were attractive because of the proximity to the beach where we live, and how often we've been nervous about taking electronics to the beach! It's going to be nice to drag the camera right into the surf or even underwater.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
New Canon PowerShot D10, a Waterproof Point-and-Shoot
I compared this D10 with other waterproof and shockproof models from Olympus (the Tough-8000) and Panasonic (the Lumix TS-1 or FS-1), but ultimately chose the Canon. I liked the way it felt in my hands at the store, and there were too many quirks in reviews about the others. At any rate, I thought I would share some first impressions and photos with everyone.
Specifications of the Canon PowerShot D10
Let me summarize some of the specs.
Megapixels - A solid 12.1, combined with the Digic4 processor. I'm not so interested in huge megapixel figures, because I really don't need to print posters.
Lens - it's got a bright f/2.8 3x optical, 4x digital zoom, with lens-shift Image Stabilization. This is a nice lens, and it's in line with the sensor and not "folded", which contributes to its rather bulbous shape.
Focus - face-detection auto-focus.
Media - "Secure Digital" SDHC format.
File Format - JPEG (Fine only, not Super-Fine) for photos and Motion JPEG for movies up to 1 hour and 4GB.
Toughness - it's an outdoor-use camera, waterproof to 10 m and shockproof to 1.2 m.
ISO - 80 to 1600 but pretty noisy at high ISO.
Viewfinder - none, it's an "LCD only" camera.
Battery - Lithium Ion
Unprocessed Samples from the Canon PowerShot D10
Here are some unprocessed sample photos, and a gratuitous motion JPEG video from the Canon PowerShot D10.
Impressions of the Canon PowerShot D10
I've only used the camera just for a few snaps, but I like it. It turns on very quickly, has a whole slew of "scene modes" like aquarium, beach, underwater, foliage and so forth, as well as a program mode for some manual tinkering as usual in the PowerShot range. It has a programmable print button, so you can for example link "video record" to that for an easy way to start recording without fishing through menus.
I don't care too much about the fashionable, replaceable faceplates that you can swap in (it has blue on there in the box but there's also black, orange and camoflage), but I really love the straps that came with the "Canon D10 Outdoor Kit". There's a wrist strap, a neck strap, a caribiner strap that you hook to your belt, and a shoulder strap that lets you sling the D10 over your shoulder, and whip up when you want to take a photo. The design of the camera itself is pretty funky, but each corner has a connector that looks like something you'd see in a submarine. These connectors make the straps really easy to connect. You just slot it in and turn. Easy! And since there's a connector on each corner, it's nice for left- or right-handed people.
As for negatives, despite the nice fast f/2.8 lens, Canon bastardized the JPEG settings so there's no "super fine". I suppose this is to try to prevent you from having to swap SD cards at the beach, but I'd rather make that decision myself. Also, there's no HD video like Canon's introduced into their newest IXY models. Something I noticed in the manual, it says to turn up the volume on any videos you take with the camera because the mic is "not so sensitive due to the waterproof characteristics of the camera." So say we all. Finally, I've owned other PowerShots but this one's manual settings feel a little limited.
In the end, I think I'm going to probably take this camera everywhere because I don't have to fret about damage from water. I like it quite a bit, especially the fact that I can sling it over my shoulder with the useful straps. I'll update when I get some samples underwater.
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