This hint is for those who have a primary email address, say a@default.com, and would like to use this email address, but would like the 'push' aspects of their MobileMe account, say a@me.com. It would be useful to be able to send email from a MobileMe account, but have a@default.com show up by default as the From address. This hint is similar to
this previously-posted hint,
in that one can set their primary email address to forward a copy to
their MobileMe account. However, this previous hint does this, but only
by subscribing to their MobileMe account as a standard IMAP account,
which would not use push.

For this hint, one also needs an additional Gmail account (which may or may not be the primary email address) -- assume this account is a@gmail.com.
and one would need to subscribe to that within the iPhone as well.
Under the Mail settings for the MobileMe account, change the sent mail
server to use smpt.gmail.com instead of the MobileMe sent mail server.

Then, in the Gmail settings page on the web, on the Accounts tab, configure it so that your Gmail account can send mail as a@default.com. (This involves gmail sending an email to a@default.com, confirming that it can send mail as that address). Then after that is added, click on Default next to a@default.com to make that your default sent mail address.

In this way, when one sends mail from the MobileMe account on the iPhone, even though it displays a@me.com as the From address, Gmail's mail server will replace a@me.com with a@default.com, and the receiver will see that in the From address. When replying, the recipient will reply to that email address as well.

If you would rather not change your Gmail settings to use a default
alternate From address, you could get an additional Gmail account that
only is used for this purpose. This would also be useful, in that you
would not get new mail to this alternate Gmail address, which would
affect the unread message count of mail on the iPhone. It would
obviously be good to set this Gmail account to refresh manually on the
iPhone as well, to save battery life.

By default, there are many hidden system files, which users can
interact with albeit directly, in Mac OS X. The restrictions prevent
inadvertent tampering with files that need not be accessed by the
average user. For example, upon opening "Macintosh HD" there are four
obvious folders: Applications, Library, System, and Users; however, in
reality there are many more in that location. To see these folders,
open the terminal and type the following command (replace "Macintosh
HD/" with the name of the desired volume):

• ls -p /Volumes/Macintosh HD/

This will output a list of the files and folders at the root of "Macintosh HD", and put slashes by the names of all directories.

Users may wish to take advantage of the feature and create personal
hidden folders for many reasons including keeping some data relatively
private from others who may use the same user account. In order to do
this, follow these steps:

• Open the Terminal application
• Type the following, followed by a single space: chflags hidden
• Locate the desired file or folder in the Finder

Drag the folder to the terminal, and the command should complete itself as such: chflags hidden path_to_file_or_folder

Pressing enter after the full path has been entered should hide the
item from view in the Finder. To reverse this process, repeat the
process from step 1 and use "nohidden" instead of "hidden" in the
command.

NOTE: While this command can be used to unhide the system files and
folders that are hidden by default, doing this is not recommended, as
they can accidentally be targeted for modification or deletion. This is
especially true in a multi-user environment.

The Goal: Examsoft's SofTest is the software used by the CA Bar to lock down laptops while taking the Bar Exam. It must be installed before applicants can take the test. SofTest is Windows-only, so for Mac users to use the software, Windows must be installed via Boot Camp, and then SofTest can be installed in the Windows partition.

The Problem (short version): You've installed but cannot run SofTest because it says you're installed VMWare software... even though you already uninstalled VMWare. If you currently or in the past have used VMWare, you won't be able to run SofTest even after uninstalling VMWare, unless you take these extra steps.

Email VMWare For A Fix: According to MacLawStudents, ExamSoft does offer a fix, though they haven't made it available through their site (and didn't offer it to me when I called). If you have the time, you might want to try this first. If you're comfortable finding and deleting files on your own, however, I'd read on to The Solution below.

Through research, we have found that the VMWare Tools package deployed by VMWare Fusion does not completely remove all components when removed via Add/Remove programs.

We have created a simple utility that will prompt the user to uninstall VMWare Tools and will also remove the items left behind that caused the problem with SofTest. Users of SofTest may contact support via phone, chat or email to request the fix.

The Easy, Quick Solution (found here):

1. Using the VMWare Fusion CD, uninstall Fusion from OS X. It will still leave your Virtual Machines in place, so don't worry if you've already installed Linux or anything like that.
2. Boot into Windows by shutting off your computer and then holding down the ALT/Option key when you reboot. On reboot, Boot Camp will give you the option to boot into OS X or Windows. Choose Windows.
3. Go to Start (or the Windows icon at the bottom-left, if you're in Vista) » Control Panel. Then choose Uninstall Programs. Select VMWare Tools from the list, and click the Uninstall button.
4. You'd think you're done, but you'd be wrong. Instead, here's what you need to do. Go to Start and then to Search. You'll need to search for and delete three files. Evidently SofTest checks for the presence of the following files:
   1. vms_fb.dll
   2. vmx_fb.dll
   3. vmx_svga.sys

   These are usually found in the following locations, but you may still want to perform a search for them as well:

   1. C:\WINDOWS\system32\vms_fb.dll
   2. C:\WINDOWS\system32\vmx_fb.dll
   3. C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\vmx_svga.sys

   (If your search doesn't show any of these files, first make sure that you're searching Everywhere on your computer. Then, go to Advanced Search and make sure the checkbox is clicked to allow searching for Hidden or System files.)

5. Search for and delete these files if found on the machine. These files are drivers used by VM Ware and are usually left behind after uninstalling VM Ware. [Note: I only found two of the three files left on my machine. Deleting them fixed the problem.]
6. That's it! You should now be able to run SofTest with no problem. Double-click SofTest and make with the Registration process. Best of luck on the Bar Exam!

Other General Tips:

• Boot into Windows by default: In Windows, on the bottom-right corner of the screen is a gray icon for Boot Camp (over near the Network, Battery, Volume icons and the time). Click this icon and choose Boot Camp Control Panel. There, set the default OS to Windows. This will alleviate any potential problems when SofTest reboots your system to send in your completed exam. You can always switch this back later, to reboot by default in OS X after the Exam is over. In the meantime, you can still reboot while holding the ALT key and choose OS X.
• Right-click: Your laptop only has one mouse button, but Windows requires that you right-click a lot. There are a couple ways to do this. First, you can hold two fingers on the trackpad and then click the mouse button, which will right-click in Windows. Second, you can install free software that will let you right-click. Third, you can always use an external mouse. Wireless optical mice are cheap nowadays - check one of the deal sites to find bargains.
• Anti-virus: You're not in OS X anymore, so this Windows side of your machine can pick up viruses without you doing anything but connecting to the Internet. Viruses won't hurt your OS X system, but why worry about any other problems if you don't need to. There are lots of paid options available, and your school may offer a free license for Norton AntiVirus. If so, great. Install it. If not, a friend of mine recommended AVG Anti-Virus, which is free and has worked great so far. I couldn't be happier.
• Alt-menus: In Windows, if you see an underlined letter in a menu item, that means you can hold the ALT key while hitting that letter to go straight to that menu item, without using the mouse. Great way to navigate through menus. Click here for a full list of Windows key commands.

The Problem (long version): SofTest takes a snapshot of your system when you first attempt to run it. This allows SofTest to make sure that you don't install any ways to cheat and get around its security after you've installed and registered. SofTest also looks for software on your hard drive that could be used to allow cheating. If it detects any of this software, SofTest will tell you that it cannot run, and will shut down.

One of the programs SofTest looks for as a potential avenue for cheating is VMWare's Fusion. Fusion allows Mac Users to run a virtual Windows OS inside of OS X. Fusion also allows a user who has OS X and Windows installed fully on their computer (via Boot Camp or Fusion) to access files across both OSes.

Of course, were a person to run Windows as a virtual machine, they would still have full access to the rest of their files and could, therefore, theoretically cheat like hell on the Bar Exam. And no one wants that. So, of course, ExamSoft is right to ensure that applicants can't cheat.

The problem, however, is how SofTest goes about checking for cheaters.

First, once you're set up, you can't really do much of anything to your system without causing potential conflicts. If you need to Defrag your hard drive, install any third party software, or run any other sort of maintenance, I'd do that before installing SofTest. This might be a necessary inconvenience, but it's still a hassle for the students caused by ExamSoft's need to protect against never-before-seen cheats and exploits.

Second, and the cause of the VMWare problem, is that ExamSoft seems to have been lazy in going about checking for VMWare installs. SofTest just tests for a few files, none of which are crucial for VMWare to work, in determining that VMWare Fusion is installed. Worse, instead of checking for multiple variables and components that would be necessary for a working version of VMWare's software to run, it just does a spot test and then shuts down. I'd fully deleted VMWare products from my machine and there was no possible way for me to cheat, but because SofTest found a couple of random files, it determined that I did have the software installed.

Now, this never would have been a problem had VMWare Tools uninstalled properly. But it doesn't. Instead of being fully removed from all aspects of Windows, the Windows uninstaller only gets rid of the core files. It doesn't clear out the registry and it doesn't clear out everything that VMWare had installed on my system. I put the blame here on both VMWare and Windows. VMWare for not providing an Uninstall tool for Fusion, downloadable via its support website, and Windows for using an architecture that allows and even encourages developers to put pieces of software all over the place during install, without a common naming scheme. I could have searched till the cows came home, but had someone not posted the solution, I'd never have solved the problem because it was impossible for me to find the random files that were gumming up the works.

Worst of all, however, is the terrible support provided by both ExamSoft and VMWare.

I checked both sites and Google before attempting to get personal help. Then I tried three different service tickets with ExamSoft. Two were closed without an answer, the third sent back a form letter response, complete with text from the FAQ. Next I tried Online Chat support with ExamSoft. No answer, over multiple days. Finally (after Googling to find it), I called ExamSoft tech support. Fifteen minutes on hold and I spoke to Charles, who said he didn't have a fix and that I should call VMWare.*

So it was on to VMWare. I called their tech support line, but they don't offer phone support for Fusion. I searched around their FAQ and Knowledge Base, but no search terms yielded useful solutions. Finally, a Google search with different search terms led to a solution...

Where was the solution? On VMWare's Support site ... posted by a good samaritan customer who had received the answer via email from ExamSoft!

I know I'm not alone in running into this problem. How do both VMWare and ExamSoft not have this solution listed and easy to find in their Knowledge Bases or FAQs?! Why does ExamSoft not have the answer ready if users call in for help? Why doesn't the CA Bar site have this answer listed in their FAQ? So simple. So frustrating!

The End: If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my rant. I hope this post has proved useful.

Start boot camp utility, partition, crash.  Try again. Crash.

Won't start up.

Damn.

Check backup disk.  OK.

Manual partition.  Wait.

Restore MacOS.  Restore, restore, restore.

Restart, everything's OK.

Insert Ubuntu disc.  Shut down, hold C, restart.

DOOOONNNNNNGGGGGGGG!!!!!!  I love that sound.

Live CD.  Boot, boot, boot.

Installer.  US, S.L.C., Dvorak, Use largest free space, ...

Are you sure?

Yes.

Partitioning.  Partition, partition, partition.

Install, install, install.  Install.

Remove CD, reboot.  There we are.

Success! ... wait a minute, where's my AirPort card?

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Shuttleworth-Make-Desktop-Linux-Better-than-Apple/?kc=rss

-Apple has 8% marketshare. That's both OS and Hardware. In any case with Linux at less than 1% right now, that's going to be a VERY tough goal to meet.
-Linux needs more Manufacturer support. This is a must. Most people aren't going to go and seek out Linux to install. Why would they? Windows probably gets all they want done and they're never exposed to a Linux distro such as Ubuntu. Unfortunately Windows has all the apps they want and there isn't a significant enough "improvement" or "difference" to make it worthwhile for the customer to seek out Linux, or at least learn what Linux has to offer them. If Linux was preloaded on more machines, more people would be likely to stick with it. Just look at the Eee and Everex's desktop.
- If people do decide to put linux on their machine more drivers need to be installed or available OTB. Even I, someone fairly familiar with Linux, has trouble getting somethings working. Madwifi, Ndiswrapper, OSS, ALSA... No average user is going to know what to do with that. On new machines with Linux pre-installed this isn't a problem, but if people decided they want to try linux this probably isn't the case. Most machines usually have at least one or two hardware devices that need configuring. This is improved dramatically in the last few years, but it's likely that many people will run into something.
-Advertising needs to be done. Like it or not, people need to know that Ubuntu (or any other distro of Linux) exists, it's "free", easy to set up, and is a good alternative. If people don't know about it, they're never going to consider it.
-When considering MacOS X keep in mind that Macs have more than looks going for it. OS X has excellent tools for graphic design and video editing built into the operating system. Quartz and Core Image are examples. Besides many of the benefits under the hood OS X is consistent and feels well polished. While the ability to use on other machines would certainly be nice, the trade off is a system in which the operating system and hardware work together in harmony. The "Mac" afterall is the combination of the OS, the Hardware, and the Software. Try using OSx86 or Windows on a Mac.

In any case, I wish the Ubuntu team the best of luck. Taking on Apple will be a much bigger task then they might realize.

Osservata bene l'immagine (il cui testo, per i meno anglofoni, recita "ad un certo momento, tutti credevano che la Terra fosse piatta"). Non c'è qualcosa che vi suona strano? E' come se tra Apple e Microsoft le parti si fossero invertite! La storia narra che in principio vi era Microsoft, la produttrice regina del sistema operativo migliore del mondo: Microsoft Windows. E in un angolino (o per meglio dire, in una nicchia) vi era una piccola mela rosicchiata. In realtà la mela non era poi così piccola, e il suo sistema operativo non era poi così scadente, ma questo la gente lo ignorava perchè Microsoft aveva argomentazioni (apparentemente) molto valide dalla sua e che tutti conosciamo bene. Poi però, piano piano, la mela cominciò ad ingrandirsi, e così anche il suo OS X. Lettori mp3, telefonini e infine, tramite a dir poco astutissime mosse commerciali, riuscì a gettare sotto una cattiva luce la Microsoft. Intendiamoci: gran parte del demerito era proprio opera stessa di Microsoft, e OS X aveva successo più per la sua qualità intrinseca che non per la cattiva luce su Microsoft. In ogni caso arriviamo così ai giorni nostri. Qual è il parere comune? Windows Vista fa schifo, non esiste OS peggiore di lui, compatibilità zero, falle ovunque ecc ecc. Intanto i clienti diminuiscono e la cattiva fama di Vista continua a crescere, mentre Apple guadagna notorietà e credibilità. Così, Gates lascia Microsoft in mano a Steve Ballmer, intraprendente personaggio, aggressivo e conciso.

Sembra partorita proprio dalla sua mente questa campagna: l'obbiettivo (finalmente l'hanno capito, direi) non è creare un nuovo prodotto apparentemente migliore del precedente, prima del prossimo bisogna far avere successo a questo. Le prime impressioni su Vista hanno fatto storia ed ora l'OS di Redmond continua a godere della medesima, pessima fama. Ma chi lo usa (pochi, guardando i risultati di vendita) sa che non è esattamente così, non come prima almeno. In 18 mesi di sviluppo Vista è nettamente migliorato sotto tutti i fronti ed ora Microsoft si sobbarca della più ardua delle azioni da intraprendere: cercare di invertire il trend, e farlo alla maniera di Apple.
Proprio qui nasce il "paradosso di Redmond" (TM gioggi2002): non solo a Redmond si trovano nella stessa situazione che aleggiava a Cupertino, ma il metodo per contrastarlo sarà addirittura lo stesso della casa della mela morsicata. Ballmer e soci dovranno convincere il pubblico che Vista non è Satana proprio come Jobs e compagni hanno dovuto fare per Leopard, Tiger o OS 9. E se i risultati saranno gli stessi, auguro tutta la fortuna del mondo ai ragazzi di Redmond.

In America più che in altre parti del mondo, la pubblicità comparativa ha un successo notevole: è così che Apple (con la sua campagna "PC VS Mac") ha conquistato buona parte del favore del pubblico. Ed è su questo che Microsoft vuole scavare: Windows Vista passa così da figura primaria ad alternativa, da Redmond chiedono addirittura di dare la possibilità di mostrare cosa è in grado di fare Vista (guardate la home Microsoft). Un cambio di direzione evidente che non può che portare a riflettere.

Ma dobbiamo riflettere non solo sul (chiamiamolo così) "mea culpa" di Ballmer e compagni: pensiamo ad uno dei punti "laterali" della cosa. Qui, ora, la battaglia non si sta combattendo sul miglior software, ma si sta combattendo sul miglior marketing. Il "paradosso di Redmond" non è solo l'affermazione di una apparente volontà di cambiare di Microsoft, ma è anche segno del passaggio del duello sul fronte della pubblicità. Se tutto ciò alla fine rimarrà a vantaggio dell'utente non so proprio dirlo, ma così a naso azzarderei un bel "no". Il miglioramento del marketing non porta necessariamente ad un abbassamento dei prezzi o ad un nuovo investimento tecnico. Il progresso tecnologico sì.

Certo è che dopo ben 18 mesi di lavorazione extra (oltre la data di uscita) Windows Vista sembra essere (finalmente) un prodotto maturo e funzionale, pur conservando un po' di quei difetti iniziali, se non altro è comunque decisamente migliorato. Le statistiche (di cui non ci vengono però rimandate le fonti) dicono che Vista ora è "tecnicamente" migliore di OS X, ma ciò che non viene contato è il reale feeling dell'utente.
E riguardo questo, non c'è marketing che tenga.
Mi (ci) auguro che Apple e Microsoft se ne rendano conto.

Have a nice day

gioggi2002

Today was possibly the worse day in the world for that to happen. But all is not lost, I have a cloned backup from a superduper backup and tech tools pro is running now. Also you need a startup disc and a few USB hard drives for a backup of the backup.

It's going to be a long night but I'll get it going.

Also for the new readers of this site, all post are being typed & published using WordPress for iPhone.

read more | digg story

you do need SIMBL and both pages seem to have links to where you can get your mits on. you may already have SIMBL if you're the tinkering application sort of person.

If PsyStar isn't completely shut down by Apple (which it probably will be) watch out, here comes the clones...

GNU Screen is a free terminal multiplexer developed by the GNU Project. It allows a user to access multiple separate terminal sessions inside a single terminal window or remote terminal session. It is useful for dealing with multiple programs from the command line, and for separating programs from the shell that started the program.

I use it mostly for running command line utilities that take forever to run (e.g. academic programs that do "work" for me). This allows me to remotely log in, start screen, start a program, detach screen, and log out. When I come back to check on how the program is running, I can log back in, attach an already running screen, and check on it again. Once I am done then I detach.

Here are useful commands:

>screen, starts a screen session on the host.
>screen -r, reattaches to a previous session.
>screen -r blah.host, reattaches to a specific previous session.
>exit, destroys the current screen session.
>screen -x, attach to a non detached screen.

In addition, you can hit CTRL+a and type one of the following to send specific commands to screen:

c, create new screen.
n, next screen.
A, rename screen.
d, detach screen.
", lists screens. Interactive.
0-9, select certain screen.

• iLife-Support aktualisiert die Systemkomponenten für alle iLife-Programme
• iPhoto erhält neue Themen für Apple-Druckerzeugnisse (Online erhältlich)
• iWeb behebt Kompatibilitätsprobleme
• iMovie verbessert die Kompatibilität und Stabilität

There is a great screencast on the site to demonstration the application and at $15 the price is right too in my opinion.

Find it here.

1. Go to System Preferences and select Keyboard & Mouse.

2. Go to Keyboard Shortcuts tab and click "+"

3. Select an application from the list and enter EXACLY menu name.

That's it. If you spelled the menu item correctly your new shortcut should function.

Over my years as a professional musician, I've invested a phenomenal amount of money in musical gear. Amps, pedals, guitars, effects systems, you name it, I've probably bought it, beat it up, and traded it off in my search for "that sound."

After about 40 years of playing, I've arrived at the combination of analog and digital gear that presently outfits my studio, and a few choice instruments. I was pretty happy with this too, except it isn't very portable, and the setup is complex enough that there are times when I spend more time twiddling knobs than I do actually playing or recording.

Well, I've found something rather extraordinary. So much so I thought it was worth telling the world. As it turns out, there's an easy, sensible, cool way to go that costs very little and gives you the world. Here's the scoop.

[caption id="attachment_79" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Flying Haggis Interface"][/caption]
Hardware: M-Audio JAMLAB

This is a USB-connected guitar interface with a 24-bit guitar input and a stereo audio output. You plug it into a primary USB port (left hand side of the Macbook or Macbook Pro as the notebook faces you, or a front port on the Mac Pro - you can't run this through a hub, either internal to the Mac or elsewhere - too much data.)

Basically, you download the latest drivers from m-audio.com, install them, and the interface is ready to plug in and go for clean guitar input. Not that most of us are looking for such a thing. More on that in a bit.

I got my JAMLAB some time ago for about $60 at thinkgeek.com; It came with software called "GT Player Express", the latest version of which is called "InTone Guitar Express (and Pro) which is, in my musical opinion, not very good. Nor is the upgraded version, intone Guitar Pro, which I also bought, any better. The current release as I write this has a relatively simplistic view of what an "amp" is, and some of the stompbox emulations simply don't work. But not to worry. This software isn't what you want to use anyway, though it is there if you decide to try it.

Software: Flying Haggis (No, really -- that's what it's called.)

This comes with quite a few stompbox emulations, and they are excellent -- I'll come back to them. But the most important thing here is that the amplifier and speaker cabinet emulations are nothing less than superb. You want a little blues amp? It's in there, and it sounds right. You want a Marshal stack? It's in there, and it is right. The range of preset emulations is outstanding, and you can tweak any one of them in a number of very, very cool ways. You have an early stage gain, a distortion control, compression, cabinet emulation, cabinet miking and a master output level -- all of which can be varied from the preset amp settings or from custom ones.

So once you've got the amp sounding just the way you want it to, you can save it under a new name, and it's a permanently available setup. This is just primo, and though that may sound over-excited to you, it sounds not excited enough to me. That's just how good the amp and speaker emulations are. You can even control the mike placement in front of the amp. Did I mention this thing sounds absolutely, unbelievably primo? Well, it does.

The stompboxes extend the fabulous sound into the usual areas, but they do so with the same quality as the amplifier emulations. You get a noise gate [threshold] (which you will use with some of the high gain amps);

You get an auto-wah [depth / speed / tone], which does a very credible job of keeping up with heated leads or mournful picking;

You get a phaser [depth / speed / tone], which goes from flange to gentle wash with authority;

You get a tremolo [depth / speed] which does just what you'd expect, just as you'd want it to;

You get an Echo [time / feedback / width / mix] which serves as a quiet, studio quality system (though one thing you can't make it do, as near as I can tell, is make it act like an old Echoplex... it's too clean for that.)

And you get a Chorus [depth / speed / mix] which again, is ultra-clean and does just what you'd want.

Up on the amp system, there's a Reverb -- just a single control, seems to do just the right thing. Initially I thought I'd be wanting more control such as how deep the room was, how hard the surface, but as it turns out, this thing acts just right and I have no complaints.

Flying Haggis is $99, however, they're perfectly happy to let you try it for free without anything disabled. So you should do that!

One sour note: Flying Haggis is copy protected, so you are at risk to some degree if they go out of business. They claim otherwise, but frankly, if you don't have control over the software, you're at risk and there's no way around that fact.

Having said that, I say buy it anyway. It's that good. They've let me authorize the software for my main desktop, a Mac Pro, and my laptop, a Macbook pro; no extra charges, no delays, easily done. The copy protection is a little annoying to get going, authorization requires one more step than usual, but once done, it hasn't bothered me any further.

Playing Out

Now, this system is the type of thing that doesn't need a guitar amp. What it needs is a wideband, high-fidelity amp and speakers. That's important. If you feed this combination to (for instance) a Fender Twin, then *everything* will sound like it's being pumped through a... yeah, a Fender Twin. In order for things to work as well as possible, you're going to want a few hundred watts per channel stereo amplifier, and two wide-range PA-class speakers.

You doubt me, I know, but you'll see. The system does *not* use the amp or the speakers to color tone; if you try to do that yourself, you'll severely limit the type and quality of sound you can produce. An easy way to convince yourself is to plug in a pair of stereo headphones into the JAMLAB output and play. Those headphones are wideband, right? Now listen to the various amps. Each one has a totally different character. You will lose that character if you use, for instance, a Marshall cabinet or a Fender head.

Garage Band

You can plug Flying Haggis right into Garage Band, too; which gives you recording and solo-oriented jamming capability immediately. It's just a very well integrated, ultra-high quality experience from start to finish.

Summing Up

I am deliriously happy with this setup. I play jazz, blues, rock, metal, classical and folk; everything I want is right at my fingertips. Perfect. I just drag my laptop, a stereo amp, and a couple speakers out, and I'm good. Aside from the Mac, amp and speakers, the outlay is about $160 in total, which is a screaming bargain for what you get. I highly, totally, ultimately and without quibbling recommend this setup. If it weren't for the copy protection, I'd rate it stone perfect.

Well, I gave in and wiped the harddrive on the laptop after trying just about every method known to man to try to get any files off it. The file system was completely hosed.

Reinstalling the OS and upgrading to Leopard and then reinstalling Office and Adobe's Creative Suite took way too long. I'm still missing some stuff, but luckily I had registration codes written down for everything except one and I think I lost the email for that one in the wipe.

Fortunately, I only lost about 5 days worth of edits and journal entries that weren't backed up on my desktop machine. I'm giving what used to be called .mac or iDisk and is now known as MobileMe a trial. For $99 a year, they'll back up all the preferences and data from my Apple-centric software. Sadly, I don't like Mail, Safari, iCal, or Address Book and prefer Entourage. So, if I want that stuff backed up, I have to do a bunch of picky hand-setting of what I want archived. Add to this, if I don't want to give up my two free month trial, I can pay my money now and upload more than 100mb at a time.

Do you know how small 100mb is?! Sheesh.

So on the whole, I'm not TOO depressed about having to wipe it, but I am feeling a distinct sting where all my contacts, emails and stuff that wasn't backed up have been ripped from me. Yes, for a digital packrat, this sucks. Oh well, life goes on and more will be accumulated over time.

So the plans this week are to jump back in at the deep end and keep going. At least the writing stuff lost wasn't new pages, just some edits. It could have been so much worse than having to resummarize the scenes in Revealed, but I'm looking at them closely in terms of subplots and what I can do to expand on Barrington's story line. I also printed out the whole beast so I can work on the edits from that and know which pages have been revised for sure. Yup, list of pages revised went poof too.

So that's how my week wrapped up. Dr. Horrible was definitely a bright spot. Joss Whedon is pure EVIL!

Then came Apple's change to MobileMe. Dorky name, but whatever. It held the promise of push e-mail as well as push contacts, push calendar events and push bookmarks. Sounded great. And initially, once some bugs were worked out on Apple's end, it seemed to work ok. Certainly, the push e-mail works perfectly. However, “pushing” to and from my MacBook Pro would take much, much longer. True, the MobileMe sync preferences are set to sync at 15-minute intervals (a number easily changed, mind you, but in the end that doesn't help much---trust me). That I could have lived with, since all I'd have to do is hit the Sync Now button in iSync on my menu bar, and that would be that. However, syncing this way takes forever. The sync would keep going and going for 30 minutes or more, even if hardly anything had changed on my iPhone or laptop. 

I reset sync services, restarted, repaired permissions, etc. but that didn't make the “push” syncing any faster. So I disabled push on my iPhone except for e-mail, and that's when the real troubles started. As expected, the calendar, contacts and bookmarks on my iPhone were now blank, but one sync with my MBP over a USB cable would do the trick. And it did. Except that with all the sync services nonsense I went through, my iCal calendar wouldn't sync within any reasonable timeframe with my Entourage calendar. I had read an article on MacFixit about how to solve these issues by deleting several preference files, and that made things worse. I no longer had any Entourage calendar within iCal, nor was it being recreated by deactivating then reactivating sync services in Entourage. And when I finally had some success, everything was duplicated on both ends. Fortunately, I had a backup of my Entourage database (several, actually, all taking up 2+ GB of space), and reverted to that one, but now iCal only showed all my old recurring events ad nauseum. I even went into the terminal and tried the following:

killall SyncServer

rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/SyncServices/*

(note: in general, I never recommend using any rm -rf Unix commands, since it can end up irrevocably trashing unintended files, but in this case it was worth a shot.). Unfortunately, this didn't work. Apple does mention never to delete anything in the SyncServices folder, but deleting the entire folder in the expectation that it would be recreated later on seemed reasonable.

To make a long story short, after two days and many hours of dealing with this issue, here was the fix, at least on my system, which I found in a support article from the Entourage Help Page:

I should also add that I used iSync to reset the sync history. How much that helped is hard to say, but Apple also suggests going into Terminal.app and typing:

/System/Library/Frameworks/SyncServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/resetsync.pl full

I didn't need to try that one, which probably does what I did with resetting the sync history anyway. In any event, I now can sync perfectly over USB again. However, I strongly recommend not enabling push for contacts, calendar and bookmark synchronization. It's slow, unpredictable, and the fact that I usually cannot load the calendar page in MobileMe doesn't make me very confident in Apple's servers these days. Until they really have their act together on the MobileMe front, I'm keeping push off except for e-mail. The whole MobileMe push thing is what got me into this nonsense, anyway. It cost me much of my weekend, and had I not been careful, could have lost data as well.

There are many Articles around the web that describe how to install OS X on a normal PC. But there is no full guide who describes how to update 10.5.1 to 10.5.4. So here is it.

Upgrade 10.5.1 to 10.5.2

1. Download the 10.5.2 Combo Update (search Google) 343MB
   
2. Go to /System/Library/Extensions/
3. Start Update
4. When AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext apperars, move it to trash immediatly
5. The install finishes, but do NOT click the restartbutton!
6. Go to /System/InstallAtStartup/scripts/ and open the file 1 with a texteditor
   if you can't access the folder     
   • rightclick > Get Info
   • at the bottom of the window it says Sharing & Permission, unlock it and click the plusbutton
   • Select your Username, press Select and change your permissions to read & write
7. Find the string /System/Library/Extensions/Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext and replace it with /System/Library/Extensions/dsmos.kext
8. Save the file and restart

Update 10.5.2 to 10.5.3

1. Download the 10.5.3 Combo Update (search Google) 536MB
   
2. Repeat steps 2 to 8 from above

Update 10.5.3 to 10.5.4

Just start the Apple Softwareupdate, download and install the 10.5.4 update.

Now you should have running OS X 10.5.4!

If you've any problems write a comment and I'll help you!

Thanks to netkas.org (Update 10.5.2/10.5.3) and Infintite Mac (Update 10.5.4).

Windows - I use TightVNC because it is free and it works. This provides both a viewer and a server for your Windows machine. To setup a server on your just follow the TightVNC directions. Note that you have to have TightVNC server running at all times to connect to the machine. Another free one out there is called UltraVNC.

OS X - I use Chicken of the VNC as a viewer since it is also free and works well. The VNC server is automatically built in OS X 10.5 and can be found by navigating to System Preferences > Sharing > Screen Sharing. Go ahead and click on Computer Settings and check off that "VNC viewers may control screen with password" and insert an appropriate password. You may also have to check the box above as well. Now if you go back, you can read the dialog and it will let you know how to connect to your Mac via VNC.

If your using a Mac, this is really easy to set up. Just enable Screen Sharing on your Mac, then with VNC Lite on your iPhone or iPod Touch connect using your IP Address or Computer Name, and enter the password. If your using Windows, you will first need to install a VNC server on your PC.

Here are couple of screenshots:[gallery]

And here is a Link to Mocha VNC Lite in the iTunes App Store.