Definitely want to pick up the 1TB Time Capsule, much easier than remembering to connect up my external drive every night!
Also, i’m considering picking up an Apple TV to replace the old Mac Mini I have under my TV at the moment (Which i’m going to relocate to the music room to use as a DAS).
I’m not bothered with the Macbook Air, seems to be a bit of a stop gap between something better – as in it’s a bit underspec’d to be taken seriously – Only 80GB storage and only the 1.8ghz CD. Nice idea though and you can see the Eco touch coming from the Apple board.
Not as groundbreaking as last years iPhone by any margin but still cool.
Posted in: Hardware, Mac.
Tagged: MWSF
My last post mentioned that I was having some intermittant issues with my Macbook after resuming from sleep, in that after entering my password I just got a blank screen. Key presses result in an error tone and I have to close the lid and reopen it to gain access to OS X.
It just happened again, so after closing and reopening the lid (i.e ’sleeping it’), I opened Activity Monitor. When I try to lock the screen, the process WindowServer flashes up to the top of the CPU list momentarily. I decided to kill that process off, which killed my session and kicked me back out to the login screen again. Logging in this time, i’m able to lock the screen so it looks like it could be something funny with the WindowServer process.
In the WindowServer log (/var/logs/) the first entries are:
Jan 15 16:27:08 [112] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXSetWindowListTags: Operation on a window 0×6 not owned by caller loginwindow
Jan 15 16:29:37 [112] kCGErrorFailure: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application “Finder” for over 1 second. Server has re-enabled them.
They corralate with the following entry in the system.log:
ScreenSaverEngine[1591]: Screen saver is running in blackout mode.
Other than there there doesn’t seem to be much awry in the logs..
I’m still investigating but Google is not my friend in this case 
[tags]OS X, Can’t reboot, Can’t lock screen, Lock up, WindowServer[/tags]
Posted in: Mac.
Tagged: OS X
I’ve noticed a few problems with OS X on my Macbook over the last couple of weeks.
I’ve got added ‘Keychain Access’ to my menubar (or toolbar – the one up the top anyway) so that I can just hit ‘Lock Screen’ when I step away from my machine at work. In general it’s been working like a champ but over the last couple of weeks something seems to have gone awry.
On occasions, it just doesn’t work. No errors to the screen, nothing. It just doesn’t do _anything_. This message is added to the system.log:
loginwindow[34]: ERROR | WSActivateApp | SetFrontProcess({0, 3978187}) returned error -600. Unable to activate process.
Additionally, when this problem manifests, I can’t restart OS X either. Choosing Restart from the Apple menu just restarts Finder. After about 2 minutes it throws up a dialogue saying (I’ll Skitch this next time to get the complete error) along the lines of “Logout Timeout. Restart failed because Finder failed to quit, try using Force Quit..”.
Using Force Quit to restart Finder doesn’t fix it, still the same problem.
This is added to the system.log:
com.apple.launchd[238] ([0x0-0x3cd3cd].com.apple.finder[7004]): Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 7006 PPID 1 smbclient
I have to do a hard shutdown using the power button and then restart – which seems to fix whatever the problem was. So much for all the “At least you don’t have to reboot OS X all the time” comments.
I’ve not installed nor changed anything recently that I can think would have any bearing here and I’ve also quit EVERY running application that I can to see if something is locking Finder up.
This thread “Finder Won’t Quit” on the Apple Support Forums, this thread on Yahoo Questions and this one on MacTalk shows i’m not the only one. No one seems to have come up with a definitive fix or RCA yet. I’m considering trying to log a defect with Apple, if I can find out how. I don’t have the time to piss about with the ‘Genius Bar’ crap though.
Posted in: Mac.
Tagged: OS X
I can’t believe that there isn’t a built in way to rename tags within the Google Reader UI! Shocking.
Quickest way I’ve found is to export your feeds (Settings | Import / Export), edit the XML by hand (fortunately my 100 or so feeds are organised within ~12 folders), delete all of your subs from GReader and reimport your edited XML list.
I wonder if the GReader UX guys are having trouble deciding between Folder and Tag for classification.
Posted in: Web.
Tagged: Google Reader · UI · UX
I came across Project Euler this evening via this post.
Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and programming skills will be required to solve most problems.
The motivation for starting Project Euler, and its continuation, is to provide a platform for the inquiring mind to delve into unfamiliar areas and learn new concepts in a fun and recreational context.
I thought this would be a good way to get my hands dirty with Xcode and ObjC.
I’ve just completed the first problem (Add all the natural numbers below 1000 that are multiples of 3 or 5), which has elevated my Genius level to the dizzy heights of 1! 
Whilst some of them are pretty simple mathematic manipulation type problems, some of them are proper head scratchers!
I’m quite tempted to post my solutions to them here somewhere so I can get some code feedback – i’m probably making a right mess when it could be done in a much simpler fashion!
Posted in: Development.
Tagged: Objective C
I caught this post on the BBC News site, which pretty much echoes (almost exactly ) my comments a few weeks back.
Some of the comments make interesting reading, people are so quick to jump on the ‘hate it ‘cos it’s a brand’ bandwagon. I really wonder how long it will take before people are as hateful to Apple as they are to Microsoft….
Posted in: iPhone.
I’ve been getting really pissed off trying to install Trac to my Dreamhost shared server, to the extent that i’m contemplating moving hosts.
In the interim, DevJaVu have just started to offer free Personal accounts that include integrate Trac and SVN.
All you need to do is sign up using the referal code johnny5. I don’t know how long that code is valid for so get on it.
Posted in: Development, Software, Web.
Tagged: Trac · Version Control
** UPDATED MARCH 12 2010: I just posted my solution to this problem here **
I’ve had VMWare Fusion running an image of my work laptop, on my Macbook, for nearly three weeks now. I’ve had no problems at all, running over both NAT and via network bridge.
Until this week.
Now, when I try to use the image over network bridge I get the error “The network bridge on device /dev/vmnet0 is not running”. It still works over NAT but i’m perplexed as to where this problem has come from. No software updates, no network config changes, nothing that I can think would affect this at all.
I started to wonder if it was something to do with being assigned a bridged DHCP on my home lan (10.0.0.X), suspending and being brought up on the work lan under a different subnet completely. Maybe something was going majorly wrong with the bridge device.
I couldn’t/can’t find anything logged anywhere other than the error message above in the vmware.log within the VM image folder.
Running the following command restarts all the vmnet related services:
/Library/Application\ Support/VMWare\ Fusion/boot.sh –restart
You’ll need to sudo that command.
I haven’t found anything on the VMWare community forums to indicate that this has been bugged for fix in a later release so i’m still not entirely sure of the cause…
Posted in: Hardware, Mac, Software.
Tagged: Networking · OS X · Virtualisation · VMware Fusion
With rumours of a pre-Christmas firmware update to 1.1.3, here’s my wish list. I’d probably forgo the Jailbreak for these – currently I only really use the MobileScrobbler app from the iPhone dev scene but i’m finding that it keeps logging me out and doesn’t cache track plays. Everything else seems to pretty much be fluff (i.e Pirate-photo-app, eBooks and Games) or unstable (Summerboard kept rebooting for me and broke access to photos).
I’m going to get my dev head on and see if I can come up with something useful, just as soon as I find the time – i’m currently pretty busy with work and university studies.
My top 11: Continue reading →
Posted in: iPhone.
Tagged: Google Maps · iCal · Jailbreak
In an earlier post, I mentioned how i’d been an admirer of the Quicksilver application and its workflow. Having finally picked up a Mac for full time use (work & play), it was I think the 2nd application I installed. It’s definately a great productivity tool. I’m not keen on the way OS X has all of it’s apps in one folder – I hate scrolling using a track pad, even with Apples two finger “gesture” method – and the Stacks feature of OS X Leopard doesn’t cut it for me.
So, with all that, I was gutted to read today that it is almost certainly in it’s final state – certainly from the developers POV according to this interview on Lifehacker.
Hopefully there is a community out there that will pick up the Open Source project and take it on.
I’m still looking for a decent Dictionary plug-in that works with Leopard…
Posted in: Mac, Software.
Tagged: Open Source · OS X · Quicksilver · Switch to Mac
