Wow. How many times will Apple release a new version of iMovie and completely change the interface and how it works? I cannot tell you how many versions now I have used of iMovie that were completely different than the previous. Each time I have to either waste an hour or so to figure out how to work with my media or read the manual. Good thing I am not afraid to do both - but I feel bad for people who are not as patient as I am.

Amy recently took a grad class on … [more]

Apple saves the day for me:
Hello Jennifer, I’m sorry to hear the titles you purchased from the iTunes Store with account “xxx@xxx.com” were lost. I can certainly see how this would be upsetting and I would like to help. iTunes Store Customer Support has decided to let you download (at no charge) all the titles you purchased on this account that are still available.

Thank you Apple!

Recently I had my backup drive die which doubled as my music drive (dumb). I also in the past few weeks - cleaned out my off site backups which included my music (dumb). After not being very excited with what happened - I decided to do some research on some of my options to get my music back. With my fingers crossed - I submitted a form to Apple asking them if I could get my purchased music back: http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/lostmusic/. Let’s hope this works!

Ever wonder how to copy something from the command line into the Mac OS clipboard? If you want to copy/paste a files content (perhaps a log file or a conf file, etc) into the clipboard to use outside of the CLI, you can use the commands pbcopy and pbpaste. Example: I want to copy the contents of my public key to the clipboard (so I can send it to a server admin who will use it in allowing me to access their subversion repository).

All I would need to do is:
cat id_dsa.pub | pbcopy

(cat writes out … [more]

I use Growl mostly for email notifications because post the Mac OS X 10.5 update IMAP flag support (new mail notification) blows. Unfortunately x2 GrowlMail (the mail notification which I love and rely on) did not work with 10.5 - so I am forced to rely on having SquirrelMail open so I can see what new mail is where within my many mailboxes. Anyway - I recently saw there was a new(er) beta available for Growl and all was working as expected until I downloaded Mac OS X 10.5.3. After that - I had a … [more]

It happens to everyone - and it happened to me last week. I use my MiniStack external 500gig drive for my iTunes music library…and to make room for a complete backup (using Time Machine) I accidentally deleted all my music. Did I have a backup of all my music? No. I recently cleaned up my backup files and deleted the backup that had all my music files.

I have since changed my backups to include music on a regular basis but to get back all the lost music - I used File Salvage. … [more]

I know it is generally cold here in the winter - and even though we had a nice break a few days ago, it is cold here, but man I was shocked to see my Mac Mini’s ambient temperature reporting:

So much for that temperature reporting application!

My preferred browser is Safari but when I need to do any serious debugging, I use Firefox because of the web developer, firebug, and yslow (for firebug) addons.
In the most recent update of Safari (Safari 3.1), we now have the option to show a “Developer” menu (without any hacks) when using the browser.

There are all kinds of goodies in the “Developer menu - one which I will end up using quite a bit: Web Inspector which is helpful for a number of things (viewing code for errors, optimization, even CSS editing … [more]

It is funny how you sometimes seem to always return to the same color. I recently decided to repaint my office (the only room we did not repaint after buying the house) from a boring beige to something a bit richer that would of course look nice with my desk and most importantly - my Apple equipment. I wanted something that would really give some life to the room as well as make the brushed metal of my 23″ Apple display really stand out. I combed through a number of paint samples and came out with a … [more]

After spending more time than I would have liked trying to figure out how to get any network shares/mounts to show up on my Desktop like they did before I upgraded to Leopard, I finally figured it out. It is possible and it is easy to set up. If you want to have your servers to appear as icons on the desktop:

1. Click anywhere in the Finder
2. Choose the Finder menu > Preferences
3. Click on the “General” tab
4. Check the “Connected servers” option

I have been using Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) for multiple weeks now, and I am absolutely fed up with Mail.app (others are as well). I rely heavily on email for all aspects of my business, and I finally had to resort to using webmail today so I would not waste any more time troubleshooting and manually clicking on all my IMAP folders to see if I had new messages in them (something is broken with showing the “Unread” status. On top of that fun, Mail.app hangs multiple times a day, and I noticed today, the mail activity … [more]

I ran into an issue earlier today where I could not connect to a SMB share after my upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5. After some research, I found a thread in Apple’s Discussions.

Basically…you need to not use “Connect to Server…” - you need to mount/unmount the SMB share via the command line.

Basic Mount/Unmount Process

1. Create a directory (folder) where you want the mounted share to appear. I created a folder called “SMB” on my Desktop
2. Type in the following command: mount_smbfs //useyourusername@localhost/remote_share /Users/useyourusername/Desktop/SMB in the terminal
3. You will be prompted for your password, type it in
4. You now have access … [more]
   

I have been using Mac OS X 10.5 now on my MacBook Pro for a week to test everything out before I upgraded my main development environment. I only found a few issues and they were pretty easy to fix.

1. Text Wrangler via Cyberduck would not update any files after I made changes. I looked at a similar bug report, and updated my version of Cyberduck to the latest nightly build (2.8.1(3268)) and have not had any issues since.
2. Amy had a mail issue after the “archive and install” upgrade where the “Send” button was greyed out, … [more]
   

I finally had some time this evening to install Mac OS X 10.5 on my MacBook Pro. I have not done a thorough run through of all the new bells and whistles but I have to say - it is pretty sharp OS. Everything is very crisp and clean. I will report back later when I have more of an opinion.

Stamps.com got my contact information a few weeks ago and have been hounding me every other day after answering their three initial questions:

1. How much does your company spend on postage a year? My response: I think I buy maybe 3-4 books of stamps.
2. How much do you spend on shipping packages? My response: I have never sent a package.
3. Do you wish you did not have to go to the post office to save time? My response: Yes.

From that, I got: “Well we have a great solution for all your postage needs. Our package starts out at $191 a year…” … [more]

If you know me…and have seen me work with hardware, you know my style of troubleshooting. First - read to see if others are having issues. Second, make sure all the connections are working. Third, look for the dumb reasons why something would not work (electrical, buttons). Fourth - use force to beat the hardware. At first step four was out of frustration. Then, Apple made it an official option with my old displays. I quote: …you can most often break the adhesion between the grid wires by using the heel of … [more]

I stumbled on this sweet Retro Mac OS WordPress theme and had to pass the link on to others. Rock on!

Serenity now - Apple has updated their .Mac service. There are some good updates…and some bad. The good: the Web Gallery looks pretty sweet. The bad: .Mac users can now send and receive email attachments up to 20mb. Ugh…nothing drives me more crazy than getting large email attachments. What is large? For me it is anything over 3mb. How to completely drive me insane? Send me your billboard sized photos that total over 3mb. On the upside of the .Mac improvements, I am very excited about the additional space … [more]

I have had my iPhone for over a week now and am still really excited about it. After going on a week long car trip - I have to say I really enjoyed having the camera in the phone to take quick pictures (something I did not have with my BlackBerry 8700c), I organized my overcrowded personal email inbox somewhere in the middle of Ohio while Amy was driving, sent some of my pictures that I took of my son Evan to his grandparents while we were on the road, mapped our route with turn by turn directions, and … [more]

I finally did it, I had to…I bought an iPhone and I have loved every minute of owning it. I had an appointment the second day I owned it and the person I met with wanted to “zoom the pictures like the commercials”. I also now have the ability to carry around tons of pictures and movies of my son, as well as some of my favorite Curb Your Enthusiasm so I can watch my favorite show while waiting instead of reading some lame magazine. Sure, the camera … [more]