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 lot of weird errors and most notably - the inability to restart without physically pressing the power button until a forced restart took place. Finally - tonight (this morning) I did some research and found that other people were having the same issue and everyone with this same issue all came to the conclusion it was because of some startup item (System Preferences > Users > Login Items). Sure enough - after disabling Growl on startup, my computer restarted without any issues. Phew. Tech support is bad - but worse when it costs you time (and then money … [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. The process took a long time - but I expected that when combing through a 500 gig drive. If you ever need to recover files - check this application out!

Finally - I stumbled upon an article that outlines how to use rsync, Mac OS X, Jungle Disk, and Amazon S3 (all which I use). This will simplify and speed up my backup process. (Especially when my external backup drive has been acting a little irregular this morning.) If you do not backup your files, or have not looked at Amazon S3 yet - this is your chance!

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

Create a directory (folder) where you want the mounted share to appear. I created a folder called “SMB” on my Desktop
Type in the following command: mount_smbfs //useyourusername@localhost/remote_share /Users/useyourusername/Desktop/SMB in the terminal
You will be prompted for your password, type it in
You now have access to the files on the remote server in the folder you created - enjoy!
Once you are done, unmount the server by typing in the command: umount /Users/useyourusername/Desktop/SMB

Hopefully Apple will fix this issue ASAP, but until they do, you now have a way to connect to servers via SMB.

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.

After working with Ben for almost eight years he had decided to move on. I wanted to wish Ben all the luck in the world. We had a great time working together for many years…as he put up with my on again off again relationship with Mac OS X Server and I put up with his “not as funny as he thought” videos and comics We also had a good time playing Carmageddon 2, Diablo, Diablo II and Quake 3 Arena. We did do some great work in between all the games and great music (I got him out of the “ambient” music mode and opened the door to electronica, DJs, etc). We did do a kick ass job of putting together a really sweet Mac OS X/Mac OS X Server server set up using Apache, MySQL, PHP, WebObjects complete with failover. Best of luck and thanks for the good times.

I spent the majority of Monday night cleaning up my hardrive, my email, my server space, and my iDisk. During this cleanup I saw some interesting (and in my mind funny) things...I just had to take a screenshot. Enjoy.

The first screenshot is from my Mail.app. Someone had sent me an html email that contained lots of graphics...when I saw the number of attachments I had to laugh. Sometimes I think about putting something similar to that in my CC line of my email for those who copy everyone they ever knew. Stop the insanity! Good work Apple on putting this one in.

The next screenshot was taken when I was uploading my movies to my iDisk. I should only have 1gig of space, but on this day...my Finder thought I had 2 TB of space!

[tags]Mac OS X, screenshots, Mail.app, Finder, iDisk[/tags]