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Thu, 11 Dec 2008


Merging entries in an iTunes library

    I have quite a large iTunes library, and I've always been too lazy to move it across to something open source. However, last night I imported a bunch of CDs, and now I am the proud owner of 5,000 duplicate entries in the iTunes library. It seems like there are no tools to merge duplicate entries out there, which is important to me as I use the play and skip counts to build smart play lists of songs to sync to my iPod.

    After doing a lot of surfing, toying with learning apple script (no, the language it too retarded), I ended up exporting the library to XML and writing a bad python script to fix it. I assume there is a better way to do this.

    Tags for this post: macintosh(S) osx(S) itunes(S)

posted at: 09:49 | path: /macintosh/osx/itunes | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 03 Nov 2008


Adium crashes on launch

    Dear Mac Nerds,

    Adium upgraded itself this morning, and now crashes on launch. This still happens after rebooting the machine. I'm a MacOS n00b, and have no idea how to debug what is happening. Please be with the helping?

    Tags for this post: macintosh(S) osx(S)

posted at: 17:16 | path: /macintosh/osx | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 13 Oct 2008


Solving a slow app startup on MacOS

    I recently upgraded to a new version of MythTV, and that meant installing a new version of the MythTV frontend app on a bunch of Macs around the house. I downloaded the app and put it on a network drive, and then just dragged that onto the start bar on each of the Macs.

    There is of course a problem with that. What happens is you create a reference when you drag something onto the start bar, and that meant the application was really slow to start on load. Specifically because the MythTV frontend app for the Mac is of course over 100 megabytes.

    The solution? Copy the app to the local disk, and then drag it onto the start bar. You'd think Apple would be able to ask me if I wanted a local cache of the binary when I did the initial drag...

    I'm putting this here so I remember it for next time.

    Tags for this post: macintosh(S) osx(S)

posted at: 21:07 | path: /macintosh/osx | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 10 Oct 2008


MacOS' RSS screen saver really unreliable?

    I've added a Mac to my list of machines, and was excited to discover the screen saver option where it would download images from an RSS feed and use them as pretty pictures for the screen saver. I quickly wrote a little script which returns 100 random images in an RSS feed. The screen saver worked great at first, but seems really unreliable now. It seems like it will only use images for the feed for a little while, and then falls back to just complaining that there are no images available. There doesn't seem to be a pattern, and there are no errors logged on the server (in fact, I can't see the machine grabbing the feed at all).

    So, does anyone have any hints on how to make this suck less?

    Tags for this post: macintosh(S) osx(S)

posted at: 20:06 | path: /macintosh/osx | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 25 Dec 2007


Its Christmas, that means its time for a Macintosh to make me angry again

    I picked up the kids a set of Disney edutainment games for Christmas. We're talking 6 CDs of learning fun. The box said it works on Macintoshes (classic mode, whatever that means), and Andrew was so excited by the idea that he basically shredded the box getting in.

    Of course, because its a Macintosh, we stick the game into the machine, and it doesn't work. Apparently "classic mode", which I have never heard of, means "we're too lame to have written this game in the last five years, and it only works on OS 9". This is despite the box saying the game works with OS X. Apparently PowerPC macs can reboot into OS 9, but Intel Macs can't?

    So, questions. Is there a PowerPC emulator for Intel Macs? Is it expensive? I also happen to have a PowerPC mac lying around, how do I reboot it into classic mode? It doesn't seem to be an option in the reboot dialog...

    I am so disappointed in Disney at the moment...



    Update 1: Disney tech support is closed of course, because its Christmas. Andrew is quite sad about it all. I'm being unfair on Apple in the text above, this is entirely Disney's fault for selling games which are so hideously out of date. To give you an idea of how out of date these games are, Intel Macs have been sold since January 2006 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Intel_transition), and OS 9 was discontinued in 2002 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_9). These games are really out of date.

    Tags for this post: macintosh(S) osx(S)

posted at: 11:24 | path: /macintosh/osx | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 23 Nov 2007


Installing X11 on MacOS X

    Dear Lazyweb, I can see conflicting descriptions of how to install X11 on my wife's Macintosh. Some say I have to download something, while others say that I need to install X11 as part of the system setup. Given her machine is MacOS 10.4.11, how do I get X11 installed?

    Tags for this post: macintosh(S) osx(S) x11(S)

posted at: 09:28 | path: /macintosh/osx/x11 | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 23 Sep 2007


Apple remote for older ibook?

    I've got an iBook G4 1.33 GHz that used to be Catherine's old laptop. I now want to use it as a MythTV frontend for the kids, which it is just great for, with one wart. There doesn't seem to be any remote control options for this machine.

    Does anyone know of an Apple Remote like remote control for the iBooks? I would have thought there would be USB remote controls like there are for Windows, but I can't find any.

    Tags for this post: macintosh(S) osx(S)

posted at: 16:16 | path: /macintosh/osx | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 14 Apr 2007


Macintosh backups, a better way

    I thought about backups for Catherine's Macintosh laptop a while ago in the end it was too complicated, and I basically never solved the problem. Catherine got lucky today, and having married a fantastic guy, she got a new Macintosh for her birthday today. Even though her birthday isn't for another 6 days.

    That would be irrelevant if the "make your new Mac" process hadn't sparked an idea. To bootstrap your new Macintosh, you put it in firewire target mode and plug it into the new machine. It then copies the data you should care about to the new machine.

    That made me wonder if Ubuntu Feisty supports firewire disks out of the box. Guess what? It does. The new Macintosh backup process is born. I just plug the laptop into a server, run a simple script and walk away. Did I mention it's also crazily fast? Too cool.

    Tags for this post: macintosh(S) osx(S)

posted at: 18:50 | path: /macintosh/osx | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 31 Dec 2006


External monitor resolution on Os X

    The Macintosh users always seem so much better than other OS users for answering dumb questions here, so I have high hopes...

    Basically the only thing I need a Mac for these days is doing copy and technical edits on book chapters. The revision control and change tracking in OpenOffice is unfortunately not quite there yet, so it's not possible on Linux. However, I just got the heebies with Catherine's tiny 1024x768 internal LCD on her 12 inch ibook, and tried to plug in my spare LCD monitor.

    Now the display is automatically mirrored, which is nice, but it's at 1024x768 on the external monitor as well. This sucks because the monitor is a LCD and only properly displays at 1280x1024. Some quick surfing seems to imply that this is standard behaviour on Os X, which sucks.

    So, does anyone have a quick fix which wont destroy Catherine's machine? I don't mind running the external monitor with fewer colours, or not in mirrored mode if that helps. It just seems to me that the display control panel is surprisingly lacking in options.

    Tags for this post: macintosh(S) osx(S)

posted at: 12:56 | path: /macintosh/osx | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 24 Nov 2006


Hey, the Macintosh bloggers rock more than the Linux bloggers

    Hmmm, within 13.4 seconds of asking a half arsed question about Macintosh backups, I've got seven fully arsed answers (I mean that in a good way). Thanks everyone for your help.

    I have more questions though, mainly because I hadn't thought through the Macintosh backup options enough. What I want from the backup is an ISO image of a DVD which I can use to restore the machine if the disk dies. I will then do regular rsyncs of the data from the machine to the network, and use those to restore after using the DVD image to re-image.

    I need an ISO image though, because the Macintosh doesn't have a DVD burner. So, questions:

    Can Carbon Copy Cloner create ISO images instead of burning a DVD? If I rsync restore to a newly imaged machine, which bits are "the OS" and shouldn't be rsynced (or is it all safe?). Is a one off boot DVD enough, or should I do it every few months or something? Can cdrecord on Linux create a bootable Macintosh DVD?

    Further advice gratefully accepted.

    Tags for this post: macintosh(S) osx(S)

posted at: 11:28 | path: /macintosh/osx | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 23 Nov 2006


Macintosh backups

    Today appears to have become "home network admin day", and having done a bunch of work on the kid's Xbox, the kid's Ubuntu laptop, and my NSLU2 NAS device, I've moved onto my wife's Macintosh.

    I've upgraded her to the latest version of MythTV's front end so that she can watch TV again, but I also think it might be time to take a backup of her machine.

    What is the least horrible, free, way of backing up a Macintosh to a network share?

    Tags for this post: macintosh(S) osx(S)

posted at: 14:18 | path: /macintosh/osx | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 21 Aug 2005


Podcasts and iTunes 4.9 on Mac

    Oh, while you're being my Macintosh help desk, with iTunes for Windows I could have podcasts appear in party shuffles and when I was playing random shuffled music on my iPod. This doesn't seem to work any more now that I'm using the Tiger iTunes. Is there any way to get this behaviour back?

    Tags for this post: macintosh(S) osx(S) tiger(S) itunes(S)

posted at: 03:00 | path: /macintosh/osx/tiger/itunes | permanent link to this entry


Automator and iTunes hates me

    I can't see a way to get Automator to change the track rating (called "My Rating" in the iTunes user interface) in a workflow. This makes me very sad. I can't even see a way of running AppleScript as part of a workflow. Am I going blind? Is this possible?

    Tags for this post: macintosh(S) osx(S) tiger(S) automator(S) itunes(S)

posted at: 02:51 | path: /macintosh/osx/tiger/automator/itunes | permanent link to this entry
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