July 11th, 2008 — apple
the iphone 2.0 comes out tomorrow morning.
here i lay, on the couch, watching the videos and downloading applications from the app store (aim, facebook, google mobile app, remote, twitterific), even though i don’t have an iphone. yet.
you see, in about seven hours the stores will be opening up and i shall have one. i’m not really sure why, though. i mean, yeah, they’re cool and all, but i have a completely functional blackberry pearl sitting right here.
why must i have an iphone?
the truth is i really don’t know. but i must. and i shall. and i will.
April 13th, 2008 — networking
a month or so ago, i downloaded jungle disk. i installed it on an older laptop i have running windows xp that has quite a few files on it i’d like to have backups of. i uploaded a few hundred megabytes of files to disk storage on the amazon s3 system and pretty much forgot about it.
a few days ago i was looking at my bank statement and seen a charge from amazon for $0.04 for the s3 storage. that got me thinking about backups again. i don’t really have any good backups here at home, other than keeping copies of “important stuff” on multiple machines — not exactly an ideal backup strategy.
i have an external usb drive that i’ve been wanting to use with time machine on my macbook to keep it backed up (it has pretty much became my “primary computer” in the last few months). i was keeping copies of important files on it, though, so i couldn’t just wipe it clean. instead, i first hooked it up to an ubuntu linux box that i have here, copied off all the important stuff, and then wiped it clean.
the external usb drive is now hooked up to the macbook and the first full backup (using time machine) is taking place as i write this (in textmate, of course!). it’s currently at 7.7gb of 105.9gb to back up. fun!
on the ubuntu linux box, jungle disk is hard at work backing up all my important files to the amazon s3 storage. i started out with 2.4gb of data to upload, mostly pictures and video that wouldn’t be easily replaced. with my cable modem connection (10 mbps down/1 mbps up), it’s going to take a while. once i get all the “important stuff” dumped onto amazon’s servers, however, and only occasionally add stuff to it, the backups will run much quicker.
i still have a few more pc’s to sift through in order to find everything i want backed up, but i don’t anticipate having more than 10gb or so of data stored on amazon’s servers. at their rates, that makes for very cheap off-site backups.
if you’re looking for a good solution to this same problem, i highly recommend amazon s3 and jungle disk. i’ve had no problems with either as of yet (granted i haven’t used either extensively). jungle disk is commercial software (only $20), but you can run it on as many pc’s as you have. they also have windows, linux, and os x versions that operate nearly identical. i haven’t installed the os x version yet, but i imagine i will before the day is over.
March 27th, 2008 — funny
windows toaster
the windows toaster looks great, but sometimes it just won’t make toast. it either comes out burnt or raw, and you have to unplug the toaster and plug it back in again each time you want to try and make some toast. for every loaf of bread you buy you are forced to buy a new toaster to go with it.
linux toaster
the linux toaster looks absolutely awful: it has wires crimped together, things are just hanging out of it. the first time you make toast with it the toaster burns it; the next time it’s raw. you read the man pages and invoke the command line “toast -verbose -breadsize 50132 -eject -o z3321 > /dev/toast” and it makes perfect toast ever after.
mac toaster
the mac toaster has no settings or controls. it looks very stylish, but will only accept proprietary-sized bread which can only be bought from apple dealers at ten times the cost of regular bread. the toast is fine except that the size of the bread is so odd that you can’t actually eat the toast it produces, although it does look very good.
February 12th, 2008 — apple
the mac os x 10.5.2 update is out, sooner than i expected. among the various improvements is an airport update that “improves connection reliability and stability”. that’s exciting to me since i’ve had some issues with that.
if you don’t use software update (why wouldn’t you?), grab the standalone installer.
February 1st, 2008 — apple, microsoft
today is february 1 and, as promised, microsoft office 2008 for os x has been made available on mvls for volume licensing customers.
w00t! downloading it now…
January 24th, 2008 — apple, blog
i just registered textmate. evidentally it’s been 30 days already since i got this spiffy macbook because the trial just quit working when i tried to make that last blog post. i had to go buy it before i could use it again. i work at a .edu, so i did the educational discount thing and got it for $51 usd. that’s the most money i’ve personally spent on a piece of software in years. i haven’t even began to explore all the functionality that textmate has, but i have a good feeling it’s worth it.
textmate brings apple’s approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. by bridging unix underpinnings and gui, textmate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.
i feel redeemed. now if you’ll excuse me i must go drink some more apple kool-aid. =)
(hopefully the textmate folks won’t mind that i stole their image to use above. if they do, let me know and i’ll take it down.)
January 5th, 2008 — apple, php, sql, web development
just a heads up… if you’re trying to use cakephp on os x with a mysql database, you’ll probably have problems connecting to the database server (by default).in my case, i created the mysql database (using the mysql command-line client), created a mysql user for the application (and gave it the appropriate permissions), configured cakephp’s database.php configuration file, and tried to access the default page. i was presented with the following error:
Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/var/mysql/mysql.sock’ (2) in /Library/WebServer/Documents/application_name/cake/libs/model/dbo/dbo_mysql.php on line 100
Warning: mysql_select_db(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /Library/WebServer/Documents/application_name/cake/libs/model/dbo/dbo_mysql.php on line 105
the fix for this is pretty easy. i’ve seen recommendations to just make a symbolic link from /var/mysql/mysql.sock to /tmp/mysql.sock, but that’s not really a good idea. instead, open up /etc/php.ini in your text editor (as root), find the line that begins with “mysql.default_socket = ” and change the entire line so that it reads “mysql.default_socket = /tmp/mysql.sock” (make sure there’s not a semicolon at the beginning of the line). save the file, exit, and restart apache (“apachectl restart”) and you should be good to go.
note that if you don’t have an /etc/php.ini file, but you do have /etc/php.ini.default, simply copy the default file over (e.g. “cp /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php.ini”), then do the fix above.
January 5th, 2008 — links
prior to getting my new macbook i used firefox exclusively. one of my favorite extensions was foxmarks since i typically use a number of different pc’s each day (between work, home, being on the road, etc.). i was told to try to stick to safari and not install firefox, if possible. i’ve managed to make it almost two weeks now but not having my bookmarks handy has been a bit inconvenient.
for that reason, i’m including here links to a number of sites that i had bookmarked in firefox prior to getting the macbook. they’re primarily for me, but they might be useful to others as well.
January 5th, 2008 — apple, linux
chris howard wrote an opinion article on apple matters called “apple is killing linux on the desktop”. in the article, chris talks about how the number of apple macs running os x used to access the web has been consistently increasing over the last few years while linux has seen only minimal growth.
as a long-time linux user and recent mac convert, i can’t help but feel that i’m helping this along. i began using linux sometime in 1997. since then, i’ve never been able to use linux exclusively. in other words, i’ve always had to keep around at least one windows box in order to do certain tasks. that may just be changing, however.
less than two weeks ago, i got my first mac. i say “first mac” because, even this early in the game, i’m fairly confident it won’t be my last. i’ve even went so far as to tell myself that i’ll never buy another windows pc again. that may seem a bit premature, but i’m pretty convinced.
i work in information technology. there aren’t many days that go by that i’m not either sitting in front of a computer or have one on my lap for at least 12 hours. i am, by all accounts, a “power user”. by day, i manage computer networks. my group runs the servers that keeps our organization going. if i didn’t require outlook, i could use a linux pc 90% of the time and be just fine. in fact, i have both windows xp and linux pc’s under my desk. until two weeks ago, however, i worked almost exclusively on the xp box.
i write a fair amount of code. it’s not my official job but if there’s applications that we can create or scripts we can write to make our jobs easier, that task usually falls to me. i primarily use perl for unattended scripts and php for our web-based apps (cakephp rocks, by the way). i also tend to carry a laptop back and forth to work with me. after a certain point, it became a huge pain in the ass to use my laptop to write code but have that code actually reside on another server. if i’m at work, it meant ssh’ing to the box my code was on (i use vi for 90% of my code development). if i’m at home (or somewhere else), it meant bringing up the vpn link and then doing the same thing.
i was able to avoid that by running linux on my laptop and just developing all my code there. then, however, i was missing out on tools that i use quite often (e.g. ms word, ms outlook, etc.) so if i needed to use them, i still had to connect to a windows box to use them.
i managed to convince my $boss to buy me a mac. one of my selling points was that it would make writing code easier — and, as an extension, faster — because all the development tools are right there. as i write this on my new macbook, i can quickly open up a terminal and i have instant access to both perl and php. in addition, i’ve got apache and mysql running. that’s everything i need to write and test my code locally. i can do it anywhere, with or without a network connection. that’s nice too, since we travel a lot and it means i can write code while riding down the highway (i’ve already done it).
anyways, i’m getting a little sidetracked. my point is that i can agree with chris. previously, if you were looking for an alternative to windows, you went with linux. now more and more people are switching to apple and os x instead. i’ve been telling everyone that i get the best of both worlds (windows and linux) on this mac. i haven’t been able to find one single thing that i can do on either windows or linux that i can’t do on this mac. this macbook does everything, and does it quite well.
i’ve still got my windows xp and linux boxes, both at work and at home. that may very well change in the future.
