Dear apple

Apple Receipt,
originally uploaded by odiosam.

Please stop sending me receipts for free downloads from the app store. They're clogging my inbox.

While you're at it, you might as well not require that I input my account password to download them as well. It's a hassle on the tiny keyboard, and pointless (somebody's going to steal my phone and rack up charges downloading free software?)

a quick tip: the disk "name-here" is in use and could not be ejected

Under Leopard I seem to get this error relatively often when I'm trying to eject my external disks. Even after quitting all my applications, the error doesn't go away. I never want to disconnect my drive without unmounting it (maybe it's an OCD thing). Here's my solution:

First, get the device name of the drive: Disk utility > Select volume > Click Info > Then note the disk identifier.

Open up terminal to check which applications are using this drive (substitute your drive name):

lsof /dev/disk2s10

Quit (or kill) all the processes that are using the resource. If nothing is returned (as is frequently the case with me), then force umount the drive (substitute your drive mount point):

sudo umount -f /Volumes/Backup

I'm adding this because the man page on umount doesn't document the force (-f) option.

MacBook security

wakeup photo,
originally uploaded by odiosam.

A while back I found this howto on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/omegastation/292845901/

It's pretty useful - every time your mac wakes up from sleep, it takes a photo and emails it to you (or to flickr!). That's cool, but I'd also like to record the internal / external IP address as well. That way, if my macbook is ever stolen, I have a photo of who's using it, AND their IP address.

This is what you'll need, if you want to do the same:

• My workflow, to start with: http://sam.bluwiki.com/sam/take_picture_on_wake.zip
• wget
• A server to rsync into
• Ability to set up password-less ssh for your server (see this howto
• camcapture
• sleepwatcher

1)Download my workflow

2) I put everything into ~/Stuff/Surveillance - you can put it wherever, but be sure to modify the workflow.

3) Download camcapture, and copy the binary into ~/Stuff/Surveillance

4) If you want to upload your photos to flickr, get a flickr account and read this.

5) Test the workflow

6) Save it as an application (I saved my into ~/Stuff)

7) Download camcapture

8) Download & install sleepwatcher 9)Open terminal and vim ~/.wakeup (Make sure you change the location of take_picture_on_wake.app to the directory that you saved it into):

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/automator /Users/so/Stuff/take_picture_on_wake.app

Make it executable:

chmod +x ./.wakeup

10) Restart and test!

Note: Most users would be better off using automator to download a copy of http://ipchicken.com / http://whatismyip.com for an internal IP address, using automator to create an archive of all the files (index.html with External IP, ipdata with internal IP, iSight.jpg, and then emailing all the files to an account they can check over the web (like gmail). This will eliminate the need to use wget / rsync.

Getting music off your iPod without third-party apps

I recently needed to get music off my iPod - something that should be easy to do, but isn't. Most How-to's suggest that you download a third-party, like iLinkPod. There's an easier way to do this on your Mac, no third-party app required.

First, plug in your iPod and make sure "Enable disk use" is checked under your iPod preferences in iTunes. If your iPod shows up on your desktop, then you're fine. Next, open up Terminal, and cd into your iPod (cd /Volumes/Ipod_name_here). You should see a directory called "iPod_Control." All your music is stored within that directory. cp to your heart's content.



If you're not comfortable with the terminal, you can easily view all your music in finder. Simply open the terminal and execute these two commands:

# defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
# killall Finder

Well the 2 Gb of ram has arrived

In my previous post, I was complaining about how my MacBook seemed so slooow. Well 2GB of Ram has definitely helped. In intel-native applications, the system is much faster than my powerbook. However the MS Office suite is still annoyingly slow. Thankfully, now when I'm running a non-native app, at least it doesn't slow down the rest of the computer.

However, based on my experience - if you're doing a lot of work in Word / Excel / Powerpoint - stick with a PowerBook, at least until the new office suite comes out.

Below is my ram usage when multitasking:


I haven't yet been able to use the full 2GB - the system almost allways has 512MB or more free. This is good, since it means there aren't any "page outs" - the system doesn't have to wait to load memory from the hard drive.

It also means the system would probably improve significantly with just a 1GB upgrade, since my MacBook doens't often make much use of the second GB, even though its available.

Disappointed with my new macbook...

Update: I've upgraded to 2 GB of RAM, which has helped. Click here for more.

So I just dropped $1,500 on a MacBook, less than a year after I bought a PowerBook. Based on all the benchmarks - I expected the MacBook to be considerably faster than the machine it was replacing. This is good, since I felt the Powerbook struggled when I attached it to Apple's 23" screen.

Well, so far I've been seriously disappointed. I usually multitask, and when I have several applications open, the MacBook doesn't seem any faster than my PowerBook. Granted, the MacBook only has 512MB of Ram (verses the PowerBook's 1.25 GB) - but I would still think the Core Duo would make it feel faster.

The Macbook seems fast enough when I just have 1 application running. However, when I'm running 3-5 apps (like iPhoto, iTunes, Mail.app, iChat, and Safari), the Macbook is painfully slow. It can take 5-20 seconds for the Mac to respond to mouse clicks.

However, its REALLY bad with non-universal apps. It seems these apps (which haven't been redesigned for the intel processor) slow the entire system down. The entire system can often take 30 secs - 2 minutes to respond.

Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client are some of the applications that cause the problem. As I'm writing this, I'm trying to open these apps to test them, and they won't even start! UGH! I never thought I would be going back to my PB to edit a freggin' word document.

I'll let you know what happens when I upgrade the RAM to 2GB, but I suspect it won't be much...