I work for Absolute Software, as anyone who reads this probably knows. I developed the Mac versions of Computrace & Absolute Track, anti-theft and asset management products. Today someone submitted an article to MacMegasite promoting a competing product. Although MacMegasite doesn’t represent Absolute Software, I don’t feel right allowing someone to promote a competing product there. I haven’t approved the article and I most likely won’t.
Macintosh
Laptop upgrades
I was back at the site yesterday upgrading more Dell laptops. This time we had it down to an assembly line and got it done a lot faster. Unfortunately 24 of the laptops never showed up and the truck couldn’t be located. Those laptops have been reported lost or stolen.
PC Annoyances
There’s nothing more annoying than using someone else’s heavily customized PC. Windows XP takes long enough to boot, but when you have to wait for a half dozen applications like MSN, AIM, etc. load, it gets even slower. It usually takes well over a minute to boot and you don’t get any visual feedback to tell you when it’s ready. I’m used to getting immediate feedback on a Mac, which makes double-clicking and not getting any feedback even more annoying.
Today I had to install software on lots of Dell laptops which had been upgraded & make some configuration changes. Once I got them booted, many of them had Norton anti-virus asking to be activated. I then had to figure out their passwords, which were based on a service ID that was usually unreadable or copied incorrectly. We had 6 people working and we only got a small number of laptops done today and I have to go back tomorrow. The biggest waste of time was waiting for them to boot and getting the password correct.
Running my own browser
I’ve just reached the ultimate in geekiness. I’m now running a G4 optimized copy of Firefox I built myself on my own PowerBook. It feels a lot faster than the official build.
Linux on my Mac
Last week I installed a 120G drive, which I got for $85 from CPU Solutions, in my G4 minitower, replacing the old 40G secondary drive (it also has an 80G drive). Since I have lots of disk space, I partitioned it for Linux as well as Mac OS X. I also have Jaguar installed on the smaller drive so I can test software with it.
Today I installed Ubuntu Linux on it. The installation was very fast & painless. I first partitioned the drive with Disk Utility, leaving a large unallocated space as well as the OS X partition. When I booted from the Ubuntu CD, it created the Linux partitions and did the rest. Less than an hour later, I was running Linux. Ubuntu is based on Debian, so I was able to easily add packages and update everything to the latest version using Synaptic.
Coolest Bluetooth device ever
I just got a Sony Ericsson CAR 100 Bluetooth remote control car. It charges from my phone (a T616) and can be controlled with the phone’s joystick. There’s also a Car-100 control application for the Mac, which lets me control it with the arrow keys.
Cody & Midnight find it very amusing. I’ve been driving it around them and they love stalking it. When I make it stop, one of them will come over and start pawing at it.
Back to NetNewsWire
After trying Bloglines for a week, I’ve gone back to NetNewsWire since I find it more convenient. I’m now using a custom refresh schedule, with the sites I want to montor regularly refreshed every hour and everything else on manual refresh only.
BTW, I’ve been beta testing NetNewsWire 2.0 & MarsEdit (which were just publicly announced) for a long time and I’ve been using MarsEdit exclusively to post to this blog.
It still doesn't suck
I upgraded to BBEdit 8.0 today. I still haven’t had a chance to check out all of the new features, but it looks like a winner. The new server preview feature which can now preview PHP pages directly in BBEdit alone is worth the upgrade price.
Using a Linux server with a Mac
I just posted an article at MacMegasite detailing how I set up my Linux server for optimal usage with a Mac network.
Linux server setup
I now have my Linux server fully set up. One of my main uses for it is a file server for my Mac network. I tried Netatalk but had lots of problems with long filename handling & dealing with case sensitivity. When I would copy folders to the server, it would complain about file names that were too long and abort the copy. When I tried to compile code on the server volume, I ran into lots of trouble where the case of file names weren’t consistent. I tried the various casefold options, but they caused more trouble.
Finally I tried Samba and it’s now working like a charm. No more long file name problems, and it’s not case sensitive.