A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
The blog is in some measure of disarray at the moment. What you can see is actually MT3 templates and styles being applied to an MT2 blog. Right now I am working on the main page - I suspect that the individual entries and other forms are likely to be cactus (American), stuffed (Aussie) or pear-shaped (English).
For the time being, if you spot something odd on the main page, let me know but don't worry about other bits looking strange (unless of course the strangeness prevents you from reading or commenting).
Today the main page, tomorrow the world more of the same!
Apart from having some amazing dialogue boxes, there are still some problems in MacOS X Tiger (10.4.1). Today I got bitten by something completely out of the blue: How do you create a disk image from a CD?
Hmmm. That guy is pretty smart and he would normally work this one out, there must be some funny catch here. So I pop round to look at his machine. CD is mounted on the desktop OK. Open DiskUtility, click on the DVD drive and head up to the menu bar for File->New->Image from device. Whoops. It is greyed out. Maybe you have to click the volume rather than the device. Nope. Hmmm. I know I have done this before (I often do it with game disks if I am travelling so that I can extend the battery life on my laptop). Maybe it is something funny on his laptop. I take the CD and pop it in my laptop. Same problem. Ahhhhh. It is an *audio cd*. Apparently, you can no longer create images of audio-cd's. 點解?
Must be an anti-pirate measure. Very difficult to get around. Just download the very excellent FreeDMG and drag-n-drop your audio CD. Problem solved.
In the original article, the "Why?" was actually written in Chinese (dian1 jie6) but for some reason or other, MT refuses to allow the characters and replaces them with more question-marks. To get around this, I had to look the character up in the character palette and get a unicode number. This then has to be converted into a decimal number before MT will have anything to do with it.
So, open the character palette and select 'Traditional Chinese). Use Apple-Space to switch keyboards (to Pinyin). Type (dian1) in the search box and press enter. Hover over the highlighted character with the mouse and copy the unicode character code onto a bit of paper (9EDE). Switch back to the Aussie keyboard and open the calculator. Switch to programmer mode, select hex, type in 9EDE and then select decimal. The result should be 40670. Put this in your document with 點 ...
I guess that is almost another tech tip in it's own right :-)
In case you were wondering, "點解?" (dian1 jie6) is a Cantonese verbal exclamation which means "Why?".
The tax is finally done (for last year) and the refund is due any day now. Combine the refund with whatever I can pick up for the old machines (Performa = $0, Powerbook G3 = $450, Powerbook G3 with stuff = $550, 3 Newtons @ $50 ea, Emate = $50) might be worth putting into a G5 machine. Once we clear everything else out, the only machines in the house will be my (dented) 17" Powerbook, DragonFly's G4 iMac and one remaining Newton.
So, what can I buy with my cash... my minimum requirements: 2Gb RAM, 20" screen, 400Gb disk. A wireless keyboard would be interesting...
Option 1: G5 iMac (2GHz plus options) = $AU 3,900
Option 2: Power Mac G5 (2x2GHz plus options) = $AU 4,000 plus I need the 20" monitor (an extra $AU 1,250).
Option 3: Option 2 plus better graphics card and larger (23") monitor = $AU 7,100
At this point, I start to wonder whether perhaps I can make do without a G5 for another year :-) I don't think Mr Howard is going to be quite that generous with his refund...
Note: Option 3 would cost $US4,800 ($AU 6,300) if purchased in the USA.
[Found at Cynical Cyn]
Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then -- we elected them.
~Lily Tomlin~
I think that applies just as much in Australia except that the ratio of politicians might be higher than 2%.
Two guys who drove their pickup truck into a lumberyard
One of them walked in the office and said, "We need some four-by-twos."
"You mean two-by-fours, don't you?" the clerk said.
"Let me go check," replied the man, and he went back to the truck.
"Yeah, I meant two-by-fours," he said, returning a few moments later.
"Alright. How long do you need them?"
The customer paused for a minute to think and then finally said, "I'd better go check."
After awhile he returned to the office and said, "A long time. We're building a house."
I was trying to install some software on Tiger but every time I clicked the installer, I got some error about AppleScript and the ScriptEditor opened with a window full of binary mishmash.
It turns out that I am not the only one and there is a simple solution.
You need to rebuild the LaunchServices database:
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/\
Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister \
-kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
Rule of Defactualization:
Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
[This refers to the old server at www.guru-international.com...]
Sorry if you are having trouble reading the blog at the moment - after upgrading the server, I lost all of my IP banning rules (all 4871 of them) and the server is being blasted. I am having trouble keeping anything up long enough to identify the spammers.
Check out this alternate site instead :-)
One of the options for a Solaris network connection is the Cassini Ethernet (CE) interface. This may be on-board (e.g. V480), a single expansion port expansion card or the network-enhanced a quad-port variation.
The one thing all these cards have in common is that they are unique when it comes to fiddling the settings. Normally you can drop a setting into the system file or the relevant /kernel/drv/*.conf file and that setting will apply to all ports of that type.
It turns out that the correct way to do this for a Cassini (CE) card is to do it port by port. You can read about it in the Sun developers forum, in Sun's Hardware Release Notes, or (for those with valid Sun Support contracts) you can get the nitty-gritty from this infodoc.
I found that last link via got marko?.
Wow - there was a spectacular U2 Roof Concert in New York. Wonder if Squip got to see it...
The only problem (apart from the police finishing it before the end of the last song) was that the band wasn't really U2... it was actually an improveverywhere mission.
Sounds like it was fun...
Did anyone see it? Were you taken in?
It’s is not, it isn’t ain’t, and it’s it’s, not its, if you mean it is. If you don’t, it’s its. Then too, it’s hers. It isn’t her’s. It isn’t our’s either. It’s ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
– Oxford University Press, Edpress News
I used to read the on-line comic User Friendly every week but I had got out of the habit due to workload. Someone sent me the link because it mentioned my blog :-)
Leigh Hollingworth, "an Aussie working with the UN in Nepal", has a different take on explaining cricket to Americans (Column 8, last week). "My experience was even more difficult - explaining the concept of 'not cricket'. Having failed to explain the intricacies of the game to one American, I gave up and told him to stand at a particular spot. If the ball came near him, he was to throw it as hard as he could back to the guy with the gloves. This he did, just in time to intersect with the batsman. After explaining the term 'retired hurt', I could see the American deep in thought. Then, with a glint in his eye, he said 'Throw the ball to me. I can hit these guys easy. They're real slow'."
From Column 8, Saturday 28.05.05
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
People are always available for work in the past tense.
One day an elderly Jewish Pole, living in Warsaw, finds an old lamp in his attic. He starts to polish it and (poof!) a genie appears in cloud of smoke.
“Greetings, Mortal!” exclaims the genie, stretching and yawning, “For releasing me I will grant you three wishes.”
The old man thinks for a moment, then replies, “I want Genghis Khan resurrected. I want him to re-unite the Mongol hordes, march to the Polish border, decide he doesn’t want to invade, and march back home.”
“No sooner said than done!” thunders the genie. “Your second wish?”
“Hmmmm. I want Genghis Khan resurrected. I want him to re-unite the Mongol hordes, march to the Polish border, decide he doesn’t want to invade, and march back home.”
“But… well, all right! Your third wish?”
“I want Genghis Khan resurrected. I want him to re-unite his —”
“OKOKOKOK! Right. Got it. Why do you want Genghis Khan to march to Poland three times and never invade?”
The old man smiles. “He has to pass through Russia six times.”