Nostalgia / humour question

[James Devenish]

Hi,

I'm pretty sure, many years ago, an official Apple User Guide had an
illustration of an iPod being used by a server administrator as a disk
to install software on an Xserve or something. Anyone remember what
document this was, or have a link to it online?

James



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Re: Tool to measure data use on home network to individual connections

[James Devenish]

Hi Tom,

There are some practical reasons why there's no "obvious" solution to
this problem for everyone. The saving grace is that you might be able
to short-circuit the problem by focussing only on the "excessive use"
aspect. Let me step through the possibilities so you can see the pros
and cons. But be warned: I have no solution for you, only ideas that
might help you along the way.

The first hitch is the "rules"...Everyone's broadband contract has
different rules. So you'll need to know about any "inclusions" and
"exclusions" that apply to your account. For example, do you know if
you being are billed for "uploads" as well as "downloads"? Do you have
any "free zone" downloads? Are you billed for "TCP/IP overheads"? Most
people will  get "free uploads" or "free zone downloads", but not
necessarily either or both. Multiplayer gaming involves both uploading
and downloading. Most people who do broadband gaming will require some
kind of free zone for it to be fast enough and cheap enough.

The second hitch is that there's no device in your house that records
all the information that you need. The only way to generally
understand your bill is to combine information from multiple sources.
And that's the problem. You've told us that your network consists of 5
Macs, two PCs, an Xbox, a cable modem, and maybe a printer and maybe a
Time Capsule backup too. So that's a combination of products from 4-6
different corporations, in a mixture of Ethernet and wireless. For
simplicity of discussion, I'm going to refer to these as "a dozen"
devices.

Although every individual device can count the "bytes" it's
transferred to and from the network, you need the data analyzed at a
much more sophisticated level. Consider that a Mac could transfer
bytes to a printer, from a Time Machine, to/from the freezone, etc.
All of this interferes with the results you want, and must be filtered
out! And that involves some heavy duty monitoring. And somehow you
need to monitor every connection of every PC, every Mac, and the Xbox.
So as Rob alluded to, the final solution will need to involve data
from your Telstra cable modem/router. It is the only device that can
track the Internet usage of all dozen devices.

Unless your cable modem contract is very straightforward, the solution
will be quite specific to Telstra cable. So you should enquire with
Telstra as your first option. To get a meaningful report on your
household Internet usage, you'll need to solve the following problems:
* Monitoring every connection made by every one of the dozen devices
on your network, and identifying their usage in a useful way ("Tom's
iMac", "Jane's MacBook", "Billy's PC", etc).
* Correctly taking in to account the inclusions and exclusions of your
Telstra cable modem contract by subtracting any eligible "free zone"
or "uploads" from the report.
* Removing "internal network usage" from the report (i.e., you don't
want internal throughput like printing, household file sharing, or
Time Capsule to be counted as network usage for the purpose of your
Internet usage report).

By now you might be convinced there's no direct solution, and that's
why no one's been able to give you a silver bullet. Sophisticated
users would install a custom gateway router with its own Ethernet and
wireless in  between the cable modem and the rest of the network, and
then install and configure their own monitoring software, and divert
their dozen devices off their modem and onto their custom gateway
router. (The institutional approach.) But most people are simply stuck
with the modem that came with their contract, and it simply doesn't
provide the information you need.

And here's the other rub: only Telstra knows that is free and what is
billed, but the only thing Telstra can see from its own end is your
household's aggregate usage. It simply cannot see your Macs, PCs,
Xbox, etc. So Telstra simply can't tell you which devices have been
using the most data. You'd have to piece together most of the
information yourself and then craftily subtract your freezone usage
(if applicable).

Here are things that probably won't work naively:
* Installing monitor software on all your Macs and PCs. Why it won't
work: internal network usage such as printing and Time Capsule will be
erroneously included in your "usage", as will any Telstra free zone.
Plus, how are you going to monitor the Xbox?
* Installing a traffic monitor on your Cable modem. Why it won't work:
you probably can't install software on your cable modem. Instead,
you'll need to extract reports from the Cable modem and filter them to
remove free zone, and to map the usage back to your individual
devices. But each device can change its network address daily, so how
are you going to keep track of which network address matches which
device? And does your cable modem even give you this information?

If you are billed for all uploads and all downloads (no freezone),
then the network traffic bytes counted by your cable modem will within
a f

Re: Trackpad stuck in marque/select mode

[James Devenish]

Hi Mark,

On 7 October 2010 14:46, Mark Secker  wrote:
> Recently my trackpad (the magic thingy trackpad not the one on my laptop)
> has taken to getting itself regularly stuck in marque/”drag select” mode

Sometimes, but rarely, I experience the same thing on my laptop. I
believe it's a software bug in Snow Leopard. But it's impossible to
reproduce willingly. The solution, for me, is to tap twice on the
trackpad. This turns drag mode off. Does it work for you?

James



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Re: OSX/iPhone - Surprising Errors?

[James Devenish]

Hi Neil,

1) Time discrepancy on iPhone

Your iPhone clock accuracy may depend on your mobile phone provider.
If the phone tower is out of sync, your phone will be too. I don't
think the phone syncs with iTunes or time.apple.asia.com because my
iPhone is consistently 20 seconds slow, which I attribute to Vodafone.
My Mac OS X computers sync correctly and are always accurate.
Therefore I get alerts on my Macs 20 seconds before they appear on my
iPhone :-)

2) Calculator Errors

All binary digital calculators suffer from the decimal accuracy
problem when working with "floating-point numbers" (i.e., 21.24 =
21.242). Most of them hide this fact from you by rounding
off to fewer decimal digit. If you actually need to do financial
calculations, it's best to use "fixed-point numbers". So maybe you
need to use a financial calculator rather than a regular
calculator...?

James



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Re: Mac OS X background apps stealing foreground focus

[James Devenish]

On 13 September 2010 20:07, Eugene  wrote:
> If another application wants my attention it usually bounces politely on the 
> dock
> to get my attention and never rudely jumps into the foreground taking over my
> screen and hijacking my keystrokes.

Good point Eugene. Handbrake is an example that is well-behaved and
bounces in the background. On the other hand, apps from Apple are
probably the worst offenders, with Excel a close second. I also have
alerts from a time tracking app that get all tangled up with iCal, the
worst popup-style offender (even though it doesn't steal keystrokes).
There are also some third party apps that are problematic
(SpeedDownload is one that 'pops' into mind). As Ronni points out, I'm
not alone, but as Eugene points out, it's an app-by-app issue. So
apparently applications can choose to be nice or nasty. I would love
to have a global override. I may also be able to dig up the option in
Apple's developer docs. I'll have to start recording the exact
circumstances, so that I can be clearer about the issue.

Thanks for the ideas,
James



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Mac OS X background apps stealing foreground focus

[James Devenish]

Hi all,

If I have any complaint about Mac OS X, it is there severe user
interface floor whereby you can be happily typing or clicking in an
application (which is called the "foreground"), and then a 2nd
application from the background will pop up in front of everything
with some kind of question or text entry request, and your keystrokes
and mouseclicks will be errantly misdirected in dangerous ways. I
often lose my work in addition to losing my concentration. This
problem has existed since Tiger, at least. But in the past,
Application switching took about a second, so I was always able to
stop typing before too much damaged was caused. But these days, with
fast computers and fast Snow Leopard, the applications switch around
in the blink of an eye, and by sheer momentum I am overwriting,
misclicking and misentering data in errant places. Complete
productivity killer. Is there was way to fix this? If no one knows, I
will file a bug report with Apple. But I'm sure someone has already
done this and been ignored...

James



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Re: Non-forwarding PDFs

[James Devenish]

Hi Pat,

> On 12/09/2010, at 17:39 , Pat wrote:
> Someone told me recently that she had come across a PDF attached
> to an e-mail that she was not able to forward to someone else

I think Ray is probably right too. Some people don't know that they
have to "save" the attachment to their computer before they can attach
it to a new e-mail. I know one novice who spent all day assuming she
needed to find her e-mail attachments in Windows explorer to forward
them on. In Apple Mail, not only does it forward attachments, but you
can also drag-and-drop attachments from old e-mails into new ones.

The other issue is that her ISP might not allow large attachments to
be sent from her address...

James



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Re: iPhone Barcode Scanning App

[James Devenish]

Hi Andrew,

On 13 September 2010 14:42, Andrew McColl  wrote:
> Im looking for an iPhone barcode scanning app.  With the ability to access
> Australian retail barcodes of the supermarket variety. I basically just want
> something that will allow me to generate a shopping list from the barcodes
> of the empty packaging Im throwing out.

I've been wondering about this too. Unfortunately, I don't think there
is a public registry of individual product codes, at least not for
Australian and New Zealand brands. I don't think Google owns
Woolworths yet. Maybe there is a good app in the style of Shopary,
which allows you to catalogue your own items.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/shopary-shopping-diary-push/id343072667?mt=8

James



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Re: iPhone4 and multitasking / memory

[James Devenish]

Hi Glenn,

It shouldn't be necessary for you to manually quit iPhone
applications. iPhone puts strict limits on multitasking, by limiting
background applications to 10 mins of continuous activity, after which
any unfinished processes are forcefully terminated. The reason for 10
mins is to give programmes (e..g, Mail download) a bit of leeway in
the background to finish your last request. So in general, a programme
can only remain in the background if it is sleeping after 10 minutes.
There are only a few exceptions, like if a programme is playing audio
in the background. So after 10 minutes, your iPhone should be idle
even when there are dozens of programmes in the background. I
currently have 48 simultaneous applications open on my iPhone, and it
is idle.

Also, iPhone automatically closes background applications when memory
gets low. If fact, you can check this on a Mac that is synchronised
with iPhone. In ~home/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice you will
find a listing of apps that have crashed or reached low-memory.
Because this is automatic, you shouldn't have to close applications
manually.

However, if a programme stalls in the foreground, then it can prevent
your iPhone from responding. In this case, quitting apps via the
genius procedure can help. Also, holding down Home and Power for a few
seconds will allow you to shut down the iPhone (i.e. turn the power
off).

It sounds like there is a bug that caused a problem for you Glenn.
According to the design intention, it should never have happened. I've
found that iOS 4.1 fixes several bugs for me, relative to iOS 4.0.2.

James

On 13 September 2010 11:16, Glenn Nicholas  wrote:
>
> Quick note here (maybe someone knows how to avoid this issue?)
>
> My iPhone4 (running iOS 4.0.2) stopped working on the weekend. There
> was plenty of charge (60% it later turned out), but I just had a black
> screen, no response to on/off and no response to being plugged in to
> charger.
>
> A visit to the Apple Store and talking to a genius solved the problem.
> 1. When you open an app (built in or 3rd party) it stays open - this
> uses up some memory
> 2. Over time - if you don't shut down apps manually - the iPhone runs
> out of memory and won't respond
>
> The solution:
> - double tap home button to see list of apps that are open
> - tap and hold one of them to put them in to edit mode
> - tap the red minus icon to switch off apps
>
> It seems apps will stay running (multitasking) until you manually
> switch them off.
>
>
> Glenn Nicholas
> OM4 ::
>



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Re: USB vs Firewire

[James Devenish]

Hi Rod,

You don't mention if you're using FireWire 800 or 400. But either
way...your speeds seem to be 20 Mb/sec for FireWire and 30 Mb/sec for
USB. These seem slow to me, I would have expected at least 30 Mb/sec
for FireWire, or more likely 50 Mb/sec. Maybe there is some other
limiting factor in your setup? FireWire usually doesn't need as much
CPU power compared to USB. Obviously for the disks you have, USB is
faster, but I wouldn't extrapolate these results to other drives or
cables.

James

> On 19/07/2010, at 7:40 PM, Rod Blitvich wrote:
>
> I tried some more tests:
> Copy 1.95 GB movie
> To Old FW drive and to newish FW drive - both came in about 1 min 42 secs
> To new USB drive tested twice - around 60 seconds
> Blitto
>


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Re: Corrupt file - options ?

[James Devenish]

Hi Steven,

Your inadvertent attachment shows us something...the file is full of
NULL bytes. I.e. it's a 760 kb file full of zeros. There is no data.
This can happen if your original disk was corrupt...and you say that
the machine died? If the disk was corrupt, and it was giving zeros
instead of filedata, then the backups will also have zeros because
they simply back up what is given by the disk. On the other hand, the
backup drive itself might be corrupt, and it's returning zeros even
though the originals were okay. My guess is that the files are full of
zeros and can't be un-corrupted without resolving the disk issue.

Sorry,
James

On 17 July 2010 17:57, Steven Knowles  wrote:
> I seem to be coming across too many image files lately which for some reason
> have become corrupt. They seem to have become corrupt following a restore
> from Time Capsule, after one of my machines died. The reason I suspect this
> is because I can usually dive back into Time Capsule to recover a
> pre-restore version of the file and all is fine. Though that's only going to
> be good for so long until the older backups start to be replaced.
> There is one particular pdf file which although digging out the pre-restore
> version, that version is corrupt also.
>
> 
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>
> If I try to open it with Preview, the message I receive is ...
> The file "name-of-file.pdf" could not be opened. It may be damaged or use a
> file format that Preview doesn't recognize.
> Similar messages if I try to open with Reader or Acrobat Pro.
> GraphicConverter tells me the file is broken, the format is unknown or it
> isn't a graphics file, presenting me with what appears to be a preview with
> lots of zeros.
> Interestingly, Apple's Mail won't let me attach the file to a message
> either.
> The file obviously contains data because it's 778Kb in size.
> Two questions ...
> 1. A long shot, but any suggestions as to what else I could try in a futile
> attempt at recovery?
> 2. Since I seem to be getting a lot of these corrupt files show up, anyone
> know of any software that could do, say, a sweep of all files on my hard
> drive and tell me which ones are corrupt? That way, I could perhaps try to
> recover them from old backups before those backups get wiped.
>
> Cheers, Steven
>


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Re: Strange 24-second pauses

[James Devenish]

Hi David,

> the screen more or less freezes and the coloured wheel appears.
> After about 24 seconds the wheel disappears and normal service is resumed.

Just a thought, can you start your computer using its Installation
Disc (DVD) and Repair Disk and Repair Permissions? It is possible
there is a problem with the filesystem after a loss of power. This can
also cause a loss of disk space, which in turn leads to performance
problems.

It also isn't clear from your e-mail whether you have external
peripherals attached to your computer nor whether you are using wired
or wireless keyboard/mice.

Also, do you have a home network and has anything changed since the storm?

James


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Re: Application privileges

[James Devenish]

Hi Adrian,

Did you set up your new computer with different "Accounts" compared to
your old one? That's that this problem sounds like -- the new computer
does not have the same accounts as the old one, so migrated files have
no equivalent permissions on the new computer.

The general solution to your problem is to "repair permissions". This
can be done using Disk Utility. Please note that it's normal for it to
take a long time (minutes) and you should leave it to do so. It may
produce many warnings, but in normal circumstances these are spurious
and can be completed ignored. It's just important let your computer
Repair Permissions.

This should repair your system files and applications. However, there
may still be data files in your home folder which will need to be
manually updated to be Owned by your new Account.

James


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Re: Do not hide

[James Devenish]

Hi Severin,

> I have a list of startup items with all but Mail and the Finder Window set to 
> hide.
> Word, Excel and iTunes are rogues and stay open.

The "Hide" option should do what you want, and I am surprised that
iTunes is not compliant. Unfortunately, most programmes "unhide"
themselves even after the system has requested that they be hidden.

The "Hide" checkbox isn't anything to do with faceless background
utilities (they hide themselves automatically and it makes no
difference whether the Hide option is ticked or not -- in fact most of
them can't be "un"hidden).

The best suggestion I can think of is to use Automator (or
AppleScript) to launch the desired programmes at login, wait a few
seconds for them to settle, and then hide them. It should be easy
enough to find tutorials about scripting with Automator or
AppleScript, then put your script into Startup Items instead of the
constitutent applications.

James


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Re: Permissions Problem

[James Devenish]

Hi Joe,

> Preferences error can not load PTHPasteboard

This sounds like a PTH problem. It's likely that other customers are
affected. I suggest you contact PTH directly about their product, or
see if it is covered by their online help.

While you are usually welcome to move your PTH preferences to the
trash to resolve the problem, you would of course loose any
personalisation of your product!

I note that PTH provides the following online help:

9. PTHPasteboard PRO launches and then quits a few seconds later, how
do I fix this?
There's a file in Library/Application Support/PTHPasteboard of your
Home directory called Main.Buffer. Delete that and relaunch.

James


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Re: Time Capsule backups

[James Devenish]

Hi Peter,

Can I suggest that you go into your System Preferences, then Time
Machine, Options... and click on the Plus sign to select your movies
folder to exclude it from backups (you can also check the size of the
movies folder in the Finder). Then, ask your machine to "Back Up Now".
Check that the required size goes back to a reasonable level (if it
doesn't, there must be something else going on). This backup will at
least ensure that your normal files are safe.

Once a reasonable backup has occurred and you have some time for an
uninterrupted backup, go back into your Time Machine preferences and
remove your movies from the exclusion list and "Back Up Now".

James


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Re: Cleaning question

[James Devenish]

Hi Reg,

On 07/03/2010, Reg Whitely  wrote:
> Is this what's in my Dick Smith spray can of Contact Cleaner? It
> carries no contents list other than the propellant - hydrocarbon

The Contact Cleaner is just an inert gas -- like tetrafluoroethane
(the hydrocarbon acts as both the propellant and the active
ingredient). Useful for cleaning the dust out of confined spaces, but
it's more like blowing air than anything else. It won't clean the
fingerprints off anything.

The chemist's alcohol wipes are fine for what you used them for, they
were probably a 70/30 mix of isopropanol and water like you would find
in a first-aid kit, which basically the 75/25 combination I referred
to in my previous e-mail. But if they contain ethanol, they wouldn't
be suitable for plastics.

James


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Re: Cleaning question

[James Devenish]

Hi Aurora,

I'm very curious about the Enjo idea -- sounds like a great idea if it works.

For quick cleaning, I use isopropyl alcohol (99.7% pure
isopropanol/propan-2-ol, not the 70% "rubbing alcohol"). You can buy a
spray pack for $10 at electronics stores. You don't have to turn off
the computer before spraying it, as it's electrically non-conductive
and you can spray it carefree (no need to overdo it, though).

You can safely and effectively clean metal, plastic and glass. I use
it to clean all of my computers, laptops, screens, keyboards, mice,
USB flash drives, iPods, mobile phones, desks, mirrors, windows, etc.
It's a "universal cleaner" for non-porous surfaces. I generally wipe
with tissues, but obviously you'd use a lint-free cloth if you can (I
use left-overs from spectacles).

I know there is a culture against using "alcohol" and tissues, but
they are harmless, effective, and cheap. People always marvel at why
my equipment looks brand new. The reason people are against "alcohol"
is due to ethanol (drinking alcohol), which will damage most plastics.

For proper polishing, I use a 60%/40% (or 75%/25%) mixture of
isopropyl alcohol and water. This can be sprayed onto standalone
keyboards, mice and glass screens (anything that can be virtually
sprayed with water). But for non water-tight surfaces, I use the
mixture to moisten a cloth/tissue. The mixture is a better polisher
than either ingredient on its own, and the alcohol ensures that the
water evaporates quickly. It is also a great tool for eliminating
leftover adhesive from labels and sticky tape. You can use it as a
general household cleaner and disinfectant.

James


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Re: Magic Mouse battery appetite

[James Devenish]

Hi Peter,

Perhaps if your System Preferences are to "Allow Bluetooth devices to
wake this computer", then the mouse might not go into its lowest power
mode then the computer is asleep. If you are able to turn this option
off, then see if the batteries last any longer. You'll need to wake
your computer by pressing its power button briefly to wake it.

James


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Re: Printing envelopes

[James Devenish]

Hi Graeme,

> I have now mastered the technique for printing an envelope after a few 
> experiments
> and would now like to incorporate a return address on the envelope as well


You didn't explain to us what software you are using to make the envelopes!

You also didn't tell us if you want the sender address on the front or
back of the envelope. The sender address usually goes on the back of
the envelope, in which case you print it exactly the same way as the
front of the envelope, except that you feed the envelope into the
printer "back to front".

Alternatively, you can print a sheet of labels and stick a label onto
the back of each envelope.

James


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Re: Acrobat Pro 9 print problem

[James Devenish]

Hi Mike,

When you say that your printers aren't listed in Acrobat Pro's Page
Setup, do you also mean that Custom Page Size is not available? If I
choose "Any Printer", I can still create a custom page size with small
margins. Are you able to create a custom page size?


James


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Re: Shared tab missing

[James Devenish]

Hi Pedro,

For a Mac to show 'Shared' in the Finder's sidebar, there must be at
least two computers correctly operating on the same network. This is
because Shared is hidden for solo computers. Your computers seem to
think they are solo, and a failure in merely one of the pair would
cause this to happen.

You should double-check that both computer are truly connected to the
same wireless access point. (E.g,., it's possible for one of them to
have latched onto a neighbour's wireless by mistake.) Secondly,
Bonjour must be working on both computers. Bonjour is essential for
automatic Sharing in both the Finder and iTunes. So just in case
Bonjour has failed, you should restart both computers (reboot one of
them about 10 seconds after the other, to be sure, and then check
their Airport network names in the Network System Preferences).

I'm pretty sure that the 'Shared' sidebar should be visible in the
Finder even if File Sharing is turned off.

James


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Re: Google quirks

[James Devenish]

Hi Severin,

I just looked at your site. Ideas for distinctive domain names could
include newartsinc or newartsalbany.

James


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Re: Importing CD'd/Track internal

[James Devenish]

Hi Stuart,

On 10/01/2010, Stuart Breden  wrote:
> I've looked at iTunes preferences to see how to vary the length of the
> interval between tracks when you are importing a CD but can't see what
> to do.

The gap is created as part of the CD when it's exported, not when it's
imported. So if you want to adjust the gap of an imported CD, you'll
need to "Get Info" on the tracks after you've imported them.

If you want to reduce the gaps, then trim the silence by specifying
your own start/end time in Options for each track.

If you want to increase the gaps, go into Options and tick "Part of a
gapless album" (I know it's counter-intuitive, but it turns off the
crossfade feature). If you want more gap you'll need to actually
create a track of silence and add the track of silence into your
playlist between the other tracks.

James


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Re: Google quirks

[James Devenish]

Hi Severin,

Nothing is guaranteed with Google. That's part of its design. Making
assumptions about Google is a trap that has caused grief for many
people. I believe Google avoids being predictable, because
predictability can be used by bad people as well as good people.

Google is by-and-large a popularity content. its results come from
global analysis of statistics. In this case, Google has special
algorithms for English words. For example, it understands that "race
car" and "racecar" are generally equivalent. This allows Google to
automatically follow trends in language. This is done by artificial
intelligence and is based mostly on popularity. Unfortunately for you,
NewArts has less global significance than "new arts", and therefore
Google's algorithms decide that "newarts" is a typo. From Google's
perspective, almost everyone who searches for "newarts" actually wants
"new arts". But if you search for NewArts in quotation marks
("newarts"), Google will take the hint that you know are trying to be
specific, and it will try to give you better results. But there are no
guarantees.

ALSO, although we think of Google is unified whole, there is in fact
no single global search engine for Google. It's not physically
possible for Google to synchronise all its results globally (think
about it...it is impossible for it to transfer its knowledge of the
entire Internet between every global server simultaneously).
Therefore, Google is made up of dozens of distributed databases, even
within a single country, and the new data shifts around like leaves in
the wind. This has many unfortunate consequences.

(1) When you change website name, you lose your existing standing with
Google and have to rebuild it. You MUST get other people to link
through to your new address you want it to rise in Google's search
results. You must also get them to use the words and phrases that you
desire. The text on other people's websites has as much influence as
the content of your own site! The only way I know for small regional
sites to reliably appear at the top of search results is to choose a
rare phrase combination.

(2) Google will visit your new site within a couple of weeks, but your
content will not start appearing in all of Google's results
immediately. Your new content enters a queue along with millions of
other sites that were updated on the same day as yours.

(3) Because Google gives you results using one of its randomly
allocated databases ("load balancing"), two people can get different
and conflicting results from Google even when they make the same
search within seconds of each other. This is because it takes time for
the new information to propagate to all Google databases. And also
Google experiments with its algorithms so your search might be handled
by a newer algorithm than anyone else. Two people can only expect to
get consistent results in Google when the sites have been stable for a
month or so. In fact, I suspect Google adds a bit of randomness to its
search results to reduce the degree to which the top-ten results
become artificially self fulfilling.

James


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Re: firewire vs usb

[James Devenish]

Speaking of which,

Wishfully thinking, does any know of any economical, portable,
bus-powered external FireWire 800 enclosures for 2.5" hard drives?

James


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Re: Retention of records

[James Devenish]

Hi Ray,

On 08/01/2010, Ray Forma  wrote:
> My current big concern is in what format to store my photo files. I
> currently store them as uncompressed TIFF files, a format that has
> been with us for a long time. Can anyone suggest a better format?

TIFF is a good format because it is publicly documented, has been in
use for at least 20 years, can be read with open source software
written in the C programming language (which has remained popular for
40 years and still underpins a vast amount of current software), and
moreover it is basically a wrapper around "raw" image data. However,
it's certainly not my favourite format, and because it's extensible,
incompatibilities can creep in.

A better format would may be PNG, which although being much newer, is
in some regards the modern successor to TIFF. It's:
- openly-specified
- non-proprietary
- patent-free
- has been standardised by the ISO
- is readable by open-source C software
- is "lossless"
- is already a pervasively-supported format on the world wide web
.

I believe that for these reasons, the National Archives of Australia
converts TIFF images to PNG in their digital preservation software:

http://www.naa.gov.au/records-management/secure-and-store/e-preservation/at-NAA/software.aspx

I don't think you need to convert your TIFF files to PNG, nor need you
start using PNG if you already use TIFF. But if you were creating your
archives from scratch starting today, I think you would choose PNG as
your format. Perhaps you could progressively convert TIFFs to PNGs
during the natural cycle of re-archiving.

Hope this has been informative,
James


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Re: Retention of records

[James Devenish]

Hi Graeme,

I thought it was common knowledge that home-made CDs simply do not
last. This was common knowledge a few years ago but perhaps people
have got too accustomed to them and forgotten their limitations. It is
ALWAYS necessary to have a periodical plan to copy all contents from
archival media (CDs, DVDs, hard disks, and USB flash storage) onto
newer storage every few years. Don't forget, it is even difficult to
read many hard disks from just a decade ago! Archival materials should
always be kept on at least two different media in two different
locations. Don't throw out the old one media (your new media could
meet with an accident!), just don't rely on them as the sole copies.

James


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Re: MOUSE WITH A MIND OF ITS OWN

[James Devenish]

Hi Julie,

On 03/01/2010, Julie Bedford  wrote:
> It may not occur for an hour, but then the mouse takes off on its own
> accord and it can take me a minute or two to gain control of it again
> and that is with the use of two mice.  It's ridiculous.  It's like the mouse
> is possessed !!

I agree with you that it is ridiculous! If you mean you are using two
mice at the same time, as well as Mouse Keys, without success, then
there are two likely situations.

Firstly, it's possibly a software problem (e.g., an unknown virus) and
would be solved by an "Archive and Install" of your Mac OS X.
Secondly, it's possible that your computer is receiving erroneous
hardware signals, either from an intended device or a unintentional
device. For instance, if your computer is somehow shared over
Bluetooth, WiFi or Internet, there is the possibility of remote
interference. This can be checked by going into the relevant
preferences and isolating your computer from the outside world.

Out of curiosity, when the problem occurs, can you see the mouse at
the bottom of the screen, and does it slide side-to-side horizontally
but never go up-or-down? Or does it bounce around a bit along the
bottom of the screen? Or is it not visible at all? (If it's not
visible at all: open your Displays system preferences and check that
your computer does not think it has two screens. If it does, the mouse
can get stuck on the other screen...sometimes happens to me when I use
an external projector.)

James


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Re: S L O W Leopard

[James Devenish]

Hi Lloyd,

Your computer is unwell. It should never be that slow, regardless of
OS. You have the option of starting up in Safe Mode which is quite
limited but turns of any optional plug-ins.

 At the end of this e-mail, can I
suggest that you unplug as many USB accessories as possible, then boot
into Safe Mode?

Just to be clear with the Activity Monitor: do the 'disk', 'cpu' and
'network' summaries show relatively zero activity? Problems are
generally-speaking due to a bottleneck in disk (low disk space - not
in your case; or bad blocks), RAM (run-away programme consuming memory
and causing virtual memory to be used), network (uncontactable DNS
server; or remote attacker flooding the computer), wifi/bluetooth
(similar to network), CPU (rogue process), or due to corruption of
files, drivers or filesystem.

What's critical is what's going on *while* the delay is occurring, not
what's happening You've mentioned that "everything" is slow, but your
only examples were starting up and opening disks for the first time.
Can you test these tasks before booting into Safe Mode, and then test
them again in Safe Mode (if it lets you):

- Disk: Try copying a very large file (one that takes at least 10
seconds). Does it start pretty quickly and proceed evenly toward the
end, or does it sit idle?
- CPU: Try running the 'visualiser' in iTunes. Do you get a reasonably
smooth frame rate, or does it take forever to load and then perform
jerkily?
- Network: If you visit  does it take a lot
longer than ?

James

On 03/01/2010, Lloyd White  wrote:
>
> Hi Ronnie,
>
> Thanks for your continued support.
>
> iMac
> HD  500 GB  -388 available.
> 4 Gb memory (2+2)
> OS 10.6.2
> I don't think Rosetta is installed - can't find it. No programs have asked
> for it.
> The Console  shows hundreds of messages in the last few days. All sorts of
> errors and failures to do with Internet Clean-up menu,  iTunes, Osacript,
> Software update check, system U1 Server and a host of others. Not sure what
> they mean but it does not look good !
>
> Nothing in the System Startup items folder.
>
> Font book has reported some duplicates but nothing corrupted.
>
> I did a Snow Leopard upgrade. Perhaps I should bite the bullet and do a
> complete CLEAN install of Snow Leopard. I have  the bootable backup on my
> ext hard disk, plus my Time Machine backup on another ext disk.
>
> Lloyd
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> Hi Lloyd,
>>
>> What are the specifications of your Mac?
>> How full is the hard drive?
>> How much memory is installed?
>> Are you running OSX programs or those that require the use of Rosetta?
>>
>> 1. The most obvious is check Activity Monitor for signs of applications or
>> utilities that may be chewing up CPU time under Snow Leopard.
>>
>> 2. You should also check your system.log (viewable via
>> Applications->Utilities->Console) to make sure something isn't logging
>> continuous errors, also slowing down your machine.
>>
>> 3. Look in Library > StartupItems and in System > Library > StartupItems.
>> Move
>> whatever you find in them to the desktop to see if your problem is
>> resolved.
>> You can move whatever you want back one at a time to test which, if any,
>> is
>> your problem.
>>
>> 4. Use Font Book to eliminate all bad and duplicate fonts.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Ronni
>>
>> On 03/01/2010, at 4:31 PM, Lloyd White wrote:
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
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Re: MOUSE WITH A MIND OF ITS OWN

[James Devenish]

Hi Julie,

On 02/01/2010, at 10:11 PM, Julie Bedford wrote:
> I have a problem with my mouse for the past year or so.
> The problem is that my wired mouse sometimes takes off to the
> bottom of the screen...I then bought a Microsoft one (has a plug
> in USB so one can use without wires)...It is getting to the point
> where it occurs every minute or so.

Sorry to hear of your long-term problem. You've obviously tried a
number of things to fix it.  But in every case I've heard of, mouse
problems are due to a physical issues such as using an unsuitable
mouse pad (or lack of mouse pad), dirt on the bottom or inside the
mouse, or low batteries (for wireless mice).

As Yvonne suggested, I recommend you try the blank piece of paper
temporarily, to see if it makes a difference. Wood is not a good
surface for mice. For some people, the back of the mouse pad (i.e.,
the black rubbery side) works better. (But for some people, it makes
the problem worse. I'm just suggesting it as another last resort.)

The other thing is...and this is very unlikely...someone could have
played a prank on you. There are some prank programs that can be put
onto your computer that cause this to happen. I temporarily had one
installed on my own laptop just for fun (really) but I can't remember
the name of it.

You might also wish to resort to trying SteerMouse
, which is a programme that lets
you adjust the motion sensitivity of your mice.

Alternatively, Mac OS X has a feature that allows you to control your
cursor with your keyboard (it's intended to help people who have
physical disabilities). You might like to enable this feature, so that
you can use the keyboard to move your mouse back to the middle of the
screen. To do this, open your "System Preferences", go into "Universal
Access", then click on the "Mouse & Keyboard" tab, and turn on "Mouse
Keys". To use Mouse Keys, you will need a full-size keyboard with a
numerical keyboard on the right, or enable "Num Lock" on a smaller
keyboard. Depends on your keyboard.

- James


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Re: Pages Template - Can't see Invisibles

[James Devenish]

Hi Alan,

On 01/01/2010, Alan Smith  wrote:
> I cannot create a Pages template with visible paragraph markers
> (Invisibles).   Any suggestions?

This appears to be a bug or simply an oversight in Pages. To resolve
it, save your template as an ordinary Page document, then pages the
filename from 'something.pages' to 'something.template'. Now, when you
double-click it, it will act like a template but will remember the
same settings as ordinary documents (including the Invisibles
setting). At least, this is how it works for me (Pages '09 v4.0.3).

James


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Re: Safari query

[James Devenish]

Hi Graeme,

On 27/12/2009, Graeme Winters  wrote:
> during the course of using Safari I used to have a line beneath the web
> address that allowed me to navigate between earlier web pages.

Try using the "View" menu to show/hide things until you find the one
you want. If this does not produce the result you expected to see, try
"Customise Toolbar...". You might even discover some hidden features
of benefit to you. You can also use the "History" menu to go back and
forth between web pages. The menu even shows you some keyboard
shortcuts for these operations.

James


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Re: Machinarium

[James Devenish]

Hi John,

Machinarium is downloadable as a .dmg (disk image). When you open the
disk image, there is a folder called Machinarium. You can copy this
folder to your Applications folder, or use it directly our of the disk
image. Either way, open the Machinarium folder and double-click on the
app. Yes, the app file is only 13 MB but the overall game is about 350
MB in size when expanded. The four folders (00, 01, 10, 11) contain
all the graphics and sound for the game. You aren't suppose to try to
open any of them, they are not programmes, they are the data folders
which need to sit alongside the app.

The reason for this is that Machinarium is based on Adobe Flash. The
data folders (00, 01, 10, 11) are the same for every platform (e.g.,
same for Windows and Mac and Linux), while the app is downloaded
specifically for one platform (i.e., either Windows or Mac or Linux,
not all three).

James

On 27/12/2009, John Daniels  wrote:
>
> Thanks Paul
> I did download the correct Mac one but what was puzzling me was
> although the download was over 300MB, Finder showed that the app was
> only 13.3MB. I note that there  are four folders within the dmg, each
> one containing about 100MB. The files these folders contain are all
> Unix Executable ones and I cannot open any of them.
> This is above my level of understanding so any advice would be
> appreciated.
> Nevertheless I am able to operate the program in full. The 13.3MB App
> does not appear to be the demo which I downloaded first.
> Cheers
> John
>
>
> On 26/12/2009, at 9:43 PM, Paul Weaver wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi John,
>>
>> After you paid you should have had an automated email with the links
>> to the three versions for Mac OSX, Windows and Linux. Perhaps you
>> downloaded the wrong version by mistake?
>>
>> Paul.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> - Original Message -
>> From: "John Daniels" 
>> To: "WAMUG Mailing List" 
>> Sent: Saturday, 26 December, 2009 8:03:41 PM GMT +08:00 Beijing /
>> Chongqing / Hong Kong / Urumqi
>> Subject: Re: Machinarium
>>
>>
>> Hi All
>>  I have downloaded the file 300+MB but I cannot open the dmg. Tried
>> dragging it into Applications, opening it in disk utility but it
>> always shows up as a dmg and not an app.  Anyone assist?
>> Also I too have no instructions on how to play the game.
>> Cheers
>> John
>> On 26/12/2009, at 12:51 PM, Philip Trouchet wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> John Daniels wrote:

 Thankyou Paul
 I am downloading it.  I found I had to go to Google and ask for
 "Machinarium Christmas offer" to still get the cheap offer. Maybe
 it's the time difference in US, anyway it's still available at
 1150am today.
 Cheers
 John
 On 24/12/2009, at 10:45 AM, Paul Weaver wrote:

>
> Just a note to say my family is impressed with this brain teaser
> since buying it.  At US$10 with a bundle of other stuff it seems
> to be another bargain. I mentioned it in detail on my blog this
> morning.
>
> Cheers, Paul.
>
> Dr Paul R. Weaver
> http://fremantlebiz.livejournal.com/calendar
> 
>>> Hi John & Season Greetings! I have also just down loaded it but
>>> with Age setting How to I play ? Can't find play instructions ! At
>>> my age I need new puzzle games & brain teazers but I know my
>>> limits. . Ciao. P.
>>> ***
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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Re: Time Capsule setup

[James Devenish]

Hi Severin and Peter,

On 26/12/2009, Severin Crisp  wrote:
> For the Macbook it is intended that it connect wirelessly to the Time
> Capsule for Time Machine backup and internet traffic.
> 4. BUT the Time Capsule will not connect to the internet via the D-
> Link.

1/ Do you mean that the MacBook cannot connect to the Internet through
the Time Capsule? The problem could be between the Time Capsule and
D-Link, or between the Time Capsule and MacBook.
2/ Can you confirm that the Time Capsule itself shows a green light
and has not been instructed to ignore any networking issues?
3/ And attempts have been made to connect the MacBook to the Time
Capsule using Ethernet and Wireless, neither of which succeeded?
4/ And no relevant security barriers were set up on the D-Link (such
as MAC filtering).
5/ To check whether the Time Capsule can connect through the D-Link,
go into the "AirPort Utility", go into "Manual Setup" for the Time
Capsule, go into "Advanced", then
"Logs and Statistics", then "Logs", and check if it says "Clock
synchronised to network time server time.asia.apple.com". If so, it
would indicate that the Time Capsule can reach the internet, and that
the problem lies between the Time Capsule and MacBook.

I have a Time Capsule and although I'm a sceptical techie, I thought
the Time Capsule's networking works like a dream, and handsomely deals
with every configuration problem I throw at it.

James


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Re: Apple Magic Mouse

[James Devenish]

Hi Jon,

The Magic Mouse requirements are as follows:
Mac OS X v10.5.8 or later with Wireless Mouse Software Update 1.0 or
Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later with Wireless Mouse Software Update 1.0.

James


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Re: ip over firewire

[James Devenish]

Hi Alastair,

On 25/12/2009, mince and pud  wrote:
> I have followed all the tips I can find about networks and sharing
> but although the laptop is now connected to the internet via ethernet
> through belkin router, and the iMac is connected to the laptop via
> firewire, I can connect and fileshare between the two and the network
> status on the iMac even says it is connected to the net via firewire
> - safari disagrees and says I'm not connected.

IP over FireWire has always worked for me, but be aware that Internet
access requires more than just a raw network connection. You also need
to basic services, such as DNS, DHCP and NAT. On the laptop, ensure
that 'Internet Sharing' is enabled. You want to share 'from' Ethernet
'to' FireWire. This should provide all three services to the iMac. The
iMac might not pick up the new services instantly - you may want to
unplug and replug the FireWire cable and give it a few moments.

James


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Re: Images in MS Word

[James Devenish]

Hi Severin,

Don't bother with embedded profiles if you are importing into
Word...it does its own thing. One possible strategy is to Export for
Web in Photoshop. This tends to push things to lowest common
denominator (e.g., sRGB), and also allows Mac vs Windows preview. When
I do this, I don't notice any shifts in colour when importing into
Word.

James


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Re: NDF files ??

[James Devenish]

Hi,

I believe this would be Neller Document Format, and the employer
should have provided information about viewing the file. Not only is
it a proprietary format, I also don't know of a Mac viewer. Very
non-enlightened. http://www.neller.com.au/Page.asp?PID=64

James

On 13/12/2009, Roger Kortas  wrote:
> very interesting pay system!!
>
> NDf is an SQL data file read below :)
>
> SQL Server 2000 databases have three types of files:
>
> Primary data files
> The primary data file is the starting point of the database and points to
> the other files in the database. Every database has one primary data file.
> The recommended file name extension for primary data files is .mdf.
>
> Secondary data files
> Secondary data files comprise all of the data files other than the primary
> data file. Some databases may not have any secondary data files, while
> others
> have multiple secondary data files. The recommended file name extension for
> secondary data files is .ndf.
>
> Log files
> Log files hold all of the log information used to recover the database.
> There must be at least one log file for each database, although there can be
> more than one. The recommended file name extension for log files is .ldf.
>
> SQL Server 2000 does not enforce the .mdf, .ndf, and .ldf file name
> extensions, but these extensions are recommended to help identify the use of
> the file.
> On 13/12/2009, at 5:18 PM, Stephen Chape wrote:
>
>>
>> Surprisingly  Yes !!
>>
>> On 13/12/2009, at 5:02 PM, Severin Crisp wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Sounds like a really enlightened pay system - do you still get your
>>> money?
>>> Severin Crisp
>>>
>>>
>>> On 13/12/2009, at 4:42 PM, Stephen Chape wrote:
>>>

 Hi people,

 Our pay office has switched to a payroll package that emails payslips to
 employees as NDF files (Neller).
 It cannot be opened by anything at work or on my Mac at home.
 Has anyone any idea re this ?
 Have Googled readers but not with any success.

 Regards,
 Stephen Chape



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>>>
>>> 
>>>  Assoc Professor R Severin Crisp, FIP, CPhys, FAIP
>>>  15 Thomas St, Mount Clarence, Albany, 6330, Western Australia.
>>>   Phone  (08) 9842 1950   (Int'l +61 8 9842 1950)
>>>   email  mailto:sevcr...@westnet.com.au
>>> 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>> Regards,
>> Stephen Chape
>>
>>
>>
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Re: What's happening here - IMAP account versus Mail>Messages folder

[James Devenish]

Hi Steven,

Don't be too concerned about the underlying mechanism of the Mailboxes
folder. There are many explanations for all of this.

In the case of the Mailboxes folders, multi-part MIME messages are
stored across multiple files (one file for each part). Multi-part MIME
messages are probably the majority of messages on the internet these
days. So your Mailboxes folder contains 290 Parts, not 290 Messages.

Also don't worry about the discrepancy in megabytes. It is normal.
Firstly, each emlx file has some metadata appended to it, so it is
slightly larger than the server size. Moreover, many e-mail parts are
smaller than the "allocation block size" (physical block size) of
modern hard disks, so there is space wasted. Mac will report the true
physical allocation size AND the logical byte size of the data
contained within the files, whereas servers will usually report only
the logical byte size (which is smaller than the physical allocation
size).

But I realise this doesn't help you solve your problem. To here's how
to make Apple Mail import your imapmbox. Firstly, copy your
INBOX.imapbox from backup (or Library folder) to your Desktop. COPY
it, do not try to import the original to itself or you could create a
loop. Then rename the copy from INBOX.imapmbox to INBOX.mbox. You can
now import it into Mail and delete the COPY. The imported messages
will appear in an 'Import' folder under the heading of 'On My Mac'.
You can then move the messages to your IMAP folder. The reason for
this trickery is that Apple Mail only imports LOCAL mailboxes, so you
need make it interpret the cached IMAP (server) folder as a LOCAL
folder even though it is actually a cached IMAP (server) folder.

James


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Re: What's happening here - IMAP account versus Mail>Messages folder

[James Devenish]

Hi Steven,

On 30/11/2009, Steven Knowles  wrote:
> I have an IMAP account set up, in which were quite a few messages.
> However, if I check the folder at Library > Mail >
> imap-acco...@domain.com@mail.domain.com > INBOX.imapmbox > Messages, it's
> full of emlx messages. Intuitively I would have thought such a folder would
> be empty, in line with the empty IMAP account.

Both the INBOX and INBOX.imapmbox folder are relevant. One latter
contains the INBOX messages, the former contains the folders that are
nested within the INBOX. (It won't be like this or everyone...it
depends on the underlying setup of the brand of IMAP server.)

I'd suggest the reason the .emlx files are still there because
basically it is a cache, and Apple Mail hasn't yet 'purged' the cache.
If you synchronised the account, the .emlx files would probably
disappear to match the server.

You are in a somewhat tricky situation, because you need to convince
the server that the messages are not deleted, even though the server's
index says those message IDs have been deleted. Restoring from backup
*might* work, or on the other hand it could fail if the server will
see the restored message IDs as 'zombies' and instructs Apple Mail to
delete them again. You may find that you have to restore from backup
into a folder on your Desktop, then 'Import' into Mail, then drag
across from the Import folder to the IMAP account, to basically tell
the server to add all the old messages as though they were new
messages. But I'm just speculating. Wait for someone else with more
definitive information (or check on Google). I've never had this
problem and haven't tested it out.

James


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Re: Mail Rules Query

[James Devenish]

Hi,

On 30/11/2009, Ronda Brown  wrote:
> This has always bugged me about Mail Rules. Like you I have had to select
> the sent message > Apply Rules for it to move into the correct Mailbox.
> If I find any "Script" or Utility that will do the job for us, I'll let you
> know. There is MailTags 

Those people also make http://www.indev.ca/MailActOn.html

-James


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Re: Mail Rules Query

[James Devenish]

Hi Andrew,

On 30/11/2009, Andrew Schox  wrote:
> I have just made the jump from Entourage to Apple mail.
> Does anyone know how to create a rule which applies to outgoing mail?

I'm not sure about outgoing rules, you might need to download a
Plugin. What version of Apple Mail are you using

Regarding large amounts of mail, it depends a bit on whether you're
using IMAP or POP3. There's really a world of difference between the
two. I manage about 10 GB of mail with Apple Mail, using IMAP.
Entourage and most versions of Outlook are fatally flawed above 2 GB,
Apple Mail has a different design which does not have this limitation.

James.


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Re: Strange Design Based Problem with CS3 and images changing colour when creating PDFs.

[James Devenish]

Hi Kelly,

On 30/11/2009, Kelly Duffy  wrote:
> I don't know if anyone can help, but I'm using Indesign CS3 on an iMac
> running OS 10.5 and having some weird issues with creating a PDF from
> a file. If anyone has seen it before I'd love to know what causes it,
> especially since it shows differently on both Macs.

I'm not exactly sure why there's a problem with yellow converting to
cyan, or why it's inconsistent. Maybe you have a corrupt colour
profile at some stage of the process? Also, make sure you're not
applying a spot colour or an RGB colour by mistake (sounds like you're
already checked, but I'm just double-checking). Also, could you
recolour the TIFF in Photoshop before placing it? Out of curiosity,
what happens if you colour the TIFF as magneta or yellow in InDesign
... how does it display in PDF?

James


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Re: MacBook Pro Unibody - Laptop Edge

[James Devenish]

Hi David,

I wear long-sleeved shirts, so I don't have a problem with the
keyboard. However, I agree with you that it's quite vicious. Putting
ticket tape across the edge makes it less sharp, but it'll still put
pressure on your wrist. I'd suggest you raise the back edge of your
laptop (try resting it on a pad of post-it notes), so that they
keyboard is slightly angled, then your wrist won't touch the front
edge.

James


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Re: Apple Mail and the Flag feature - any Windows em ail clients recognise it?

[James Devenish]

Hi Steven,

2009/11/23 Steven Knowles :
> Ahh, that's interesting. Thanks James.
> What do you mean by the flag button though? The flag itself?

In Apple Mail, I always flag and unflag by clicking the toolbar
button. (Perhaps I have customised my toolbar.) It's easier than using
the Message menu.

James


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Re: Apple Mail and the Flag feature - any Windows em ail clients recognise it?

[James Devenish]

Hi Steven,

2009/11/23 Steven Knowles :
> Apple Mail provides the ability to 'flag' an email...One of the others
> who can access the IMAP account uses Opera on a Windows
> machine. It seems that he doesn't see these flags, unless of
> course there is some setting or view which he needs to activate.

Flags, labels and keywords are built into IMAP servers. In this
regard, Apple Mail simply uses the features provided to it. I'd be
surprised if Opera didn't use IMAP flags. Most likely, it's using them
in an obscure way or the flag column is simply hidden from view. I'd
suggest he check his Opera view options. In Apple mail, you can show
or hide both the flag column and the flag button.

James


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Re: Unicode

[James Devenish]

Hi Bill,

On 21/11/2009, Bill Parker  wrote:
> Can anyone give me a heads up on how to activate unicode?
> OS 10.5.8   using Word (Microsoft Office 2008) mainly.

You might need to explain your requirements a bit further.

Unicode is supported natively in Mac OS X and doesn't need to be
activated separately. This is the opposite of Microsoft Windows, prior
to Windows Vista you had to install a different version of Windows for
each language you want to use. Microsoft Office has the same heritage,
and most fonts contain only a fraction of Unicode characters.

Fortunately you can gain access to Unicode input via Mac OS X's
International system preferences. This is as Ronni described. Use the
preferences' 'Input Menu' tab, tick 'Character Palette', tick 'Show
input menu in menu bar' and if desired tick Unicode Hex Input from the
list. You can also enable Keyboard Shortcuts.

However when you use Unicode characters, Microsoft Word switches you
into 'Apple Symbols' font. This is different from what Apple uses, but
perhaps that comes as no surprise. A bit laborious but you'll get the
hang of it.

If you mean you want to use Unicode with Microsoft Word .doc format,
then you may have a problem due to its heritage. Instead, you may need
to consider using the .docx or .rtf formats.

James


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Re: Creating high resolution PDF

[James Devenish]

Hi,

Mac OS X's built-in Save as PDF produces high-res, lossless PDF files.
It uses the document's images with no loss of quality -- can't get any
higher res than that! It is also the reason that Mac PDFs are often
larger than Adobe PDFs (Acrobat compresses images to lower quality for
smaller file size by default).

If you find that PDFs from Word are low-res, that's because Word
converts many standard high res formats (e.g., PDF) down to 72 dpi
upon import. Only a few formats escape this butchering...perhaps
Microsoft's own Windows Metafile Format. This is one reason of many
many reasons why Word is the bane of people who work in the printing
industry.

Pages is a much better programme for many purposes (in fact, after
using Pages I've realised how bad Word is, to the extent that I now
believe Word is a major killer of office productivity and probably
costs the world unfathomable $$ in lost time and labour).
Unfortunately Pages has one major flaw - outline numbering doesn't
work automatically. For me this is a show-stopper with long technical
documents.

James


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Re: Freeze!

[James Devenish]

Hi Lloyd,

2009/11/10 Lloyd White :
> Hi everyone. I have a problem that has just started and is driving me crazy.
> iMac OS 10.5.8 After waking from sleep it freezes. Can¹t shut down, can¹t
> force quit, can't do anything but cut the power and then re-start.

I have this exact problem on a MacBook Pro with Mac OS X 10.5.8, but
in my case it's correlated with the use of EyeTV.

James


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Re: Animated gifs

[James Devenish]

Hi Neil/Severin,

A common misconception is kilobits per second (kbps) versus kibibytes
per second (KBps). This means that 'kbps' overstates your performance
by a factor of 8.2 compared to what you expect! Therefore 1400 kpbs
(kilobits per second) is only 175 kBps (kilobytes per second) or  170
KBps (kibibytes per second). This means a 1.3 MB GIF would take 10
seconds to download at 1400 kbps. ABC iViews shows my connection at
5000 kpbs, but that's only 610 KBps and in fact the GIF loads at 400
KBps (3.5 seconds).

James


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Re: Animated gifs

[James Devenish]

Hi Severin,

In these days of ADSL2+, a lot of people with broadband won't notice
the problem. I certainly didn't have any problem with the slideshow.
However, I set up a low-bandwidth simulator and can confirm what
happens. Basically, you have a 2.5 second delay between each frame,
but if the slideshow download is incomplete when the 2.5 second timer
is reached, then Safari waits 30 seconds before trying to play the
slideshow.

James.


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Re: Safari/Firefox internet problem

[James Devenish]

Hi Peter,

In Safari's Window menu, there is an Activity option. If you open the
Activity option, you will see that it shows you the title of each web
page in Safari, and expands to show all the subsidiary elements that
comprise each page. The file size and loading status are shown. This
can help you see if there's a problem "within" a page. So next time
you visit www.woodworkforums.com in Safari, open the Activity window
and see if a single file is holding up the whole site. For instance,
some pages have been (mis-)designed so that they won't load unless the
ads load, and if the ads don't load, you don't ever see the page.
Sounds silly, but some sites are like that.

If the site drop out again, you can also try testing your ISP's basic
connectivity between you and the site:

Open your Applications folder, go into your Utilities folder.
Open the Network Utility.
Click on the Port Scan tab.
Enter the domain name of the site (www.woodworkforums.com NOT
http://www.woodworkforums.com).
Check 'Only test ports between', and enter 80 and 80 (i.e., testing
port 80 only).
Click Scan.
If it's successful, it'll look like this:

Port Scan has started ...
Port Scanning host: 174.132.135.26
 Open TCP Port: 80  http
Port Scan has completed ...

You can then Quit the Network Utility.

If you get a different result, please report back, as this may explain
the problem.

As a basic test for any website that's not working, you can also try this:

Use Google to search for the site address (e.g., www.woodworkforums.com).
Then, instead of clicking on the like, right-click on the link (or
control-click if you only have a one-button mouse) and choose
"Download Linked File".
The home page should then download reasonably fast as
www.woodworkforums.com.html
If www.woodworkforums.com.html does not start downloading, or is very
slow, this usually indicates a fault within the site (unless you're on
dialup, in which case make the usual allowances for dialup).

James


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Re: Animated GIF

[James Devenish]

Hi Severin,

2009/11/2 Severin Crisp :
> I use animated GIFs of a series of images, generated from within Photoshop,
> as a very convenient way of placing them on a webpage.  However there is a
> considerable delay in them playing,

GIF allows a deliberate delay, useful if the frames contains text.
Photoshop allows you to adjust the delay for each frame. In the
Animation pallette, it's pretty obvious how to change the delay (but
the exact method depends on whether you are using Frame mode or
Timeline mode). If this isn't the problem, you might like to disable
interlacing. If it is still taking a long time, you might want to
reduce the canvas size, or re-evaluate the need for animation. If
animation is still necessary, Flash is the most common alternative for
fast loading web animations (but you can't do it within Photoshop).

James


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Re: .zip archives

[James Devenish]

Hi Severin,

2009/9/29 Severin Crisp :
> I would have thought Windows would know all about .zip
> files.   Maybe I am too naive ?

Windows has generally relied upon third-party ZIP software (e.g.,
WinZIP, the old PKZIP, etc.). This in turns depends on what retailer
sells the PC (or what company the person works for) and whether the
person has installed their own. There are also multiple versions of
ZIP and presumably some non-standard versions too. Having said that,
.zip is generally a very good (best?) choice for sending archives to
Windows users. Perhaps someone else knows what happened with the 'ews'
issue.

James


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Re: Cookie log?

[James Devenish]

Hi Paul,

2009/9/26 Paul Weaver :
> I'm wondering if there is some sort of utility which can
> maintain a chronological list of cookies when they are
> added or modified?

Need to know what web browser(s) you use, and what OS version...

Safari, for instance, stores cookies in
~/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist and they are in chronological order
with 'Created' timestamp noted (however this is not in human-readable
timestamp format). Perhaps something like
http://ditchnet.org/cocoacookies/ could do the job (never used it
myself...just found it via Google).

James


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Re: Links in Safari

[James Devenish]

Hi Severin,

2009/9/25 Severin Crisp :
> In Explorer Preferences the colours for Read and Unread links can be
> changed.  I can find no such item in Safari or Firefox.  Are they hidden
> somewhere?

Safari supports this through Style Sheet (in Advanced Preferences). If
you create your own CSS file, Safari can be told to use it. However,
according to the rules of CSS, your CSS file is not the most
important. If you want to make it important, you need to designate the
rules as follows. Put it into a text file (e.g., severin.txt or
severin.css) and tell Safari to use that file. In the example below,
'a' stands for 'anchor', which is how links are done in HTML. You can
then specify styles and colours using US spelling:

a { color: green !important; }
a:visited { color: yellow !important; }

James


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Re: VirtualBox

[James Devenish]

Hi Clyde,

2009/9/22 Clyde McLennan :
>   Following on from the helpful discussion and comments about the three VM
> programs, I thought I would try the free one, VirtualBox.
>   No problem installing virtualbox, but didn't get far installing windows
> XP. Came unstuck during the installation when it asked me to press F8 to
> accept the Windows terms and conditions.

With some keyboards (especially laptops), you might find that you have
to hold down the Fn (function) key while pressing the F8 key. This is
because F8 might be assigned to some other function in Mac OS X, like
'Play/Pause'.

I use VirtualBox for running several versions of Windows and Linux,
and have to say I don't recall encountering this issue at all.

I think this is a rare issue, so it would be helpful to know what Mac
OS X and hardware you are using.

James


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Re: i-tunes to external harddrive

[James Devenish]

Hi Martin,

Backup up your iTunes library is as simple as copying your 'iTunes'
folder. For instance, you can open your 'Music' folder and
drag-and-drop the 'iTunes' folder icon onto your external hard disk
icon.

Of course, this will take a very long time because you have 400 GB of
music, and maintaining this backup would require that you copy the
whole 400 GB every time you make a backup. Therefore, you may prefer
to use backup (sync) software instead. Backup and sync software works
by detecting changes, and only needs to back up the new/changed files.

If you ever need to recover your iTunes library, you can simply drag
the backed up 'iTunes' folder back to your Music folder.
Alternatively, if you wanted to point iTunes to use the external disk
instead of your internal disk, open iTunes and hold then down the
Option key as soon as possible. iTunes should ask you whether you want
to Quit, Create a New Library, or Open A Library. You can choose
Open... and select your external iTunes folder. iTunes will remember
this setting.

James


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Re: Other strange mail behaviour

[James Devenish]

HI Adrian,

2009/9/15 Adrian Skehan :
> No, the messages are sent OK. but of some reason it is also put into the
> Draft box.  This is occurring quiet randomly with the messages and with the
> addressees.

I know the messages sent okay. What I'm trying to say is that the
DRAFTS (i.e., incl automatic drafts made in the background) are saved
to the DRAFTS folder. This also explains why they may be missing some
addresses - they are drafts from way back before you'd finished the
message. When you send the message, it's sent okay but the old drafts
are left behind in the drafts folder until the server expunges them.
At least this is exactly how it works for me.

James


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Re: Other strange mail behaviour

[James Devenish]

Hi Adrian,

2009/9/15 Adrian Skehan :
> Since going over to Snow Leopard mail has been sending mail out OK but
> randomly puts copies in the Draft box as well as the Sent box,  some of
> these messages have the original recipients address and some have no address
> at all.  Has anyone any suggestions as to the cause of this?
Could it simply be that these are drafts? It is the same for me in
Leopard...if it takes me a long time to write an e-mail, I will have
some draft copies left behind. They have are greyed out (deleted) but
not yet purged from my IMAP server.

James


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Re: Mail receipts

[James Devenish]

Hi Jennifer,

2009/9/12 Jennifer Lefroy :
> Is there any way in Mail of asking for an acknowledgement of receipt of an
> email?  At present I know of two emails which took days to reach the
> addressees (and of course there may be others that I do not know about -

I can understand your frustration. Although it is possible to get
Apple Mail to request a receipt, this feature is turned off for good
reasons. Basically, read receipts needs to be generated by the
receiver, and most people's mail programmes either don't do this, or
prompt the user to do so (and many people say 'no' -- they don't want
you knowing whether or not they've read the message). The only
exception is that some businesses and government departments are set
up so that read receipts are acknowledged automatically -- so it's
only useful for you if those are the types of businesses you are
mailing.

For most senders, read receipts are so unreliable they're not worth
the effort of trying. You won't get receipts even for messages that
have been read! For anything that requires urgency or acknowledgement,
it's best to use your message to ask the person to reply by e-mail
before a certain date.

Hopefully that clarifies things at least.

James


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Re: .tif and Snow Leopard

[James Devenish]

Hi all,

On the topic of default programmes, downloads, etc., one utility I
have always consulted is the RCDefaultApp preference pane:
http://www.rubicode.com/Downloads/RCDefaultApp-2.0.1.X.dmg While it
doesn't work miracles, it does offer a range of information and
programme settings about file types, URLs, MIME types, etc.

James


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Re: .tif and Snow Leopard

[James Devenish]

Hi Neil,

Sorry I missed your original posting. I use CSV files extensively. The
issue is that 10.5's QuickLook doesn't have a setting for CSV files --
it treats them as unknown. You can download a nifty CSV plugin for
QuickLook here: http://code.google.com/p/quicklook-csv/ (I have used
this one...there may be others). In 10.6, CSV is understood natively.

James


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Re: .tif and Snow Leopard

[James Devenish]

Hi Michael,

2009/9/9 Michael Hawkins :
> Since Snow Leopard was installed the icons for each page of the attachment
> show up in the sidebar in Preview, but I cannot open the pages.
> The attachments print from Preview without any difficulty .
> If I change the suffix from .tif  to  .tiff , however, the documents open in
> Preview.
>
> Why could this be?

Sorry to hear the compatibility has gone downhill. Original versions
of the TIFF format only accommodated a single image. New TIFF support
multiple pages (as you well know), but ".tif" is pretty much a legacy
extension. My guess is that the sender(s) are sending an old or
incorrect MIME type in their e-mail, and Snow Leopard is relying on
the .tif extension to indicate the file format. Changing the extension
to .tiff probably causes Snow Leopard to re-evaluate the content on
its merits, at which point the MIME type is replaced with the correct
UTI. Of course, that doesn't explain why printing works, or how you
can fix your problem. Sorry!

James.


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Re: One for the Techos

[James Devenish]

Hi Kevin,

Perhaps it's a bit confusing that lithium batteries come in both
rechargeable and non-rechargeable varieties. Definitely do not use
non-rechargeables for laptop PRAM.

James


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Re: Repairing difficult permissions

[James Devenish]

Hi Pat,

> Ever since, when I use Disk Utility to repair permissions, dozens of entries
> needing repair come up.

If the permissions appear as "should be ..., they are lrwxrwxrwx",
these permissions do NOT need to be repaired despite what Disk Utility
tells you. The critical thing to note is that the permissions start
with the letter 'l', e.g. 'lrwx...' and are merely cross-references
(symbolic links) to other paths. This bug in the repair_packages
utility (underlying Disk Utility) and is fixed in Snow Leopard.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1448

James


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Snow Leopard compatibility

[James Devenish]

Hi,

There are some unofficial lists of software that is not yet compatible
with Snow Leopard:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/27/snow_leopard_incompatibilities/
http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/

I know I use some of those applications!

James


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Re: Keychain?

[James Devenish]

Hi Hugh,

You may find that you can go into Safari preferences > Security and
then turn off the auto-fill of passwords. This may then mean Keychain
is not longer used in Safari.

However, a common explanation of this problem is if the password for
the user has changed, in which case the fix is to change the Keychain
password to match the account password. The reason this step is
required is because the Keychain password is used for encrypting the
password, and hence Keychain needs to go through the process of using
the old password to de-crypt the chain followed by using the new
password to re-encrypt the chain.

James


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Re: Snow Leopard

[James Devenish]

Hi Peter,

2009/8/26 Peter Tomlinson :
> Regarding the formatting of drives does that include all external drives?

Snow Leopard will continue to read and write external disks (and thumb
drives, etc.). The GUID partition issue is only relevant for disks
onto which you are installing Snow Leopard. This is because GUID
enables an Intel computer to boot using Snow Leopard. Since you are
using Time Machine for backups, this is not considered Installing Snow
Leopard for GUID purposes. If you ever needed to restore your
computer, you'd most likely to do so by booting from a Mac OS X
installation DVD, hence you don't need to reformat your Time Machine
disk. If on the other hand you were making a "live backup" directly
onto your external disk for booting in an emergency, the GUID rule
would presumably apply. (?)

James


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Re: Apple Mail - questions about 'Rules'

[James Devenish]

Hi Steven,

2009/8/26 Steven Knowles :
> With the rules on two Macs accessing the same IMAP email account, I suspect
> that the rules will be applied twice, with the result being two copies of
> the email being sent to other email addresses.

If you're flagging messages on the server when the rules are applied,
then configure a rule that skips over flagged messages?

James


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Re: 4 corners program 'Life in the Fast Lane'

[James Devenish]

Hi,

As a starting point, "bots" fall within the
virus/spyware/adware/malware/break-in vulnerability spectrum.
Detection, prevention, and susceptibility fall along those lines. If
you've previously made a decision not to worry about anti-virus for
Mac OS X due to the relatively low risk, you need not be alarmed by
last night's programme. If you have a monitoring system like "Little
Snitch", bot activity will be detected unless the bot hides itself
within the kernel (highly specific to OS versions and CPU - rare for
us).

Bots, zombie networks, identity theft, mules, etc., are old and
well-established phenomena -- nothing has changed overnight. We have
been living alongside these for as long as we would care to remember.
*However*, Mac OS X is not immune and there are some botnets for Mac
OS X that have emerged this year, so the risk for Mac users is
probably higher than before. I have no idea if these new botnets are
viable, or if they fizzle out straight away. The next one "could" be a
biggie...

*Caution* If you are going to buy anti-badware software, don't buy it
through spam. I know it sounds silly, but there's a phenomenon called
"scareware", where fear is used to trick people into buying anti-virus
software that's either ineffective or a bot itself!

James


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Re: posting etiquette

[James Devenish]

Hi,

2009/8/17 Roger Kortas :
> I don't really understand why some people are getting upset for something
> that is managed for us by a very few people is their spare time!!!

I think what confuses/upsets participants (who are also volunteers) is
when there's no explanation, followed by vague answers -- people don't
know what to expect, but Daniel has cleared that up now.

Regarding Google/Google groups, it's quite confining and you run up
against a frequent requirement for people to set up and use Google
accounts in order to participate. There are numerous problems with
this and while I am a Google user (both as a 'client' as as a
'hoster'), I wouldn't strike me as a good idea for WAMUG, if it can be
avoided.

James


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Re: Airport Extreme - g vs n?

[James Devenish]

Hi Mike,

2009/8/4 Mike Fuller :
> I'm getting a Mac laptop (MacBook Core2duo 2.16) and want to use it's
> wireless capabilities, so I'm after a wifi base station.

The 1 thing not mentioned...what will you be doing with your wireless?
Web browsing? Printing? File sharing? Backups? Multi-player games? And
with how many other people using wireless in the house?

A lot of people are perfectly happy with 802.11g (except for the huge
software updates we endure these days), especially if there are only a
couple of machines and not too many neighbours competing for WiFi
spectrum.

If you're used to the reliability and capacity of Ethernet, you may be
disappointed by 802.11g, but in that case there's no harm having
802.11g on standby and using Ethernet most of the time.

James


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Re: Snow Leopard

[James Devenish]

2009/8/1 Severin Crisp :
> I just got a message from Amazon offering a pre-order on Snow Leopard for
> $29!   I am sure someone is still making something, even at that price!

Well that's pleasant. Microsoft's price to upgrade from Windows Vista
Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium (due in October) costs only
slightly less than an outright copy of Leopard (e.g. $130 versus
$160). Apple's upgrade from Mac OS X Leopard to Mac OS X Snow Leopard
is a mere $29 (due in September). I guess this reflects the
incremental nature of Snow Leopard (whereas perhaps Windows 7 is what
Vista should have been).

James


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Re: Bluetooth problem

[James Devenish]

Hi John,

I have a MacBook Pro 15" with Leopard, probably the most disappointing
and flawed Mac I've had in a long time. One of the many day-to-day
frustrations is that Bluetooth drops out when used with my Apple
Wireless Mighty Mouse and Apple Wireless Keyboard. There is no such
problem with any of my other Macs. Apple issued a FirmWare update, but
it has not helped. To get Bluetooth working again, I have gone into
Bluetooth preferences and chosen "Show Bluetooth status in the menu
bar". When Bluetooth drops out, I use the trackpad (which is the
MacBook Pro's redeeming feature) to go into the Bluetooth menu and
Disconnect one of the devices. When I do this, all devices re-connect
(including the one I just 'Disconnected') and Bluetooth is working
again. Works every time for me.

James


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Re: DVD regions

[James Devenish]

Hi Adrian,

2009/7/11 Adrian Skehan :
> Can anyone please tell me if the DVD burner puts encodes a DVD with a
> Regional Code?

You won't have region codes on DVDs that you created (and
hypothetically even if you did, you'd probably have all your equipment
set to the same region code anyway). Also, DVDs will actually mount
even if they have a mismatched region code.

> Just to clarify my problem a bit;  I have my iMac G5 and 2 intel MacBooks
> here at the moment and, to my surprise, having burnt iDVD movies/slide shows
> with each of them I find that the iMac G5 and one of the MacBook's DVD will
> play on my family room, lounge room player and my old iMac G4 but the one
> from the other MacBook will only play on the lounge room player and iMac G5,
> it wont even mount on the old iMac G4.

Is the problem only with iDVDs from MacBook #2 going to the G4, or are
there other players (e.g., family room) that won't play? And are there
many DVDs that won't play, or just one? I'd firstly suspect the G4,
either of the drive wearing out or of the DVD file format being a
version too new for the old G4. It's also possible that you burned a
dual-layer disc and the G4 can't play dual-layer, or that you have a
variety of +R and -R discs versus drives. Normally this wouldn't be a
problem, but if any one of the drives is slightly out of alignment,
you could have failures to play.

James


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Re: Vertical Bar in email address

[James Devenish]

Hi,

2009/7/7 Steven Knowles :
> Has anyone ever used or seen the vertical bar, or pipe, on a keyboard used
> as part of an email address?

Yes, the "username" part of e-mail addresses can contain a variety of
allowed punctuation (including apostrophes). As an example that Clyde
mentioned, the plus sign and exclamation mark have traditionally been
used in the following convention: route!username+fol...@domain (but
the +folder trick is not supported by all servers...some of them treat
it as part of the username and fail to recognise it). It is even
possible to have spaces, if you quote them: "James'
e-mail"@my.domain.com.au.

James


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Re: Transparent Stripe down RHS of desktop

[James Devenish]

Hi Matt

On 03/07/2009, at 11:49 PM, Matt Falvey wrote:
> Hi, my daughter has managed to put a stripe permanently on her desktop on
> the the RHS, top to bottom occupies about 10-15% of the desktop top screen
> width, is transparent with about 20% opacity.

Having trouble interpreting this description. Do you mean there is a
dark stripe that covers all windows and the menubar, or that it floats
between the desktop icons and applications, or that it is actually the
desktop background that's affected? Is it similar in appearance to the
Dock or is it quite different? Try going into System Preferences >
Accounts > Login Items and remove anything that shouldn't be there,
then try logging out or restarting. Does that make a difference?

James


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Re: new macbookpro ?

[James Devenish]

Hi Roger,

A difference of 4h versus 1.5h is so dramatic is sounds like one of
the cores is turned off (i.e., CPU set to use 1 core only). But that
should've been reflected in Xbench too. Is Handbrake the only slow
thing on your new computer? Apart from your overall Xbench score, you
can also explore the results for specific hidden differences in CPU or
disk.

James

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Re: 64-bit architecture with older 32-bit applications

[James Devenish]

Hi,

There are three issues here. First is the actual transition to a
64-bit headers and libraries, which has been underway for many years
and is "not a big issue". Second is Snow Leopard's support for older
32-bit apps and drivers. Thirdly is Snow Leopard's support for PowerPC
apps and drivers.

We have heard that Snow Leopard occupies less disk space than Leopard.
And because 64-bit binaries are larger than 32-bit binaries, any major
reduction in size for a 64-bit OS has traditionally implied dropping
support for older architectures. As a case in point, current
transitional libraries contain all four architectures on disk:

library.so: Mach-O universal binary with 4 architectures
library.so (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O bundle ppc
library.so (for architecture ppc64):   Mach-O 64-bit bundle ppc64
library.so (for architecture i386):Mach-O bundle i386
library.so (for architecture x86_64):  Mach-O 64-bit bundle x86_64

Fortunately, Apple has already committed Snow Leopard (despite its
size reduction) to supporting 32-bit Intel applications, if not kernel
extensions . Regarding
Freehand MX, was it released as a Universal binary or only PPC? I
don't know if Snow Leopard will support PPC applications (Rosetta).
There is speculation that by default it WON'T, but that you CAN
OPTIONALLY install Rosetta support (losing some disk space in the
process).

James.

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Re: new macbookpro ?

[James Devenish]

Hi Roger,

Not sure why you are having your performance problem. I run HandBrake
fine on the slow graphics card. You can try http://www.xbench.com to
compare your two laptops (it makes sense to compare your two laptops
rather than compare with the highly variable community benchmarks).

James

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Re: new macbookpro ?

[James Devenish]

Hi Roger,

2009/6/28 Roger Kortas :
> I got my new Macbookpro on Friday its a 2.8Ghz 15" model, its very nice but
> seems slow compared to my old 2.4Ghz!

Is it possible that your new laptop is busy backing up with Time Machine?

James

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Audio output gain adjustment

[James Devenish]

Hi,

I want to be able to reduce the output volume of an external USB sound
device below the lowest volume available in the system Sound
preference. I imagine the way to do this is to filter all output
signal to reduce the amplitude. Does anyone know of a free, simple,
gain-adjustment output filter that's Leopard/Intel compatible? E.g., a
HAL plug-in.

James

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Re: You Tube video

[James Devenish]

Hi Adrian,

2009/6/24 Adrian Skehan :
> Is there a way of capturing video from You Tube and is it OK to do so?

You can download YouTube videos using keepvid.com and savetube.com,
for example. Copyright and licensing is specific to each video, so you
would have to check each one yourself. I don't know how those tools
are viewed from the point of view of YouTube's terms and conditions -
you would have to check. They are known to work, though.

James

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Re: Mail

[James Devenish]

Hi Ken,

2009/6/17 Ken Jackson 
> strange one... I put  emails in the trash but when I go to the trash they're 
> not there?
> Where might they go to & why?

Do you mean you are in Apple Mail when you do this? Do you click the
"Delete" button or do you drag the messages? Have you had this problem
from day 1, or is it something that has changed recently? If you go
into Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviours, check whether "Move
deleted messages to the Trash mailbox" is turned on.

Regards,
James

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Re: Can't download Pdf files from Safari

[James Devenish]

Hi Dick,

> When I go to webpages with a .pdf, all I get is a blank (black) page.
> I think this might have arisen when I upgraded to OS 10.4.11 and I have
> also upgraded to Safari 3.0.4 and Adobe Reader 9.1.2.

If you need to see the PDFs on website, you can control-click on each
links, which will display a popup menu, from which you choose
'Download Linked File'. Then you can double-click the files to open
them in Adobe Reader or Preview.

Regarding the problem with Safari, the current version of Safari 3 is
3.2.3, but you say you have the older version 3.0.4. It sounds like an
issue with the Adobe Reader web plug-in, but I don't know
specifically. It is interesting that you get black blank pages instead
of white blank pages -- hopefully this will help someone identify the
solution for you.

James

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Re: Device removal warning

[James Devenish]

Hi Barry,

In that case, can I suggest Shutting Down your computer tonight and
turning the Firewire drive off, leaving the computer powered off for
at least 8 hours, then starting back up again and resuming normal
procedures. Has the problem gone away? Some people might suggest
resetting ("zapping") your PRAM (find instructions on the web) but
simply leaving your computer turned off may be enough to resettle the
FireWire controller without the side-effects of a PRAM reset.

James.

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Re: Device removal warning

[James Devenish]

Hi Barry,

2009/6/16 Barry Sexstone :
> In the last few days, on waking from sleep in the morning, the computer
> shows the standard device removal warning "The device you removed was not
> properly put away etc." and the icons for the external disk are not on the

I assume you are referring to a desktop computer, but if you have a
laptop with a "bus-powered" external drive (i.e., one that doesn't
plug into the wall), it is easily explained. If either the laptop or
hard drive, or both, are plugged into wall power for the entire time,
everything will be fine. But if the laptop is asleep and both the
laptop AND the hard drive are UNplugged from the wall at the same time
(or if your house lost mains power at any time during the night), you
would get the "device removal" message when the computer wakes up.

I'm not sure why you would have the problem with a desktop. If you
house experienced power interruptions during the night, I'd expect
your desktop to lose power too. I don't know what kind of WD drive you
have, but make sure it's plugged into the wall if it needs to be. I
can only image that if it came unplugged, it might draw its power
through FireWire when the computer is awake, but not when the computer
is asleep. If the drive has a light, does the light normally stay on
when the computer is asleep, or does it go off?

James

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Re: PDF Writers - tricky request

[James Devenish]

Hi Aurora,

2009/6/10 Aurora74 :
> The tricky part is that I need to pair pdf writers to folders. It is my
> intent to then automate emailing the resultant pdf's  to defined addresses
> (one for each folder)

As Peter says, you can probably do what you need with the Mac's
built-in features, which I'll describe below. But having said that, I
don't quite understand the scenario completely. Is it always the same
Doc A and Doc B that you're printing from? Of could it be any file at
all? And what Mac OS X version (Tiger, Leopard) and programme you
printing from (some programmes have built-in automation)?

In general, it looks like a human would have to at least choose
between PDFwriter A and PDFwriter B. And then who choses the names for
the resulting PDFs to be e-mailed? I would suggest all your PDFs go
into a single folder (you can use any PDF writer you like, including
the built-in one), and then you automate the e-mailing based on the
name of the PDF rather than the folder location. So if the PDF is
named Doc A, then it goes with E-mail A, otherwise...etc.

On the other hand, if it is okay for a human to choose the printer
driver, then you can just extend your Mac's built-in PDF print menu to
suit your purposes. I am on Leopard right now, and in the Print window
I can click on the PDF button and choose 'Mail PDF'. It runs an
Automator workflow. Have a look at the menu and you'll see that you
can 'Edit Menu'. So, just add your own Automator workflows, namely
'PDF E-mail A', 'PDF E-mail B', etc. All you have to put into your
Automator workflow is the "New Mail Message" action. The PDF will be
automatically attached. If you have already set up your e-mail
automation to work from folders, then your workflow should move the
PDF into the folder for you (as per your original request).

James

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Re: Re Links in email .. Apple Mail

[James Devenish]

Hi Bob,

It's probably the business's fault. It is invalid to put ~ into a URL.
If it appears, it denotes the end of the URL. A valid alternative is
to use "%7e":



Some mail clients and webmail may kindly (but wrongly) allow the ~,
but I wouldn't bet on it. I'm reading the e-mail in Gmail and it
doesn't work.

James.

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Re: A profile query

[James Devenish]

Hi Severin,

Since I don't export from Quicktime, I don't know the exact answer to
your question, but typical default profiles are (a) sRGB (which is
like a "lowest common denominator") and (b) the source device profile.
I'd assume that QT passes along the colour values provided by your
recorder software, and if that was recording PAL TV (e.g., DVB-T
MPEG), then I'd assume the closest profile is would be the PAL/SECAM
RGB profile in Photoshop. But if you have edited them as DV in
Cinematize, you'd better check the specifics of DV/Cinematize.

Also, in Photoshop, be aware that you may have "Proof Colours" turned
OFF or turned ON.

Depending on where the images are going to be used, the best strategy
could be to assign PAL/SECAM to the images and them CONVERT the
colours to sRGB as your working space (pretty much the default for
JPEG).

James.

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Re: Sun's VirtualBox

[James Devenish]

Hi,

I use VirtualBox to run both Windows and Linux, no complaints, except
(cosmetically) that the Windows desktop background sometimes shows
through in seamless mode, and (reasonably) it is sometimes necessary
to update VirtualBox after updating the hosted operating system. USB
support is not always 100%, meaning that although most devices work
fine, one or two don't seem to connect at all. Mouse tracking is not
100% as smooth as the native operating system, but I always found this
to be a problem with VMware, etc, too.

James

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Re: Managing tasks on Mac

[James Devenish]

Hi Andrew,

There are potentially several solution to your issue, the first of
which you have already tried (i.e., using System Preferences > Energy
Saver to set a wake-up time for your computer).

Secondly, even if you your computer was on all the time (forgetting
the sleep/wake energy issue for the time being), your torrent software
might have a bandwidth preference with a specified start time and stop
time. For instance, in Transmission, you can set your download
bandwidth to be unlimited during your off-peak quota period and zero
during your on-peak quota period.

Thirdly, if you would like to have your software automatically launch
you can still use a repeating event in iCal, either by opening files
(to start a new download) or opening the application (to continue
existing uploads and downloads). Unfortunately, as you already found
out, iCal can only launch an application via opening a document or
running an AppleScript. To make an AppleScript, go into Applications >
AppleScript > Script Editor, then save a really simple AppleScript
like the following (and save it somewhere you can find it, like
Documents). Then iCal will recognise it.

tell application "Vuse"
activate
end tell

James.

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Re: Restricting access by MAC address

[James Devenish]

Hi Steven,

If MAC address filtering is the appropriate option, then you filter a
Mac's MAC address the same way you would any other MAC address. Exact
instructions may vary according to what OS version is running on the
server, and depending on whether a whitelist or a blacklist is better.
Maybe Windows Server doesn't come with this feature. It's more common,
perhaps depending on the policies of the organisation that runs the
network, to do MAC filtering on the network switches (Ethernet) at a
border or edge, not on the endpoint servers themselves.

James.

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Re: Boot with FW800 possible ?

[James Devenish]

Hi,

2009/4/23 Robert Howells :
> BUT what aboutFIREWIRE 800  .
> Has anybody actually done it   booted a PPC or an Intel Mac ?

You're really not telling us what models this pertains to, so the
answer is "officially yes, most of the time, but not on some older
Macs, and in some cases you may have to apply a firmware update". I
haven't heard of any rule specifically preventing FireWire 800 Macs
from booting via FireWire 800, so if anything it would be the FireWire
400 macs that might not boot. I have booted an Xserve with FW 800, but
I can only guess that this doesn't answer question. You might take
heart from this website:
 (answer: at
least one person has done it successfully with one model that wasn't
an Xserve). Note that with laptops, you may have to have the AC
adaptor plugged in if you want to boot from a bus-powered FireWire
drive.

James

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Re: Boot with FW800 possible ?

[James Devenish]

Hi Rob,

In general you should be able to boot from FireWire by going into
System Preferences and selecting the disk as the startup drive, or by
holding down Option at startup. In a pinch, you might alternatively be
able to use Command-Shift-Option-Delete to ignore your internal disk
when booting. HOWEVER there is a difference in the boot partitioning
system for Intel versus PPC, so it may turn out that you can only boot
the platform that the disk was formatted for...

James

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Re: MacResolve Spam

[James Devenish]

Hi,

I don't think it's the WAMUG list OR the DigiLife newsletter list per se.

Following from Daniel and Malcolm B's contributions, I have been using
this address (Gmail) for WAMUG since 2005 and I did NOT receive the
SPAM here.

The common denominator and most likely suspect seems to be Digilife,
but NOT their newsletter, as I have never been subscribed to their
newsletter yet I received the spam. I have only ever bought
off-the-shelf accessories from Digilife and never used them for
service. The only way they could have had my old address (from five
years ago) is if I'd filled out a survey or competition several years
ago. Perhaps MacResolve scraped Digilife's customer database (rather
than the newsletter list). Maybe (as Shay pointed out), this is a
tactic to claim a 'strong business relationship' with us. But in my
case, filling out a survey does not count! Since Michael Waldie is
subscribed to this list, might he confirm or deny his involvement?

James

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Re: MacResolve Spam

[James Devenish]

Hi,

Mine came through to an address that I have not used since 2004 or
2005. The address is not currently associated with any mailing lists
or online stores, so Tony & Mike must have used a  spam list that is
several years old. It *does* seem to be specifically targeted to Mac
users and not others, so it could logically have come from a breach of
an old mailing list or sales list from several years ago...

James.

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Re: An Office quirk

[James Devenish]

Hi Severin,

> When going to either Word or Excel or Power Point, by default a new blank
> document opens.  I find this most annoying

Do you remember version 5 of Microsoft Word for Mac, which was
brilliant for its day? And then how Microsoft had its Mac developers
lobotomised between version 5 and 6, so 6 was a port of the DOS
version of Word (I exaggerate how bad it was, but nevertheless...).
One of the regressions in Word 6 was that a blank document would
appear and then, unlike Word 5, you HAD to close it before you opened
another document, otherwise it would stay there forever. Fortunately
this was addressed in future versions of Word, and now if you open a
document while the initial blank Document1 document is on screen, the
Document1 document disappears automatically. So, you don't have to
close it yourself...it gets replaced when Word realises it's unwanted.

James

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