Glog

Courtesy of bstreiff: Enabling Remote Disc on not-Airs:

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true
defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool true

Context: we have an older MacBook with what appears to be a busted DVD-ROM drive, preventing a clean install of the newly arrived cat. After enabling CD/DVD Sharing on the “server”, nothing would show up on the “client”. After tweaking the above properties and restarting the Finder, it’s all good now. Install in progress.

Snow Leopard is still a rare-to-find species in Spain (at least in Valencia). No luck in four separate (and unrelated) stores this morning.

Yum: Apple to Ship Mac OS X Snow Leopard on August 28.

I recently noticed that my system.log was collecting these messages fairly constatly.

Jul 14 04:08:01 boxname kernel[0]: unknown SIGSEGV code 0
Jul 14 04:08:31: --- last message repeated 3 times ---
Jul 14 04:08:41 boxname kernel[0]: unknown SIGSEGV code 0
Jul 14 04:09:08: --- last message repeated 3 times ---

It turns out the problem lies with Adobe’s license manager, and they provide a fix. All is well now.

I don’t really have the time to try this out, especially with all the gotchas, but it is nevertheless interesting. I may give it a try once some version of OpenSolaris goes into 2010. For now, I’ll keep watching out for Karim’s experience and see how it pans out. No, not giving up on Mac OS X; just curious about the possibilities.

I try to stay as far away from Outlook as I can, but I needed to something with it today and that required hooking up through the VPN. I fired up VMware, started Windows, ran through the network wizard for a VPN, got set up, connected… and nothing really worked. See here and here for details. Sigh.

Along with the system I picked up yesterday, I bought a HP Color Laserjet CP1215, which isn’t particularly Mac friendly. Many thanks to Ryan Ridge for his very helpful write-up on how to get this printer to work with a Mac. I still can’t get color, but I’ll settle for B&W for now. Thanks again Ryan!

Today I picked up a cheap Compaq Presario (yep, C-o-m-p-a-q) with an Athlon X2, 4GB of RAM and a 320GB SATA drive for under $300. I have some VMs and other cruft to run and I rather not do it on the Mac Pro anymore. This will do fine, especially as a playground of sorts. I wanted to put OpenSolaris 2009.06 on it, which took less than 20 minutes, including the creation of a ZFS root mirror. Another 10 minutes to flip into a Dom0 and I’m ready to go.

Very sweet indeed.

OpenSolaris 2009.06 is out. Get the bits. They’re yummy.

The word vista, which was probably imported into English from Spanish, means a pleasing view, esp. one seen through a long, narrow opening. This is most ironic in the context of the latest offering from Redmond, which I had seen here and there but never actually used.

I recently picked up a no-name (well, it does have a brand, and a popular one at that, but the hardware manufacturer has nothing to do with this particular gripe, and I will appreciate being spared the install Linux diatribe) for a friend. This friend, who is not a computer whiz, speaks Spanish, so I wanted to switch the language in the OS to Spanish. Sounds sensible, right?

Asides from the horribly busy interface (discerning input boxes and even windows on the screen was a challenge, and giving up something like 35% of the browser’s useful real state, i.e., actual content, in the name of title bars, menus, plugin messages, search bars, tabs and frames annoyed me in extremis), I was unable to configure the thing to display menus and such in Spanish. In the process, I learned about LIPs and MUIs, I read a few [useless] threads on how to activate the Spanish translation (I apparently needed to install an undownloadable LIP, but only if I’m using something or other edition), and ended up nowhere. Ironic as well the whole Genuine Advantage gig. I gave up. Time’s valuable.

Compare this to the PowerBook I gave my Mom a while back: System Settings -> International -> Language -> Spanish. Log out. Log back in. Heck, I’ll trow in a reboot just to try and even things out a bit. Done. Move on with life.

I’m glad a lot of people find Vista useful (and pretty, I suppose) enough to endure it. I’ll spare you the expletives. Perhaps I’m getting too old to tinker like in the good old days, tho language installation (really, it should simply be activation) doesn’t qualify as tinkering in my book. When I tell people I last used Windows in the mid 90′s (I did use NT for about 4 months at Systemhouse), they sometimes look at me funny. But then again: I don’t have to endure my operating system. I use it and be done with it.