the-way-to-the-centre » MacBook http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog a Lazlo Woodbine thriller Sun, 12 Feb 2012 03:06:16 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 alarm clocks and apple scripts http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2011/07/14/alarm-clocks-and-apple-scripts/ http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2011/07/14/alarm-clocks-and-apple-scripts/#comments Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:04:02 +0000 Ian http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/?p=936 For the last couple or three years I have been using the Powercontroller application as an alarm clock on my Mac. Each morning it starts iTunes with a recently played song and slowly increases the volume so I don’t get shocked out of bed.1

One of the features of Powercontroller is the ability to run scripts and following a rewatching of Iron Man I thought I fancied something like Jarvis that told me the weather in the morning before I got out of bed.

Most of the scripting was cut, pasted and modified for my own needs. Although I learned pretty fast so much of it was resequenced to better fit in with what I needed and to improve the efficiency.

There were two main hurdles in creating my messenger:

Adjusting the volume for the voice based on location.

At my apartment, my laptop is always connected to a set of speakers so I realised that if I just had a default volume I would either get blasted out of bed if the volume was set for the internal speakers, or not hear the message if I was not at my place.
Unfortunately, Applescript does not have a way of testing for a headphone jack (there is a way where you allow the computer to ‘read’ the screen but trialing this I had troubles with screensaver locks and other applications that run overnight (such as Carbon Copy Cloner) that have popup messages on completion. Eventually I settled on a method where it tests for the SSID of my router, on the assumption that if the airport is connected to my router the computer will be plugged into the speakers.
The script also captures initial volume settings so it can return to them once the message has been delivered.

Testing for an internet connection

As the script checks my mail and gathers live weather data, I realised that it would go horribly wrong if it could not do this (for reasons such as staying at a hotel with no internet or my housemate turning off the modem). It took a while but I eventually found an elegant solution that just tries to ping a website (in this case the Apple site) and then either runs or does not run relevant sections of the script.

With all that done, at the allotted time something like this happens:

  1. Clock reaches desired time
  2. Powercontroller starts iTunes and wake up script2
  3. Appropriate amount of pause is included in the script to both give it time to complete the data gathering and to let iTunes music kinda wake me up
  4. System volume level is captured, then reduced.

    “Good morning Ian”
    “It is 5:55 AM”
    “Today is Thursday, 14 July 2011″
    “You have 3 unread emails”
    “Now, the temperature is: 9 degrees centigrade, and it is Mostly Cloudy.”
    “Todays forecast is: Showers Late, between 12 and 19 degrees.”

  5. System volume level is put back, I try and get up

It doesn’t quite have the eloquence of JARVIS and I would like to extend things to include a news headline and the like but I’m happy with things as they are at the moment.

  1. Except when I set it wrong ?
  2. Which also instructs iTunes to check for new podcasts ?
]]> http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2011/07/14/alarm-clocks-and-apple-scripts/feed/ 0 dropbox symlinks http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2008/12/18/dropbox-symlinks/ http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2008/12/18/dropbox-symlinks/#comments Thu, 18 Dec 2008 06:48:49 +0000 Ian http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/?p=740 After my laptop got a (non fatal) soaking due to a burst pipe, I have been looking at additional measures to backup some of my data1.

Remembering a post by but she’s a girl, I duly downloaded and installed myself a copy of Dropbox. BSAG mentioned creating symlinks for folders rather than copying so that is what I tried since I didn’t really want to be dragging and moving things too much.

After creating a symlink/ alias with crtl+click, I dragged it to the dropbox folder where it was duly synced. The contents of the aliased folder however, were not. A few repeat & fails later a bit more searching brought me to this post that stated that this only works if you symlink out from the Dropbox directory.

So, as far as I can tell there are no GUI methods for this so it was off to Terminal for me:

Last login: Mon Dec 14 22:50:49 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
Ians-MacBook:~ ian$
Ians-MacBook:~ ian$ cd dropbox
Ians-MacBook:~/dropbox ian$ ln -s ~/WordPress/New\ Blog\ Backups "New Blog Backups"

That creates the symbolic link (ln -s) from the backup folder (~/WordPress/New\ Blog\ Backups) to the Dropbox-synced folder ("New Blog Backups").

Now whenever I backup my site via ftp & drop it into the normal folder, a copy gets pushed up to the remote server as well.

Since I only have one laptop at the moment, between-system syncing is not needed (though I am looking at either the MSI Wind or Lenovo S10 as a ultra-portable2).

Hopefully this system will serve me well & transparently to keep important documents safe from burst pipes.

  1. Unfortunately the PSU for the backup drive also got a soaking and is currently dead too. ↑
  2. These seem to be the best bet to persuade OS X onto ↑
]]> http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2008/12/18/dropbox-symlinks/feed/ 0 fun on the command line http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2007/11/16/fun-on-the-command-line/ http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2007/11/16/fun-on-the-command-line/#comments Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:21:52 +0000 Ian http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/archives/2007/11/16/fun-on-the-command-line/ Late last night my MacBook attempted to install and update itself to the most recent version 10.4.11. After downloading the file a scary message about ‘failed install’ and ‘remove package from trash and try again’ appeared. Then applications started not launching, and a normal reboot resulted in the spinning spinny-thing of despair. Booting to single-user mode showed the process stalling midway with the following.

Load of /sbin/launchd, errno 88, trying /sbin/mach_init
Load of /sbin/launchd failed, errno 88

Fortunately searching for ‘launchd, errno 88′ took me to the blog of Igor Minar, who dealt with the same issue on 10.4.9. I am thankful that the iPod Touch has a fully fledged browser built in which I could read it from while doing the deed1.

The first try or two I must have had typos as it did not work, but eventually I got to the installer GUI which allowed me to apply the update. Incase anyone else tries this, it took a long time to boot first time after the fix.

The more user friendly solution which I didn’t think of at the time would have been to boot from my SuperDuper backup, and download and apply the combo update to the laptop drive from there. One to remember for next time as 4:30am is not a good time to be typing complex things into Terminal2.

  1. The combo update itself I managed to download through my dual-boot of XP ↑
  2. I don’t like things that don’t work ↑
]]> http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2007/11/16/fun-on-the-command-line/feed/ 3 up in smoke http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2007/05/10/up-in-smoke/ http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2007/05/10/up-in-smoke/#comments Thu, 10 May 2007 12:32:03 +0000 Ian http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/archives/2007/05/10/up-in-smoke/ On Tuesday evening I booted up my MacBook (after a moment wondering why it was off in the first place). As it was doing it’s thing, I thought I could smell burning, and glanced round to see the power cable creating some nice sparks and plenty of smoke as several amps merrily sublimed the plastic coating from the wire1. Unfortunately this does not seem to be an unknown fault – it looks like the strain reliever is not doing it’s job correctly.

At least I am still covered by the warranty, so endured the traffic to get to the Apple shop in the Bullring after work on Wednesday.

I quickly accosted an Apple Employee (who incidentally was packing power-bricks onto the shelf) and explained the situation.

AE: You’ll need a Genius to sort out a replacement [pause]… The earliest slot is Friday.
Me: !!!???!! Erm… It’s clearly melted, it really doesn’t need a Genius, I just need one of those from the boxes that you were just stacking.
AE: Sorry, can’t do that, it is a service part you need. If you can’t come back, you can phone AppleCare they will arrange to swap it out..
Me: The boxes over there have the part that I want……
AE: Or you can buy one now, call Applecare and then return the one you purchased today.
Me: !!!!??????????!!!!!!!!!!!!
Me: Ok, I’ll need the Applecare number (no PSU – no power – no internet)…. and I’ll also need a form to complain about ridiculous customer service.. please.

AE disappears to to talk to AE2 and AE3. At this point I am considering having a word with the people looking at the MacBooks and showing them some melted hardware.

Time passes AE returns from conference..

AE: If you would like to come over to the till I can change that for you.

At this point AE takes power brick box from shelf… hmm.. service parts?.

Having dedicated and trained people to solve problems is great, what they also need are some people who can take a look, say ‘yep, thats dead’ and sort it out there and then (without the need for customers to be told to come back in two days, buy something to return later, or request complain forms).

Sometimes you really don’t need to be a genius.

  1. I assume that the cable had partially failed during the day, cutting power meaning the battery had gone flat. Lucky the sparks and smoke bit didn’t happen then too… ↑
]]> http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2007/05/10/up-in-smoke/feed/ 0 missing buttons http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2007/02/05/missing-buttons/ http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2007/02/05/missing-buttons/#comments Mon, 05 Feb 2007 23:07:43 +0000 Ian http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/archives/2007/02/05/missing-buttons/ A few people are linking to an article from Fridays Guardian blog:

[...] When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, “I hate Macs”, and then I think, “Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?” Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. [...]

This has to be the one thing that really bugs me in the Mac vs PC/Windows argument, trivial as it might be. Simply the answer is: It was never designed to have one.

Apple operating systems have, for a long time, been designed with the concept of one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse – the keyboard hand therefore able to operate key modifiers such and cmd+click and option+click. Windows (not sure about Linux et al) on the other hand were designed with the mouse as the primary input device and so menus are acessed via right/middle/double click etc.

As for the content of the rest of the post regarding what is better or worse, I shall just say that my laptop is equally at home running OS X or XP, (and you can always buy a 2-button mouse if you really want one).

[From a link via Lori].

]]> http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2007/02/05/missing-buttons/feed/ 0 tracks and things http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2007/02/05/tracks-and-things/ http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2007/02/05/tracks-and-things/#comments Mon, 05 Feb 2007 13:24:30 +0000 Ian http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/archives/2007/02/05/tracks-and-things/ I’ve been wanting to try out Tracks on my laptop for a while but have held off as the installation seems rather complex with several things being needed. Hopefully this guide will help out, when I have enough time to try and break things.

]]> http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2007/02/05/tracks-and-things/feed/ 0 the other 0.001 percent http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2006/12/01/the-other-0001-percent/ http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2006/12/01/the-other-0001-percent/#comments Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:57:52 +0000 Ian http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/archives/2006/12/01/the-other-0001-percent/ A nice simple fix, though I had to delete the file from /all_users and /my_account. I don’t know if it has it, but Vista needs bootable volumes on external drives.

]]> http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2006/12/01/the-other-0001-percent/feed/ 0 cloning XP http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2006/11/29/cloning-xp/ http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2006/11/29/cloning-xp/#comments Tue, 28 Nov 2006 23:02:47 +0000 Ian http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/archives/2006/11/29/cloning-xp/ On my MacBook I have a Bootcamp installed partition for running Windowy-things (i.e playing Eve online) from an external drive. Feeling a little tight on space I ordered a 160Gb drive1 which should give a bit more room to fill my computer with yet more stuff. Copying the OS X part was going to be easy – I already have a program that can make bootable copies on any connected drive, XP was going to be a little trickier though, and no-one seems to have written an application to do the job. Fortunately, while consuming tea and cake2 I realised I had been looking too hard, and the solution may in fact, based on a few assumptions, be simple:

  • Windows is a bunch of files in a FAT32 partition
  • OS X can read and write to a FAT32 partition
  • OS X doesn’t care what the Windows files are and handily corals them in a single place

With these thoughts I hatched a plan, and cloned both my OS X install (with Superduper) and a copy of the XP files onto an external drive. The plan was simple and given that it would probably go down in flames, worth a try…

  • Drop in the new hard drive
  • Re-clone OS X back into the laptop
  • Repartion using Bootcamp again, this time a little more generously than 5Gb for XP (so I don’t have to run everything off a USB drive)
  • Use the Windows installer to format the partition to FAT32 then kill the install process
  • Recopy the XP files into the new partition within OS X
  • Hope

Results were, very surprisingly, seemingly 99.999% effective (I seem to end up with a notepad file open at boot with the end of of a shell script)… but b*ugger me sideways with a bargepole if that was not the least painful dealing with XP I have ever had…

  1. I was of course delivered a 120Gb UATA drive first time around ↑
  2. Any better way to think about things? ↑
]]> http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2006/11/29/cloning-xp/feed/ 1 new bootcamp http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2006/11/03/new-bootcamp/ http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2006/11/03/new-bootcamp/#comments Fri, 03 Nov 2006 12:49:33 +0000 Ian http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/archives/2006/11/03/new-bootcamp/ Apple’s Bootcamp drivers have been bumped up to 1.1.2 to include trackpad scrolling. Everything BSOD’d on me during install and the pad now has a tendancy to go off on one at times. Scrolling is nice, but maybe an upgrade to avoid for now.

]]> http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2006/11/03/new-bootcamp/feed/ 0 perian http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2006/10/06/perian/ http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2006/10/06/perian/#comments Fri, 06 Oct 2006 00:20:06 +0000 Ian http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/archives/2006/10/06/perian/ If you have Quicktime, get Perian and get it now. No more multi-component woe. Plays almost anything, genius.

]]> http://the-way-to-the-centre.org.uk/blog/2006/10/06/perian/feed/ 0