Macos-Windows-Linux on Pesches Schlauch

Updating my Android tablet on the Mac

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:32:37 +0100

Updating a Samsung Galaxy Tab with a Mac is not for the faint of heart.

Triple emulation

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 17:27:00 +0100

I'm cleaning up old harddisks in my vintage PCs and found a DOS partition that I used solely to run the emulator S3AEMUL for the Psion Series 3a. This emulator was once available for free: a clever marketing trick! I got soon hooked and bought my first PDA, back in 1995.

Out of nostalgia I tried to get the emulator running again – but without leaving OS X, of course. Thanks to Parallels Desktop this should be easy, I thought. Just create a new virtual machine, install FreeDOS and copy the emulator on it.

AltGr and Parallels Desktop

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:24:19 +0100

I'm quite happy with my alien operating system running along my other applications on my Mac. The biggest gripe is the keyboard.

Parallels maps the Windows Alt key to the Mac alt/option key. Ok, Alt to alt seems quite logical, but my fingers don't care what is written on the key – they remember by position. And the Windows Alt key sits right to the left of the space key!
Though it's handy to be able to tab out of Windows with Cmd-Tab, I can't really tab back in. When I change the focus to Windows using Cmd-Tab, I have to press Cmd-I before my key presses are sent to Windows again (I know that I can use the mouse, but the keyboard is so much faster). I like when things are logical and symmetrical because that is what makes life easier.
The support for AltGr (I have a Swiss German keyboard and need AltGr for all the programmers best friends: []{}|\@#) is weak, almost nonexistent. A couple of weeks back Parallels mapped the Enter key of Apple Laptops (the one to the right of the right Cmd key) as AltGr – without telling anyone. I don't remember where I first found about this life saver, probably macosxhints, but surely not the Parallels help.
As of the newest build (1970), Enter as AltGr has silently vanished again. And only hidden in the forum pages are instructions how to get back the AltGr behaviour involving the Terminal. This is not the Mac way to configure things! (Basically you have to create the file /Library/Parallels/.keyboard_config containing one word: numenterisaltgr and no LF following it).
I dream of having the same keyboard layout inside and outside Parallels Desktop (e.g. using the option key to compose all these special characters in Windows), and perhaps even having a combined list of OS X and Windows applications when switching with Cmd-Tab.

Erleichtertes Hörbuch-Rippen

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 22:33:40 +0100

Ist es nicht angenehm, sich ein Buch vorlesen zu lassen? Am liebsten natürlich ortsungebunden, vom iPod – bloss wie gelangt das Hörbuch in den iPod? Bisher geschah das wie folgt:

Die Import-Einstellungen von iTunes auf AAC/gesprochene Podcasts setzen
CD einschieben, alle Tracks markieren und die CD-Titel gruppieren (unter Erweitert)
Jetzt die CD importieren.
Die Schritte 2 und 3 für alle CDs wiederholen. Am Schluss hat man einen Titel pro CD.
Den Namen der Titel editieren und nummerieren (sofern das nicht schon automatisch geschah, weil der Titel abgefragt und gefunden wurde). So ist es später auf dem iPod einfach, die CDs in der richtigen Reihenfolge zu hören.
Alle Titel markieren und das AppleScript Make Bookmarkable anwenden. Damit wird u.a. die Option Wiedergabeposition merken gesetzt und die Datei-Endung des Titels auf m4b gesetzt. Dies muss so sein, damit das Buch bei iTunes 7 in der Bibliothek unter Hörbücher eingereiht wird. (Dieser Schritt ist Apple-spezifisch. Bei Windows gibt es keine AppleScripts und für dasselbe sind wesentlich kompliziertere Aktionen nötig. Die Suchbegriffe m4b windows sind dein Freund...)
Synchronisieren. Für mich hat es sich bewährt, eine intelligente Wiedergabeliste extra zum Synchronisieren zu verwenden, mit den Kriterien Zähler ist 0 und Genre ist Hörbücher (vorausgesetzt, dass man nach dem Importieren das Genre richtig setzt). Damit erreicht man, dass Hörbücher automatisch vom iPod gelöscht werden, wenn man sie einmal gehört hat.

Neu geht es (nur mit Apple) auch etwas einfacher: mit dem Audiobook Builder. Die Schritte hier:

Swisscom and Orangeclick GPRS

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 10:33:29 +0100

One week per year I want to connect my Powerbook to the internet using GPRS. In principle this is easy: choose the right modem script in the Network Preferences and fill in the provider details.

Modem Script

Unfortunately, the Modem Scripts that come with OS X are rather old. I tried the newest one (for a T39), but failed. I asked the Swisscom hotline for help, but they told me that they don't support Apple Computers and directed me to the commercial solution from Novamedia.de ("Mobile High Speed" for €87).

iSync Phone Plugin for Motorola C350

Thu, 12 Jan 2006 22:18:41 +0100

According to the iSync Device List, the Motorola C350 is supported by iSync. But my phone was not found.

There are small differences between the supported model and mine. Using USB Prober¹ my device announces itself as:

Device VendorID/ProductID:   0x22B8/0x5802   (Motorola PCS)

whereas iSync expects² a ProductID of 0x3802 for the C350.

Instead of editing the iSync plist file I created an iSync Plugin as Rui Carmo described in his detailed iSync Plugins Howto.

Using Macintosh Menus without the Mouse

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 08:32:33 +0100

Using the newest Development version of Quicksilver, you can now navigate the menu of the current application without a mouse, just by using Quicksilver. Unfortunately, the configuration of Quicksilver is not for the faint of heart, but Rui Carmo has nice instructions in The Tao of Mac.

I have chosen Alt-§ as hotkey for menu navigation. See an example for choosing a menu entry typing Alt-§ G R U (CD-Titel gruppieren = Join CD Tracks in iTunes):

Darwinports and Mono incompabilities

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 20:31:32 +0100

I wanted to give dia a go and tried to install from Darwinports with sudo port install dia. I had a small problem during the install: after a couple of dependencies had been compiled, it aborted with this message:

--->  Installing glib2 2.8.4_0
--->  Activating glib2 2.8.4_0
--->  Cleaning glib2
--->  Configuring atk
Error: Target com.apple.configure returned: configure failure:
[... a couple of lines omitted ...]
checking for pkg-config... /usr/bin/pkg-config
checking for GLIB - version >= 2.5.7...
*** 'pkg-config --modversion glib-2.0' returned 2.6.3, but GLIB (2.8.4)
*** was found! [... rest omitted ...]

I couldn't find anything about this specific message. Because glib was just installed before pkg-config failed to find it, I tried installing the Darwinports pkg-config and then restarted the installation... and it worked this time!

Safe Sleep -- almost

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 15:55:50 +0100

Matt Johnston found out how to enable the hibernate mode (a.k.a. the Safe Sleep introduced with the new HiRes Powerbooks) for older Macs.

I tried it on my 867 MHz 12" Powerbook and it works. Finally changing batteries doesn't require to shutdown and restart anymore -- or so I thought. After some hours testing I reverted the hack. I observed two problems:

The fan wouldn't start anymore and the Powerbook got pretty hot
The clock stopped when sleeping

Nice work, Matt, but in my case: 😢

Why it didn't work out with Rekall (yet)

Sat, 01 Oct 2005 08:02:24 +0200

A couple of days ago I made Rekall work with MySQL on OS X. And now I'm not really using it!

There is a big showstopper for maintaining german content (or in any other language that uses more than the 7 bit ASCII character set): Rekall (on the Mac) doesn't handle Unicode correctly. Here's a short sample: to the left the expected display (from phpMyAdmin), to the right the screen shot from Rekall:

Rekall and MySQL with OS X

Tue, 06 Sep 2005 16:38:39 +0200

I had some trouble getting Rekall to work with my MySQL server, but in the end I succeeded. Here's what I needed:

MySQL binaries (I'm using 4.1.14-max)
MySQL source code
Rekall-2.3.4 and Qt-3.3.4-mini binaries from ATG
MacPython 2.4.1
Apple Developer Tools (from your Tiger Install Disk)

The short road installing just the binaries lead to an error:

dlcompat: Library not loaded:
/usr/local/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient.14.dylib

The reason is that the original MySQL binaries are built with the --disable-shared flag and contain only the static libraries instead of the dynamic ones.

Why only 8 weeks?

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 21:15:53 +0200

Many years after most users I have jumped on the iCal train too. I've dumped my very old Palm and started using iCal as my main calendar.

But iCal itself is not good enough:

it doesn't know how to calculate Easter. For this I have subscribed (free!) to project24, which is very nice for Swiss holidays (for German and Austrian ones too).
it doesn't show the week number. project24 comes to the rescue again.
I want to print/export real lists, not just empty boxes with a date. Some calenders have less than one event per week and I wanted a list with all events. All iCal does is filling pages with empty days and once in a while a day with an event. Clay Spinuzzi mentions the Ruby iCal module, which did the trick for me.

What I haven't got working yet: iSync limits the calendar period that is copied to my mobile to 8 weeks and I haven't found any hidden plist entry or any other hack to fix that.

SMTP enabled

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 18:54:03 +0200

I just installed Postfix Enabler to be able to send my emails through a SMTP server on my own powerbook. I didn't want the hassle to configure the postfix server myself, so I went for a software doing it the Macintosh way.

The default configuration was a little too open for my taste. I want others (that is me on the PC nearby) to use the postfix server only if they know a password. Using the Postfix Enabler configuration tab to setup password authentication still lets anybody on the same subnet send mail without a password.

CVS with AppleSingle files

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 10:07:04 +0100

Longtime Apple developers probably know this intuitively, but I needed some time to figure it out: When CVS-ing files with a resource fork, you must not use the /usr/bin/cvs that ships with OS X!

Because Apple used to separate data and metadata, most files in the pre OS X era had a data fork and a resource fork, but for the user this was transparent; the user just manipulated one file. Tools without this "Classic" background know nothing of the resource fork. Files without data fork appear in the Terminal to have 0 bytes.

Two Years Big and Small

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 14:39:12 +0100

It is exactly two years that I ordered my first Mac, a 12 inch Powerbook. It's compactness and completeness (almost everything built-in without protruding parts, Bluetooth and fast WLAN, except the second and third mouse key) make it still the right choice. And with OS X it has a decent operating system that lets you use the mouse if you want to, but the power of the command line is integrated in a better way than with Windows and Cygwin.

Installing a gaming PC

Thu, 16 Dec 2004 07:59:29 +0100

After four years I had again a PC assembled, but this time as a gaming PC for K (and for the rest of the family, too ;) ).

At work we have a PC department that assembled the PC according to my wishes. The installation of the OS I like to do myself; I chose Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) over XP Pro, because it's less expensive but has almost all features of XP Pro. The Media Center itself I don't need; the PC hasn't got a TV card.

Boot Partition Drive Letter Problems

Wed, 29 Sep 2004 21:42:46 +0200

A friend's PC had lost its ability to dual boot (Windows 2000 for work and Windows 98 for games). I had installed BootMagic to switch operating systems some years ago and it worked fine until it was broken this month during some harddisk cleanup.

I completed the cleanup of the Win98 partition with a new installation. After installing PartitionMagic and BootMagic again, Bootmagic would still not work, and the Windows 2000 installation (which I didn't touch) booted, but after a successful log on I was always logged out immediately.