WMWare Unity Desktop

WMWare Unity Desktop

Originally uploaded by alecclews

Running Windows and Mac OS/X “alongside” each other. Actually Windows XP is being virtulised as a guest operating system under OS/X using WMWare Fusion

Duh! Computer Operations 101 — have off site backups

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Coppola plea after computer theft

Film director Francis Ford Coppola has appealed for the return of his computer backup device following a robbery at his house

It would appear that Mr Coppola did not have an offsite backup for his computer data. So when the robbers came they stole the laptop AND the backup. He would have had the same problem if there had been a fire or any other disaster.

I personally have a remote version repository which backs up my work, I keep copies of all my email on the mail servers and every so often I burn stuff such as photos onto DVD.

“Let’s be careful out there”

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Oh Dear :-( Is this my bitter future?

The Tao of Steve – Apple – Steve Jobs – Design

I blame Steve Jobs, who has seduced me into buying his sleek machines, even if their delicate organs seem to fail with alarming regularity, like the beautiful consumptive heroines in Victorian novels.

I bought into the Mac deal because:

• we have an iMac at home and it was a great experience
• a fully tricked out Dell latop was the same price as a similar Macbook
• I think it’s a well made piece of hardware and software
• it’s UNIX and that’s more secure and stable and of course
• it’s really cool…

Am I due to take a huge prattfall?

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Macports oddness when installing software

(updated March 2008)

I was using Macports to install GNUCash on my Macbook and hit a small road block which may be useful to share:

Halfway through install of glib2 my connection dropped out and the install barphed. Every time I restarted it it complained about the checksum being invalid for that package. After a lot of messing around the following two commands seemed to do the trick

sudo port clean --all glib2

YMMV

Things to remember when you switch to Mac OS/X

1. The application menu bar appears across the top and changes depending on which application currently has the focus
2. Applications that need to be manually installed can be picked up and dragged to the Applications folder after you open open up the delivered disk image
3. If you have an Mighty Mouse (the mouse that looks like a bar of soap), you can enable multiple mouse buttons in System Preferences
4. You can change the format of the dock (make is smaller and switch on the magnification affect) in system preferences
5. If you have one button mouse, then you can use the second button by using the Ctrl key as a modifier

(With big thanks to Kirrily for pointing out my cock up about modifiers)

What I add to Firefox to make it better

One of the first things I install on any new machine is Firefox (Linux of course usually has it already). However after  have done that there a couple of extentions I always add

1. Scribefire for blog posting
2. Del.icio.us extension — rather complicated but I love the sidebar

I also always try and remember to change the download location before my desktop get’s too cluttered.

What I add to Mac OS/X to make it better

In a simliar to my posts about Linux and Windows here are the things I add to a Mac

1. FlikcrBooth
2. MacPorts (but only for the geeky)
3. Firefox
4. Acrobat Reader is much better than the supplied Preview application
5. Adium, messaging across all the IM network
6. Skype, the worlds most popular VOIP client (but closed)
7. Bouml for UML modelling
8. Filezilla
9. Vim, the worlds best editor
10. Juhu (because I am just so hip to Web 1.9)
11. Neooffice, Open Office ported to Aqua
12. smcFanControl, helps cool the hot metal on a Macbook
13. UnRarX for the odd occasions when you need to unpack a RAR archive
14. VMWare Fusion
15. X server, supplied on the OS/X CDs that came with your Mac
16. Quicksilver
17. iTerm
18. Caffeine
19. Freemind to edit mind maps
20. GNUcash — installed via Macports, but it’s a struggle .

Getting git-svn working on the Mac

Fraser Speirs – Getting git-svn working on the Mac

Or, for the lazy MacPorts users, sudo port install git-core +svn

Even if you already installed SVN by some other means

Alec’s new job and new Mac

One of the reasons that it’s been a little quite here recently is that I have been busy with my new job, I ‘m pleased to say that I am now the Technical Manager for Tripwire in Australia and New Zealand. This is an exiting opportunity to bring server auditing and compliance into the local market and I’m looking forward to it immensely.

Expect to see more material on IT Systems Management and Visible Operations, which I see a a another facet of what I have already been talking about (Change management, process and focusing on customer value).

As well as the professional opportunity, I have been given the chance to retool. So I am now using a 15″ Macbook Pro which, when coupled with VMWare Fusion for when you absolutely need Windows, has been a really great experience — UNIX in a really low cut, slinky, dress (and really tight leather chaps as well).

So you can expect to see more material on my experiences with the Mac, including the stuff I think I need to add to make it better.

Installing James MTA on Windows

It’s often useful to run a POP3/SMTP server on your system to demo/test/use the email functions when using applications. Apache James is the only free option I have come across so far – here are some installation notes to help get you started on Windows (but remember YMMV):

1. Download from the James website
2. Make sure you have admin privilege
3. Unpack the James archive into an empty directory. I chose not to have spaces in the directory path as they cause problems (even if you try to use the 8.3 format name)
4. Make sure no other SMTP or POP3 servers (or NNTP) are running
5. In a command prompt change to the installation directory and run bin/run.bat
6. Hit control-C to stop James running
7. You are now probably in the bin directory, so run the command ‘cd ..‘
8. Edit the file apps\james\SAR-INF\config.xml. Change any ports you need to (I would suggest POP3 and SMTP) and disable the NNTP server. You may also want to change the default admin account credentials. You will need to use a proper editor (e.g. Vim) as this file is in UNIX format.
9. In a command prompt run bin/run.bat
10. In another command prompt windows run a telnet session as follows telnet localhost 4555
11. Login with the James admin credentials (default is root/root)
12. Issue the command adduser <userid> <password> (use the command quit when finished)
13. Configure an email client to talk to James using the correct port settings and user credentials
14. Send yourself a test email
15. Hit control-C to stop James running
16. cd bin
17. Run the command wrapper -i ..\conf\wrapper.conf
18. Run the command net start "James 2.3.0"(or whatever version number was installed)

How not to market yourself on YouTube?

A company I know has released a promotional video on YouTube to explain their solution space. Whilst I applaud their initiative, I can’t help feeling they look like a bunch of sad 40 year olds trying to do the twist at an Eminem concert.

Sorry guys, a 10 for effort, but minus several million points for style

Or am I being really bitchy and unfair?