Project Insomnia: 12/01/2008

Project Insomnia is many things, but in this context it is simply a "braindump" of whatever I happen to be thinking/reading/watching/doing at the moment. Parental guidance suggested.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Angry IP Scanner broken in Mac OS 10.5.5 (and later)

In an earlier "Confessions" post I'd mentioned Angry IP Scanner, a terrific little app that does IP address and port scans. What I didn't mention, because I didn't realize it at the time, is that it doesn't work in Mac OS X 10.5.5 and later (including the current 10.5.6) due to a Java incompatibility. By Googling the Console error messages (always the best way of tracking down a strange problem) I found this post in the Angry IP Scanner section of the SourceForge forum:

In Terminal:
$ cd /Applications/Angry\ IP\ Scanner.app/Contents/MacOS/
$ rm /Applications/Angry\ IP\ Scanner.app/Contents/MacOS/ipscan
$ cp /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Resources/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub ipscan

This worked as advertised and Angry IP Scanner now launches and runs again without error.

|| Andrew, 5:12 PM || || link ||

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Bet they didn't use vegan marshmallows...

|| Andrew, 6:48 PM || || link ||

Monday, December 22, 2008

Why are you trying to call me?

Denis Krieg, whose phone number is (650) 873-3056 and who lives at 420 Milton Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066, has tried several times in the past few days to call me. I don't generally answer calls from unknown or blocked numbers, preferring to let them go to voicemail. Mr Krieg hasn't seen fit to leave a voicemail. Denis, if you need to get in touch with me, you can email me or leave a voicemail since you obviously have my number.

|| Andrew, 1:07 PM || || link ||

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Birthdays (not mine, everyone else's)

Some problems trying to get my Windows Mobile device synced with the
Mac's Address Book caused most birthday entries to either be changed
(to one or two days early) or deleted. If I had your birthday before,
please send it to me again!

|| Andrew, 5:36 PM || || link ||

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Fringemas!

|| Andrew, 1:39 PM || || link ||

Sunday, December 14, 2008

New restaurant review: JOYA

Yes, it's another restaurant review. We visited JOYA Restaurant & Lounge on Saturday night and enjoyed it muchly. Check out the review!

|| Andrew, 9:08 PM || || link ||

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Confessions of a Switcher (part 3)

This is part three of a theoretically infinite series.

It's been roughly five months since I brought home the MacBook Pro and almost that long since my last update to this series. I've become incredibly comfortable in the OS X environment and, with a very few exceptions, can do anything I ever did in Windows. In the event I do need Windows, I can use VMWare Fusion to boot Windows XP from a Boot Camp partition with seamless desktop integration. Just today I found a solution to one of the last Windows requirements -- syncing my HTC Mogul phone, a Windows Mobile device. Normally one would use ActiveSync to sync a Windows Mobile device, or pay $30 for Missing Sync. I've found a free product that does exactly what I need and no more: Eltima Software's SyncMate. It syncs my contacts and calendars to the Mac's Address Book and iCal, respectively, and can mount the WinMo file system as an external volume on the Mac for file transfer.

Here's a current list of third-party software I'm using.

Angry IP Scanner -- the built-in Network Utility has most of this application's functionality; I use either or both depending on what exactly I'm trying to do.
Book Collector
ChronoSync -- I haven't actually started using this yet, but I've installed the trial and am checking it out.
CrossOver Office -- supposed to allow (some) Windows applications to install and run directly in OS X, but I've had little success as of yet.
Fetch -- seems to be the best ftp client for OS X.
Google Earth
Jolly's Fast VNC -- even in public Alpha, this is the best VNC client I've found for OS X, and (apprehensive of using an Alpha) I tried quite a few before this one. Does what it says on the tin.
Logitech Harmony Remote software -- Web-based programming tool for my Harmony 880 and 670 universal remotes.
Movie Collector
NetNewsWire -- my choice for RSS newsreader. I started with the built-in Mail application, but it couldn't handle 200+ feeds with any stability; I tried Endo and gave it a couple of months, but eventually gave up on it after one too many crashes and system resource grabs -- plus, its UI is a nightmare. NNW does what I want and does it well.
OpenOffice.org -- the excellent free, open-source alternative to Microsoft Office I've been using for years, now in a spiffy new OS X-native version.
Opera -- if you've been reading Project Insomnia for lo, these many years, you know I've been an Opera fan for quite a long time. Since switching to Mac I've converted almost completely to Safari. I keep Opera around for alternate-browser testing and also use it when I need to have more than one Google Account session open simultaneously, but it's pretty much fallen off my radar in general.
Remote Desktop Connection -- the only Microsoft software on my OS X partition is a fine port of the standard RDC client.
SketchUp -- nifty 3-D sketching tool which I have so far been completely unable to learn. I'd like to use it to model the cabinet wall we want to build in the living room.
SplashID -- password vault, works with the Mogul to keep all my many and varied passwords safe. Syncing SplashID between the Mac and the Mogul is one of the very few remaining tasks for which I still need Windows; the Mac version doesn't sync directly but only imports saved files.
SyncMate -- see above.
TextWrangler -- this is a terrific text editor that handles code of all kinds, from PHP to HTML to Java.
TinkerTool -- essentially the OS X equivalent to TweakUI.
Transmission -- BitTorrent client.
VLC Player -- for the rare filetype that QuickTime + Flip4Mac can't handle.
VMWare Fusion -- see above.

I'm assembling a list of useful tips and tricks, things I've learned by trial and error or lucky Googling. That will probably be the subject of part four of this series.

Labels: macbook pro, switch, syncmate, vmware

|| Andrew, 3:53 PM || || link ||

Thursday, December 04, 2008

From the Adventurer's Club: Dominic the Italian Christmas Donkey

|| Andrew, 11:17 AM || || link ||

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Prop 8 - The Musical

Thanks to Mox for the linkage.

|| Andrew, 1:19 PM || || link ||

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Attn LiveJournalers: I haven't been (deliberately) ignoring you!

I just discovered that endo, my RSS reader, had silently dropped all of my LJ RSS feeds when I imported them. I've gone back and re-imported them all and am catching up as much as I can.

|| Andrew, 3:46 PM || || link ||

Google Calendar officially comes to Apple's iCal

Google Calendar officially comes to Apple's iCal:

Google on Monday formally announced full support for the CalDAV protocol along with the release of a small piece of software for Mac computers that lets users easily link up their Google Calendars with the iCal application.

I'm trying this now and will report. Now if I could get my Gmail contacts into Apple Mail, I'd be really happy. There's a third-party method of syncing calendars and contacts but I've had trouble getting it to work.

|| Andrew, 11:57 AM || || link ||

What Tina Fey Wants

Photograph by Annie Leibovitz; styled by Michael Roberts.

Maureen Dowd's interview with Tina Fey (featuring photography by Annie Leibovitz) in this month's Vanity Fair, titled What Tina Fey Wants is an excellent read for Fans of Fey:

Tina Fey has rules. They’ve guided the 38-year-old writer-comedian through marriage, motherhood, and a career that went into hyperdrive this fall, when her Sarah Palin impression convulsed the nation, boosting the ratings of both Saturday Night Live and her own NBC show, 30 Rock. Backstage at S.N.L., where “Palin” met Palin, and at the home Fey shares with her husband and daughter, the author reports on how a tweezer, cream rinse, a diet, and a Teutonic will transformed a mousy brain into a brainy glamour-puss.

|| Andrew, 11:45 AM || || link ||

Monday, December 01, 2008

New Restaurant Reviews (yes, really)

After a year-long hiatus, I've added four new restaurant reviews; two revisits (Scott's Seafood and Mexicali Grill) and two new (Firehouse Grill and Hobee's). We haven't stopped dining out, and I always save receipts with the intention of reviewing but for some reason I just haven't had the motivation to do so. What changed today? Search me, but there they are.

|| Andrew, 6:17 PM || || link ||

Project Insomnia