A 355 Mb patch, downloaded over poor UMTS/3G at school and in the train… Took a while, but it’s finally installed.
Some nice few features, like the fact you can now remove the semi-transparent effect on the menu bar (makes it nicer). They also added some nice stacks enhancements.
A Time Machine icon is added in the menu bar too, just too bad you can’t make it just pop-up when it is actually backing up. I like keeping my menu bar clean. 😉
And well, a lot more bug fixes, but haven’t noticed any of them, besides perhaps iCal that for some reason hides appointments, as if they were deleted. After changing weeks/refreshing the page, if reappears… (most iCal bugs were fixed in patch 15.1 for me)
The only thing they haven’t fixed is the Workgroup problem… Still can’t join one. If forgets the name of the workgroup I’ve entered when I close the window… Yes, there are some workarounds, like copying the network-location and so on, but I haven’t tried yet.
But hey, I’m glad with this. 🙂
No big changes, but I hope Leopard’s bugs are fixed now
EyeTV is a cool application that let’s you watch TV on your Mac. I happen to have the “lite” version, because it was significantly cheaper than the other version.
The cool thing is, you can easily record films or TV episodes with it, but with this version, there is no way to export it to a iMovie project, or to play the recording in a QuickTime based application.
When recording, it creates a folder “Live Recording – $date $time.eyetv”. And when double clicking it, it will open EyeTV.
Now if you would go into that folder (rather than opening it), for example with Terminal, you would see four files.
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Nazgul:Desktop yeri$ cd Live\ Recording\ -\ 31-01-2008\ 21_54.eyetv/
Nazgul:Live Recording - 31-01-200821_54.eyetv yeri$ ls-ls
total 15159681736-rw-r--r--1 yeri yeri 886080 Jan 3122:08 000000000d526cf1.eyetvi
8-rw-r--r--1 yeri yeri 1137 Jan 3122:08 000000000d526cf1.eyetvp
8-rw-r--r--1 yeri yeri 1950 Jan 3123:48 000000000d526cf1.eyetvr
1514216-rw-r--r--1 yeri yeri 775275716 Jan 3122:08 000000000d526cf1.mpg
Nazgul:Desktop yeri$ cd Live\ Recording\ -\ 31-01-2008\ 21_54.eyetv/
Nazgul:Live Recording - 31-01-2008 21_54.eyetv yeri$ ls -ls
total 1515968173
6 -rw-r--r-- 1 yeri yeri 886080 Jan 31 22:08 000000000d526cf1.eyetvi
8 -rw-r--r-- 1 yeri yeri 1137 Jan 31 22:08 000000000d526cf1.eyetvp
8 -rw-r--r-- 1 yeri yeri 1950 Jan 31 23:48 000000000d526cf1.eyetvr
1514216 -rw-r--r-- 1 yeri yeri 775275716 Jan 31 22:08 000000000d526cf1.mpg
The only important file is the .mpg file. You can open it with QuickTime, but you won’t have any sound.
To move your .mpg file to, e.g., your Movies directory, use (change $You with your username):
The only player that plays the file correctly is VLC. No way to import it in iMovie, edit it, or share it. But, have no fear, there’s a workaround using ffmpegX. Download and install it (follow the instructions on the website, you’ll need to install 3 extra binaries too).
When installed, open the program, import the .mpg file, and export it to, for example, a .mov (-mpeg4) file.
Converting might take a while.
All you then have to do, is to import it in iMovie.
Follow the steps on the screen. iMovie will ask you a few things, and then you’ll be ready to edit your recording!
With iMovie ’08, you can even directly share your records on YouTube, cool stuff!
As you probably know, the MagSafe adapter is a great invention. Someone trips over your power cord, and the connector pops off.
And if you think “well, cool, but won’t happen, a normal connector won’t break your notebook” you’re very wrong.
A few months ago, at school, during courses, someone tripped over my Powerbook’s power cord, and pulled everything off the table. This resulted in complete data loss + broken adapter + banana-looking case; 926 EUR repairing costs (Yes, this is when I dediced the get myself a Macbook (Pro), and the good thing was that Leopard was about to be released).
And today, at school again, MagSafe proved itself for the first real time. Someone again tripped over my power cord, and pop, all that fell on the ground was the power cable.
I must honestly say, the power infrastructure at school is terrible, we have tons of cables going to one power hub, and I haven’t been the first victim to such brutal hardware murder.
Anyway, the big downside of the MagSafe adapter, is the fact it’s patented… Apple has only released (some lame) plane adapter (it won’t even charge your Macbook)… Nothing for in the car.
The only alternative I’ve found on the web, was this. But look at the prices… Ridiculous!
So I’ve been searching on eBay for some alternative, I’ve seen some home-made adapters, but nothing I really trusted.
Because I still had my old Kensington Powerbook-car-charger, I tried to find some connector that would fit. No luck on the official pages.
This is when I came across weaudio. They were selling Kensington car adapters, with a home-made MagSafe switch. (Basicly, one ends fits in your Kensington adapter, the other end is what is left of an old MagSafe power cable.)
I’ve mailed the man, if it would be possible to sell just the MagSafe cable + Kensington-to-MagSafe switch; and guess what!
This morning, after a small week of patiently waiting for my item to arrive, i finally have it.
I’ve tested it, and so far my battery hasn’t blown up, it gets the juice from my car, and it even charges (although it’s only 70W)! This all for 30$ (including shipping costs from Hong Kong).
Before trying to run Vista/Bootcamp through Parallels again, I’m waiting till the end of my exams (Thursday). Don’t want to blow up my Windows install again when I’m in desperate need of it. 😉
As usual with Parallels, creating/installing a new OS isn’t easy. Wether it crashes or you get a bunch of errors, you’re always up for a day full of fun!
Here is how I managed to install Ubuntu on Parallels:
First of all, make sure you’re running the latest version of Parallels, especially if you’re using Leopard.
Step 2, download the alternate Ubuntu installer. If you do not use the alternate installer, you’ll end up with ‘Display server errors’ before being able to install Ubuntu. You can download Ubuntu here. Select the approriate version (probably Desktop, latest version), and check “Check here if you need the alternate desktop CD. This CD does not include the Live CD, instead it uses a text-based installer“.
Step 3, create a new virtual machine, with OS Linux/Ubuntu.
And follow the steps. I’ve added some more screenshots below. You can leave everything by default, that’s as you wish.
As CD-drive, select the Ubuntu (alternate) installer .iso-file.
Click Finish and Start — the Ubuntu installer will boot.
You’ll end up in Ubuntu’s welcome screen. Select your keyboard layout (hit F3) and select (text) install
Here too, follow the steps on the screen. It will ask for your language, country, and will propose a manual or automatic disk partition. I’ve selected automatic — it creates a big ext3 root partition, and a swap partition.
The installer then asks if you agree with the partition table. Select Yes or No. (I’ve selected No – changed my root partition from ext3 to reiserfs, as I’m a big reiserfs fan.) When selecting Yes — the table will be created and Ubuntu will start installing.
After it’s installed, Ubuntu will reboot. This is where you’ll get your first error; ACPI: Unable to locate RSDP. This is a known error; you can safey ignore it.
Ubuntu will continue to boot, and then pop up this error: The display server has been shut down about 6 times in the last 90 seconds, and will freeze. To fix this error, shut down and restart (or reset) the VM, and hit the ESC-key. Grub’s bootloader menu will pop up if everything is right.
Select the 2nd option (recovery). Ubuntu will boot up in text-mode-only and you should be logged in as root (if you’re not, add ‘sudo’ in front of the commands below).
In Parallels, click (on top of your screen) “Actions” -> “Install Parallels Tools…” and type in following commands in the shell:
mount /media/cdrom
cd /media/cdrom
./parallels-tools.run
reboot
After Ubuntu has rebooted (in normal mode), you shouldn’t receive any more errors, and you can enjoy Ubuntu on your mac!
