The Coppit Family Daily News

So about 3 hours after getting my new MacBook Pro, the fan started blowing at full blast. No biggie, I thought, since I was in the process of installing a bunch of software. I stopped what I was doing, and checked the CPU usage with Activity Monitor. The CPU was idle!

At this point the area where I rest my left palm while typing was getting really really hot–too hot to touch for very long. The computer was also getting sluggish, sometimes waiting for over a minute to respond to my mouse clicks or keyboard commands. I shut down the system (with the hold-the-button-for-five-seconds-I-really-mean-it method) and considered my options.

After the machine cooled off a bit I inserted the OS X DVD and booted into the hardware tester program as described in the manual. As that was going on, I gave Apple a call. I told the tech my problem and that I suspected the hard drive. He had me reboot into Disk Utility to verify the disk. Sure enough, it was rife with errors. He said that either the disk was bad, or the original imaging of the software on the drive was erroneous. My best bet was to frst try and repair the disk, and if that didn’t work, wipe the drive and reinstall the OS and applications. Sigh.

After 6 tries the repair failed, so I spent a few hours wiping the drive and reinstalling everything. So far everything has worked fine. In fact, after filling up 80 GB space I still get no disk errors. I just wish that Apple had done a disk verify before shipping me the machine…

There are a number of half-baked ways to resize a boot camp partition out there. Here’s the way I enlarged my NTFS partition. Your mileage may vary with FAT32, shrinking partitions, etc..

• Use WinClone to clone your existing bootcamp volume
• Use Boot Camp Assistant to restore your disk to one volume. When it’s done, reboot to Mac OS X. (I had to do this twice.)
• Run Boot Camp Assistant again to create a new partition.
• Start WinClone, and restore the image into the new UNLABELED partition.
• Reboot, holding the option key to select the Windows partition. Windows will notice that something happened to the partition and will automatically run checkdisk. When you reboot again either partition will work.

I had to do a couple extra steps for VMWare Fusion to work. First, I had to delete my old virtual machine at /Users/[your_user]/Library/Application Support/VMWare Fusion/Virtual Machines/Boot Camp. Simply removing the disk didn’t work. Then VMWare complained that Windows wasn’t shut down cleanly. So you should maybe boot into Windows after the checkdisk before going back to OS X to fiddle with VMWare. Finally, just cancel the re-installation of VMWare Tools once the boot camp VM is running in Fusion.

Generally I’m really happy with my new MacBook Pro. It’s fast, quiet, and keeps me warm in sub-zero weather. But there are some things that bug me:

• I can’t resize a window without accidentally changing both height and width. Apple needs to add modifier key support for one-axis resizing, a la Photoshop
• Icon spacing in Finder is too wide with icon sizes are small
• The file system is pseudo-case-insensitive. This means if you want to change the case of a file, you can’t do “mv A a” You have to do “mv A temp; mv temp a”.
• There is no way to drag an item in Finder into the item’s parent folder.
• Boot camp needs to have the so-called “sleep camp” feature, which does a safe sleep in OS X, then boots into Windows. Reboots cause Coppit to lose desktop state, which makes Coppit sad.
• My mighty mouse doesn’t have real buttons, which means that if I need to drag something from one corner to the next, I have to shove my keyboard out of the way to get there. With a buttoned mouse, I could keep the button down while I lifted the mouse and put it back down.

The College upgraded my machine… I now have a nice MacBook Pro. I’ve had a few issues which I’ll blog separately about. First I thought I’d revisit my Mac customizations, which I first published last year.

Good free software:

• Cyberduck: Secure FTP
• StartupSound.prefPane: Silence the startup “bong”
• Growl: System-wide notifications
• NicePlayer: A clean movie player
• Codecs: Perian, Flip4Mac WMV
• iStat Menus: Shows CPU, network, memory, disk usage in the menu bar. It also supports showing the date along with the time.
• MacFUSE and sshfs: Mount a remote directory for read/write access.

• Audio Recorder: In case I need to record something using the built-in microphone
• Eclipse: For software development
• GraphViz for Mac: Awesome GUI for an awesome graph layout tool
• Integrity: Link checker
• iStumbler: WiFi finder
• Pacifist: Extract files from packages. Useful if you need something from your install DVD
• Sightspeed: For video chatting with people who don’t have iChat
• Thunderbird: News reader, and graphical email viewer
• Spark: Control iTunes with the keyboard
• SimplyRar: Unpack rar archives
• Jing: Screen capture utility. It’s functional but doesn’t have a lot of options.
• SafariBlock: Adblock for Safari. It works with Safari 3.0, but you have to put it in /Library/InputManagers and chmod -R root:admin it.
• Gallery Remote: Upload photos to my gallery
• Fink Commander: For installing Unix stuff like subversion, tetex, etc.
• Apple OS X Developer Tools: gcc, plus a lot of cool performance tools like Shark. Link the /Developer/Applications directory to /Applications/Developer for easier access.
• TinkerTool: Advanced tweaking of options, such as not creating .DS_Store folders on Windows mounted drives

Non-free Software:

• Adobe Acrobat Pro
• Adobe Photoshop CS3. An interesting contender is Pixel Editor. Since I get a site-license discount for Photoshop I use that, but Pixel might be just as good
• AutoPano Pro: Expensive but really good panorama stitching software
• Quicktime Pro
• Saft: A relatively cheap way to improve Safari with features like type-to-search. Not Safari 3.0 compatible yet.
• Compost: Automatically manage the trash can
• Apple iWork: I’m sick of how MS Office for Mac is still stuck in 2004. I thought I’d try out Apple’s offering
• VMWare Fusion: For running MS Office when I really need to and other Windows-only apps. Their “unity” mode is pretty good although it has a few rough edges. I picked VMWare over Parallels because it’s a bigger company with a longer track record, my own good experiences with VMWare on Windows, and relatively less complaints about their VM.
• Adobe Lightroom: For folder-based management of digital pictures and (hopefully soon) videos. I like the interface better than Aperture’s. iPhoto is just too primitive. They won’t let me arrange photos into folders, for example (and “events” doesn’t fully solve the scalability problem). Pretty much the only thing I use iPhoto for is the redeye correction, which works great when it works.

Deprecated software:

• Quicksilver: It’s just too buggy. And on my new laptop Spotlight is usable as an application launcher
• Fugu: I switched to Cyberduck. I like the interface better.
• MS Internet Explorer: Not offered any more
• Norton Anti-Virus: Just not necessary
• iView MediaPro 3: Bought by Microsoft, and generally very clunky. I really like (1) how it can manage videos, and (2) its folder-based management. The second issue is handled decently by Lightroom (but not iPhoto), and I hope the first issue will be resolved soon.
• Synk: I’m using a hand-rolled rsync solution which works with my unRAID server to make backups take up less space.
• Missing Sync: I’m limping along without syncing my Palm for now. I’m hoping that Apple will add appointment entry soon to the iPod Touch so it can become my new PDA.
• RealVNC: You can connect with the vnc:// built-in now.
• iChatOnLogin: iChat has this functionality now.
• iCalFix: It’s fixed now.

For a while now I’ve been looking for a good storage solution. For important things like pictures I would make duplicates across several drives. As my storage needs would grow, I would buy bigger hard drives and copy things over. My main machine became a behemoth with 6 hard drives in it. Still, most of my data was not protected.

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Moving from the Windows world to the Mac world, I encountered a number of annoyances while trying to make my Mac comfortable. Below is a list of software and tweaks I’ve made to get things “just right”.

Good software that is free:

• Adium: IM Client with more protocol support than iChat (works with Google Talk, AIM, MSN, etc.) Unfortunately there is no video support, unlike iChat.
• AutoPano Pro: Simply the best way to create panoramas from individual photos.
• CubicConvertor: Make Quicktime VR from panoramas.
• Gallery Remote: For uploading photos to my gallery.
• iStumbler: Find open wireless networks
• Spark: global hotkeys for iTunes
• Quicksilver: Keyboard-oriented application launcher
• MenuCalendarClock: To get the date along with the time in the menu bar
• Thunderbird: For reading news and mail.
• Eclipse Java Development Environment (XCode isn’t cross-platform)
• Fink Commander: For all those good 3rd party unix tools
• Firefox: A good browser. I would use Safari, but I can’t live with my plugins: Adblock Plus, All-in-One Gestures, Always Remember Password, Clone Window, CustomizeGoogle, Download Statusbar, Google Toolbar, IE View, InfoLister, Mimetype Editor, Open Java Console, Regular Expression Find, Sort Extensions and Themes, Tab Mix Plus, TargetAlert, Web Develoepr, SwitchProxy.
• Fugu: SCP Client for secure file transfers
• GraphicConverter: Free upgrades to pre-installed version
• GraphViz: Native Mac version of graph layout tool is awesome
• VLC, RealPlayer, MPlayer: Play media
• Chicken of the VNC: A client for the popular VNC remote desktop protocol
• MS Remote Desktop
• MS Internet Explorer: For websites still in the dark ages
• Apple OS X Developer tools: For gcc 3.3 and stuff. Link the /Developer/Applications directory to /Applications/Developer for easier access.
• Apple X11, with the quartz-wm window manager. See http://www.chemistry.ucsc.edu/~wgscott/xtal/page1.html for info on how to get rid of the dock icon.
• FileMerge from the Apple Developer Tools: File merge that is better than WinMerge. I also created a script called “fdiff” with the following:
  #!/bin/sh
  /Developer/Applications/Utilities/FileMerge.app/Contents/MacOS/FileMerge -left $1 -right $2 -merge $2 2>/dev/null &
• startupsound.prefpane: Silence the loud startup sound
• TinkerTool: Advanced tweaking of options, such as not creating .DS_Store folders on Windows mounted drives
• Pacifist: For looking inside packages on the Mac install disk. I’ve needed this once or twice to retrieve a file.
• Growl: Notifications for Quicksilver, Adium, and other apps
• MenuMeters: CPU, network, and disk monitors in the menu
• Sightspeed: For video camera chats with Windows users.

Good software that is not free:

• Quicktime Full
• Synk: folder synchronization for backups. Free for academics
• Compost: Manage the trash better, namely wipe oldest files first as necessary.
• Missing Sync: For syncing my Palm with the Mac. Works better than the buggy Palm Hotsync.
• Adobe Acrobat: Needed to edit PDF files
• iView MediaPro 3: The best photo management software I’ve found. More powerful than iPhoto, although the image editor is less user friendly.
• Adobe Photoshop: For when iPhoto doesn’t cut it
• Norton Anti-Virus
• Parallels: For running Windows inside Mac OS X.

Unsolved Problems:

I’d appreciate any help on fixing the following issues.

• When you copy a folder and one already exists, why does it replace the entire folder? Can I get it to add the contents, overwriting or skipping existing files in the folders?
• How do I lengthen a window without accidentally changing its width?
• How do I remove context menu items for uninstalled programs?

Can’t be fixed:

• Icon spacing is too wide. How can I narrow it?
• In the terminal, why does “mv a A” prompt to overwrite? The file system is not case-sensitive, although it is “faked”. The solution is to “mv a temp; mv temp A”
• How can I drag something into folder enclosing the current one? You can’t. Pathfinder has a dock/shelf for this, as well as other options.

Solutions to Annoyances:

• What’s a good Visio-like drawing program?: OmniGraffle
• How do I kill an unruly program? You can try command-option-esc. If the program isn’t listed, use the activity monitor.
• Where is the right-Del key? (Right delete): Fn-Delete
• How do I run apps like X11 on boot?: Sys Prefs, Users, Startup
• http://www.cs.ecu.edu/~collins/rm/rm.html: Can I get the rm command to move the file to the trash instead? (For undelete…)
• Where is ctrl-c? Use command-c
• How can I get the function keys to work as function keys instead of volume etc? Use fn-f5, for example.
• How come the desktop doesn’t refresh after downloading a file, and having Stuffit automatically unpack it? (I have to click the desktop for it to refresh.): That’s just the way it’s implemented. (Haven’t seen this problem in a while–maybe it was fixed.)
• How can I add “Open with Vim” to the context menu of every file?: Zingg, also /User/coppit/Library/Contextual Items
• How do I make the terminal window close automatically after running a .command? (It says [Process Completed]): Save As in terminal allows you to specify a command to run.
• How can I open a terminal at the current finder location?: http://www.entropy.ch/software/applescript/welcome.html
• How do I extract a single file from an archive?: http://www.charlessoft.com/
• CPAN module doesn’t do command history and stuff: There’s a bug in XCode 1.5’s version of gcc. Need to roll back cc1plus to the version from XCode 1.2 (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/costabel/cc1plus_12). Update fink, then do an Update-All

Good resources:

• osxfaq.com
• http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/docs/customization/
• macvim.org

Recently Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel chips. This is a great move, because Intel chips run both faster and more efficiently. It also means that Macs can run Windows alongside Apple’s OS X more easily, with very little performance loss.

Mac laptops come in two flavors: the smaller MacBook and the more powerful MacBook Pro. Macs are easier to use, safer from the nastiness that plagues PCs, and just better engineered all around. If you look at the new series of Apple ads, they hit all the high points. I compared Dell’s prices to Apple’s and they are very close. Even if Apple prices were higher, I would say it’s worth it. (Would you prefer to buy a Ford or a Toyota? Pay the extra and you’ll avoid the hassles.)
However, one thing the ads don’t talk about is the fact that the new Macs can run Windows very well. (When the MacBook Pros came out, they were actually the fastest laptops to run Windows!) You can configure your Mac to boot into either Windows or OS X, but the Parallels company is going to be releasing software that allows you to run Windows inside of OS X. This means you can still run all the software that you already have. But to tell you the truth, there’s nothing I miss from the Windows world–I can get Acrobat, Microsoft Office, Firefox, and other software for the Mac.

MacBooks start at about $1200, and MacBook Pros at about $2200. If you are sick of dealing with Windows-based PCs that work fine for 3 months then start breaking down or running slow, I suggest you switch to Mac now. There’s really no reason not to. If you already have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, you can even buy a Mac Mini for $600. Apple has a nice laptop comparison chart.

It dawned on me that the relatives would like to see Christopher live instead of watching movies all the time. After seeing what the h264 codec could do for movies, I really wanted to get a video chat program that would work for windows and support h264. (On Mac I have iChat, but Windows folks are out of luck on that.)

Mom bought me an iSight camera for Christmas, which is really nice. It works okay on Windows, assuming your software can fix the insane overexposure that the camera has out-of-the-box. Windows also doesn’t recognize the built-in directional microphone. But the autofocus and overall picture are nice.

Next I looked into software. Streaming video supports h264 and multiple viewers, but has nasty delays. Supposedly AOL Instant Messenger supports iChat, but I just couldn’t get it to work. After much web searching, I finally found SightSpeed. The free service provides one-to-one chatting, and 30 second video mail. It even has a web-based viewer that family can use even if they don’t have SightSpeed installed (it downloads an ActiveX control). Perfect! (Well, not really since it doesn’t have h264 support.)

I expect that soon my family will all have webcams. If you want to connect to me, install SightSpeed and search for “coppit” as a contact. Be sure to enable the video mail so I can send you video clips when you’re not online.

By the way, I did try Skype, but its video interface was clunky.

Quicktime 7 is out now for both Windows and Mac. One nice thing about it is that it supports H.264, which is a high compression codec for video. This is how I encode all my movies, so if you want to see any of them, download it here.

More proof that the developer of autostitch knows what he’s doing… Compare the following two photos from two merged images:

Usually panorama programs are not smart enough to understand that part of an image changed between two photos that are being merged. As a result, you get “ghosts” at the seams where the software blends the two images. Here’s the merged seam that autostitch created:

Click on the image to see a larger version. Notice how Glenn’s head isn’t blended. Rather, the software chose one image to override the other. Kudos to the author. I really hope he gets someone to license his algorithms, putting some polish on the software.

For a long time now I’ve been looking for the magical panorama software that will automatically figure out how different images fit together, then warp them and merge them.

Today I found it. It’s called AutoStitch. Just throw a bunch of images at it, and it will sort them out. It will even handle images of different sizes, up/down/left/right stitching of images, and (get this) images from more than one panorama.

There are two things it doesn’t do very well. First, it doesn’t automatically match exposure levels across images very well. The metrix plugin did the trick for me. It’s for Photoshop, or any program that can use Photoshop plugins (such as Paint Shop Pro). The second thing it doesn’t do is crop the resulting image. For that I just did it manually in Mac’s preview program.

Here are some panoramas I made:

* NOT FOUND *

As soon as I got home today, I downloaded Google Earth. The folks at Google have an awesome mapping interface. It’s like Google Maps on steroids.

Anyway, right when Dorothy said “Look up Area 51!” we got a knock at the door. Was it the CIA? Did they know we were trying to get info on a top secret aircraft testing facility? Would I ever get to tell anyone this story?

It turned out to be an Orkin salesman trying to get us to buy pest control. After he left, we still weren’t convinced. Maybe Orkin is a shadow company run by the CIA. Maybe they get rid of the natural bugs and plant electronic ones! And we give them full run of our houses!

Conspiracy theories aside, Google Earth is super-cool. Here’s our neighborhood:	For major cities, they have the shapes of the buildings. You can also tilt the map to get perspective, and fly around. Here’s Washington DC:
It will also show terrian. Here’s Boulder, CO, looking to the west:	And finally, Area 51:

So far they gubmint hasn’t come to snatch me fr0238 9 8 fj-a/sdf23