Do HouseKeeping on Leopard Wireless Connections

Previously, I have written a post here on how to do housekeeping on your Mac's wireless networks in Tiger. For Leopard systems, the settings are slightly different from Tiger.

Just do the following to do some spring cleaning:

1. Go to System Preferences
2. Click on Network
   
3. Click on the Airport, and click on the padlock at the bottom left hand corner to unlock the system preferences for modification (the padlock icon should be unlocked). You will need your administrator userid and password
   
4. Click on the Advanced button at the bottom right hand corner.
5. Under the Preferred Networks section, you will see the list of wireless networks you have ever logged in.
6. Re-order the preference in which the airport tries to connect to the wireless network by dragging the network name up or down. Use the +, or - button to add or remove wireless network settings.

That's all to it... After doing this housekeeping exercise, your connection to your wireless network should be faster as the Mac will be able to recognise which are your preferred wireless networks.

Conductors do make a difference

I've just finished watching Nodame Cantabile this early morning. Watched until 3+ am. :p Aside from the very very nice classical music throughout the whole show, there is another important take-away from the show. Conductors do matter.

Conductors bring life to the music, and this person is responsible for controlling the orchestra, and ensuring that they played together, in a manner that they want.

Coming from playing solo guitar, I enjoy playing in an ensemble because of this very reason. I'm sort of fascinated that you can put a group of guitars together, and you can make music that you can never duplicate on a solo guitar.

Not only do you need to play in time, you will need to know how your part fit in to the overall music. Just by looking at the part notes, it's not really possible that you can figure out how your part fits in to the music. The conductor knows, through the understanding of the composer, the era, and of course the conductor score (Yes, I still know nuts about composers and era. :p).

There was also a section in the show that sort of shows conducting can be done through playing. That means the person conducting is doing it by playing the pulse of the music. Quite interesting... I wonder if this can be applied to the sheep song. Hmm...

Anyway, the conducting looks quite good in the show, especially towards the end. Looking at the conducting, it also brings back memories of a certain performance I've seen in the Esplanade on a certain Sunday. The conductor for that performance was basically, in my opinion, making a fool of himself. I have no idea you can conduct music by acting like a snake, and doing stupid movements, that at times do not even sync with the orchestra.

Many times during the 1 hour performance, I really wanted to laugh out loud. What is most surprising is that some people in the hall are actually giving standing ovation for this kind of conducting.

I guess the maturity of the Singapore audience needs leveling up too.

Reset resolution of LCD TV Display connected to a Mac

Previously, I have encountered a problem where the resolution was set wrongly on a Mac mini, which resulted in a "Mode not supported" error that appeared on a Samsung LCD TV.

The problem with this error is that the Mac is too smart. It recognises each monitor that you have connected to the Mac. Therefore, if you connect a normal LCD monitor, and a LCD TV, it will save individual display settings for both the devices. Its not a simple case of just plugging in another monitor and resetting the resolution.

First... The steps that do not work:

1. Resetting PRAM
2. Safe Boot
3. Removing com.apple.windowserver.plist

Tried all of it, and none works in resetting the resolution! :(

After some days of tinkering, I've managed to reset the resolution on the LCD TV using the following steps which I've found through trial and error:

1. Connect an external monitor to the Mac and ensure that System Preferences > Sharing > Remote Management is turned on
2. Ensure that System Preferences > Security > Firewall is either set to Allow all incoming connections or Set access for specific services and applications. If it is the later, remember to ensure that Remote Management is enabled.
3. Reconnect the "locked" Mac to the LCD TV
   
4. Use another Mac Mini, or MacBook and connect the 2 computers with a ethernet cable.
5. Look at the Finder of the other Mac. You should see your "locked" Mac. Click on it, and click on Share Screen (Alternatively, use any VNC client)
6. Click on System Preferences > Displays in the Share Screen/VNC window and reset the resolution.

That is it... Using this method, I've managed to reset the resolution of the Mac so that it works on the LCD TV. I only tried this on Leopard macs, but theoretically speaking, this should work on a Tiger too, with some minor adjustment to the steps.

Remember... Never play with the resolution if you do not know the supported modes. It was quite painful for me to figure out how to reset the resolution.

Vista is green?? No way...

Just glanced at some headlines and one stood out to me. Vista is green??? Yeah right... You take the same specs machine, and compare the speed of Vista and XP. You tell me which one is more green. XP definitely can last much longer on a battery charge than Vista.

Better still... You take a MacBook, and compare the battery life of the OSX, and the battery life of Vista. My MacBook lasts 5 hours on a full battery charge, with wireless on. Vista??

Green?? Yeah right... More like Vista is green with envy.

Nodame Cantabile

Just bought the DVD from TS Video for $19.90. Highly recommended by my girlfriend. She kept asking me if the guitar ensemble will play some pieces from there. Hahahaha...

Anyway, this is suppose to be a light-hearted, slapstick comedy about a conductor wanna-be, and a girl (Nodame), who plays music by ear. Suppose to be quite cute, and "classical". Total of 11 episodes.


Signing off to watch Nodame... :)

A side note... For those who wants to get Neverwinter Nights II expansion pack, Mask of Betrayer, better get it fast. It seems that they are now selling the combined box sets now (together with the main NWN II) and it's hard to find the standalone expansion box set. I quickly got mine even though I'm still playing.

Thunderbird does not integrate to Spotlight

Updated 30 May 2008: Link to previous instructions on how to install the mdimporter

I think I am going to give up integrating Thunderbird into spotlight on Leopard. I have encountered so many problems!

First, the problems that can be found on both Tiger and Leopard:

• The mail.spotlight.enable option in Thunderbird is not implemented correctly. If your mail folder names have a spacing in-between (e.g. "Good Food"), clicking on the result of the search will not bring you to the email. It will just bring you to a blank screen.
  
  
• Thunderbird implements the spotlight search by creating mozeml files in your mail profile per email. That means if you have 10,000 emails, you're going to get 10,000 mozeml files that contain the exact same information as the main inbox that Thunderbird uses.
  
  This only proves that Thunderbird v2.0.0.x is not designed to integrate to spotlight, and it uses up harddisk space unnecessarily.
  

Problems found on Leopard (in addition to the problems above):

• mail.spotlight.enable option in Thunderbird does not index all your emails. I found that it only indexes a few emails within all my existing mail folders. It seems that it has hit some error, and refuses to index further. I find this weird because I have no such problems in Tiger.
  
  However, new emails that comes in after the option is enabled, have no such problems.
  
  
• mozeml files from Tiger does not seem to work on Leopard. Clicking on the mozeml files will produce some weird behaviour. You will need to regenerate the mozeml files, and you will face the problem above.
  
  
• Spotlight in Leopard no longer index System Files. The mozeml files generated by Thunderbird are actually system files. They are all tagged as plist (property list) files. Therefore, no matter where you place your emails in Leopard, Spotlight results will not show because it is already tagged as System Files.
  
  You can force spotlight to index System Files by creating your own search in the Finder, and choosing the Search to search only for System Files. However, you will face the problems above.
  
  I can make it such that the command mdfind is able to search through the emails, but it is of no use because I cannot open up the email.

I was on it for a month because I thought there should be some way. I'm giving up!

Until Thunderbird comes out with a new version, I think I am going to disable this spotlight integration. I will use the internal search provided in Thunderbird. Just click on the Local Folders, and the Search messages option.

For those who wish to try out integrating Thunderbird into spotlight, refer to my previous post here.

Grrrrr...

Price of natural gas is pegged to the price of oil

Previously, I have written a post here asking why Singapore electricity is following the price of oil. I think I know why. I have read some reports somewhere that the price of natural gas is actually pegged to the price of oil! That is why as the oil price rises, electricity bills goes up too, even though we're 80% on natural gas. I've also read that most of the alternate bio-fuel, like palm oil, is also pegged to the oil price.

*shrug*. So much for alternative energy.

Go go solar energy.

VirtualBox on the Mac

Finally someone has released a free virtual machine (VM) for the Mac! The company is none other than Sun. The software is called VirtualBox, and the current version that I'm using is v1.6. VirtualBox for the Mac works only on an Intel Mac though.

To create a VM for Windows XP Home, just do the following:

• Create a New Virtual Disk
• Choose a name, and OS Type (Note that you can install many different flavors of Windows, Linux, etc)
• Choose a Base Memory size. This will be the "physical memory" your Windows will be allocated, and this amount of memory will be locked from your real physical memory when you're running your VM. I chose 512MB
• Create a New Boot Harddisk. This would be your virtual harddisk. I recommend using a fixed size image for performance. You will need at the very least 10GB for a fresh installation with SP3 installed (respectable speed).
• Finish the VM Wizard.
• Insert your Windows XP CD
• Start the VM you have just created.
• Install your Windows XP in the VM
• Once the installation is complete, go to the Menu Bar on top, and click on Devices > Install Guest Additions. This will install the VM device drivers for your Windows. Note that you should always install this.
• Patch up to SP3 (Yes, SP3 works in VirtualBox).
• Install your anti-virus, firewall, etc.

Few tips to note

• It is recommended to enable ACPI, VT-x/AMD-V and PAE/NX in the VM settings. VT-x/AMD-V is especially important because this will make use of the virtualization power of your Intel chip (faster).
• At any point of time, you can just "Hibernate" by closing the Window, and saving the Machine state. When you re-launch the VM, it will return back to the state before you closed the Window.
  
• To save a copy of your VM before you install any software, you can also go to the menu bar, and go to Machine > Take Snapshot. This is for you to recover your VM in-case the software you've installed crashed your VM. :)
• To re-size your VM, just drag the window. It will automatically re-adjust the resolution as you drag it. One can also always go to Full-Screen mode. It took me some time to figure this out. Apparently you cannot resize the resolution from the Display settings in Windows. The only way I know is to drag the window.
  

Below is the screenshot of my VM. :)

VM Screenshot

This is the first release for the Mac, and there are some features that are not yet enabled. However, this is more than enough for any casual user.

That's all to it. Now when I need to use Internet Explorer, I just need to launch VirtualBox to quickly view the application/Internet website. :)

Inflation is up 7.5%

These are the Singapore inflation rates for 2008:
January: 6.6%
February: 6.5%
March: 6.7%
April: 7.5%

Inflation is again highest since 1982. April's inflation is lead by food, transport and housing. I've written in the last post that inflation will hit 7%. I did not expect it to hit 7.5% though.

Am I surprised? Actually no. I expect this elevated inflation to last at least until June, with inflation hitting at least 7%.

MTI said that inflation was running ahead of what they expected. I would say that they did not read the world news properly. The signs are everywhere that inflation will hit this high, and I've seen the signs since last year. China, India, Geopolitical problems...

And the world is forgetting one more thing... The hurricane season is coming, and look how abnormal the weather is for this year. Be prepared for an interesting second half of the year.

Safe Mode for a Mac

Recently, I had a very "interesting" time trying to reset a wrongly set resolution on a Samsung LCD TV connected to a Mac Mini. Sad to say that this method does not work in resetting the resolution. I did managed to reset it though, and I will post the method later.

Anyway, this Safe mode for the Mac is still useful if you have programs that caused your Mac unable to startup. To go to Safe mode, just do the following:

1. Startup your Mac.
   
2. Hold down the Shift key immediately. It should be pressed down before you hear the startup tone.
3. Continue depressing the Shift key until you see the familiar gray loading screen.

That's all to it. When you see the Login Screen, you should see the word Safe Mode in red. Please be reminded that Safe mode is used for troubleshooting. Some Mac features do not work in Safe mode. Usually, this is used to un-install the offending program, or re-configure some system settings.

Note that going into Safe mode might take some time as it also forces a directory check of the startup volume. More information can be found at the Apple site here.