

Ik moest kloppen want de bel deed het niet


Knock is een handige app die ervoor zorgt dat je niet je wachtwoord hoeft in te typen als je je Mac wilt unlocken. In plaats daarvan klop je gewoon even op je telefoon. Superhandig! Maar er zijn een paar kleine verbeteringen nodig om deze app echt goed te laten werken. Welke dat zijn licht ik hier toe.

Knock, knock? Not there!







You have to be logged in

Hello? Someone there?

Nobody home


Just keep knocking


Tools of the trade
















Living and working:

Well, that's most of it. What about you?

Links for this week


» MacGDBp - a PHP debugger using XDebug
» DPC'08 review by Rick Buitenman
» The Top Ten Subversion Tips for CVS Users
» The Subversion Book
» Running multiple FireFoxes on your Mac
» PHP Performance Series: Maximizing Your MySQL Database
» Which is the fastest browser?

Wubi: the new way of dual-booting










Life really does get better with every Ubuntu release.

Life after kill -9


I don't get this. I've had this on servers, on desktops, now I have it on my Mac: a process froze, didn't do a thing and just ignored the hell out of me. So what do you do? Kill it!

In Mac OSX, there's a little interface which allows you to choose an application and force it to quit. Works every time. So far. But how do you solve the frozen-process problem with a fullscreen application that won't let you switch to another application, like Front Row?

Tonight, my Mac froze on Front Row. I was comfortably sitting in bed, ready to watch an episode of a tv show on DVD, when Front Row just froze up. Silent. Nothing. No response. So I got out of bed, walked to my Linux PC and logged into my Mac using SSH. And I looked up the logs. And there it was:

Mar 31 22:41:46 Yoda2 diskarbitrationd[43]: Front Row [4394]:40707 not responding.

Non-responsive. That's fine, I thought, I'll just kill it, get back into bed and start over. But Front Row didn't let itself be killed:

breuls@Yoda2: ~ $ ps aux | grep Front
breuls 4435 0.3 0.0 590472 84 s005 R+ 10:43PM 0:00.00 grep Front
breuls 4394 0.2 3.8 430184 78816 ?? U 10:39PM 0:11.11 /System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/MacOS/Front Row
breuls@Yoda2: ~ $ kill 4394
breuls@Yoda2: ~ $ ps aux | grep Front
breuls 4394 0.0 0.0 0 0 ?? E 10:39PM 0:00.00 (Front Row)
breuls 4440 0.0 0.0 590472 204 s005 R+ 10:44PM 0:00.00 grep Front

That's right. Didn't listen to the kill command. Now, I know about the several options to kill. I tried several, including the -9 switch. Didn't work. Front Row ignored me, all the way through my giving up and pressing the reset button.

I hate that. That's not supposed to happen. Kill -9 is supposed to be the last way out of trouble. It-should-work. But it didn't. Why am I not in control of my own laptop? Why is there an afterlife to kill -9?

I'm a snob


Well, no, I'm not a snob, but I'm getting close, according to this list:

Mac owners are more likely:
1. to be perfectionists
2. to use notebooks
3. to use teeth whitening products
4. to drive station wagons
5. to pay for downloaded music
6. to go to Starbucks
7. care about "green" products and the environment
8. to own a hybrid car
9. and last but not least ... to buy 5 pairs of sneakers in a year

I'm a Mac owner. In fact, I recently replaced my MacBook Pro with.. well, a MacBook Pro. You know, "it was time" for a new one. So I should have a look at the list:

1. Perfectionist: a bit. Sometimes. When time allows, I want what I do to be done well. And that borders on perfect. So yeah, check this box.
2. Duh.
3. Apart from tooth paste: no.
4. I don't have a car. Hell, I don't even have a driver's license.
5. Yup. Sometimes I grab an album from Usenet, but most of the time I get my music through iTunes.
6. Whenever I'm near a Starbucks, which is at least a few days a year (there's no Starbucks in my city), I'll get me a Caramel Macchiato. Yummie!
7. Green-ish. Maybe a bit. I have some CFL bulbs in my lamps, and I turn down the heating when I open the window, and I separate used paper from the regular waste, but apart from that.. nah, not more than others.
8. I don't have a car, so no.
9. I don't own five pairs of sneakers, but I do wear Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars. Exclusively. And in the last year I bought three pairs. And yeah, within a few months I will probably have bought another pair. So let's check this box.

So, that's about five out of nine. Does that make me a snob? I'll leave others to be the judge of that.

Software developers: please log everything







Read my CD's, please!


I'm having serious trouble with my Mac. It won't read some of my CD's, which severely limits the possibilities of iTunes shuffling through my entire music collection. Or my iPod, for that matter.

It's really strange, too. When I insert a CD into the drive, it makes some noise, which indicates that the CD is being read. After about 20 seconds, the CD ejects. Just like that. No reason given. I have tried to look up any form of logged error, but the usual place where errors are supposed to be written down, the /var/log folder, doesn't mention any problem at all. Just accept the CD being inserted, make noise, eject CD and don't tell the user.

Why is that? Why does it eject the CD's at all? When it has a problem reading them, pop up some message explaining it, or put an entry in the system.log. Don't just go ignoring the fact that I want to read that CD!

Anyway, half of my CD collection is useless this way, because I never play CD's on a regular CD player. I hate that. I love my Mac, but this is really annoying.

MacBook heating




Guess what? No whine!


Allright, the MacBook Pro arrived yesterday, and like a kid at Christmas, I was very happy to be able to start using it. What a great machine. It's thin, light-weight, looks great and is really fast. Also, Mac OSX is quite nice to work with, although I still need some getting used to.

The problems I was afraid of? Almost none. Really! There's no noise. Not from the screen, not from the CPU, fans, harddrive, etcetera. It's silent, and I like it. There's only one thing: it's hot. The left-hand side of the body gets considerably hotter than the right hand side, and when resting my hand on it for a while, it gets irritated a bit. I don't know if that's just getting used to, or really a manufacturing mistake. I'll see how it works out for me the next couple of days.

All in all: I'm very happy. It's a cool machine, nice to work with, fast, easy... I love it!

MacBook in transit


I've been looking at a TNT tracking page for the past few days. My MacBook is paid for, assembled and on its way to me. Today it arrived in Amsterdam:

02 May  13:18  Rotterdam   Delivered 
02 May 09:57 Rotterdam Out For Delivery
02 May 05:52 Rotterdam Import Received
01 May 19:38 Arnhem Hub Consignment Received At Transit Point
01 May 19:35 Arnhem Hub Consignment Passed Through Transit Point
01 May 14:21 Amsterdam Consignment Received At Transit Point
30 Apr 14:32 Shanghai Shipped From Originating Depot
29 Apr 10:06 Shanghai Consignment Received At Transit Point

Now, I live in Rotterdam, and I assume that all TNT has to do is bring the thing to me. So I might have it tomorrow, unless for some reason it doesn't get picked up from Amsterdam. To save myself from dissappointment, I won't get my hopes up too high, but I'm getting really excited now...

Update: okay, it's in Arnhem now. That's not closer to where I live, but hey, if that's the way it works, fine. Google searches on the phrases in the tracking table make me believe I'll receive it tomorrow. Will I?

Update 2: and now it's in Rotterdam. Unless something weird happens, it will be delivered today.

Update 3: out for delivery. That's right. Give it to me baby. ;)

Update 4: it's here. Time to have some fun.

The Mac story begins


It's kind of official now: My MacBook Pro is on its way. I've ordered it, paid for it, so all I have to do now is wait for it to arrive.

Update on saturday the 29th: it's being sent out. Expected arrival: this week.

MacBook Large


While I was busy deciding about my MacBook Pro purchase, Apple released a 17" Macbook Pro today. I'm not getting one that large, it won't fit in my backpack. But it's still cool.

About my decision: I am getting the 15" version. I do care about the possibility of suffering from a whining noise, but I'll just go through several tech support phone calls if any of that happens.

I wish I could say here that I ordered the thing already, but I don't. Well, I do, but not entirely. My payment bounced because I hit a limit on my credit card. Need to fix that first, so the order will complete probably somewhere this week. I hope.

Becoming a Mac user means that I will start reading more Mac related web sites and blogs, and subscribing to some feeds. Milo already suggested a nice one: Macupdate.com. What else do I really need to start visiting regularly?

Mac means OPML


OPML logo Should I buy a MacBook, I will have the possibility of using the OPML Editor again, something I've missed doing since I threw out Windows and started using Ubuntu.

MacBook Pro: do or don't?


So here's the issue: I have a laptop, and it's getting old. Very old. Falling apart-old. For instance, every now and then, the thing won't boot normally, because of some harddisk problem. This usually means I have to do some fsck-repairs, reboot and hope for the best. Also, I have less time when running on just the battery than when it was new.

Of course, if it's just this, and I think it is, it can be fixed by just getting a new battery and a new harddisk. But the laptop is over two years old, and who knows what the next failure will be. Also I have never liked the fact that it weighs about 4 kilo's, which is kind of heavy to be just carrying around all the time. So I decided I needed a new laptop. A fresh one, with new technology, a slick design, good features.. And I chose: a MacBook Pro.

MacBook ProThere's just one problem. I've been reading several blogs, forums and news sites, and a lot of them report about a whining noise when the MacBook is on, making work on the laptop a lot less comfortabe. Also, it tends to get too hot to put it on your lap.

These complaints, which seem to be very serious, make me doubt whether I want to buy a MacBook or not. A lot of people have the problems, so chances are I will too. And Apple doesn't seem to care about it either, because I can't find a public statement about it anywhere. I don't know if they're busy fixing it, or recognize the problem at all. So, when I buy one, will I be able to use the thing comfortably, of do I have to return it to Apple to get a new one, over and over again, until it's finally fixed?

Still doubting..