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tiger days 1

Published May 8, 2005 by lieven

It
should be really day 2 but yesterday evening I was a bit overoptimistic
and tried to get MySQL, Ruby, Rails & Tracks installed and in the
process totally wrecked my Ruby-system (and probably a few things more).
Besides, I found out that the _Carbon Copy Cloner_ work-around
doesn\’t really work (that is, one canNOT boot from the cloned copy)
etc. etc. In short, a lot of frustration. So today, I started all over
again (using the install notes below to guide me and so I could reduce
the total time to about 2 hrs). But, as this was the easy bit (still to
come : MySQL, PHP, WordPress+LatexRender, Ruby&Tracks etc.) and I
don\’t want to redo everything again when I do something horribly wrong
I changed my overall tactics. I\’ll keep identical copies on my iBook
and on my iMac and do the next batch of installs on just one machine and
check whether everything works before syncing it to the other. If
something gets messed up I resync to the state of the previous day. Just
one question left : what program to use for the backup/restore now that
CCC seems to be broken? Fortunately, there is still PsyncX which still
seems to work fine (at least today…). Below, for what it is worth,
yesterday\’s log of events :

Okay, I checked that I can still
TeX papers and connect to the printer on the iMac (after Archive/Install
to Tiger). Most other things have broken down, such as my mind on tracks
and my MySQL-database, but I\’m quite hopeful I can rebuild them all.
So, time for a drastic _Erase/Install_ on my iBook.

12:04 : One final safety check. Connect the external
HD, select the _Carbon Copy Cloned_ partition as StartUp Disk and
do a Restart to verify that it can be cloned back should everything go
terribly wrong. Seems to work nicely, so change again from StartUp disk,
restart and disconnect the external HD.

12:16
: Printed the macdevcenter install
tips and made a fresh pot of coffee. Took the unread part of the
newspaper with me, connected Jan\’s iPod, made it the new StartUp disk
and did another Restart.

12:24 : Selected
\’English\’ as the main language. Selected _DiskUtility_ from the
_Utilities_ menu (before you have to select a Disk destination).
Selected the HD, clicked _Erase_ and choose _Erase Free
Space_ first, then choose the SecurityOption to \’zero out data\’.
(Both steps require a lot of extra time but what is the point of doing
an Erase if you don\’t erase properly? Btw. the macdev-article does not
agree with me on this point.) Meanwhile, had some coffee and a
read…

13:23 : Did quit DiskUtility
which brought me back to the Installer. Selected the HD and clicked on
_Options_ to select Erase&Install and clicked Continue. Then
clicked on _Custom Install_ to choose which Packages to Install.
Did choose _all_ Printer Drivers but in _Language
Translations_ only selected : French, German and Dutch. Didn\’t
select X11! Clicked : _Install_ and had yet another cup of
coffee…

13:45 : Restarted! Got me into
the SetupAssistant. Didn\’t choose to transfer info from another Mac. It
selected our wireless network immediately, and asked me for my .Mac
account info. Did create my main account and finished at
13:53 Only had to stop iTunes from wanting to put
PodSoftware onto the connected iPod… Checked for SoftwareUpdate
but there was none. Am connected to internet but had to add my other
mail-account. Done and received email at 14:05 Found
our Printer but did gray out two-sided printing (have to remember later
how I did set this up…).

14:12 : Time
to add the _Xcode Tools_ : opened the folder on the iPod and
clicked on _XcodeTools.mpkg_ . Followed he default installation.
Finished and deconnected the iPod at 14:24 Took a break
to decide how to continue. (21.97Gb available) Update today : do a
custom install using also cross-development!

14:37 : Okay, first things first : get myself a
working TeX-system starting from this page
to get the latest version of TeXShop and the i-Installer and place both
in the Applications folder and in the Dock. Placed the _To Your
Library_ folder of TeXShop in my ~/Library (containing the texmf
etc. path for pdfsync). Then followed this
page and the i-Installer to install the packages in the right order
:

  • FreeType 2
  • libwmf
  • Ghostscript
    8
  • ImageMagick
  • FontForge
  • TeX (did a
    Full install with 2005 Devel.)

Had a brief look
through the other packages and maybe I\’ll install _Latex to RTF_
and _RTF 2 Latex_ later. Created a _DMG_ folder and put
the downloaded disk images into it. Created a_PAPERS_ folder and
transferred the last version of the paper with Stijn to check TeX but
clearly it couldn\’t find the _diagrams.sty_ file (I know I have
to quit using this, but I\’ll better get it over for backward
compatibility; put it into ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/. Ran TeX again
without problems this time and checked the nice source-PDF syncing
(apple-click to jump). Finished : 15:37

15:56 : As long as administration sends me
_Word_ documents and expects me to read them, I have no choice
but to install _Office X_ . The upshot was that while searching
for the OfficeCD I found also the HP LaserJet 1320 CD and installed the
driver so now I can print 2-sided (using Printer Setup Utility) . Done :
16:15

16:45 : Used the
_.mac System Preference_ to get syncing started with my iDisk to
get adresses, calendars and passwords etc. on my iBook. Also filled in
the Sharing Preferences. Now that I have the passwords at hand, it is
time to get the latest versions of some of the shareware I own (and copy
their disk image to the DMG folder)

  • DevonThink
  • DenonAgent
  • Pod2Go : the site seems to be down at the
    moment but fortunately, I have a disk image of it which will have to do
    for now (note to self : check later whether the site is permanently
    dead…) Update today : it is up and running again…

and while I\’m at it I may as well get my wallet out and
purchase the full version of _Lite_ versions I like and use a lot
:

Fortunately, there is also a lot of excellent freeware that I
want to use

One of the following days : MySQL, PHP and perhaps Tracks but
first I desperately need to do some maths to kick off from all this
nonsense…

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tiger balm

Published May 6, 2005 by lieven

I still
havent received my Tiger-package but got a bit panicky because it is
released as a DVD and at least one of our recent iMacs (the older ones
do not even have build in firewire, let alone enough RAM) cannot read
DVDs. That’s not a major problem as one can always send the DVD back and
ask for CDs instead (and wait even longer) or you can follow this trick (using
Firewire target disk mode). Jan suggested another
approach : make the DVD into a _dmg image_, connect an iPod,
erase with DiskUtility its hard disk and use the _Restore_ option
of DiskUtility to copy the dmg onto it. Then choose the iPod as StartUp
Disk and restart and everything works nicely.

As he went through the
trouble of setting up his iPod, I merely borrowed it and did an
Archive/Install of Tiger on the redundant iMac.All went well and
afterwards you can hardly see the difference with Panther except in the
top right corner where there is the _SpotLight_ icon (a feature I
do like and will use often) and in the lower left corner the
_Dashboard_ icon (a feature which still has to convince me).

Anyway, I wanted to check out as quickly as possible a comment (also
from jan)
that there is a new _Tiger only_ version of TexShop out
which syncs nicely between the PDF-file and the source. As it requires
some extra packages using i-Installer I took the opportunity
to update my TeX-system.

As they predict bad weather for the
rest of the weekend I thought “well, why not just begin the
Panther/Tiger switch on my _iBook_ using the iPod trick as well”.
But first I wanted to backup the latest Tiger+TeX version using
_Carbon Copy Cloner_. Over the last year this has become such a
routine operation (backing up to a slick _Porsche_ designed 250Gb
HD) that I was quite surprised that the computer halted after typing in
the super-user password. Forcing CCC to quit and restarting didn’t solve
the problem so it was time to do a Google on “Carbon Copy Cloner Tiger”
to find out that other (quicker) people had already experienced the
same.

As making a bootable backup is crucial for me I had to
find a way round this and fortunately found the Tiger balm
post. Here’s the hack :

– go to the Applications folder
–
open Terminal and type sudo open
– drag CCC to
the Terminal-window
– type return and provide superuser
password
– open CCC and fill in Source and Target disks as
usual
– it works!

Rumours are that
Mike Bombich will rewrite CCC shortly to fix this problem. Let’s just
hope that I don’t find too many other applications behaving unexpectedly
(in the 2 hours I’m onto Tiger I also found _Remote Desktop_ not
to work at all but then it’s an old 1.2 version so maybe Apple took this
chance to force people to upgrade (and pay heavily) as they seem to do
with hardware (someone should come up with a way to get the first
generation iMacs onto Tiger!)

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mind on tracks

Published May 2, 2005 by lieven

I just
started putting my mind on tracks but it will take
me a couple of days to offload most of the crap that keeps me awake at
night. There are three main components to Tracks: Next actions, Contexts
and Projects.

“Contexts are very flexible, and can
be places, states of mind or modes of working in which actions can be
taken. Next actions can be assigned to and sorted by context so that you
know when you are able to make progress with items. e.g. “Library”,
“Shops” or “Tired”.” So far I added only 10 contexts : _@inbox_,
_@books_, _@email_, _@home_, _@neverending_,
_@courses_, _@other_, _@papers_, _@computer_
and _@personal_. Probably I’ll have to add others such as
_@refereeing_ etc.

“Projects : any goal
which requires more than one next action to take it to completion is a
Project. In Tracks, you can view your next actions by Project.” So far I
added the first few things that came to mind ranging from small-easy
things such as _Learn
VoodooPad_ over _Paper with Jan_ to neverending-things
like Write nag@n !

“Next
actions : These are the heart of GTD. They are the very next
physical action that can be taken on something. It’s best to phrase
these in an active way e.g. “Call Bob about the committee meeting” or
“Search for a reputable garage”.” Up to now I merely added the next
foreseeable action in each project together with a few urgent persoanl
matters. It is a good idea to give each of these a deadline so they
appear on the screen with a color-code giving the date and red (urgent),
orange (coming up) to green (some day). I realize I’ve been rather
relaxed about my projects so far!

More information on tracks can
be found here. Try it
out!

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