Trey’s Blog

I try to get my hands into everything computer related so I have a good range of machines. I’m not really into gaming, so I don’t have any suped up rigs. The good news is that all of my OSes are legal versions. The bad news is that I need to get rid of some of these machines. My electric bill is probably impacted greatly by this computer lab I have set up in my office.

• Mac Mini 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo with 2GB RAM (Mac OS X 10.4)

• Custom AMD64 3500+ with 1GB RAM (Windows XP Pro)

• HP Pavilion 7965 1.6GHz P4 with 1GB RAM (Ubuntu Linux 6.06)

• Custom AMD 2600+ with 1GB RAM (Windows XP Pro)

• Sony VAIO 1GHz Pentium-M Notebook with 256MB RAM (Windows XP Home)

• eMachines W1640 AMD 1600+ with 768MB RAM (SuSE Linux 10.1) - For sale $100 plus any applicable shipping costs. Photos and specs available upon request.

I was thinking this morning that of the people I know, and surround myself with, only one person (podious) shares the same interests when it comes to the Internet. Percentage wise, this is very low. Here are some things I use often that would qualify anyone as a web geek (IMHO):

• Bloglines
• digg
• BackPackIt
• RememberTheMilk
• del.icio.us

Can anyone think of other things that qualify someone as a web geek?

This tool, Monolingual, is a fantastic find for anyone using OS X and only needs English installed on their system. This tool found all of the languages I had installed on my system and gave me the choice to remove any I didn’t want. After 5 minutes of business, it alerted me it was done and freed up 2.4GB of space just by removing the extra languages.

http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/

Here are a few applications I have discovered and started using for my Mac. Flash and Photoshop weren’t new discoveries, but familiar faces are always welcomed. Why in the world they can’t get these two products working in Linux is beyond me. They can’t use the RISC processor excuse any longer. No one bother telling me about CodeWeavers projects. I’ve tried them and they are so-so.

Smultron - Web Editor

Cyberduck - FTP Client

Acqlite - Gnutella Client

Transmission - BitTorrent Client

HandBrake - DVD to DivX

Toast 7 Titanium ($) - Burning CDs

Fast DVD Copy ($) - DVD Backups

Adium - Instant Messaging (Yahoo and MSN)

CocoaMySQL - MySQL Management Tool

Disk Inventory X - Hard drive space reporting

DivX Player - self explanatory

Firefox - Web Browser

Thunderbird - Email Client

Macromedia Flash 8 ($) - Vector Graphics

Adobe Photoshop CS2 ($) - Photo Manipulation/Graphics

Apparently I’m in the minority when it comes to migrating my Thunderbird Profile from Linux to OS X. I couldn’t find information for it anywhere. Most of the information I found was how to move from another client to Thunderbird or how to migrate from XP to Linux.

What I’ve tried

1. I copied over the entire profile, and added it to the Profiles directory under /Users/[username]/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles. After that, I modified the pref.js for this profile changing all references to /home/[username]/.mozilla-thunderbird/ to /Users/[username]/Library/Thunderbird/. With all of this done, the only thing that appears in Thunderbird when I launch it is Local Folders. There is no sign of my emails. When I look under the mail settings, the mailbox appears to be setup, but nothing shows up in the Inbox.

2. Another thing I tried was using default profile as created by Thunderbird, then overwriting the Profile Mail files over the existing and still nothing shows. This method doesn’t require any change to the prefs.js file as it should already be correct and more environmentally accurate.

GOOD NEWS!! The second method is what proved to be the answer, although, one key thing for my situation was the speedbump pothole in the road. I keep my Inbox as a global Inbox, meaning all of my mail for my email account gets stored in Local Folders’ Inbox rather than the mail.whatever.com Inbox. This means I was copying the wrong Mail folder into the Mac profile. What I did to find this was a simple du -sh on the Mail directory to find that my Local Folders directory was 1.4GB while my mail.whatever.com was only 100MB (which is still a lot for no use, but no worries… I don’t need it). Once the correct Mail dir was put in place, Thunderbird was launched and had all of my email and folder structure was intact.

Note: I spent about an hour looking for the answer and submitted a post to the mozillazine forums. I must commend the Moderators over there because they are on top of their game. They replied to my post in about 5 minutes and provided another workaround that would’ve worked (I tested it) had I not found out my own goof up during the process.

These are items I need to get worked out before I can move to my Mac Mini fulltime.

• get Mozilla Thunderbird configured and showing all mail from previous Profile (Thunderbird on Ubuntu Linux)
• find a good DVD Copy program that works without a hitch
• get my music stored off on a larger hard drive. I’m currently approaching the limit on my 40GB hard drive. I was thinking of getting a MiniStack v2 and putting the spare 120GB I have in it.
• get my iTunes setup as it is on XP with my music and podcast subscriptions.
• get my photo collection moved over from XP
• get my DiVX movie collection moved over from XP (BTW Handbrake is an awesome app that is very easy to use and can even crop out letterboxes!)
• get all of my FTP Sites setup in CyberDuck.

I believe that is it. Some of you might be wondering why I even posted this. The answer is because I needed to checklist for myself and this just happen to pop into my head when I was looking at my blog.

Okay, first things first. I was able to get the Wifi working with my new Mac. The issue was the WEP Settings. In the original setup, there is a dropdown list, but since it defaulted to WEP Password, I assumed I was in the only WEP option. It wasn’t until my second go around that I found there were three options: 1. WEP Password, 2. WEP Hex, and 3. WEP Ascii. Once I setup my correct WEP option with the correct security string, everything worked great. One less wire is very nice. I’ve got most of my apps installed, but I’ve had some issues with getting my Mozilla Thunderbird profile migrated over. The messages won’t show up under the new Inbox. I assume there is an issue with the paths in one of the profile settings files. I’ve already adjusted the prefs.js file which had four different references that had to be updated. Essentially, Linux keeps everything in /home/[username]/.mozilla-thunderbird/ and OS X keeps everything in /Users/[username]/Library/Thunderbird/. Everything under the Preferences Menu of Thunderbird seems to be pointing to the correct paths, but still no emails. The profile I’ve copied over is about 1.2GB, so there should definitely be some messages somewhere. Other than this, I’m very impressed with this operating system. I can see how Mac lovers are so hard to switch back. The only thing that I find odd, but only because I’ve not read the details is why there isn’t more free software available. Almost everything is available, but for a price. I’ll post more later.

Apparently, I hadn’t thought out my system wiring prior to making this purchase as I was shy one DVI cable and an ethernet cable. For the setup, I went ahead and shutdown two other machines and used their cabling to satisfy my requirements. My initial thoughts were of how beautiful this piece of art really was. Apple’s design team gets major kudos from me. Besides telling it to use American English for all of its language configurations, I was prompted for an Internet connection. I remembered that the Mac mini had built-in wireless so I decided to give that a shot. It found my access point and 2 others in the neighborhood, but when I tried to connect using my WEP key, it failed… and it failed… and it failed again. To eager to see the system, I decided to go with the easy route. I reconnected the ethernet cable and started configuration with that. The OS wanted to grab the first available IP address from the router despite having been allocated to another machine via SDHCP (that machine was off at the time). Since this IP was taken, it was told not to get it. I added a SDHCP entry to my router for the Mac and its MAC address, and after selecting DHCP with manual entry of IP Address, it worked. So far the wireless keyboard and mouse, both using Bluetooth, were the easiest part of the setup. At this point, I’m connected to the Internet and went straight to Mozilla to get Firefox, and a little familiarity. This is my first experience with a Mac of my own, so I’ll be climbing the learning curve for the next month or so, I’m sure. If I was an average user, I would probably be set to go now, but I’m a web developer, so on I go to install FTP tools, web editors, graphics tools, etc.

For now, my Mac is sitting on my shelf, powered off and disconnected, but once I get my cabling plan established, I’ll be reconnecting again. The one thing that is hindering me the most is my busy schedule. It doesn’t allow for much time to toy around with a computer without using it to make money. The only catch is, if I wasn’t doing this work, I wouldn’t have the ‘toys’ to begin with. This may be a life rethink for some other time. For now, all of my other computers are running, and the Mac will soon be my development machine.

Well, I did it. I ordered my Mac Mini on Sunday and it should be delivered today. I’m very anxious. This is my first attempt at using a Mac of my own, and to try to use it whilest shutting down my Windows box completely. Not that I’m attached to Windows. I primarily use my Ubuntu Linux box for the everyday mundane tasks and web development. From what I’ve read and seen, using my Mac will be a breeze and a pleasure. I purchased the top of the line without upgrades, so I’ll be running the 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo with 512MB RAM and the SuperDrive. With the computer, I also ordered the Apple Bluetooth Keyboard and today I’ll buy the Logitech V270 Bluetooth Mouse to complete the wireless I/O package. If only DVI and Audio came with a wireless option. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be posting about my experiences.