Archive for 'Mac'

Apr200922

Gomi

0

Abandoned Twitter Insanity!

Twitter BirdJust installed a new plugin… twitter-updater for WordPress! While the whole planet seems to be going all wacko over Twitter, I guess it’s time to completely jump on the bandwagon - updating my Twitter feed everytime I make a new post or edit an old post in my WordPress-powered blog seems like a nice proposition. Nevermind that Twitter has no business plan whatsoever or that Twitter is completely primitive compared to Plurk! You can download the twitter-updater plugin here, requires a self-hosted WordPress installation. My best buddy is complaining you can’t add plugins into his blog @WordPress.com without paying for it. LOL. Oh yeah, while were on the subject, don’t forget to follow me on the bluebird - Twitter.com/iGomi

Apr200918

Gomi

0

Fixing Adobe Updater lockup problems in Mac OS X

Any self-respecting professional designer works with at least one Adode application. Adobe’s Creative Suite, especially Photoshop and Illustrator, is the artery upon which our creativity flows. Every new version number upgrade in Photoshop or any of the CS applications adds new features, and sometimes, unwanted capabilities that are barely used or not used at all. One of the more annoying additions to the Creative Suite is the Adobe Updater, which seems to be built as an afterthought.

Adobe Updater iconThe Adobe Updater, notably in Mac OS X, is incredibly buggy, unreliable, and a waste of time. It is sometimes better to just download patches and updates manually from Adobe.com and install them one-by-one rather than to use this built-in POS. If you do get Adobe Updater to run and check for updates, it usually locks up when updating the Creative Suite, without as much as a whimper on what went wrong. This is just bad programming, IMHO, and what the heck is that icon supposed to represent anyway? The ninja star of update fail?

If you have probably noticed, the hangups usually happen when the updater begins on Flash, AIR, or Device Central. The quick fix for this is to run Flash, Device Central, and Bridge at least once before you start the update process using Adobe Updater. It appears these applications need to install some Application Support files which will only only happen if you open them for the first time. If you don’t, Adobe Updater can’t seem to find the right files and folders upon which to apply the updates. Once you’ve launched each of the Adobe CS applications, Adobe Updater should work without much of the hangups (it will still be slow though, a typical full update will take at least an hour). This tip should work for Creative Suite, CS2, CS3, and the latest CS4.

Adobe Updater is a shame, it would be nice if Adobe took more time and real effort to make a working update service for a great set of applications.

Apr200909

Gomi

14

Running Leopard on an AsRock 945GCM-S Motherboard

Asrock 945GCM-SIf you’ve tried installing Leopard using an AsRock 945GCM-S Motherboard and get the dreaded reboot loop during startup or incessant halts on the “using 10485 buffer headers and 4096 cluster IO buffer headers” line, we’ve found a way to make your Leopard 10.5.6 installation work with this motherboard.

It appears the normal BIOS of the motherboard won’t allow you to boot the Kalyway unless you place the “cpus=1” flag into your startup. That flag signals the kernel to use only one core in your multi-core system, resulting in a slower than expected system. While you can boot into the Kalyway install disc with the cpus=1 flag, you’ll never get the system to work unless you choose the “SSE2″ option in the customize dialog of the installation. It will successfully install but you’ll either have to manually type in “cpus=1″ during startup or modify your com.apple.Boot.plist file. If you can live with a working a system with just one core working then I guess this method is good for you.

Using the iDeneb 1.4 distro will give you a successful boot into the install DVD and even completely install the system unto your hard disc, BUT you’ll be getting the common halt on the ”using 10485 buffer headers and 4096 cluster IO buffer headers” line (only viewable in verbose mode), and it appears there is no way to make the system work.

Incidentally, the OSX86 Project Wiki lists the AsRock 945GCM-S motherboard as “does not work any method”. Sad indeed especially when you consider that the 945GCM-S is a great board for overclocking. My best friend’s rig is currently running a 1.6GHz Celeron E1200 @ 2.6GHz and pretty much stable. I’ve seen reports of other users using this board to run the Celeron E1200 at over 3.0GHz successfully with a better fan than the stock one included by Intel.

However, it seems a simple BIOS mod will make this AsRock board workable for any install and multi-core enabled. OSXCores lists a modified BIOS version 1.10 for the AsRock 945GCM-S that will enable you to successfully install and run Leopard using either iDeneb or Kalyway (we successfully tried and is currently running off an iDeneb 1.4 10.5.6 install). You’ll just need to flash your stock BIOS with the modified one. Pretty painless for experienced users. Noobs should stay away and don’t complain to me if you brick your system!

UPDATE: It seems OSXCores is now charging for downloading and making BIOS mods. I’ll have a mirror of the modified BIOS once I find the original file we downloaded a few weeks ago. OSXCores website has been updated, you can now download the modified version 1.10 BIOS file from OSXCores Desktop page, just look for 945GCM-S. New BIOS mods will require a donation.

Feb200909

Gomi

9

Install and run WordPress locally in Mac OS X using MAMP

Since the start of 2008, I’ve run into some client requests to develop their websites based on the de facto blogging engine, WordPress. As such, it was required that I be able to create and test custom Content Management System themes locally on my PowerBook G4 without having to be online. A boon considering some places I go to don’t have web access or have ridiculous firewall policies blocking access to some WordPress administration pages.

In case you’re wondering, MAMP stands for “Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP”. It enables Apache server with PHP and a MySQL server to run without the need for an online web server. Mac OS X Leopard already has Apache pre-installed, in fact its what you use when you enable Web Sharing, but it’s not as straightforward to enable and configure as compared to MAMP’s one-click solution. Also, you’ll still need to install the latest MySQL and PHP separately with Leopard’s Apache – something quite tedious and not for the faint-hearted. Unless you need full control over your entire Apache/PHP/MySQL, MAMP is simply the best way to go.

Here’s the way to install MAMP and configure WordPress to run off your local hard drive. It really isn’t difficult; in reality, it’s quite painless.

  1. Download WordPress from www.wordpress.org.
  2. Download MAMP for Mac OS X from www.mamp.info, the free version (as opposed to the US$56.77 Pro version) is good enough for running WordPress and testing.
  3. After downloading the 100+ Megabyte package, continue to install MAMP. After installation, open the MAMP Control Panel App inside the MAMP Folder in your main Applications folder. There’s also an included Dashboard Widget that works the same way as the main Control App.
  4. Now click on the “Start Servers” button. The red icons on the side should turn to green when the Apache and MySQL servers are ready.
  5. Safari (or whatever your default browser is) should open with the MAMP Start Page. If it doesn’t open automatically, just click on the “Open start page” button. Don’t worry about the confusing tabs and options in that page, we only need to concern ourselves with Start Page and the phpMyAdmin page (link is located on the menu at the top of the page).
  6. Take note of the following information on the Start Page:Host: localhost
    [Port: 8889]
    User: root
    Password: root
  7. You can write this information down, you’ll be needing it later for configuring WordPress’ wp-config.php file.
  8. Click on the phpMyAdmin link at the top of the page. After the page loads, look for the only text field on the page to “Create new database”. Enter a name for the database that we’ll use for the WordPress installation. Click “create”.
  9. Go to the Finder and open the MAMP Folder, inside this is the “htdocs” folder. Open “htdocs” and make a new folder – to make things easy, let’s name this “wordpress”. We’ll be installing WordPress here. Decompress WordPress and install all the necessary files (the wp-xxx files and folders).
  10. Open the wp-config-sample.php file in any text editor and change the settings in the “MySQL Settings” to match the information provided from the MAMP Start page. Make sure you put in the exact name in the database name field that we created in phpMyAdmin. Save the file inside thehtdocs -> wordpress folder as “wp-config.php”.
  11. Return to your browser and enter http://localhost:8888/wordpress/ into the address field. If everything went well you should be presented with the WordPress Installation process.
  12. Just follow you’re usual installation process like you would do if you were installing WordPress on an actual web server.

That’s pretty much it! When you’re done just click on “Stop Servers” from the MAMP Control app.

If you want multiple installations of WordPress, just follow the same procedure above but use a different name for both the database and the folder inside “htdocs’.

I hope this information was helpful! Keep coding!

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