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A Rube Goldberg-inspired garage parking assistant

We recently started parking our truck in the shorter of our garage bays—it's short due to shelves at the front that can't be moved any further forward (as they'd then block access to another portion of the garage).

The amount of wiggle room available is quite small—about two inches of leeway, at the most. So parking in the same spot every time is quite important. (The frontmost item on the truck is the bracket that holds the license plate, so that's the part that needs to be watched.)

While there are many ways to solve this issue, here's how I chose to do it:

Sure, I could have hung a tennis ball from the ceiling (I did that first, actually), or put a block on the ground in front of the tire. But I had issues with both of those methods, and I like semi-geeky do-it-yourself solutions. Read on, if you wish, for the details on the project…

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Use Mountain Lion in VMware Fusion with Tools

Note: As of VMWare Fusion 4.1.2, this hack is no longer necessary. I've left it here mainly for those using older versions of Fusion (though you may not be able to install newer Mountain Lion previews on those older versions of Fusion).

If you're a Mac developer with access to OS X Mountain Lion, you might want to use it in a virtual machine. This is simple in VMware Fusion, but if you try to install VMWare Tools, Mountain Lion will kernel panic. Unfortunately, using virtual OS X without VMware Tools installed is painful—no screen resize, captured and laggy mouse, etc. So here's a workaround to get Mountain Lion working with VMware Tools (this assumes you have Mountain Lion already running in a virtual machine):

  1. Make a snapshot of your current setup!
  2. Run the VMWare Tools installer, but do not reboot when it's done. Just leave the installer running onscreen.
  3. Navigate to /Library > Application Support > VMware Tools.
  4. Delete vmmemctl.kext and vmmemctl
  5. Edit (you'll need root power) services.sh in that same directory.
  6. Comment out these two lines (they're shown commented out, via the # in front of each):

  7. Save the edited file, quit the editor, and now (via the still-running Installer) reboot the virtual machine.

The initial reboot may take a long time, but it should work. If it doesn't, you're on your own, as I've now exhausted all my knowledge on the topic.



A workaround for an iPhoto/set desktop picture bug

On both my Mac Pro and my iMac, I've run into a problem where the iPhoto library simply doesn't show up in the Desktop & Screen Saver System Preferences panel (in Mac OS X 10.6.x). Well, sometimes it shows up, but simply as a line reading iPhoto, but without any actual content.

When this happened the first time, I looked in Console and found the following entry for each time I'd tried to load the Desktop tab of the Desktop & Screen Saver panel (reformatted for easier reading):

1/12/12 9:09:36 AM      System Preferences[4134]
**** DesktopPref error: DSKiPhotoRootSource -loadData TIME OUT!!! There something wrong with iLife Media Browser

Googling on that error led to a number of pages, including iLife: Cannot See iPhoto Files in Other iLife Applications on Apple's support site. But after trying everything in that article, I still couldn't see my iPhoto images when trying to set the Desktop picture.
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Troubleshooting a Mac CD tray that won’t stay closed

Recently, I placed my Mac Pro up for sale, both on the net in general and on eBay. The eBay auction closed with a successful bidder, so yesterday, I went to prep the machine for shipping. After wiping the drives and reinstalling OS X, I had but one thing to do: solve a small but annoying problem with one of the two installed disc burning SuperDrives (name used for simplification; one was an actual SuperDrive from Apple; the other a multi-format burning drive from Sony).

The stock drive, which I had mounted in the lower slot, worked fine. So did the after-market upper drive, as long as there was a disc in the slot. If I ejected the disc and then closed the tray, the drive would grind for a few seconds, then eject. It would then stay ejected for a few minutes, until (I believe) OS X noticed it was open. It would then close, and the grind-eject cycle would repeat.

I'm posting the sordid details of my experience in case anyone else is looking for help with a CD/DVD tray that won't stay closed on their own OS X machine; perhaps it'll show up in a Google Mac-specific search at some point in the future. Read on for the details…
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Thanks and goodbye, Tatters!

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I was never a cat person growing up; my family always had dogs. Once I got through college, I lived in shared housing arrangements for the first five years of my work life (the joys of living in Silicon Valley)—so that meant no pets of my own. My jobs were also such that having a pet would be difficult, as I traveled a fair bit. So I remained petless for many years.

In January of 1994, though, I purchased my first home (shortly after moving to Oregon). In all ways but one, it was a very typical starter home: 1970s three-bedroom two-bathroom ranch with too much dark wood, not enough light, horrendously outdated kitchen, and and orange-and-white marble-look-but-plastic guest bath.

The one way in which it differed is that the home came with a guilt trip, which led directly to my first-ever experience as a cat owner…
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How to not upgrade to iOS5

If you follow me on Twitter, you're probably familiar with my iOS5 installation difficulties. Two days into the process, and I've still not been able to update either my iPad (first generation) or iPhone 4. This is—by far—the most frustrated I've been with any Apple upgrade, ever…and that covers a lot of history!

Simply as a means of venting, and perhaps to save someone else from going through what I've gone through (though note that I haven't yet solved the problem), here's what I've gone through to try to upgrade my iPhone and iPad.

Update: On my 48th attempt, my iPhone 4 successfully updated to iOS5. Now, on to the iPad…

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11.6″ MacBook Air: Who needs a netbook?

As I'm really enjoying my new 11.6" MacBook Air, I thought it might be interesting to compare it with some other portables I currently own. Specifically, I wanted to compare the Air to my previous fave ultra-portable Mac (the 12" PowerBook G4), a Dell Mini 10 running Mac OS X, and my current fave Mac laptop, the high-res anti-glare 15" MacBook Pro.

What follows isn't a comprehensive set of benchmarks done under controlled conditions. It's more of a quick look at performance (and measurements and specifications) across a series of machines, three of which can be considered "ultra portables."

Read on for the table...

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Macworld: 2010 writings

Macworld logoAll (or as many as could be found online) of my 2010 writings for Macworld.

January
Jan 5LaunchCodes brings back 10.5-style document opening
Jan 13Does auto-expiring security software make sense?
Jan 21What key features will a tablet need before you buy one?
Jan 26What might a tablet's home screen look like?
Jan 26Fusion 3.0.1
Jan 26Parallels 5 (build 9308)
Jan 26VirtualBox 3.1.2
Jan 27Virtualization: Performance testing
Jan 27Virtualization: Which one to use?
Jan 27The iPad's five worst surprises
Jan 29Virtualization: Behind the scenes
February
Feb 25First Look: Quicken Essentials for Mac
March
Mar 8Why I don't use Google Docs
Mar 23Magic Launch brings creator-code support to Snow Leopard
April
Apr 3In the line for an iPad: A first-person account
Apr 9Why pay for Final Cut Express when iMovie is free?
Apr 29Numbers 1.0 for iPad
May
May 6Essential Mac utilities: text expanders
May 6Spell Catcher X 10.3.4
May 6Typinator 4.0
July
Jul 7Ten ways to customize Chrome
Jul 8First Look: Firefox 4 beta
August
Aug 2Office 2011 pricing penalizes owners of multiple Macs
September
Sep 13What OS X has meant to me
Sep 28Microsoft Excel for Mac 2011
October
Oct 12Office 2011: the macro is back
Oct 19OS X 10.7: The rumors and the reality
Oct 27Boost your Mac's speed with a hybrid drive
Oct 27Office 2011: Excel FAQ
November
Nov 5IT conference attendees react to Xserve's demise
Nov 9Recapping the MacTech conference
Nov 12Expert printing tips for Excel 2011
Nov 15Mac Pro: Tower of power


My 90-day health improvement plan

A few days ago, I Tweeted a message about how I've lost weight, dropped my blood pressure, and reduced my resting pulse rate over the last few months:

Sep 8 vs Dec 8: Blood pressure, 140/95 -> 115/75; resting pulse, 73 -> 48; Weight, 218 -> 185. Amazing what's possible in three months.

I had a few people ask (on Twitter) me how I made these changes. My response required more than 140 characters, so I thought I'd expand on it in a blog posting here.

Warning, this is a long blog entry, mainly because I've not written this down anywhere before, and I wanted to get it all in text. The executive summary version is simply that cutting sodium, watching calories, and running every single day possible are the three main factors behind the changes in my weight and blood pressure.

Read on for the highly-detailed version of the above...

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