Hello World!
Version 1.3 didn't quite work but I emailed the author, Adriaan Tijsseling, and he told me this brand new version, version 1.3.1, fixes the problem. Apparently, Apple changed something in Jaguar's AppleScript at the last minute that brought about the problem.
Let's see if it works...
Yup! Cool!
I just came across this app which sounds like just what I need since this site is powered by Movable Type and I use Mac OS X!...
Kung-Log is a donation-ware OSX application to post to and manage entries of a Movable Type weblog.
I'm downloading now!
I cloned my hard disk using Carbon Copy Cloner this past Saturday then backed up my key files and folders today to an external FireWire hard disk. Then this afternoon I simply upgraded my Mac OS X system from version 10.1.5 to 10.2 (codenamed "Jaguar"). The process couldn't have been easier and went very smoothly. After the initial setup which involved clicking half a dozen or so buttons and options (I opted for the equivalent of a "Clean Install"), the only other user involvement was to insert the second CD. The entire upgrade took about an hour to complete without any "hiccups" whatsoever. The new system definitely feels snappier! I expect to be madly updating software over the next week for maximum compatibility.
Gwen and I took this past Monday and Tuesday off from work just to rest ("sleep in" and nap!), relax and spend more time with Justin. We hit the swimming pool 4 days in a row! Well, I didn't swim last night (did the other 3 days) but watched as Gwen, Justin, our friend Patricia and her daughter Arianna played in the pool. On Sunday and Monday, the Ho family (Rob, Janey and little Lauren) also came by to swim and have dinner with us. So we got some exercise and enjoyed some good company! Oh, Gwen and I and even baby Justin got our hair cut yesterday at Vickie's Salon in Wanchai. Vickie was extra careful while cutting and shaving Justin's hair. It helped that Justin was half asleep! Justin's hair definitely looks better although I'm not so sure I like the back — the bottom half is shaved pretty much to the skin so it looks like he's got one of those rice-bowl haircuts! On Monday we took Justin in to the government clinic get an immunization shot but were told to come back in a month so no injection for Justin this time. We did get him weighed though and he's now 7.7kg (almost 17 pounds) at 5 months and 1 week old!
If you are constantly getting the following error when trying to burn a CD-R disc, the problem might be the discs (media) that you're using.
Sensekey hardware error (0x04)
Sense Code = 0x44
Internal Target Failure
(Note how misleading the error message is — "hardware error" sounds like the CD-RW drive is broken!)
That was the case for me when I used either Roxio Toast or CharisMac Discribe on my Mac (OS 9 and OS X). The discs that caused the problem for me were labeled "Encore - gold series" by imation (yes, imation). I have heard that the Encore-branded discs are second-rate "B Grade". "A Grade" discs made by imation are clearly labeled with the "imation" brand. Other A Grade discs are generally more expensive — in Hong Kong, over HK$100 (US$13) for 50-disc storage spindle pack.
Been using OS X for about a month now and I must take back what I had said earlier about all OS 9 applications working flawlessly (FreeHand 9 crashes) and no speed degradation (OS 9 IS noticably snappier). What was I thinking?! Well I had only been using OS X for about 3 days when I made those comments. I must have been overly excited by the whole new range of applications and the Unix command line. OS X is still very usable and robust but it and many applications for it need tweaking. Indeed, many OS X applications I'm running now are beta versions. I am disappointed that Apple would charge so much (US$129) for the next upgrade to version 10.2 (Jaguar). That's undoubtedly too much to charge for what I consider to be a lot of bug-fixes to the system. Sorry if I mislead anyone out there. (I only have 1 reader, so probably not!)
Last week I had a quick business trip to Tokyo — left on Sunday evening and came back on Wednesday afternoon (Aug 4-7). Was there with our regional finance director, Soo Siong, to look at ways to reduce our office's capital expenditure budget there. Highlight of the trip was dinner with Soo Siong and Ms Chizuru Yukita at Kani Seryna in Roppongi. The crab dishes we had were fantastic! As part of a dinner set, we each had half of a Horse Hair Crab and Snow Crab Shabu-Shabu. Pricey, but well worth it in my opinion! Thanks, Chizuru!
fsck -y
The fsck program will scan your hard disk and try to fix any problems. This will take about 5 minutes. If there were problems that it fixed, after the scan you'll see the message: FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED. In that case, run the fsck -y command again until it tells you your hard disk seems fine.
Then type the following command and hit Enter:
shutdown -nh now
Power your Mac back up and you're safely back in business!
Was looking for a small, fast program to quickly and easily downsample a bunch of JPEGs (taken by my Canon PowerShot G1 at 2048x1536 res) to a specified size (e.g. 600x450). No, nothing like massive Photoshop. I was thinking I'd be able to drag and drop a folder containing all my JPEGs and it would spit them back to a specified folder at my specified resolution. I wanted it to handle both landscape and portrait pictures such that I'd just need to specify the size of the longest dimension. So if I specified 600 pixels as the longest dimension, it'd size a standard digicam picture (4:3 aspect ratio) to 600x450 if the picture was landscape and 450x600 if the picture was portrait.
I searched on VersionTracker.com and downloaded and tried a bunch of suitable apps including ImageEdit, ImageConverter, ConvertImage, Fast Webpictures, and DropJPEG. The best one I came across was KStudio's Resize!. It has all the features I was looking for, it's freeware and is available for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and even Windows! When it processes a folder of images, it automatically creates a new folder on your desktop using the same name as the original folder and the size of the longest dimension in parentheses appended at the end (i.e. from an original folder named 20020802 Photos, folder 20020802 Photos (600) is created on your desktop containing the resized pictures). I'm hoping that an updated version will have the ability to apply a bit of sharpening to each picture as well.
Check out Justing cracking up at mommy pretending to sneeze in this small video clip (progressive QuickTime MOV, 240x180 pixels, 1 min 47 secs, 2.4MB) shot on July 30, 2002. Good for at least a few chuckles!
