Today my SuperDuper! backup failed, complaining about disc space. The log showed the error occuring with a file under /.MobileBackups. Say what?
This turns out to be a feature of Time Machine in OSX 1.7 – Backups are made locally in addition to your external drive. I don’t want this behaviour, so I disabled it:
sudo tmutil disablelocal
Simples ;)
Microsoft’s Office 2011 for Mac leaves behind files in a number of places. When removing it, say to upgrade or downgrade or just re-install, it is good to remove all the left overs and start fresh. Here’s the quick and dirty of what to do.
Start by closing all MS Office components. If you’re reading my blog, you probably don’t need me to give you step-by-step instructions to do this through Finder. You can just copy the following into a terminal and be done with it. (Disclaimer: there may be mistakes):
sudo rm -rfv /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ 2011 sudo rm -rfv /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist sudo rm -rfv /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper sudo rm -rfv /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.* sudo rm -rfv /Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft sudo rm -rfv /Library/Receipts/Office2001_ #may not exist sudo rm -rfv /Library/Fonts/Microsoft sudo rm -rfv /private/var/db/receipts/com.microsoft.office.* rm -rfv ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.* rm -rfv ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft rm -rfv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft rm -rfv ~/Documents/Microsoft\ User\ Data
You’ll have to re-do the last four lines as each user, if you have multiple users on your Mac. Once you’re done, remove the icons from the Dock, and (because this is Microsoft after all) reboot!
I recently purchased an Asus EeePC 1201N for the purpose of running OS X Snow Leopard, Windows 7 and some flavour of Linux. Each OS has a different purpose. I’ve been looking for a lightweight laptop to take with me when travelling, specifically for the purpose of importing my photos, geotag them and keyword them while things are fresh in memory. Aperture is my tool of choice, so I needed something with enough oomph and a decent enough display. Windows is purely to get to know it, as I haven’t touched it since XP days, and I’m getting rusty. Linux is what I use at work, and what I use for a lot of things outside of my day job.
As you might know, the wireless card in the 1201N doesn’t work in OS X, and the Dell 1510 card is widely recommended. It uses a Broadcom BCM4322 chip, which works natively in OS X. Unfortunately Broadcom chips tend to be somewhat shaky in Linux, unless you go with ndiswrapper for driver support, which wouldn’t work for my needs, so I had to look for something else.
Things are further complicated by the 1201N using a low-profile Mini-PCIe card. There aren’t too many of them around, and finding one that has good driver support in both OS X and Linux, wasn’t easy. Fortunately I stumbled upon a card based on the Atheros AR5B91 chip, which I know will work in Linux, and works natevly in OSX.
Front:
Have you ever been frustrated when trying to find a hidden file, or a file in a hidden directory, from an application’s open dialog? I’ve run into this a few times when trying to open disc images from disc utility. There’s an easy solution: browse to the directory where the hidden file/directory is, and hit:
Command-Shift-. [period]
This will show the hidden files. Hitting the same combination again hides them again. This might not work, depending on your region settings or key bindings. Try Command-Shift-, [comma] instead.
Some of us prefer our mail clients to display mails in plain text. Here’s how to set it. Open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist, click on the Root key, click “Add Item.” Call it ‘PreferPlainText’ and set the type to boolean. This gives you a checkbox to enable or disable it.
You can also do it via the terminal:
defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE
Or to disable:
defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool FALSE
