m2cw – my 2 cents worth

a good source for professional photos

and a great tool for finding photos of similar colors: color picker for flickr

here is an excellent site with powerpoint presentation tips

i might actually get one of those. the wow-pen

it’s cheap (only USD 60) and it seems to work with any operating system and it might even help me with my quest for the truly “digital office”…

if only i could find where to buy it!

here is an interesting bit about quicktime pro: how to rotate movies. this helps in case you used a photo camera and shot a movie with it turning the camera 90 degrees (either direction…)

i almost threw two very funny ones with jacob out because i accidentally did that! now i can actually do it on purpose…

sweet! 😉

note to myself:

if the login from a cloned disk does not work, use this little tip:

Q(17): I’ve booted from the clone, but it presents me with a login screen and won’t accept my password. What do I do?
A: Occasionally (but rarely), the NetInfo database does not copy properly. Often this is because the target disk was not formatted before cloning. The fix is fairly easy:

Reboot into single-user mode (hold down command+s during boot). When prompted, type:

fsck -y
[repeat until it no longer says that the Filesystem was modified]
mount -uw /
cd /var/db/
rm .AppleSetupDone
cd netinfo
mv local.nidb local.nidb.bak
exit

As the system boots, you will get the Apple Setup Assistant. Enter your name, password, etc (be sure to use the same short name). You should be able to get in just fine now.

one more thing, if scheduled tasks don’t work:

Hello everyone.

I have identified a problem with running scheduled tasks on Tiger. Apparently Apple changed the format used to write out files. When CCC writes out the scheduled tasks, a null character is written in between every character in the script. As such, the shell cannot execute the file (“bash: Cannot execute binary file”). The workaround is to run the following command in the Terminal whenever you create a scheduled task:

Code:
sudo perl -p -i -e ‘s/00//g’ /etc/ccc.*

Just copy/paste that command into the Terminal application (in /Applications/Utilities), and provide your admin password when requested.

This will be resolved in 3.0.

Mike

here is the original forum entry at ccc

keyboard shortcuts are of course a matter of dexterity. so it’s difficult to really complain about them.

nevertheless there are a couple of things that i really don’t understand: why can’t i use the cursor keys “up” and “down” to jump to the beginning of a title etc. but instead have to use the “home” and “end” key. granted they aren’t far away from each other but the less movement of the hand, the better…

i also don’t understand, why the “apple” key and the “strg/ctrl” key can’t be in the same spot on all keyboards? and, of course, i prefer the “apple” way as it doesn’t knot my fingers…

the “num lock” key… what a freaking piece of crap! i never had this many problems with a “num lock” on a mac than i now have with my windows machine…

accessing umlauts… on a mac: easy (two more buttons to press to get the two dots over an a, o or u) – with windows: i have no clue how to do it except a very difficult combination of plus a three digit code… (help appreciated)

there are several more which i can’t think of at the moment…

can anyone tell me why windows behaves like “force quit” (i.e. quitting a hung, non-responsive application) when using “close” in the taskbar?

what happens is that if you close an application and all of its windows that way, the application forgets, e.g. the latest opened documents etc. (in excel or word etc.)

closing it that way should be the same as if i do a normal “quit” via the menu or the little “x” on the right top!

i can only scratch my head…

god, i love it when i’m right… 😉

here was my prediction 4 (!) months ago.

here is where i was right:

a. apple would introduce a video ipod – that was not too difficult as the rumor sites were always predicting it!
b. i said in september – well, it happened in october
c. i said it will be itunes 5 – it’s now called itunes 6 (because apple pretty much skipped itunes 5 – it was only out for 2 or 3 weeks!)
d. i said: pvr/mp3/photo – well, close enough: it’s a video / mp3 / photo player (i was wrong with the recording feature!)
e. bigger screen (and jonathan ive’s genius) – the form, look & feel factor are very close to the older generation ipods and it has a slightly bigger screen! (excatly what i thought it would be like)
e. download music videos, tv shows, movies – right, except for the movies but that will happen sooner or later (see also below)

now two things that need to be discussed:

1. video recording: the new ipod cannot record videos (yet) but there is already a tutorial on how to put dvds on the new ipod. and soon there will ways on how to put recordings from elgato’s eyetv and from tivo on the ipod.

2. watching imovie content on it – now that is a bit more delicate and i was hoping for a more integrated approach but nonetheless apple has a way of importing imovies to the ipod with quicktime pro. now you need quicktime pro (around EUR 30 – so no big deal) but i would say this should come with each ipod!

all in all i was completely right! AND had no input from any outside sources!

i wish i could do this more often… predicting the future is fun!

update: here is how to convert eyetv to the ipod and apparently elgato is already working on an upgrade! (update 3: apparently this does not work! let’s hope for a quick update by elgato themselves…)

update 2: seems like apple has another “how to” here for imovie. apparently nothing else required…

i’m a mac-head. always have been, always will be…

in my new job i’m forced to use a wintel machine (a fujitsu siemens – oh lord, what a drag…). that’s why i decided to start a series on my blog about what bugs me about windows as there has been a blog entry by russell beattie with which i whole-heartedly disagree.

so without any particular order i will put together my gripes i have with windows now that i have to use it.

so here we go: why, oh why are word/excel/powerpoint acting differently in handling windows? what i mean? why is each document in word or powerpoint a separate “task” in the taskbar? and why does excel not behave in this way? if i want to switch between excel sheets, i need to go to the “window” menu and switch or, even worse, i have to minimize the sheet (which then all of sudden appears on the bottom of the overall excel window) and “maximize” the sheet i’m looking for while in word i can just switch between windows by selecting them in the taskbar!

this is one suite of programs from one and the same vendor (microsoft). what are they thinking?

almost a number two: but if you have a lot of windows open the taskbar is UNUSABLE! because you just don’t know which of the open windows you want to switch to… (that’s for those people that keep complaining about the dock in mac os x where i don’t see the open windows if i don’t want to. instead i can use “expos

i wish i could write more about what i do these days. there would be plenty to talk about. but the problem is i’m involved in too many issues that can’t be openly discussed or written about as they concern the strategies and inner workings of our portfolio companies.

i would love to find a way to get a couple of things off my chest… i have been contemplating how to do that for a long time now but can’t seem to find a good way to do so…

i’ll keep thinking… 😉