The Wax Drum

FireWire is the Apple Inc. name for the IEEE 1394 interface which operates at a bandwidth of 400Mbps. Since it supported a much higher bandwidth than USB 1.1, it was well suited for applications requiring large amounts of data transfer (scanners, disk drives).

FireWire interfaces first appeared in the PowerMac G3 (Blue & White), the iMac 350MHz (3rd generation), PowerBook G3 "Pismo", and second-generation iBook "clamshell" models.

As my web applications for artists became more sophisticated, I realized the value in having the ability for the app to dynamically resize images, say, to create thumbnails when an image is uploaded. Under PHP, the obvious choice is the GD libraries. While GD was available on my production server, I had to install it on my Mac OS X development platform. I found the procedure which I've included below.

Mac "Classic" on OS X

When OS X was introduced at the turn of the millenium, Apple provided a compatibility mode to allow software to run in "Classic" Mac OS. Even for the hard core OS X fans, there are still circumstances which require the use of OS 9 (or earlier, say, if you're a fan of "Crystal Quest".)

I love my iPod, and I'm glad that Apple has been so successful in this new venture. Just last week at MacWorld Expo, Steve Jobs announced this year's "insanely great" products, including the anticipated iPhone and AppleTV.

An inevitable side-effect of the iPod's success is that the small minority of users experiencing problems is much larger in number due to the overwhelming majority of market share Apple enjoys.

iPod Failures

Common iPod failures occur in the following subsystems:

• Battery
• Hard Drive
• Screen
• Scroll Wheel

Setting a User's Default Login Shell

When I became a Mac "switcher" in 1996, it took me a while to get accustomed to the GUI. My mind kept searching for the CLI "under the hood", so to speak. Gradually I came to understand the new paradigm, but now with OS X we've come full circle.

So, of couse, "Terminal" is one of my favorite apps. It's not ideal for everything, but better for some things. For example, I can often ssh to a machine on which the Finder is unresponsive, poke around, and usually fix it or at least reboot it cleanly.

Monkey's Audio is a lossless audio compression algorithm. The codec uses the ".APE" file extension, so if you come across them, you'll know what to do.

I've found that xAct is the best GUI app for these files. But if you're looking for command-line tools, your best bet is at Sourceforge.

I had been using version 3.97 successfully until I received an "Error: 1002" while attempting to decompress an ape file. Googling turned up the following on the Monkey's Audio forum:

I thought I was doing myself and everyone else a favor when I decided to migrate all the web sites I manage from table-based layout to CSS. In the end that might be the case, but the process was far from smooth. Part of the problem stems from the fact that HTML and CSS are moving targets, with new and sometimes conflicting standards (XHTML vs. HTML5) being proposed, adopted, and implmented to varying degrees by different browsers.

In 2006, Apple issued a recall related to Powerboook batteries. Apparently, some of the Sony manufactured batteries had a proclivity for bursting into flames. Over 10 million Sony batteries were recalled during 2006 including 1.8 million Powerbook batteries.

Visit Apple's battery exchange page for details.

PhotoShop vs. PhotoStyler

Early versions of PhotoShop (1 & 2) only ran on the Mac. Since I was a PC user in 1992, I purchased a copy of Aldus PhotoStyler which I used until Adobe released PhotoShop 2.5, the first version to run under Microsoft Windows. When Adobe bought Aldus, they offered PhotoStyler users a $200 "cross-grade" to PhotoShop. In 1996, Adobe killed PhotoStyler development.

Sure, the green-on-green look a timeless classic. But sometimes, it's nice to have more than one color. This tutorial describes how to get colors in your terminal environment.

Terminal Type

The first requirement is that your terminal supports colors. I'm assuming that you're not running an ACTUAL vt100, but a software terminal application like Apple's built-in terminal, or perhaps iTerm (my personal favorite).