Colin Charles Agenda

I like to spell with British English. Its probably because of my upbringing doing the O Level Examinations, at my high school.

For the last few days that Mac was annoying me, so I found out how to have British English available for all my applications. System Preferences -> International -> Input Menu. Select British. It will ask you to look for the Input Menu, I just selected the British flag and got rid of the input menu, to reduce clutter from the menu bar.

Firefox however, still decided to misbehave. It was then I realised that we had to download additional dictionaries for Firefox. That was easily done, thanks to the plugin architecture - visit Add-ons: Dictionaries. I wonder why it doesn’t use the system dictionary (I noticed that even in Linux, I had the dictionary add-on).

Now, I’m happily typing and not noticing typos of the spelling kind.

Technorati Tags: british english, language, spelling, firefox, macosx

I thought I’d try to get OpenOffice.org going, and see if my presentations run well, on my new MacBook. It turns out, its just plagued with issues.

First up, OpenOffice.org 2.3.1, available on the porting site, will not allow you to run Base, or anything that requires Java. At least the message in red, tells all:

Please note that the Java features of OpenOffice.org are only available from OpenOffice.org 2.4 (more specifically milestone m237) and later. This means that the Wizards, Base and some other things are unavailable in 2.3.1 or earlier. All other functionality of OpenOffice.org remains on Leopard.

Now, after its downloaded, the install is easy. Drag to the Applications folder, and just double-click (it never was always this easy!). You at this stage will think that toggling Command+Option+a will allow you to go into full screen mode. You are very wrong.

X11 Preferences, allowing you to be in full screen mode

A little searching on the Apple X11 mailing lists, and I came across some gems from Ben Byer, an engineer in Apple’s CoreOS group. It seems that X11 is now based on Xorg as opposed to XFree86’s codebase. And during the rebasing, Ben realised that full screen support was broken and couldn’t fix it. The suggested fix? Find X11 from Tiger (not even on Apple’s site), or you don’t have full screen support.

I guess I’ll file a radar bug against it, but knowing my luck, it’ll be closed in no time, with a reference to a bug that I myself won’t be able to access. I can only hope that this is fixed soon. In the meantime, maybe I need to give OpenOffice.org Aqua a twirl, or even NeoOffice/J. If you’re interested in the history of X11 in OS X, don’t hesitate to read X11.app “pedigree”.

Bottom-line: If you’re reliant on OpenOffice.org on your Mac, you’ll find that making presentations using Leopard, is going to be problematic. And its not OpenOffice.org’s fault, its on Apple’s head.

Technorati Tags: openoffice.org, openoffice.org aqua, macosx, X11, full screen X11

The other day I was musing about how I’d buy a Mac, just to use Skitch, to Cris Pearson, on Twitter. Today, I did just that.

I woke up in the morning, seeing an SMS from Giuseppe, informing me that it would be ideal if I had bought a laptop. So I proceeded to calling up a store located a few blocks down (I’m lazy to drive into the city, its F1 weekend), and asked if there was a black MacBook in stock, and if I could get 4GB of RAM rather than the standard 2. Turns out, this was available, but there was only one unit left, so I asked for it to be held (this was at 10.40am). By 2pm, I had walked to the Apple store, and picked up my new, black Macbook.

What’s in it?
It sports a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, with 4GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and the SuperDrive. Its black (there’s a AUD$150 premium added just for colour), but in the long run, I think it will prove worthy, as I won’t have to see the palm-rests looking nasty. That, and I chose to buy it in-store, rather than online, so it would have been harder to get the larger hard disk option.

I’m disappointed that the Apple Remote does not come with it (an extra $29), and there is no Mini-DVI to VGA/DVI adapter included (an extra $35). There was a time, we got everything we needed, in the box - now the MacBook by default, is useless for presentations.

What about the software?
I have been using OS X on and off for many years, and back in the day, if you had picked up an iBook, you’d have found useful software, like an encyclopedia, and games. If you grabbed a PowerBook, you’d have seen cool items like OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner (useful, as), and so on. MacBook Pro’s came with Comic Life. Nowadays, you get no additional 3rd party software.

I am pleased however, that X11 is installed by default in Leopard (this means that OpenOffice.org, will just work nowadays). To get the development tools though (XCode and friends), you still have to install it from the disc.

First Impressions
The keyboard is not hard to type with. In fact, it doesn’t take any getting used to, so I’m wondering why people are complaining. I don’t know if this is a change that has come about with Leopard and new laptops, but the F3 key now brings up the Expose, and the F4 key brings up the Dashboard Widgets. In fact, they even print it on the keyboard - highly nifty.

It weighs much lighter than my Dell 14″ Inspiron 640m. In fact, its a lot smaller, so once you’re used to carrying the tome, the MacBook seems really light.

What software is on it?
What I consider, essential software:

• AppZapper - removes unwanted tools, like GarageBand, and probably soon iPhoto. Free for 5 removals, so use it wisely
• Skitch - I’ve had a beta for a long time, and this software is just simply amazing. I cannot say enough things about it.
• Firefox - because I need to browse the web, sensibly
• XCode - I need my development tools
• XChat Aqua - to get on internal, and community based IRC channels
• Apple Mail - I’m trying this out, instead of Thunderbird, to see what all the hype is with this software. Current verdict is I’m hating it, but let me spend a bit more time with it (another post on Apple Mail sure to come soon)
• Skype - because VOIP and chat with that, is just so handy

What else will go on it, soon? OpenOffice.org, NetBeans, VirtualBox (I tried downloading it, but the Sun sanctioned download site, tells me “File Not Found” - disappointing, and no one on #vbox could help), and probably lots more.

Technorati Tags: macosx, leopard, macbook, hardware, skitch, appzapper, apple mail, laptop

MySQL Workbench has a beta out! No idea why its version 5.0.9, but its highly exciting. This software existed before, but this is quite unlike its predecessor. One snag for me is that it is Windows-only at the moment, with Linux and OS X versions to follow suit.

However, due to excitement, I decided to try running it on Linux, anyway.

Seeing that it is a .NET application, I thought I’d pass it through MoMA (the migration analyser). Everything passed, so I got excited. Running mono MySQLWorkbench.exe however, led me to a failure:
** ERROR **: Method ‘<Module>:<CrtImplementationDetails>.DoDllLanguageSupportValidation ()’ in assembly ‘/home/byte/Downloads/MySQL Workbench 5.0.9 OSS Beta/wb.wr.dll’ contains native code and mono can’t run it. The assembly was probably created by Managed C++.

So I hopped onto #workbench on Freenode, where the MySQL Workbench crew hang out, and spoke with Mike Zinner (team lead for this software). He mentioned to me that it probably wouldn’t work, as there are some 3rd-party FOSS controls that rely on Win32 API calls. Immediately, I think of WINE.

Running it against WINE, I get an error basically telling me I need Mono for Windows:
fixme:actctx:parse_manifest_buffer root element is L”asmv1:assembly”, not <assembly>
install the Windows version of Mono to run .NET executables

Workbench fails on me in WINE

Downloaded mono-1.2.5.2-gtksharp-2.10.2-win32-0.exe, installed it via WINE, and then made another attempt at running Workbench, only to see a similar failure, this time in GUI form.

A little disappointed, I think the next option is to run Workbench in a virtualized Windows environment. KVM immediately came to mind, with only one minor snag - while its full CPU hardware virtualization, it doesn’t virtualize the graphic layer as well (it just emulates a graphics card, like it does for pretty much every device). Windows will see a Cirrus Logic card, from ages ago. This means, no OpenGL support, which Workbench really needs (otherwise, it drops down to software rendering, and becomes much slower).

However, there is hope. Check out VMGL, which is OpenGL Hardware 3D Acceleration for Virtual Machines. This should work with Xen and KVM, so I’ll give it a twirl, and see how it goes.

If you’re on a Mac, I am told that VMWare Fusion does not do OpenGL, so you’re out of luck there. However, Parallels does - so let that be your virtualization option of choice, if you’re on an Intel Mac.

Next stop, to go out and buy Windows Vista - wish me luck!

Technorati Tags: mysql, workbench, mysql workbench, moma, .net, mono, wine, opengl, virtualization

Use MySQL? On Leopard/OS X 10.5? Yes, the current available packages from dev.mysql.com don’t work very well. I track “mysql” on Twitter, and boy, are there heaps of complaints.

So its nice to see, Dan Benjamin, a member of the MySQL community, stepping up, and creating the amazing Installing MySQL on Mac OS X article. The Preference Pane will obviously still not be there, and I don’t know why he thinks Mantorg (?) will build it, but I believe this is something MySQL needs to fix for the next release.

Tracking mysql#28854 will be useful.

Mark Pilgrim decided that it would be cool to poke fun at OS X, because it “just works” on Ubuntu. While what he says is true, there have been a lot more testing of MySQL on Linux, than there has been on Leopard. Developer seeds aren’t exactly the same “final” product (sure, this particular bug has been around since developer seed days, from what I can tell).

Here’s wishing I was on Leopard (or even a Mac) a bit more regularly…

Technorati Tags: mysql, leopard, macosx, bugs

In the open source world, its quite common to see bug statuses as CLOSED, RAWHIDE (on Fedora, to tell you its in the current development version). Sometimes, you also see CLOSED, CURRENTRELEASE (which usually implies that they’ve bumped the minor version number up, and have pushed the update to you, via yum/up2date). Sometimes, CURRENTRELEASE is used to define ERRATA (though with a fast moving project like Fedora, you tend not to really have errata releases - this is more RHEL-space).

Bottom-line: I get my bug fixes, for free.

Over a year ago, I reported a bug to Apple about an iChat error I was getting, that gave me a Feedbag Error 10. I’ve definitely got numerous other radar entries, but no point linking to them, since there’s no public bug tracker. Today, Apple basically closed the bug as CURRENTRELEASE (or really, what they meant to do was close it as NEXTRELEASE). And as a consequence, they’ve decided that charging me AUD$158 would be the most appropriate course of action. They’ve told me to upgrade to Leopard!

I won’t paste the message here, because that’s apparently under NDA (how can you really NDA a bug report? I’ve seen radar numbers being posted on the Web before… and its not like my bug report, which is my own, isn’t public - maybe if there were actually responses from Apple engineers, then it’d become private). But to paraphrase, Apple Engineering thinks my bug has been fixed in the commercially available Leopard, and upon installing the new software, my bug will most likely be fixed.

Bottom-line: I have to become $158 poorer. Or renew my ADC membership, and wait patiently for the mail (really, why do they even bother sending updates on CD/DVD monthly, when pretty much every Mac developer is connected to the Internet? Waste of resources Apple, how non-green of you, worse, thinking that Al Gore won a Nobel Prize for all his work. The only good thing about renewing an ADC membership is possibly the free t-shirt, the occasional pushes of OS X on DVD, and the hardware discount, if utilised).

Technorati Tags: fedora, apple, macosx, bugs, bugzilla, apple radar, bug status, adc

What’s a good, quick way, to learn a new language with the help of Linux?

In particular, I’m interested in learning conversational Mandarin. Basic reading, is a bonus, but hey, I’m not that fussed. I’d like to not pay for my software, if possible, and since I tote a Linux laptop most of the time (this might change to an OS X based one that actually works - rant on this soon), if it runs on Linux, all the better. The Popagandhi tells me I need to go to a good class - do these exist in Melbourne/

Some useful links I’ve found, so far:

• QQ for Linux - QQ is the Chinese version of ICQ, that pretty much everyone there uses. Though MSN seems to be a lot popular these days (compared to what, 2.5-3 odd years ago)
• ChinesePod - podcasts to help? Well, maybe here’s a reason to use an iPod again…
• I saw this thread on the Ubuntu Forums, but it doesn’t really address anything of requirement

Technorati Tags: linux, learning, mandarin, foreign language, qq, chinese

Dear Interweb,

Is there a way for me to install an instance of OS X inside of Parallels or VMWare Fusion? I currently use VMs for QA work, and when I want to QA packages on OS X, I don’t want to always reinstall clean environments on a test Mac. And yes, you can find problems in clean room environments - like MyODBC.

Has PearPC improved, in terms of speed? Or is it dead?

(no, I don’t care if Apple’s licensing is still retarded. This is to make my life easier.)

Technorati Tags: macosx, virtualization, parallels, vmware, qa