Archive for the 'General' Category

Win an iMac? Yes please!

So my daughter Emma is 4 now, and her ruby iMac is on its last legs. It’s been up on blocks for a couple months now, and I just can’t seem to get it to boot off anything but the internal drive so I can upgrade the OS to something past 10.2.8.

What a pleasure that I just happened to run across the Stay At Home Dad iMac Give-Away contest being run by Mike over at his blog Stay At Home Dad, Geek Style, in concert with Sittercity, which I’d never heard of before, but looks quite interesting, given the need for babysitters with a 4 year old in the house.

What’s on the line? One of these babies:

iMac

A brand new, unopened 20″ Apple iMac. It has a 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1 GB of memory, a 250 GB hard drive, an 8x SuperDrive, and an awesome 20″ glossy display. It ships with an Apple Mighty Mouse, a sexy new Apple keyboard, an Apple Remote for controlling the included Front Row software (which turns your computer into a full-on media center), and as dutifully noted on Apple’s iMac page, a power cord (duh!).

If you’d like to enter Mike’s Stay At Home Dad iMac Give-Away contest, visit his site for the rules and enter. It’s a rather interesting contest, as he’s giving out “tickets” based on doing certain things, like writing an initial post like this one is worth one ticket and is required to enter. There are other opportunities to earn a ticket.

* make extra posts about the contest for 1 ticket each
* put a Sittercity banner on your sidebar and get 5 tickets
* bid on DevDad’s ads and get 1 ticket per $1 bid
* chip in for DevDad’s dream set-up and get 2 tickets per $1 chipped in
* like the contest page on stumble upon and get 1 ticket

You’re also encouraged to use this graphic:

SitterCity

Which I am so doing as to appease the contest gremlins.

All in all, it’s an interesting way to run a contest, and I’m all for a little link love for chances to win Apple hardware, which is the pinnacle of industrial design, which runs, in my opinion, the best consumer OS on the planet. (Server OS would have to be Solaris.)

Wish me luck, and I might just have to put up a little extra chrome to help out my odds and get some more of those golden tickets!

Fun with AddressBook.app

I wonder what this “Check for duplicates” thing does…

duplicates.png

Wow, that’s a big number.

Ok, I’m brave (but only after exporting current ‘book)…
Of Course You Crashed…
Haha, but it did work..
De-duped

The latest phonecall I’ve recieved on my work line

“Hello, this is Cami. May I speak with the woman of the house please”.

ED Mongrel for fastness

Event Driven Mongrel and Swiftiply Proxy:

This is big news people. This thing makes shit faster and more stable under load

Sucks to be joe-jobbed and on Google Apps for Your Domain

LOCKED!?!?!?!

“This account has been locked down due to unusual account activity. It may take up to 24 hours for you to regain access.”

Only thing I can think of is that my catch-all address is enabled (yeah, I know, but too many years of randomness@ryanschwartz.net in use to stop now) and that I got joe-jobbed

For those of you that find yourself in a similar situation, you can email gmail-lockdown@google.com for assistance.

Macports and mod_authnz_ldap

Ok, so typically you don’t install apr-util with openldap support.

Well mod_authnz_ldap requires it. :/

So what you have to do is re-build it with openldap support and re-install. Sounds easy?

Well the funny thing about ports is even though you build a new version (with the +openldap variant) and install it it doesn’t get used for some reason. Here’s how you get it working:

port -f uninstall apr-util
port install apr-util +openldap

Sounds easy? Yes indeed. The -f is the trick because that’s what actually uninstalls the “bad” apr-util libraries and forces a reinstall with the new “good” libs.

Oh, and port selfupdate your installation if you haven’t recently - 1.4.0 is out and some ports don’t work with older versions.

Apple X11 without the DVD

Install X11 on Tiger without the Tiger install DVD | Chris Martin:

Install X11 on Tiger without the Tiger install DVD

Thought I had ‘blogged’ this the last time I used it. Guess not. In any case, the name says it all…

On Scaling

Peter Van Dijck’s Guide to Ease » Blog Archive » A bunch of presentations on scaling websites: twitter, Flickr, Bloglines, Vox and more.:

A bunch of presentations on scaling websites: twitter, Flickr, Bloglines, Vox and more.

Something to read when I have some free time. Looks like a bunch of good talks/presentations…

iSCSI initiator for OS X

Studio Network Solutions - Download iSCSI Initiator for Mac OS X:

We are pleased to announce that Version 3.0 of our globalSAN iSCSI initiator for OS X is now available for download. This publicly available version is not a timed evaluation or feature-locked – it is being offered for download to any end-user who would like to take advantage of iSCSI for their Mac OS X computers. The initiator supports CHAP, persistent targets, SLPv2 and Multiple Connections per Session. Version 3.0 is a Universal Application, for Intel- and PowerPC-based Mac computers.

Rock out.

Makes Everything Taste Like Bacon

Use your spices, and use them well. (Volume II) » Curbly | DIY Design Community « Keywords: spices, cooking, culinary, kitchen:

This is a secret weapon to most home cooks: a quarter teaspoon makes everything taste like bacon, with no fat, salt, or factory farms.

Bacon you say?!?!?!?

I bet Willie would love this stuff.