Tom Dowdy has passed away

Unconfirmed reports state that Apple Engineer (QuickTime, iTunes and others) “suddenly” passed away. More information is not available at this time. According to Tom’s page he wrote the popular Darkside of the Mac screensaver. Tom worked for Apple for 17 years as of the last update of his page, more like 21 now.

Rock Band is A-Fantanstic

What a great game. Pricey at $170, you get a wireless guitar1, a set of 4 drums with foot pedal and a mic. So you get to play solo as a drummer, singer, guitarist or bassist. Add some friends and you can form a band, go on tour, earn fans and get new stuffages. I… Continue reading Rock Band is A-Fantanstic

Published
Categorized as Uncategorized Tagged

Controlling Apple TV with a Harmony 890 RF Remote

Hopefully this saves someone else an hour. If I stuck one of the IR buds directly to the IR “eye” on the Apple TV, the Apple TV would not recognize any IR. I had to stick it below the IR “eye” in order for IR codes to be received.

Published
Categorized as Uncategorized Tagged

Office 2008 sets user ID to 502

Sigh, Microsoft. I can confirm the report at bruned that the Microsoft Office 2008 installer sets the owner to user 502, which is the second user on your machine. In this case, my test user. Nice. What a security hole. This installer also mucks with other user ids, so be careful. I ran repair permissions… Continue reading Office 2008 sets user ID to 502

Published
Categorized as Uncategorized Tagged

Bought MacHeist Bundle

Alright, I know the bru-ha-ha over MacHeist, but seeing one of the chaching guys push the bundle made me at least feel that due to the success of MH1, the developers are getting a better deal this time around. Why did I buy it? Because I loathe Intuit. I am tired of their Mac apps… Continue reading Bought MacHeist Bundle

Published
Categorized as Uncategorized Tagged

I completely disagree with John Gruber on Time Capsule and here’s why

In response to John’s Keynote Roundup about Apple’s new Time Capsule, I wrote to him: Hi John, I saw your glowing review of Time Capsule and wanted to point out a few things. 1) Backups should be reliable. Sure, a “server grade” hard disk that supports the proper buffer flush commands is great, but you… Continue reading I completely disagree with John Gruber on Time Capsule and here’s why

Published
Categorized as Uncategorized Tagged

Office 2008 Font Issues

It seems that the Office 2008 installer leaves several copies of their fonts in /Library/Fonts/ The older versions are named such as “Courier New” while the newer versions are named “Courier New.ttf” Sadly, Font Book as disabled the new fonts and offers to delete them over the old fonts. Yuck. I am not sure what… Continue reading Office 2008 Font Issues

Published
Categorized as Uncategorized Tagged

Having problems with Leopard 10.5.1 and mySQL?

“Can’t start server : Bind on unix socket: Permission denied” “Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/tmp/mysql.sock’” Wow I found a lot of stuff on the net about this, but only two things helped because I was not using PHP: Check permissions on /tmp Mine were user:user with user read only! Changed to… Continue reading Having problems with Leopard 10.5.1 and mySQL?

Published
Categorized as Uncategorized Tagged

NetNewsWire is *FREE*!!!!

Yahoo! If you read RSS on the Macintosh then you likely know that Brent Simmon’s NetNewsWire has been the best app around. Vienna is very nice and gave NNW competition, especially in the price category. Well now, Newsgator has announced that NNW is free! Yes, free! You have no excuses now: Download NetNewsWire For Free!… Continue reading NetNewsWire is *FREE*!!!!

Published
Categorized as Uncategorized Tagged

Roomba 550 Review

I have added a review of my new Roomba 550 to the Roomba Review Wiki at: Roomba 550 Review

Published
Categorized as Uncategorized Tagged

Are you using Twitter?

I am late to the game checking it out. Email me your ids, mine is geeksrus. Original, eh? Any good clients to use other than the website?

Published
Categorized as Uncategorized Tagged