Category Archives: Technical

“Rational” IT related entries.

AppleScript to mount/unmount a drive

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Dae

On my Mac Pro I have two internal hard drives I rarely use. Some times they “sleep” and while doing so, every file opening dialog, search in Spotlight or search in Dictionary might wake them up and that takes some … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming, Releases | Tagged , , | 44 Comments

Mouse cursor skipping (jumping) bug in Mac OS X

Posted on February 25, 2010 by Dae

* * * SmoothMouse, the long-awaited fix for mouse problems in OS X, has been released. Further discussion about pointer jumping bug continues in the SmoothMouse Forum. * * * * * * SmoothMouse, the long-awaited fix for mouse problems … Continue reading →

Posted in Bugs | Tagged , , | 384 Comments

Permission error of AppleScript in iTunes

Posted on January 31, 2010 by Dae

I was getting a permission error (code -54) when trying to set an id3 tag of a track using AppleScript. The solution was to add a delay between each operation: delay 1 Note that the track will remain “locked” until … Continue reading →

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Inability to upload files using any browser on Windows

Posted on January 17, 2010 by Dae

One my friend who runs Windows XP encountered a strange problem: she couldn’t upload any large (more than ≈100 KB) files using upload forms on websites under any browser. We tried Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome with no result, although … Continue reading →

Posted in Solutions | Tagged | 3 Comments

Slow startup and sleep problems on MacBook Pro 2,2

Posted on January 17, 2010 by Dae

Once I noticed that the booting process of my MacBook Pro 2,2 extended to 5-7 minutes (the longest phase of the startup process was the blue screen which usually appears right before the desktop) and additionally, sleep (hibernate) mode stopped … Continue reading →

Posted in Solutions | Tagged | 72 Comments

Create an iPhone ringtone on Mac

Posted on December 26, 2009 by Dae

This “how to” will guide you through the process of making an iPhone ringtone from a mp3 file using free tools on Mac OS X. I’m pretty sure most of those steps can as well be reproduced on Windows, since … Continue reading →

Posted in How to’s | Tagged , | 1 Comment

“Building boot caches” error when changing startup disk

Posted on December 11, 2009 by Dae

Once I tried to change the default startup disk on my Mac running Snow Leopard and the following error appeared: “you can’t change the startup disk to the selected disk. Building boot caches on boot helper partition failed”.

Posted in Solutions | Tagged | 24 Comments

“Failed to expand the files” error

Posted on December 10, 2009 by Dae

Getting “failed to expand the files” while installing Canon camera software, such as ZoomBrowser Ex? Just turn off your antivirus.

Posted in Solutions | Tagged , | 1 Comment

BBEdit preview shows raw PHP code

Posted on December 10, 2009 by Dae

If your BBEdit preview shows raw PHP code, go to “Preferences” and configure a “HTML web-site” with “Use local preview server” ticked.

Posted in Solutions | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Launch character palette using AppleScript in Snow Leopard

Posted on December 6, 2009 by Dae

tell application “CharacterPalette” to activate There is an issue though: the new character palette doesn’t get “bound” to any of the applications, therefore double-clicking a symbol doesn’t paste it automatically to the text field. You’d have to drag-and-drop. I’m posting … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged | 1 Comment