April 2004 Archives

So I'm 253. Kick ass.

That's all... I was just pleased to have knocked off 2 more. :)

So I sat down and tried to write a system for Mac OS X like SUS on the Windows side of the house. I believe what I have now is very cool. Basically you post a text file to a website with all the updates entered one after the other. For instance the file might be SecUpdate-2004-04-01 iChatAV21-2.1 and then those 2 updates would be approved. You get the names by running softwareupdate -l in Terminal on a machine that needs updates. You then take my script and make it a daily cron job. I use Fink with Anacron so I just drop the script in /sw/etc/cron.daily/ and it just works. You have to edit liveupdate.mycompany.com to be the name of your server in 2 places in the script and make sure you put a text file up on your server in whatever URL you put in the script.

Well I'm not going as quickly as I planned, but I'm doing pretty well I think. I'm at 257 today. I think I can knock off 7 more in April so hopefully on my next checkin on or about May 1st I should be 250. Happy happy.

I was running iPhoto 4 when I noticed that if a closed the window then the app would exit too. I thought to myself.. humm.. that is strange. Sure enough Apple designed it that way. Funny thing is that Mail does not act the same way. Some apps exit when the last window closes, and some don't. In my mind that only causes confusion for computer users. Shame on Apple for not following the same design for all their iApps. I subitted this feedback to Apple;

While I actually like when apps exit when the last window closes, this doesn't appear to be Apple's 'standard' design practice. Either all Apps from Apple should exit when the last window closes or none should IMHO. Mail.app is an example of an app that doesn't quit when the last window closes. If I want to hide an app then Command-H is the standard. Someone at Apple needs to make a design choice and convey that to developers so that there is a consistant look and feel to apps on the Macintosh. It's not good when even Apple flip flops design choices from app to app.

So my X-Box stopped wanting to read discs all of a sudden. Some games worked, but others would never work. All the time I'd get this stupid message telling me that the disc was dirty. There was no dirt, but like a lemming I would scrub the disc with a non-abrasive cleaner, and pop it back in hoping for a miracle. A quick Google brought me that miracle. I found Llamma's XBox Page where they actually sell replacement DVD drives for the XBox. $80 and 3 days later a little box came in the mail. 10 minutes later the new drive was installed and I was in business. The website even has tutorials if you don't know how to open your XBox up. Every game works flawlessly now. No more meaningless errors. It's a wonderful thing. They really rock.