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Installing Parallel Tools in Centos after upgrading to Parallels Desktop 4

2009-01-27T17:08:00Z

After upgrading to Parallels Desktop 4 my CentOS 5 VM couldn't correctly launch its X server anymore. Installing Parallels Tools should fix that and will also enable the Dynamic Resolution switching. This enables you to just drag the righthand corner of your VM in windowed mode and X will automatically switch to the appropriate resolution.

The installer tries to download and install make, gcc and kernel-devel, and failed miserably and even when I installed the packages manually it wouldn't continue. It seems it checks the version number of the kernel you're running. Just yum update to kernel-2.6.18-92.1.22.el5 and run the installer again.

Here's how (from Parallel Desktop User Guide)

To unmount the image, enter:

umount /dev/hdb

Create a folder named Parallels Tools in the /media/ folder (this folder will serve as a mount point).

mkdir /media/Parallels\ Tools

To mount the image, enter:

mount -o exec /dev/hdb /media/Parallels\ Tools

Change the directory to the CD/DVD-ROM directory using

cd /media/Parallels\ Tools/

In the CD/DVD-ROM directory, enter the following to launch Parallels Tools installation:

./install

Change the default schedule of Timemachine

2008-11-14T09:22:00Z

Timemachine is great, but I'm running on empty on my volume and really could do without hourly backups. Timemachine Editor to the rescue, a small app to set your own schedule:

http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor/

Centos 5 AMI for Amazon EC2 install script

2008-10-29T14:27:00Z

Excited about the load balancing, auto-scaling and other new features coming to Amazon EC2?

Here's a script to bootstrap a lean 32bit Centos 5 into m1.small AMI-form for use on EC2. I started with the Rightscale scripts and removed the interactivity and RightScale specifics and added some features: it's using a mirror based yum config to do a base install and I added the same scripts you can find on the Fedora AMI from Amazon itself to update the ec2-ami-tools and kernel-modules. I also included a couple of Dag's packages like dstat and others from RPMForge

Insert your AWS specifics in the top of the file, choose a bucket to store the bundles AMI in, and give your image a nice name. To bootstrap just launch a Fedora 8 instance (use ami-2b5fba42), copy over the script, your certificate and key, and run the script. With some luck - and no boobo on my part - you should see this in your terminal at the end:

Done! Put a fork in it!

Baking the AMI can take a while, so be patient. Afterwards you need to register this AMI so it shows up in your ec2-describe-images -o self command:

ec2-register your-bucket-name/image-name.manifest.xml

This is currently for a 32bit m1.small AMI only, I'm hoping to use some kind of template system to be able to bake a similar script for 64bit and 32bit AMI's alike.

The script:

http://zoetrope.s3.amazonaws.com/Centos5_X86_EC2_install.sh

Mac Pro's could be emitting benzene

2008-10-01T17:49:00Z

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=2319

This is so not funny, my early 2007 Mac Pro has been smelly since day one when it's in sleep mode, it's been to the shop once because of this. Calling AppleCare tomorrow morning. This Apple Discussion could be the place to vent - pun intended!

The Procrastinator

2008-09-26T11:56:00Z

From Matt Groenings Mac ad: http://homepage.mac.com/mbishop/PhotoAlbum30.html

iPhone app store rejections backlash

2008-09-25T19:06:00Z

The game is afoot:

Killing our enthusiasm by Craig Hockenberry, developer on Twitterrific

Engadget Cares: save us from Apple's groundbreaking, developer-shackling App Store on Engadget

Don't drive iPhone developers away, Apple on Macworld

iPhone App Store: Let the market decide by Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster

A Bridge Too Far on Inside iPhone from Oreilly

Android Welcomes App Store's Rejects With Arms Wide Open on Wired.com

Pimp your iChat using Chax

2008-09-25T18:37:00Z

Awesome plug-in for iChat to get some much-needed functionality that other IM-clients like Adium have had for years including chatlog database, automatic contact list resizing and Growl support: Chax for iChat

Via: The Apple Blog

A late WWDC08 impression

2008-09-25T16:41:00Z

A very late post since WWDC08 was in June of this year, but better late than never applies. Going to San Francisco solo was quite the experience as you can imagine, but you've got no chance to sit still when you're there. The city is full of life, and the sights are unbelievable. Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge are absolute musts for your tourist itinerary and San Francisco is simply an amazing place to be.

WWDC08 proved to be very enjoyable and interesting from day one, and never disappointed. I missed access to the keynote because I succumbed to my caffeine addiction at a Starbucks, and had to see it in an overflow room on a video-screen. Apparently you need to get up at 5 o'clock if you want any guarantees that you're gonna see Steve Jobs in person. Too bad, but it was fun nonetheless.

The Mac OS X State Of The Union address by Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, was really cool, showing you all the upcoming technologies and new features in the upcoming version of Mac OS X called Snow Leopard. Regarding features it was revealed that Snow Leopard would be a maintenance release and wouldn't contain a single new feature. Instead Snow Leopard is going to be fully 64-bit and it's focus is going to be stability and performance. Wil Shipley is going to be glad, because I heard him state to an Apple employee he found Leopard to be riddled with bugs on its release last year and he had never seen an OS release from Apple with so many bugs.

The sessions were plentiful,very interesting and a joy to follow. There weren't as much hands-on sessions as other years because of the emphasis on the young iPhone SDK. The sessions would tackle a certain topic at a intro-level at the beginning of the week and more advanced sessions on each topics would be held on thursday and friday. A lunchtime speaker event Small Teams, Complex Pipelines: Writing Software at Pixar was a very interesting look behind the scenes of in-house software development at Pixar Animation Studios. All in all, you couldn't get bored at WWDC even if you tried to!

Each conference room had excellent video-screens and presentation staff on hand to smooth out any problems including large mixing desks in the back of the room to provide crystal clear audio to the masses. People who whine about the entry price for conferences like this should try to organise one and pick up a renting bill for 20+ large Mackie Mixing desks and accessories. And I'm not even considering building and maintaining the conference network infrastructure. Excellent wireless connectivity and ultra-quick wired connections throughout the entire Moscone building, and specially designed websites for your iPhone to keep you up to date with the schedule and events of WWDC08.

A WWDC08 ticket isn't exactly cheap at 829 Euro, but for that price you get a nice breakfast buffet each morning featuring bagels and donuts and all the coffee and juice you can drink, excellent lunch salads and chilled sodas, unlimited coffee and juice all throughout the day, and all the excellent track, labs and sessions of course. If that's not enough, buffets are provided on evenings where there are late tracks or events like the Apple Design Awards which to my surprise featured applications built by Dutch and Belgian companies: Macnification and Checkout!

Speaking of Belgians, I literally bumped into some Belgians at WWDC08 at breakfast. I was minding my business and dressing my warm bagel with some cream cheese and suddenly found out all the people on my table were Belgian.

I also met up with Werner Ramaekers who I had contacted just before I stepped onto a plane to San Francisco and seemed to be attending WWDC08 also. I discovered his Belgian sounding name on the Yahoo Upcoming page for WWDC08. Turned out he not only was an ex-resident of my hometown Tessenderlo but a nephew of my best friend and a basketball fan like myself. No problems finding conversation topics during dinner with the hometown-connection and the 2008 NBA playoffs in full effect during our stay in San Francisco. We attended the Beer Bash at Yerba Buena Gardens and enjoyed beers and food while Phil Schiller introduced the Barenaked Ladies to the stage.

Another example of a stroke of luck: walking into a Borders at Union Square with a shopping list called 'books to buy' containing an entry of Neuromancer by William Gibson to find him signing books on the top floor. At that point I was hoping to walk into Francis Ford Coppola while (finally) buying my copy of Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier ;-)

I'm already looking forward to WWDC 2009 and can't wait to be in San Francisco again.

Check out all my WWDC08 photos on Flickr

App Store censoring: Murderdrome iPhone comic

2008-08-27T20:40:00Z

It's sad to see Apple using double-standards for the App Store and iTunes store: they banned the Murderdrome digital-comic application while in iTunes they just tag content as explicit. I hope they'll wise-up and start some kind of rating system to solve this.

I'm curious to see how digital-comics will evolve in devices like the iPhone since we're not there yet

iPhone prices point in Belgium

2008-08-27T20:39:00Z

I've been quite happy with my iPhone since I got it on July 11th. It certainly isn't fault- and controverse-free Testaankoop complaints but I'm hooked nonetheless.

People often mention the sale price in Belgium as a stumble block compared to the subsidised prices abroad, but if you look at the prices of other unlocked smartphones the point isn't that bad. The new Palm Treo Pro for instance also costs a lot more than other subsidised phones.

I wouldn't mind a law change that legalised subsidised phones in Belgium, but I think the law should enforce the sale of the same phone in an unlocked version. The current situation isn't optimal at all because almost all mobile providers require you to sign up for at least a year if you want to take advantage of the best plan they offer. I currently have a BASE contract I can cancel at any moment, but if I want to change to a better and cheaper plan (e.g. add SMS bundles or more minutes) I need to change to a new contract with BASE and sign up for at least 2 years.

So I'm better of if I switch to Mobistar: same contract length but a lot more minutes, SMS and data included for a competitive price. And that's without the added advantage of 3G versus EDGE-only.

I'm just glad my contract with BASE ran out and I can switch providers AND simcard in my beloved, unlocked iPhone

Security flaw and fix for passcode-locked iPhones

2008-08-27T19:40:00Z

a Wired blogpost details a security flaw in iPhone OS 2.0.2 where you can access the address book, Safari and Mail through the double-tap shortcut on the home button of passcode-locked iPhones.

Of course, the question remains how many people actually passcode-lock their iPhones. I can't even remember if I've ever enabled automatic passcode-locking on any phone I owned ;-)

Colored MAN pages

2008-08-18T10:52:00Z

In ~/.bashrc:

export LESS="-R"
export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'\E[01;31m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\E[01;31m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\E[0m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\E[0m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\E[01;44;33m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\E[0m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\E[01;32m'

UFO: Unidentified Fascist Object

2008-08-15T11:48:00Z

MobileMe status RSS feed

2008-08-13T11:30:00Z

Because it seems MobileMe is still wet around the ears:

feed://www.apple.com/mobileme/status/mobileme.rss (not available anymore)

Update: Apple is no longer sharing with us through a blog (like they should) and moved MobileMe status to http://www.apple.com/support/mobileme/

Focusrite LiquidMix on Tiger→Leopard upgrade

2008-08-11T15:38:00Z

Here's how to get your Focusrite LiquidMix running again if you're on a Mac OS X Tiger install that was upgraded to Leopard:

Create textfile /private/etc/sysctl.conf and reboot:

kern.sysv.shmmax=536870912
kern.sysv.shmmin=1
kern.sysv.shmmni=128
kern.sysv.shmseg=128
kern.sysv.shmall=131072

My Focusrite would only work on a virgin Leopard install, now it works without a problem on my Tiger→Leopard upgrades too. Courtesy of a very quick support email to Focusrite.