Tag: mac consulting

Eliminate the annoying vibrating clock in iCal

Everytime I do an update to OS X, I have to run these commands in Terminal, because the animated alarm clock in iCal is just obnoxious. (It also pulls precious CPU cycles.)

Taken from this hint at macosxhints.com, these are instructions for 10.4 Tiger:

cd /Applications/iCal.app/Contents/Resources/iCal Helper.app/Contents/Resources/

sudo cp -p alarmclock.mov alarmclock-mov.BAC

sudo echo "" >alarmclock.mov

cd /Applications/iCal.app/Contents/Resources

sudo cp -p alarmclock.mov alarmclock-mov.BAC

sudo echo "" >alarmclock.mov

UPDATE: I posted instructions for 10.5 here at macosxhints.com.

GrandCentral “Call Me” badge

GrandCentral is a pretty neat service, recently purchased by Google. I signed up, and while I’m not giving the number out because I mostly get spam on it, I have put this badge on my web sites. Click it and check it!

http://embed.grandcentral.com/webcall/071fe538d56953e40a549d85beede31d

I lost my iPod

Can you tell me if this is covered under my warrenty

No, lost or stolen iPods are not covered by AppleCare. Also, Apple will (typically) not repair or replace an iPod that evinces any physical damage.

These things may be covered by your homeowner's or (less likely) business insurance.

Just so long as you call me

Would you rather I call or e-mail questions to you?

Either is fine, though my responses to emails will be slower. I can also use text messaging via mobile phone 210.367.3420, AIM chat to s1r4real
(which forwards to my Treo iPhone), Skype to jjmarcus, remote control over secure VPN, Morse code, smoke signals… 😉

What is your billing policy regarding questions by phone or email or whatnot, i.e. when you’re not on-site? 

I charge per hour, pro-rated, for whatever interaction I have with clients, excepting getting-to-know-you calls or meetings, and little one-off chat messages. See more about our rates here.

SuperDuper errors

A registered SuperDuper! user writes:

Got these errors in SuperDuper:

If SuperDuper ever throws a red “X” at you, go to the Log. See the button at the bottom called “Send to Shirt Pocket…”?

After you do what I suggest below, you’ll want to click that button, and do whatever it tells you.

It occurs to me that there is a chance that — don’t freak — you have data corruption. I’d bet even if you had it, it’s not bad, because you have been able to transfer and backup successfully at least twice.

But if you know how to run Disk Utility from your installer discs, that would be wise. Do it on both your internal and external drives. If you have TechTool, DiskWarrior, or Drive Genius, great, run ’em just for kicks.

And if you have anything with the name “Norton” on it, please put it in the nearest garbage pail. Seriously.

Airport Express not connecting consistently

We have been having trouble with our Airport Express. It is working very slow (takes about 1 min. or longer to load a page). The internet works fine when we plug it directly into the computer. It was working fine a month ago but now it won’t. I have tried resetting it and unplugging everything. We have had problems with this Express before (we had to unplug it fairly often just to get our computers to connect to it).

Unfortunately, I find Airport devices to be the most finicky of Apple products, often requiring more resets than a simple device like this should. That said, I also have never had an Airport unit actually be a lemon, except one that was really old.

So, I would absolutely recommend resetting the Airport Express back to factory defaults (pressing the reset button for about 15 seconds until the light blinks 4 times), and reconfiguring it with Airport Setup Assistant. If you have already done that, you might try switching cables out.

If THAT doesn’t work, and if it’s under warranty, please call Apple to get a new one. If it’s out of warranty, might as well buy a brand new, freaky-fast Airport Extreme!

Address Book contacts are gone

I recently realized that all my contacts in my address book are gone. I was wondering how I should go about getting them back. I figure I need to use the back-up hard drive for this, but don’t know what to do exactly.

Exactly. As long as you haven’t backed up to the external since the contacts went away, you’re good. So:

  1. Quit Address Book
  2. In your home folder on your laptop, go to ~/Library/Application Support (where “~” is your home folder).
  3. Inside there, change the name of the folder AddressBook to “AddressBook old” (no quotes)
  4. Now plug in the external drive, and from your backup’s Application Support folder, drag that AddressBook folder into your laptop ~/Library/Application Support.
  5. Eject the external (just in case)
  6. Open Address Book. Your contacts should be there.

BTW, if that drive is the LaCie I remember it to be, with USB in addition to Firewire, then with the new Airport Base Station, we can plug the drive into the Base Station and share it to your network. Instant Network Attached Storage. Sweet!