dgb's blog 2.0

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Most websites sit in silence, waiting for their big day to come. It is not guaranteed. Build it and they will come? Bollocks. Who are "they" and how do they know you? The Internet is many things but it is still not magic.

Which reminds me. I put up this page some years ago (April 2007 it looks like):

http://telcontar.net/Misc/pics/woodlouse-ritual.php

Strangely enough I got a bite, from a South African biology student studying invertebrates, and woodlice in particular … who mistook me for a white-haired professor or something (I forget her exact terms, but considering that I wasn't 30 yet …) and we remained in contact for several years.

I've just got back in touch with her.

[sth]

yikes. i liked your theory better, too.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss …

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Sincerely,

Emily.

[scottc]

This is a top-quality blog. If I had to rank it, I'd say it's my second-favourite blog on Deskthority.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Oh noes … you broke my sarcasm detector. You owe me a new one now.

[BlueBär]

Does anybody have a link to the RSS feed?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

For a dead blog?

[webwit]

http://deskthority.net/feed.php?f=10&t=8446&mode

[Daniel Beardsmore]

OK, I'll toss a tidbit down — the ghetto Windows key on my ThinkPad T43:

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Ghetto Windows key 2.jpg (706.78 KiB) Viewed 3503 times

[BlueBär]

http://deskthority.net/feed.php?f=10&t=8446&mode

Thanks, I was afraid of missing any new posts.

OK, I'll toss a tidbit down — the ghetto Windows key on my ThinkPad T43:

Ghetto Windows key 1.jpg

Ghetto Windows key 2.jpg

What's going on here?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Butthurt at IBM over OS/2? I don't know — IBM didn't go in for the Windows key for some reason.

Note the sticky tape to emulate the selective image coating; I gave it a good scrape over to cut down the annoying gloss shine. I cut the tape to the correct shape just by looking at it. Too bad when I cut the pieces of label for the Windows logo they didn't come out straight.

[BlueBär]

Still pretty good! How does the sticky tape hold up?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Dunno, I only did it yesterday :)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

By the way, screw you Apple.

What's with Tiger not being able to share whatever folder I want, including the root of a volume? According to Google, I am the only person on the planet who's ever wanted to AFP share anything but his or her own home directory.

(To get the files off one Tiger Mac and onto another without FireWire, I guess I'll have to use the source Mac to throw everything at my home directory on the new one, and then rearrange everything later; there's not even administrative (volume root) shares like in Windows. Also, unplugging the keyboard, mouse and DVI cable to figure out why I can't mount my home dir on the old Mac from the new Mac (AFP or SMB) when it works perfectly in Windows, I managed to crash the HID subsystem completely — mouse and keyboard died completely even after swapping ports, putting it to sleep and waking it etc.)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

OK I take a piece of that back — you actually can mount the whole volume between Macs; it's SMB sharing where the HDD doesn't appear as a share.

[Muirium]

Correct. I use AFP sharing all the time, and it's well behaved. Unless you dare drop the connection without unmounting first. Finder will never forgive you. He goes off to the beach and you have to wait until he comes back. Force Quit be damned!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Apparently I can use Ethernet to share to another computer, but only Firewire from one.

Tiger is really jittery though — I don't know if that's anything to do with systemwide locking of the HFS+ catalogue B*tree.

I might have been more forgiving if the whole install process wasn't so annoying. Why does Apple need my phone number and postcode, location/business size, and my career? You're allowed a short password any time you please, except during setup, when you're barred.

With my old Mac, when I set it up I changed my short name after installation — it was fun piecing Mac OS X back together after that, but it was possible, and my new short name worked ever afterwards.

Neither Apple nor Microsoft get names right. Apple actually use your display name in full as your username, except for SMB where suddenly it's your short name. With Windows, I always pretend I'm my short name during set up, to avoid a huge username with a space in it, and then go back afterwards and reset my display name to what I would have originally entered if it wasn't going to put that as my username.

[Muirium]

Are you using a hub? It's been so long since I used an Ethernet jump cable that I've no idea what the name is, evidently, and I might have never done it in all my years on OS X. If you just want dumb access to a whole computer's drive: use FireWire target disk mode. Reboot a Mac holding T at startup and it'll host all its hard drives by FireWire, without loading the OS.

I always use my real name. Funny, I kinda assumed you would too! Here's one that Linux hated when I last tried: capitalised short username. I'm capitalised, Linus! Don't make this hard! Ubuntu would refuse to create them at the time, and never explain why. I futzed around with password formulas not knowing this brain dead limitation would never let me pass.

I should be thankful. I could have wasted years configuring Linux. Seriously. I'm dangerously specific yet untechnical.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Crossover cable — shouldn't even need that now with modern NICs. I'm just using the gigabit switch in my Virgin Super Hub. I might have had a FireWire cable once — my sister will have had that, if I did.

I'm used to usernames being all lowercase and that's fine, but if they also function as display names, I expect them to be correct (capitalisation, space etc). Many forums don't allow spaces in usernames, for no good reason, just the IT industry's love of constricting everyone half to death. MediaWiki's messed-up use of underscore/space (probably going back to idiotic wiki practices) and other oddities means that my name is miscapitalised and mr_a500's is totally untenable.

I came across another weird one the other day: the MailScanner service for Linux is actually called "MailScanner" … with capitals. As such, it doesn't tab-complete with something like "service mail[tab]" as you need that capital M first!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I figured I'd resurrect my pseudo-blog … for today, anyway. http://telcontar.net/Screenshots/botm.php?latest