Today I wanted to install Windows XP SP2 onto Boot Camp, so I printed the “Installation & Setup Guide” Apple provides in the “Boot Camp Assistant”. My ultimate goal is to allow Windows XP to boot off off Boot Camp (on it’s own) and by using VMWare Fusion, for the times I don’t want to reboot (which are more frequent).

So in my case I already have a working version of VMWare and Windows XP. Next is to install Windows XP, so first I needed to Partition my drive. In my case I chose a 32 GB Windows partition, as I intend to (also) play some games on it.

Then I needed a Windows XP SP2 install CD, but sadly I only had a Windows XP SP1 bootable CD (well I once made a .cdr file from that CD and used that instead). This can be fixed using the Slipstreaming Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Create Bootable CD guide. Then I used the .EXE mambo-jambo from the Guide. I ended up with a “patched” version of Windows XP SP2. Now then, how to burn a bootable CD, without “Nero”, well I just downloaded the Trial version (which expires after 15 days, but that’s fine).

Once that’s all done … the rest is trivial … except for Windows XP activation, what a nightmare! This article describes what you need to do.

Well, so far I’ve bought three games for Mac OSX:

• Need for Speed Carbon
• Command and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars ( Kane )
• Command and Conquer Generals ( + Zero Hours)

The games run great on my Mac (Macbook Pro 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo – 4GB 667Mhz DDR2 SDRAM – NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256 MB), but ofcourse I wasn’t expecting anything less!

The only thing that strikes me odd is the fact that I’m being sent to the Dutch EA website which doesn’t have a single Mac game nor any links to it. Neither is there a link to ‘complain’ about this. So I’m off to the US/Canada website

Oh and for the ‘unbelievers’ take a look at Apple’s Game Pages to see (and download) game (demo’s).

Oh (2) and EA, where are Need for Speed Prostreet and Burnout Paradise City for the Mac?

After evaluating loads of DB GUI apps for Mac OSX, I’ve finally made my decision. It seems that DBVisualizer is more than able to fit my needs, allows for data entry/export and creation and altering of tables. It also allows for a uniform view into multiple databases (MySQL/PostgreSQL/etc). It doesn’t have a great Mac OSX (Leopard) look & feel, but it’s not all that bad either! All in all I’d recommend it!

sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/opt/local/bin/mysql_config5

Here’s how you can simply enable the Inspect Element and the Safari Debug Menu:

1) Go in terminal and 2) Type (copy paste) the following commands:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitDeveloperExtras -bool true
defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

I’ve downloaded PosgreSQL from PostgreSQL for Mac and installed it, immediately after the server runs. From the diskimage I got the folders where the terminal binaries are installed (the GUI tools which come with the package don’t work for me) and it all worked. That saves a lot of compilation time!

Using Ruby on Rails with PostgreSQL is fairly simple, just install the ruby-postgres gem (gem install ruby-postgres) and have your database.yml represent something like:

development:
  adapter: postgresql
  database: my_development
  username: tdegrunt
  password:
  encoding: utf8

TO

Well just for certain things, like my UniVerse programming, for SFTP access Coda is very fast. For Rails I will continue to use TextMate, which is more brilliant in many ways. If only TextMate had SFTP access built in as fast as Coda did.

Jeez, after two/three evenings of trying I finally pieced it together! For the less daring, I’d say: WAIT, DON’T DO IT! It’s really not worth all the time I spent.

Using the article on AwkwardTV I was able to hack my AppleTV in no-time (literally 15 minutes!) and more importantly it worked! There are some articles on the web, which just don’t work the way they describe.

The most important thing to remember is that once you add the EFI partition to your to-be-appletv-harddisk you can’t format the Media partition anymore (and basically you’ll need to start over).

For good photos on how to open up your AppleTV look at this article by Macworld, but follow the AwkwardTV instructions otherwise.

NSIndexSet *selectedSet = [tableView selectedRowIndexes];

unsigned int row = [selectedSet lastIndex];
while (row != NSNotFound)
{
    [yourNsMutableArray removeObjectAtIndex:row];  
    row = [selectedSet indexLessThanIndex:row];
}

Tonight I’ve upgraded my Apple TV from the regular 40GB harddisk to 160 GB harddisk. I found that on many sites the how-to’s are teribbly wrong or don’t work with Mac OSX 10.4 (Intel). Having the EFI and recovery partitions present on your new disk, makes diskutility screw up the whole harddrive so you can start all over again.

Additionally, there’s no need to copy the OSBoot and Media partitions, since they can be reconstructed, so safe a lot of time and don’t copy those!

Next will be hacking the thing, which should be relatively easy after this ordeal.

Well solved, I kinda circumvented it by buying a different phone: A Nokia N95. Did I say phone, scratch that, it’s a multimedia computer: GPS, 5 MP camera, video calls. And above all: It syncs perfectly, using iSync with the Mac. Eat that Sony Ericsson!

Yesterday I bought an Apple TV and connected it via HDMI to my HD plasma Television. The quality is very high, ofcourse I forgot to bring an optical audio cable so the sound quality is still not what it potentially could be.

I also found that my local hardware store has DVI to HDMI cables, so I bought one of those as well so now I can plug my laptop into my TV, with good quality.

I’m curious whether I can hack the Apple TV, though I’m not prepared to screw the device open and rip out the harddisk just yet. I read that somebody booted from an external USB drive, so that I think would be the best solution path. If I do manage to run OSX on it, I’m curious what I can do with it all.

As said in the title I also bought an Apple Airport Extreme, based on the 802.11n draft-standard. My previous wireless lan was a Linksys 802.11g which was in a closet beneath the stairs. The Airport Extreme is out in the open in the living room and has an enormous range (compared to the old situation). The Apple TV is connected to the Airport Extreme using a cable, not using Airport, which will hopefully increase speed.

Today I’ve found this totally new gem: SSHFS for Darwin. It’s brilliant! It allows you to connect to a SFTP host and use it as if it was a local volume. It’s for 10.4 (Tiger) only. So this together with TextMate make a perfect couple for me.

Just upgraded my TomTom GO 700 to version 6 of the software. Mac users are now supported, thank god … so it should be pretty straightforward … you think! Well TomTom Home continuously crashed, only after removing /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/SIMBL.bundle (by temporarily copying it to my Desktop) did TomTom Home work stable. I’ll take it for a ride tomorrow, we’ll see!