Some key presses to learn

Monday, November 19, 2007 3:12 pm By BigLig

Arrow keys are the ones that are giving me the most gyp:
Left, Right move one character
Up, down move one line
CTRL+ Arrow Invokes Spaces and switch to a different desktop (this is the one that bites me!!)
ALT+Left, Right Move one word at a time (what I am trying to do with CTRL+Left, Right)
Alt+Up, Down Move to beginning/end of the current paragraph.
Apple+Left, Right Move to beginning/end of the current line.
Apple+Up, Down Move to the top/bottom of the document.

Apple+X, C, V Cut, Copy, Paste
Apple+O open selected file (also bites me because...)
Enter rename selected file
Apple+Delete Delete File


Coolest keypress so far: Ctrl+Apple+D when you have a word selected looks that word up in the dictionary!!

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UNIX underpinnings

1:54 pm By BigLig

Well, one great thing about the Mac that became apparent today - it's got all the powerful Unix tools under the hood.


I was trying to diagnose an SMTP problem today and needed to watch live SMTP connections. First I found a Perl script that sends an SMTP message with a Verbose option. Perl is already installed on the Macbook, so it worked straight away. The problem seemed to be timing related, so instead of writing ./smtp-client.pl I wrote time ./smtp-client.pl and I could get a measurement of how long the message transaction took. Then I needed to send a really big text file as another test; so I just typed uuencode bigfile.ppt to generate a 1Mb text file.

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Small things

Saturday, November 17, 2007 3:45 pm By BigLig

It's rather strange, transitioning to the Mac... so many learned behaviours (CTRL+Left Arrow to jump back a word is the wort) to undo. Whups, just did it again!

I'm getting much more used to Safari, I think the trick to it may be to get into the habit of not using tabs quite as much - still use them but also use opening in a new window.
I just found a link to a brilliant idea. Stacks, the new way of putting folders into the Dock in Leopard, are cute, but they have a problem - all you see in the dock is the contents of the folder (actually you see the first icon with the second icon peeping out from behind it. It's ugly and doesn't tell you what's in the folder very well - especially the downloads folder since that changes all the time.
The fix? Go here and download the two zip files full of icons of labeled plastic boxes; drop the appropriate ones into each folder. Their names begin with spaces so they are first in alphabetical order, and you can type
touch -mt 202001010101.01 " Downloads "
or whatever in each folder to set the modify date so far in the future that they are always first in "most recent file" order.
It looks really good.

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LDAP goodness

Thursday, November 15, 2007 1:19 pm By BigLig

I'm working up a note on Bootcamp and Parallels, which I spent most of yesterday installing (and will spend most of today reinstalling, but it's a good reinstall).

But first I wanted to share some info I found on LDAP queries. I've always had trouble getting these to work - I need them in Apple Mail to do lookups against our Exchange GAL.
Imeldesign over at TekTips posted some settings that worked perfectly the instant I used them. I shall take the liberty of quoting them in full:

1. Name: Enter whatever you want here.
2. Server: Your domain controller's FQDN.
3. Search Base: leave this blank.
4. Port : 3268
5. DO NOT USE SSL
6. Scope: Select "Subtree"
7. For authentication select "Simple"
8. User Name: "domain\username_in_caps" fill in your username in caps where directed.
9. Password: fill in your login password.

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Issue with PPTP networking

Tuesday, November 13, 2007 9:03 pm By BigLig

Been so busy this evening, little time to do anything of much interest with the Macbook. 

PPTP is a mixed bag so far. First, it's a little obscure to find - you have to go into system preference, networking, and click the plus sign to add a new connection. Second, although it connects very quickly, there's some issue with DNS name resolution, it's not resolving with the DNS server it gets from the VPN connection, which is silly default behavior. I'll have to google a solution from somewhere. However, it looks like once it is working it will be very neat and easy to use.
Also, I need a cheat sheet for the keyboard commands. I keep getting the modifier keys wrong! I know I can reprogram them to copy Windows, but that isn't the way I want to go - I want to learn OSX on it's own terms.

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Interesting factoid

3:46 pm By BigLig

I haven't right-clicked anything yet.

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First Post!

3:23 pm By BigLig

Well, first from the Macbook, anyhow. ;-)

Leopard installed very simply, and now I'm moving slowly along the Dock checking stuff out.
Dashboard was a good place to start, in fact, since it reassured me to poke about to figure out how things work.
First main application to configure was Mail.app. I expect to end up in Entourage soon enough, but I was interested in checking out the built-in tool set first. It took me a minute or two to configure, because despite being the mail admin I wasn't quite sure how my internal SMTP server is set up for authentication, etc. However, it now works fine, sending and receiving mail happily.
Safari I'm familiar with from the Windows version. It's fast, and it does the basic job of showing web pages well. I'd like more tab features - a way to have tabs show all the time, for example. I can of course just go get Firefox, but again, I'd like to give the built-in tools a chance. 
I've not really got anyone to iChat with, so that's gone back into the Applications folder.
iWork and iLife are for another post!
iCal is going to be a possible issue, since there is no built-in way to connect it to Exchange. This will need some thought, but of course I have my Blackberry for calendar, so there is no urgency.
Photo Booth is as silly as anyone could hope for.
I'm going to hold off on Time Machine until I have all my data transfered from my Dell.

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First power-up

11:09 am By BigLig

One last physical thing before booting it up, my external mouse is filthy! So I've cleaned it before using it on the new Mac. Hmm, that's quite sad.
Powering it on... A nervous few seconds before the "Bong". Tradition is nice.
Apple logo, spinning sunflower wait cursor, blue screen (on both monitors), mouse cursor, external mouse is already working, beachball, display is gorgeous, Use English as the main language, shit, it's got Tiger on it!
A desperate lunge for the CD box, and phew, there's a copy of Leopard in there.
Oooh, and a Tiger DVD, I wonder if I could get the old G3 running with that? I'd need a DVD drive for it, of course... Anyhow, never mind that rubbish.
Oh, the delight as it turns on the iSight camera and asks me to take a photo of myself for the logon page..
Hmmm, a lot of updates needed, I suppose it's safest to install those, then do the Tiger install. 130Mb for aperture is a lot... Wait, I have Aperture installed?
Spend the time waiting for the upgrade wiping my Firewire hard disk ready for Time Machine, and downloading a few of the FOSS packages I've found while waiting.
That doesn't take all that long so I start working on moving my iTunes music over from my Dell.
Another post when I have something to tell!

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Physical Impressions before turning it on.

11:01 am By BigLig

There's a guy, in cupertino somewhere, who spent a month designing the polystyrene inserts inside the Macbook box
The whole thing is like that. There are little hooks that pop out of the power supply so you can werap the cord round it.
It's very slim, very minimalist. Surprisingly heavy, which I guess is because it is made out of metal instead of plastic.
I have taken my watch and ID badge off because I'm scared I'll scrape it. Ahem.
Business observation: no docking station. I have just plugged in the following: Gigabit Ethernet, USB hub with my external mouse (Microsoft, why do you ask?) on it, External monitor, Power, and my Firewire drive. That could get tedious if I have to do it every day. Of course, I might find I don't need the external monitor, and I have WiFi everywhere I go. I could get the wireless mighty mouse and apple keyboard. There's rumours that people have figured out a way to make Time Machine talk to a NAS device. So, there are workarounds.
Keyboard is nice. there's only one mouse button, heh!
Screen is more reflective than my (also turned off) external LCD panels, but let's see what it's like when it's turned on.
Say, turning it on, that sounds like it could be fun!

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Hoo Haa Heee Haaa Hooo!

10:38 am By BigLig

As you can tell from the post title, I came in this morning to find a brown cardboard box waiting for me. With a Macboo Pro in it.
The unboxing was exactly like all the other unboxing videos on the net; but of course what a video cannot communicate is the new Mac smell.

This was perfect timing as overnight I threw my HTC TyTN 2 in the cupboard of failed PDAs. I had spent one too many calls desperately trying to find out where to hold it in order for the person at the other end to be able to hear me. Surgical implantation in my larnyx seemed to give the best results.

Back on my Blackberry and already feeling the benefit - this post, for example, would not have been fun to type on the Tytn despite it's bigger keyboard.

So, you ask, why am I posting this rubbish and not turning the Mac on for the first time? Because it's been in a warehouse in china for 2 weeks, and the heating is out in my office, so if I turn it on now I'll get condensation inside and it will explode.

But it won't be long, if only because I have abot 20 minutes of patience left and then sod dignity, I'll stick it down my trousers to warm up.

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Boooooooring!

Monday, November 12, 2007 2:03 pm By BigLig

Boy, this waiting for the Macbook to show up is tedious. Reading the horror stories on apecode.com/appletrack turns out not to be a very good way to pass the time.

Currently mine is assigned to a carrier called "UK DISTRIBUTION CENTER", which gives me hope that it's in the country at least. Unfortunately it also has the estimated delivery date set to last Friday, so I'm taking all info with a pinch of salt.

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Hope you like our new direction.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007 2:25 pm By BigLig

I'm finally flipping my production machine to UNIX, but not the way I thought I would - I'm getting a Mac!

I'll be logging my switcher experience here as usual, but I noticed that while there are a lot of good pages for switchers, there doesn't seem to be a page for the windows sysadmin. I found an itch: time to scratch.

I already have my unused Google Pages space, and I'm going to put a clean version of my experiences there.

It's at http://biglig.googlepages.com/

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