Trying to remain agile in a BIG design world.
If only I had better Google_fu this post by Josh Goebel would have saved me a day. The key was remembering that Oniguruma is more than than a Rails gem. So you have to (1) make sure that Oniguruma is installed (I recommend via MacPorts) and then (2) make sure that the gem can find it. Here’s what fixed it for me (thanks again to Josh):
sudo port install oniguruma5 sudo gem install oniguruma -- --with-opt-dir=/opt/local
Profit!
It seems that a lot of folks are experiencing the “Error 51: Unable to communicate with the VPN subsystem” issue with Cisco’s VPN Client in Mac OS X. After much searching when I encountered the same issue, the solution turned out to be quite simple.
There is no annoying middle step.
I know that I should have these committed to memory by now but I don’t and I can never find them on the Web. Now I’ll never loose them! (Those sound like famous last words…)
| Symbol | Command |
|---|---|
| ⌥ | option |
| ⌃ | control |
| ⇧ | shift |
| ⇪ | caps lock |
| ⌘ | command |
| ⌧ | clear |
| ⌫ | delete |
| ⌦ | del (erase right) |
| Symbol | Command |
|---|---|
| ⏎ | return |
| ⌅ | enter |
| ↖ | home |
| ↘ | end |
| ⇞ | page up |
| ⇟ | page down |
| ⇥ | tab |
Imagine my joy when the company owner decided (for reasons that I care not to divulge here) to swap his year old MacBook Pro for my nearly two year old Dell X1! I hadn’t been using the Dell since I also had a year old MacBook (white) and although I was giving up 20GB of storage to upgrade from the MB to the MBP I jumped at the offer.
54 minutes after firing up Migration Assistant I was in business and loving the MBP goodness NOTE: I had just upgraded the MBP for the owner from Tiger to Leopard by means of a fresh install. So there wasn’t a lot of cruft on the drive that needed cleaning up once I deleted his user account.
All was well until I got around to hooking the MBP up to my second display. I am in the habit of using my ViewSonic VX715 for my work screen since it sits above my laptop, and leaving social apps like Adium, NatsuLion, and Skype open on the laptop display. However, I was no longer able to drag Safari, TextMate, etc. to the upper display although I could drag all the social apps there. Bizarre!
I posted this “annoyance” on Twitter and then the solution came to me immediately. All my “work” apps were too wide to fit the VX715’s default resolution of 1024X768. DOH! Adjusting the monitor’s resolution via System preferences freed my apps to move wherever I choose. I am a bit annoyed though that OS X apparently does not permit “over-sized” app windows move between displays since it is certainly possible to make an app window wider than any single screen. Nonetheless, mystery solved.
As I am want to do, I became involved in an exchange on Twitter with the lovely and talented Cal Evans concerning his thoughts about forsaking his current OS/hardware choice and going Mac instead. While this seemed like a slam dunk to me, one person’s experience seemed to be giving him pause. With Twitter’s 140 character limit, there was no way for me to do justice to a very positive experience I had with Apple customer service. So, I thought I would recount the story here for posterity.
One of my current employers, Amphora Research, purchased me a PowerBook in 2005 which served me faithfully for a couple of years, until the hard drive died. Conditioned as I was to sweat such events by years of Windows and Linux use, I was not looking forward to the road to recovery ahead. I was no “spring chicken” and had been religiously backing up the PB using SuperDuper. Nonetheless, I was apprehensive as I headed to the local Apple Store to see what the geniuses could do for me. We had purchased Apple Care for the PB. So I was hoping for minimal hassle.
Upon arrival at the Genius Bar, without an appointment (you could still do that in 2007), I was greeted by a very knowledgeable genius (redundant as that may sound) who, after listening to my sad story, asked me to be patient while he checked to see what hardware they had available. As it turned out, all they had was an 80GB drive in stock but my PB came with only a 60GB drive installed. Prepared to be disappointed, I was very pleasantly surprised when the the genius asked if I would mind the extra 20GB of storage. When I asked how much the extra 20GB would cost me I was once more pleasantly surprised when he told me there was no additional cost! He asked me if I had all my data backed up which I assured him I did, and he informed me that he would need to keep the bad drive which was no concern to me. Giving Apple one more chance to disappoint me, I asked when the laptop would be ready to pick-up. “Give me a half an hour” he said, and one strawberry smoothie later I was walking out of the Kenwood Towne Centre with a juicy little upgrade but anticipating a day or two of OS and application re-installation.
I recalled the Apple genius telling me restoring the drive would be a snap when I told him I had backed up the drive using SuperDuper. He could not have been more correct. Here is the entire restore process (windows and Linux users may want to turn away at this point!):
No OS re-install. No application re-install. Simply go back to work! It don’t get no better than this.
Shortly thereafter, my boss bought me a new MacBook which required service six months after its purchase that necessitated a week long stay at a local Apple service provider, ComputerDNA. What was I going to do without my Mac for a week? Keep on working! I booted a Mac Mini we used for pair programming from the SuperDuper back-up volume and composed and saved documents to the back-up volume as if it were the internal drive. Once my MB was returned, I restored the back-up copy to the internal drive of MB and all my new work was there waiting for me. There were no hardware issues booting the back-up created on my MacBook on the Mini, or booting the back-up updated on the Mini and restored to the MacBook.
I’ve been using Macs for ten years and as my OS of choice for four years now. When I “need” Windows or Linux I fire up VMware Fusion but I’m always relieved to return to OS X. When was the last time you were pleasantly surprised by your operating system?
PS: Just so you don’t think I’m too much of an Apple/OS X fanboy, FileVault SUCKS!!!
