rob aldred

I had an iMac for a while now and have been thinking of getting a Macbook aswell.

Just recently I’ve been given a Dell D430 I’ve heard a lot about OSx86 and tried to do it once before with a kalyway install but failed miserably. This Dell D430 has a good spec match to the macbooks and seems to be supported a bit so thought i’d give it a whirl.

It took about 6 hours, 2 of them spent downloading the 4.3gb iPC DVD from Rapidshare (btw, jDownloader + Rapidshare premium ftw)

I burnt the ISO to a Blank 4.7 DVD, popped it into my Lenovo USB DVD Combo drive (No DVD/CD on the D430)
to my amazement the OSX installer booted up straight away.

Note: You’ll need a USB KB + Mouse for the first boot, the installer works with the D430’s kb + trackpad but after install it needs little more work.

Install done using iPC OSX 10.5.6 PPF5 Universal Final – Base
Use the following options when installing:

- Kernel: Voodoo 9.5.0
- Video: Intel GMA950
- Chipset: LegacyAppleIntelPIIXATA
- Audio: Sigmatel 9200 (Might not work, if not fix later with Apple HDA Patcher instructions below)
- Ethernet: Intel 82566MM/DC (Not tested, I use Wifi)
- Wireless: Intel PROSet/Wireless 3945
- USB: Patched USB + PCGenUSBEHCI
- Fixes & Patches: ACPI Fix
Time Machine Patch
IOPCIFamily.kext patched
Seatbelt.kext 10.5.5
USB Mount Fix
PS/2 Device Support (Both KB + Mouse)
DSDT Patch
- All Applications

Restart remember to use “-f” flag when starting up for the first time.

KEYBOARD AND MOUSE Install

1. Download Package PS2Fix1054.
2. Right Click on the Package -> Open With -> Pacifist
3. After 15 Seconds, Click on Not Yet (Support Charles if you use this App)
4. Expand contents of “Choice0″
5. Expand contents of “appleps2controller.pkg”
6. Right Click “ApplePS2Controller.kext” and select the option “Install to default location”

To solve the kernel panics when mounting dmg’s
Install this seatbelt.kext from 10.5.5 over the one from 10.5.6, use osx86tools for install
Remember to fix permissions.

Audio Fix:
Download Apple HDA Patcher 1.20
and the correctly patch file for the Sigmatel 9200 audio

Battery Monitor: (Source: http://mydellmini.com/forum/mac-os-x/871-battery-monitor.html)

You’ll need the following Kext collection,
Kexts for battery monitor
We only need PowerManagement.bundle + AppleACPIBatteryManager.kext

First is PowerManagement.bundle, that goes into to /System/Library/SystemConfiguration folder
Then there’s AppleACPIBatteryManager.kext, that goes into the /System/Libary/Extensions directory. Fix the extension permissions with osx86tools, reboot with -f

Summary

There is only 1 thing I cannot get working (Which I’m still working on finding a fix) the SD Card reader, it seems to freeze the laptop when a card is inserted.

If everything goes smoothly you should have OSX up and running on your Dell within an hour.
Winner Winner!

Thanks for reading & good luck
Rob

Thanks to Insanely Mac for being an invaluable resource for me

I’ve been working on a project which uses syslog.
In order for the changes I made to syslog.conf to take effect I needed to restart the syslogd process

Yes I could restart my computer but that’s just too much effort.
I found a simple solution using the built in Mac Launch Daemons

~#: launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist
~#: launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist

syslogd will now have reloaded with any config changes you made.

Nice and simple method to flawlessly enable syncing your iphone + iPods to multiple machines, works on Mac + Windows!
I used HexEdit.app, now I have my iPhone syncing to both my home + work iMac’s with iTunes 8.1

How to Sync iPhone with multiple computers

UPDATE: IT DOES WORK WITH ITUNES 8 ( THANKS DILLY! )

In order to sync your iPhone with multiple computers you always had to “erase” one iTunes library and sync with another, no longer! Thanks to Andrew Grant at Shiny Things who create a step by step instruction for syncing your iPhone with multiple computers and giving you full manual control on how you want to organize your iPhone music between multiple iTunes libraries.

This is NOT for the faint hearted as it does involve tweaking of files, please proceed with caution and BACKUP everything, especially your “iTunes Library” and “iTunes Music Library.xml” files before proceeding. I have performed this and it works flawlessly but if for any reason your iTunes or your iPhone or your data becomes destroyed, I am NOT responsible. Now that we have gotten the disclaimer aside, let’s proceed with the fun stuff.

(via tinyfish.net)

I’ve turned my computer on today gone to search google and found that all the results have a warning under them…

“This site may harm your computer”

even amazon… what are google doing to me?

Clicking on them gives me a google page that blocks me access to the page.

Google reckons all it's results are harmful

//Update @ 15:16 GMT
It would appear that I am not the only one, Google is actually broken, someone’s committed some broken code, whoops.

Theres loads of threads on the Google support forum about this.

Sometimes logging is required but putting the messages in the Rails log isn’t the answer.For example you need to see the progress of customers through your order placement cycle, you ideally need this seperate to any other in a custom log file?

There is a solution and it’s easy… To create an order progress log, simply create a new instance of Logger and pass it a File instance for your own logfile.
Create a new model which inherits from Logger

class OrderProgressLogger < Logger
  def format_message(severity, timestamp, progname, msg)
  "#{timestamp.to_formatted_s(:db)} #{severity} #{msg}\n"
  end
end

Create initializer called logs.rb in RAILS_ROOT/config/initializers with the following content:

order_progress_logfile = File.open("#{RAILS_ROOT}/log/order_progress.log", 'a')
order_progress_logfile.sync = true
ORDER_PROGRESS_LOG = ProcessLogger.new(order_progress_logfile)

After a restart of your mongrel or passenger ORDER_PROGRESS_LOG will be available through out your application.
You log to it just as you would DEFAULT_RAILS_LOGGER like so…

ORDER_PROGRESS_LOG.debug "Starting order placement method"
ORDER_PROGRESS_LOG.error "Could not create order record"

I’ve recently moved to Mac from Ubuntu.
I tend to watch alot of TV from my computer, I’ve been wondering how to add all the shows to my iTunes library without having to convert them to MOV, because that would just take forever!

I came across this little program called Movie2iTunes, it’s a little Freeware app that does just what it says!
It allows you to add any type of movie that Quicktime can play to iTunes, so with the relivant plugins Xvid/Divx and many more.

Drp the app onto your dock or somewhere handy and simply drag and drop your Movie files or Folders containing movie files onto the Movie2iTunes app.

It works by creating QuickTime media links to your movies, it then adds these links to the iTunes library.
It also tries to guess if your movie is infact a TV show, it will correctly set the media type and even try to guess the

season and episode from the file names…

eg. Prison.Break.s01e12.avi

It will automatically match the ’s’ and ‘e’ if followed by numbers as season and episode nice!

You can download the latest version from:
http://dettmer.maclab.org/movie2itunes.html

Our beloved chancellor has decided to increase the number of road tax bands from 7 to 13.
Basically this means a lot of the everyday cars we see and use on the roads will be re-banded

For example my Toyota Celica current Band E for which I pay £170 per year for road tax… I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I read that from 2009 my Celica was moving to band J meaning that I would have to pay £260 and from 2010 onwards £270 per year!

Some unlucky high band car drivers will have to pay a special rate on any new car they buy for the first year after 2010.

Once again drivers are hit hard when the government decides that I needs some more cash!

Here is the new tax banding’s that Mr Darling has released.

If you would like to see what you’ll be paying from 2009-2010 and 2010 onwards then parkers have setup a handy tax calculator

I might not be Hamilton’s biggest fan, I don’t really know why, but I am not denying he is proving himself as good driver.

• Winning Silverstone by over 68 seconds in the wet.
• This week he posted an impressive lap of 1m14.872s at Hockenheim which remained unbeaten throughout the two days testing.

I think he means business leading up to Germany next week.

The disappointing race from Massa at Silverstone allowed both Raikkonen and Hamilton the opportunity to join him at the head of the driver standings leading up to Germany next week.

The British Grand Prix will make a surprise switch to Donington Park from 2010, the FIA has announced.

Rumours about a possible Donington bid for the race had circulated in recent weeks amid the continuing uncertainty over Silverstone’s future as a Formula 1 venue, but this morning’s announcement that a 2010 deal had been secured still came as a shock.

Finally the uncertainty is over,

declared Bernie Ecclestone.

A contract has been signed with Donington Park and the future of the British Grand Prix is now secure.

We wanted a world-class venue for Formula 1 in Britain, something that the teams and British F1 fans could be proud of.

The major development plans for Donington will give us exactly that: a venue that will put British motorsport back on the map.

The 2.5-mile Leicestershire circuit will require substantial redevelopment to bring it up to F1 standards.

Although Donington hosted the legendary 1993 European Grand Prix and is still the venue for the British round of the MotoGP world championship, its facilities are not on a par with modern F1 tracks and it has been criticised by the MotoGP fraternity in recent years.

Silverstone held the first world championship F1 race in 1950 and has been the sole home of the British GP since 1987, having previously alternated with Aintree and then Brands Hatch.

But its future has been in question for over a decade, amid regular criticism of its facilities from Ecclestone, and turbulent negotiations between his Formula One Management organisation and Silverstone’s owner the British Racing Drivers’ Club.

After many years of patient but fruitless negotiation with the BRDC, we are delighted that Bernie has nevertheless been able to ensure that the British Grand Prix will keep its place on the Formula 1 world championship calendar,

said FIA president Max Mosley.

We understand that the development programme planned for Donington will achieve the very high standards we and FOM expect from a modern F1 circuit.

Finally, British Formula 1 fans will get the grand prix venue they deserve.

Silverstone had recently received planning permission to proceed with a huge redevelopment programme that it believed would bring its facilities up to the standard that Ecclestone demanded.

But its future had also depended on finding sufficient outside backing, and Ecclestone was critical of the British government for not providing Silverstone with this support.

I am sorry that we could not have helped Silverstone to raise the money to carry out the circuit improvements and run Formula 1,

he said.

I believe that the government should have supported them, which would have cost probably less than .002 percent of the government’s commitment for the Olympic Games.

It is believed that the Donington revamp will be carried out using private financial backing.

Donnington last hosted F1 back in 1993