As of this writing TinyGod is still in flux. Windows XP is running again, and Parallels is running on it, but I can't get networking inside Parallels - the drivers for the virtualized network cards are screwed up. I've given up on it for now and sent in a support request. We'll see what happens. In the meantime I'm still having to reboot into Windows a lot more than I really like, but it's time to just buck up and get back to work.

One thing I've been meaning to talk about is synchronizing my desktop (TinyGod) and my laptop (Kool-Aid). This has really saved my bacon over the last week since I can do just about anything relevant on Kool-Aid. There are three components to this, and they are all really worthwhile to me.

The first is a .Mac account. I know if you're a long-time Mac fan you're outraged because they gave you a free email address and then later started charging for it. If you're a post-OS X convert like me your impression is probably that .Mac is a weak-sauce Google with less features that costs money. But I have a .Mac account for exactly one reason - syncing of Address Book and iCal across multiple Macs. (There are other things that sync such Keychains and Mail rules that are neat, but it's Address Book/iCal that is worth cold hard cash.) If I'm at the office in San Francisco I can punch in an appointment on Kool-Aid and know that it will be on TinyGod, probably even before I get home. This works great and it's in the background. It just happens, and I only have to worry about it if I'm doing something really fiddly with both machines at the same time.

The second is The Missing Sync. This allows syncing information between my Treo 700p and OS X. I have it on both Macs, but I usually run it on TinyGod. This is the other side of the link. I can enter an appointment on my Treo (say I'm at a friend's house and we're planning dinner) and it will make it's way back to TinyGod and from there .Mac will take it to Kool-Aid. The upshot is that all three devices have full read and write access to my contacts, Calendar, and To-Do lists (which come out of Kinkless GTD). If you have a Palm and OS X you should have The Missing Sync. Period.

The new piece of the puzzle is ChronoSync. Chronosync sychronizes folders. This may not sound like much but it has a robust ruleset and scheduler. What I use for is very powerful - I sync my entire Home folder every morning at 4 AM between Kool-Aid and TinyGod. The scheduler (which runs on TinyGod) is sophisticated enough to mount Kool-Aid's drive, perform the sync, and then unmount it again. So every morning I can start using either machine for a given file and it's all good. Days like today where I'm going to reboot TinyGod in another hour or so I can work on it until time to switch and then manually run the saved sync file to move everything over to Kool-Aid. My Kinkless GTD file (aka my entire freakin' life), my fiction projects, any source code I'm working on, even files on my desktop, they all move. NetNewsWire files tracking what feeds I've read update, etc. etc.

Now this is a bit finicky to set up I must admit. In particular the contents of ~/Library/ApplicationSupport is a bit tweaky. You don't want to sync machine-specific logs (but you DO want to sync things like Adium chat logs - doesn't matter which machine I run Adium on, I have access to all my chat logs). If you do something like run NetNewsWire on BOTH machines between synce you'll have to manually tell it to use one machine over the other on the next sync. But the power of being able to just grab Kool-Aid and work on a file and being confident that tomorrow it will be on TinyGod as well is fantastic.

technorati tags:OSX, computer, Chronosync, MissingSync, .Mac, maintenance

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I haven't blogged much this week and that's mainly because I've been wrestling with Windows XP until I hate looking at the screen. Something . . . happened recently. I rebooted into XP Friday night with the intent of playing a game and discovered that XP no longer boots. (It complains that it can't find HAL.DLL). Oddly enough, the Parallels Desktop version still runs but it (XP inside the virtual machine that is) is crashing on logout - WIndows does some typically brilliant thing where it wants to know if I want to put logon.exe in the debugger (oh that sounds like it should work just great!) Although . . . it turns out Windows Update no longer runs inside Parallels so clearly all is not well inside the VM box either.

After some fiddling I decided to give up and reinstall Windows XP. Turns out you can "repair" the XP installation which seems to basically reinstall the OS but keep your Registry, apps, and so forth. Fantastic. And it turns out that Windows Update isn't running on the repaired XP either. There was a lot of comedy with this because there are a lot of conflicting reports on the net on how to best fix this. I did some steps that I think were false, but here's what I think fixed it. This worked (twice) to repair the problem, and I think the other steps were just misdirection. In IE open Internet Options. On the General Tab select Tempory Internet Files->Settings and remove the MUWebControl and the WUWebControl. You may or may not need to stop the service before doing this.

Anyway, finally got XP running again, let it download the 70+ (!) critical patches, rebooting like four times, blah, blah, blah.

Reboot into OS X, try to run Parallels Desktop. Parallels just reboots the VM immediately. Fantastic. Reboot to XP. Now we're back to missing HAL.DLL. Grrr. The Parallels FAQ claims I should try to reboot XP (inside the VM) in "Safe Mode", but it still reboots just after loading MUP.SYS. This is either because of the Parallel Tools or because some USB issue (or both - one of the things Parallels does is shims my USB keyboard/mouse into virtual PS2 connections).

Run the whole drill again. Get a functioning XP install and attempt to uninstall the Parallels Tools - oh they can't be uninstalled except when running in the VM. Wanna bet? One slash & burn through the registry later and a delete inside C:\Program Files and I think they are really gone. But I'm not going to rely on that. I'm not gonna try Parallels again until I find a satisfactory way to back and restore the entire partition. (Remember my previous backup strategy relied on Parallels - which now isn't running.) At the moment I'm letting a OS X app called WinClone crunch on making an image of my running XP System - Dev Studio installed and so forth. If THAT works then I'll try Parallels again.

Grrrr.

I didn't work on it last night though, Karin and I went and saw The Police in concert. That was a fine show, well worth seeing if you can.

technorati tags:WindowsXP, backup, Parallels, maintenance, IHateMicrosoft

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You might be wondering how did I ever settle in to the 360 Guitar Hero controller, especially after I started trying the "new grip"? Well, I'd say pretty good. But I don't have to say it myself because I can let the "Sandbox Hero" achievement (for getting five stars on all songs on the Easy tour) on my GamerTag speak for itself. Now I'm on to five-starring the Medium songs. "The Grip" rules, my friends!

In a somewhat funny note, I accidentally skipped a song in the second tier of easy, so I worked my through Psychobilly Freakout on Easy and went "Awhaa?" when I didn't get my achievement. So I had to go back and play this absolutely baby-simple song and I nailed every note on my first playthrough. Which is only sorta awesome, except back in my 360 Achievement categorization post my example of a "Major Goal" was the Guitar Hero II 100% achievement. At the time I wrote

You might do that through normal play, but it's more likely that you sit down and work at it for a while.

Well then. Turns out you can do it through normal play - IF you have mastered "The Grip". Later in the post I also referenced Splinter Cell: Double Agent's achievement for completing an entire level without being detected as a "Major Goal", so that will have to stand as my canonical example. I don't think it's likely to happen on anybody's first playthrough of a SC:DA level, so it's much more likely to be something you're doing deliberately. Unless there's a special SC:DA "Grip" that I know not of . . . .

technorati tags:Xbox360, GuitarHeroII, achievements

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Lord of the Rings is more or less the foundation of modern D&D. The latter rose from the former, although the two are now so estranged that to reunite them would be an act of savage madness. Imagine a gaggle of modern hack-n-slash roleplayers who had somehow never been exposed to the original Tolkien mythos, and then imagine taking those players and trying to introduce them to Tolkien via a D&D campaign.

Twenty Sided » DM of the Rings I:The Copious Backstory

I got this from Chris Roberson, but it's super-funny! Be sure to read the text at the bottom as well. I miss the days when I had time for D&D . . . .

technorati tags:LordOfTheRings, D&D, role-playing, humor

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I simply wanted to view the date alongside the time in the menu bar. Unfortunately this is not an option in OS X. However, with a slight of hand, you too can easily display the date in the OS X menu bar without the need of additional applications.

How To: Display Date in OS X Menu Bar - PaulStamatiou.com

Nice. No extra application to run, just a slight hack to customizing the time display and bam, my menu clock now reads June 5, 2:34. The information I want, no extra crud. I like FuzzyClock but as far as I can tell you can't make it display the date, which I really want at a glance.

technorati tags:OSX, tips, menubar, clock

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