Aerumnous.com

Noticed that the Apple international store is down for maintanance… and only 4 days before Snow Leopard is released…

$29 for an upgrade or $79 for full OS sounds like a good deal to me..

Wonder if UK buyers will get ripped off if the dollars price gets directly converted (without currency changes) into pounds (£29 and £79)?

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Web browsing is both a hobby and a need. I don’t know where I would be if I didn’t have google!

But the fact is that over time, as you google more and more, you will fall foul of having too many bookmarks to manage easilly.

Yes, you can start organised and add your bookmarks into nice folders and then you ’should’ be able to find them again (assuming your folder is a good obvious name).

But even this approach gets difficult as the number of bookmarks increase:

Issue 1: Lots of Screen space needed to see the bookmark folders – When you start having sub folders of bookmarks many clicks to navigate many levels of folders.

Issue 2: Bookmarks that fit into many categories (i.e. folders) – I find that one bookmark will get stored in one folder, and yet another may get stored in a different named folder – causing me to fragment my bookmarks!

Issue 3: Searching is broken: I use Firefox and safari alot and I find that the search feature in the firefox sidebar doesnt search! Maybe it only searching by title and not tag?

Issue 4: I want the same bookmarks on all my machines (whether its firefox or safari)

Issue 5: I don’t want the world to see my bookmarks.

I have had the above issues for many years, and I have tried many approaches…. I think I have finally cracked it – well mostly ;-(

My latest solution: Delicious + Xmarks addons

Xmarks:

I will start with issue 4 and 5 – yes, wrong order, but hey, its my post

There is a addon for both Safari and Firefox called ‘Xmarks’ (formerly foxmarks) which will synchronise your bookmarks to their website (keeping them private) and keep multiple browsers/machines in sync. So when you add or modify a bookmark, it will get synced to the remote server and then synced back to the other machines/browser.

All for free! Heres the link to the site: http://www.xmarks.com/

Downsides to Xmarks:

- Each browser decides to add additional bookmarks for ‘most visited’ into your own bookmarks – try as I mite, you cannot delete these (Xmarks will sync them to server). These then get put into the other browser. So firefox most visited appears in Safari – and then the bookmark doesnt work!

Delicious (formerly del.ico.us)

Delicious is and has been all the rage in ’social bookmarking’ for a while now. Of course if you dont have any privacy and you like to look at pages that your mates (or even any other net surfer) has been too, then delicious is for you. Of course, issue 5 (private bookmarks) is what i want.

But I have found that you can go into the settings options on the delicious site and make your bookmarks private.

The great thing about delicious is the concept of ‘tagging’. Every bookmark you create can be tagged with keywords (same as firefox can). Then no matter where you store the bookmakr folder wise, you can find it by searching by the tag.

‘Tag groups’

But the best part is that Delicious goes alittle further, you can create tag groups which encompass any number of other tags. This fixes my issue 2.

‘Delicuous sidebar’

Issue 3 is fixed by using the Delicous sidebar addon for firefox here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3615

which basically allows you to see and navigate your delicous bookmarks in the Firefox browser.

You can also search by bookmakr name and/or tag easilly by typing search words in the sidebar.

Delicous and firefox bookmarks work together

I have found that neither Firefox bookmarking by folders or Delicious bookmarking by tags fixes all the issue on their own.

But if you use both, you can get the best of both worlds. To do this, you simply need to remember to add you bookmarks to delicious at the time of adding them to firefox.

Its easy to do this by clicking yes to ‘add to delicous’ when you press ‘add bookmark’.

And here’s a screenshot with Delicious and xmarks working in firefox 3:

Delicous sidebar v2 working along side Xmarks and Firefox bookmarks

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I have been messing around with OSX86 (Mac OS X 10.5 on non Mac hardware) for just over two months and have a rather nice version of the OSX86 Distro IPC running on my HP 550 Laptop (or ‘Hackintosh’ as people call them).

But in order to get there, I tried many different distros which mostly failed to boot from the Burned DVD’s that I inserted into my machine (SAM Sense errors)

It turned out that this happens mostly due to the drive not being able to read the burned disk correctly.

A great way around this (and save wasting extra disks later) is to install OSX 86 from a USB stick. It also gives the advantage of being quick to install and also allows you to update your OSX86 distro at a later date by just copying a new one onto the stick.

 

Below are the steps that I when through to set the stick up:

(NOTE: I am actually thinking of having multiple OS installation isos on one USB stick, so I have created a few partitions, one for windows, osx and ubuntu/archlinux)

Prerequisites:

• You will need access to a Mac running OSX (normal osx or OSX86 will work) in order to run the OSX86tools app – Yes I know chicken and egg situation ;-(
• You need to download and install OSX86Tools (google for it – free)
• You need a USB stick with at least enough space for the OSX86 Distro (I use 16gb disk, but I think you would get away with 4GB)

Partition the USB disk:

• From another PC (I am using another Mac – G4), plug the usb disk into usb port and open the Disk Utility app (applications->utilities->disk utility
• Select the USB drive from the list
• Click on the ‘partition’ tab (you will see ‘current’ in a pulldown of partition layout
• Select from the pulldown the number of partitions you would like to create. The minimum is 1 (which will hold you OSX86 install, but you can have many partitions if you want to have option to install many OS’s.
• Click on the partition and format it as ‘Mac OS X Extended’
• Click on the options button and make sure that ‘Master boot record’ is selected (this is where the OSX86 bootloader will be stored)
• Click the apply button to create the partitions.

Screenshot of what your usb could look like is shown below, note I have 3 partitions, you need at least 1:

 

Put the OSX86 ISO onto the partition:

 

• Still in the Disk Utility app, choose ‘file->open image’ from the menu and select the OSX86 distro iso image.
• The iso will appear in the left hand side.
• Click on the ‘Restore’ tab.
• Drag the image from the left hand side onto the’source’ text box (or click ’source’ button and select image)
• Drag and drop the partition you’ve just created to the “Target” field. 
• Click the “Restore” button. Disk Utility will now take a few minutes to restore the OSX86 image to your partition.
• Close the Disk utility.

 

Make the USB stick bootable:

• Close the Disk utility application (Cmd+Q)
• Download and install the OSX86tools application from here on the Mac you are using.
• Open the OSX86tools app and press the ‘Install EFI/Run fdisk’ button
• You will get a screen like below:

• It should find the USB sticks Partitions (mine is called OSX86IPC). Select it from the list.
• Select ‘Cameleon’ from the 2nd pulldown list (’EFI to Install’).
• Press Install EFI to install the bootloader onto USB (this will allow it to boot the OSX86 install).
• After the OSX86tools app has finished, you can close the app and eject your USB stick.

Boot the USB disk and installer:

• Take your USB stick over to the laptop/pc that you want to install OSX86 on and boot the machine into the BIOS (usually press DEL or F12 at boot up to get into BIOS)
• Once in the BIOS select Boot from USB (different for each BIOS, but usaully have to make USB Disk highest in boot order above CD and HD)
• HP Specific additional step: I found that the HP bios would not read the USB disk quick enough before giving up and deciding it was not bootable. To fix this I entered 5 seconds in the ‘Delay at boot time’ BIOS option.
• Quit out of BIOS, saving settings
• Plug the USB stick into the Machine and reboot machine.
• With some luck, your PC will boot from USB (USB stick light should flash if you have one).
• You should see a the Leopard Mac OS X installer grey screen appear after about 10seconds.

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Background: How I have had a taste of the Forbidden Apple...

I have been a computer user as a hobby and as part of my Career path for many years now, and although I started using Macs  way back when I worked as Mac support in an ISP years ago, I mostly kept to the Windows, Linux, Unix Operating systems (as Mac users used to be seen as being a little simple years back).

However, about 5 years back, I was on the look out for a new Laptop and my partner was getting very irritated by the existing MS Windows ‘Half life’ and the fact that it seems to attract every virus going ;-(

So, although my main dev work has always been on Windows or Linux boxes, I decided to take a risk and see what Apple had to offer….

Ten minutes after buying this new shiny G4 Apple Powerbook, boy was my partner impressed… and three weeks later.. boy was I impressed at how few phone calls I had received along the lines of: ‘The pc is broken, how do i fix X,Y,Z?”

Long and short of it, Mac OS X is easier to use and due to the underlying BSD Unix security model, just doesnt get viruses.

So, several years on and we are completely sold on the Apple line.

But then all good things come to an end…  ;-(

Unfortunately, the good old powerbook is showing its age a little now what with Apple having moved away from PowerPC and the fact that the screen now has a dodgy connection.

So, I here you mac types say: “Just buy a new macbook pro laptop and continue along the Merry Apple road”

I would love to, but I don’t have £1700 quid to buy an equivalent. Also, I dont really agree with it being soo much money (I know Apple is a status symbol, but £1700 is a bit too much of a rip off considering other manufacturer laptop prices are considerably lower).

Step in OSX86…

So what’s the solution, well, being a constant geek and liking to fiddle with anything techy, I had heard of a project called OSX86 where people have been writing patches to allow Mac OS X to run on some non Apple Intel PC/Laptops. So I thought I would give it a try..

The advantage being that you can pick up very similar (in fact identical in some cases) hardware without the Apple price tag and then still use the nice OS X operating system.

Picking a Non Apple Laptop that will work with OS X:

Its not hard to go out and fall for a very shiny swanky Laptop, bring it home, wack in the OSX86 install disk (there are many to choose from) and loose your life and possibly hair trying to get the damn hardware to work with Mac OS X.

But nobody wants to take this risk – especially if you are not single, coz you will get an earful!

So, my approach was to do some research before taking the plunge. Basically read the following pages, looking for Laptops where other users have already had the pain of trying out many patches and then plump for that laptop:

OSX 86 Compatibility list: Portable Computers

I found that a few standout:

Netbooks: Dell Mini 9 - works perfectly with Mac OS X 10.5.6 / 10.5.7 (latest at time of writing) – great community support. So mature that it is pretty much stick disc in a click through setup)

HP 550 (1.8ghz Core Duo 2, 2/4GB RAM, 160/250GB HD, Wifi, BT) - Equivalent to a Mac book pro (15″ screen, single and dual core options). This laptop is what I am using – With iDeneb OSX86 and a few patches, works well except for two items:

• Inbuilt wifi card – Intel chipset is NOT recognised by Mac OS X – Solution: Buy a Broadcom minipci card (£15 on ebay) and replace it – very easy.

 

• Sleep currently does not work – no easy solution (have to shut down and restart Mac OS like windows/linux). UPDATE: Sleep now works on IPC with the Deep sleep widget installed (you have to click on widget in dashboard to sleep or press Fn+f5 (sleep button) to enter sleep.

Get your OSX86 distro:

As mentioned earlier, there are many OSX86 distributions that you can use to install Mac OS X on your Non Apple PC…

It really is a case of trying a few of them with your hardware or using one that another user has proven.

BE WARNED: Each one has its pros and cons: mostly you will find that at best case you will have one peice of hardware that does not work… worst case, nothing works ;-(

In my case, I ruled out the following Distros:

iDeneb – Installed fine, had issues with USB drive not working – even after trying various USB kext fixes.

iPC (as of 06/07/2009) –  would not boot correctly (Kernel panic trying to find the SATA drive – sense error) UPDATE: Turns out kernel panic sense error is due to bad read of DVD. Workaround is to use USB to install OSX86. See my blog post here.

I am currently using: iPC 10.5.6 – All of the hardware works, but still only 10.5.6 (Apple updates can wipe out hardware modules)

I am thinking of trying (just coz I am a tinkerer and want to by able to take Apple updates without pain):

- Boot 132 with Real leopard install disk.

Disclaimer: It is against Apples EULA license to install Mac OS X on non Apple hardware. It is currently under dispute, but it is at your own risk if you choose to do this. At the very least, you should buy a legit copy of MAC OS leopard (approx £79)

Don’t post comments asking where to get OSX86 distros. I will not reply. Hint: google is your friend

Anyhow, over the new week or so, I will be adding a post that records my journey of getting Mac OS X (ideneb) installed onto my Hp550 and working (all but the sleep mode)…

So do look out for a post if you want to save some hassle…

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What with all the Transformer new movie hype, I was compelled to re-watch some of the original Transformer cartoons… I started with the Transformer Animated Movie and it was interesting to rewatch it to see if my child hood memories match the real thing…

Mostly it did. The amount of famous people voicing the charactors was fun also (Leonard Nimoy, Eric Idle etc were very funny).
The eighties music was also rather fun.

But the shocking thing that I noticed most was the use of the ‘S@”&’ swear word! I couldnt beleive it in a children movie in the 1980’s.

So, if you are on the look out for some 80’s nostalgia, do go and watch the animate movie… and especially lookout for the part where Spike it trying to escape Nimoys robot character.

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Welcome to Aerumnouse.com, I am pretty much still setting this site up, so don’t expect too much at present.

‘The road to success is always under construction’?

Hope that is not too true, otherwise this post will be here for a while.

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