Author: David Rostenne

Can you Help? Emailing pictures with iPhoto is broken!

David Rostenne 1 Comment

I have iPhoto 5.0.4, latest version before iLife 2006. I’m still running 10.4.3 though.

The problem is simple: I choose a series of pictures, click the strangely-icon-less email button and select my options, and watch as the Mac does it’s thing. Once the progress bar is done… nothing happens.

Picture 3.png

When I go to the prefs I have a blank pop-up menu in which to choose an email program.

Picture 4.png

So far I have:

– repaired permissions
– moved the old iPhoto prefs out of the way
– cleared the ByHost cache

When I checked the result of ‘defaults read com.apple.iPhoto’ I got:

MailApp = Mail;

I checked on a friend’s machine and defaults gives the same results.

Which leads me to believe Mail.app is selected, so why does it not work?

Console has the following:

2006-02-08 18:46:24.773 iPhoto[2189] *** -[NSTextField setAllowsMultipleSelection:]: selector not recognized [self = 0x72d2560]
2006-02-08 18:47:27.047 iPhoto[2189] *** -[NSURL initFileURLWithPath:]: nil string parameter

Suggestions welcome! … or a copy of iLife 2006. 😉

An Applescript for playing DVD’s off of your local drive

David Rostenne

Joshua, now 2 and a half, loves to watch his Thomas the Tank Engine movies. I want to keep him away from the original media.. so the contents of the DVD is now on my drive.

Being irritated at the number of clicks I had to go through to play it, I found a script that would make things simple.

Thanks to the folks on the forums at applescript.net who also wanted to do this!.

Anyhow, here’s the script:

set prefix to “ExternalHD:”
set suffix to “:VIDEO_TS:”
set choice to “”
tell application “Finder”
set movies to the name of every item of alias prefix
set choice to (choose from list movies with prompt “Pick a movie to watch”)
set themovie to ((prefix & choice & suffix) as alias)
end tell

tell application “DVD Player”
activate
open dvd video folder themovie
set viewer full screen to true
play dvd
end tell

To use it you will need to edit the “ExternalHD:” to match wherever your movies are.

RadTech Products • I-Sight • Ear-Mounted LED Light

David Rostenne

Fully buzzword compliant gadget!

“Ear-Mounted, super-bright LED personal illuminator. Up to one mile visibility – weighs just 18 grams! … Overdriven, super-bright Nichea LED module features a parabolic reflector and precision focusing lens … reversible and adjustible ear loop allows use with or without glasses on left or right ears … useable runtime of over 36 hours … no distracting side flare. Easily lights anything and everything you look at … Works under water includes batteries!”

Now I know what i’ll get blinded by the next time I go camping.. it’s not just those head mounted lamps anymore! *sigh*

I want a red one!

Product Shot of Radtech's I-Sight

RadTech Products – I-Sight – Ear-Mounted LED Light

CBC interview with School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa!

David Rostenne

Update: All In A Day’s archives have now been updated, so you can listen to the interview there as well.

Khalia Scott and Michael Tardioli are founders, directors and teachers at the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa. They held a great Open House yesterday, and this afternoon they were interviewed on CBC Radio’s All In A Day.

Until the CBC updates their archives of the show, you can listen to it here: SPAO Interview as an MP3.

If you are looking for more details than what is in the interview, the SPAO site will be launching in November. Meanwhile you can email info@spao.ca.

Full Disclosure: SPAO is a client of mine. I was responsible for getting their Macs, printing, scanning and network gear purchased and installed.

Looking for Disk Image Automator Actions!

David Rostenne

Does anyone know of an Automator action, or Big Cat script, that when you right click on a mounted Disk Image, will unmount it and *delete* the original image.

Why? Well.. My download folder is huge.. and I need a faster way to look into a mounted disk image, test out whatever is in there and then delete it. If I like the application, or whatever it is, I will copy it to a more permanent location, and still need to delete the original!!!

If no such thing exists I’ll cobble one together, which should not be too hard seeing as I can start with Laine Lee’s work: Show Disk Image File of Selected Volume

MacInTouch: updating then resetting a Mac for an Out of the Box experience

David Rostenne 6 Comments

I have done exactly what Barry would like to do, and it is worth it for the OOB experience!

In my case all I did was install all the Apple updates and the software they had bought.

Once you are ready to reset the Mac; open the Terminal and delete the AppleSetupDone file, which will cause the Apple Setup Assistant to run on the next boot.

Here’s the detailed version:

loki:~$ cd /private/var/db/
loki:/private/var/db$ ls -la .AppleSetupDone 
--w----r--   1 root  wheel  0 Jul 16  2004 .AppleSetupDone
loki:/private/var/db$sudo rm .AppleSetupDone
Password:

Translation to English for those of you still learning UNIX:
‘change directory’ to /private/var/db/
‘list in long format and show files and folders whose name starts with a dot or double dot’
‘superuser do’ ‘remove’ .AppleSetupDone
then put in your password to approve the action.

All done!

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh
[Barry Brown]
I am thinking of getting a Mac mini for a friend as a gift. I’d like to to install and configure some third-party apps and the latest updates before giving it away. That’s easy enough. But I also want the out-of-box experience for the recipient to be the same as if the mini was new: it goes through the Welcome movie, account setup, and network setup. How can I “reset” the Mac so it removes all the accounts and walks the new user through the setup process when it’s turned on again?

Minor CSS changes for code blocks

David Rostenne

I made some minor changes to the default stylesheet to have blocks of code no longer overflow the edge of the page.

Changes were based on the stylesheet I found at
http://www.bigbold.com/snippets/stylesheets/posts.css.

I added in the following:

pre {
        border: 1px solid #333;
        padding: 6px;
        overflow: auto;
        margin: 0px 1%;
        width: 95%;
        }

Thanks to the Snippets public code repository.

Changes and suggestions welcome!

Kermit the Blog: That’ll be… Aw, heck. No charge.

David Rostenne

Over on the Kermit the Blog he’s having one of those days. Another friend gets free computer help, and now he’s wondering if he’s too nice or just a sucker.
Kermit the Blog: That’ll be… Aw, heck. No charge.

My take:

One of my clients, who runs a very successful jewellry business, explained it to me: When you charge little or nothing then there is no associated value. Which means there is no way to compare what you are really giving them to anything else they are familiar with.

So the next time you get a call to a ‘family or a friend’s’ house to fix something, interrupt them and tell them up front: “I am no longer able to help you for free. $$$ an hour, minimum one hour. When should I come by to fix things?”

Then things get really interesting! 😉

As he says “What’s your take?”