June was a slow month on the Quest but things began to pick up in July. It looks like problems that started in June now appear to be cleaned up. Along with that success I finally appear to be running the latest version of all my software both on my computers and on the web. Although Mr. Murphy did his best by releasing an WordPress update the day after I updated all my sites. But I lucked out and that was his only contribution. Another fix that also slipped in [...] Read the rest »
Windows & Mac Synergy
Now that my iMac problems seem to be behind me it’s time to get my desk optimized. In the past my iMac was my primary computer and the Windows PC was used for for specific tasks. My Asus monitor was setup as a dual monitor for my iMac. If I needed it I would remote desktop from my iMac to the Windows PCs. In a pinch there was a cable from my Windows 7 box to a second input port on the Asus monitor so I could hook up a [...] Read the rest »
iPhoto vs. Windows Live Photo Gallery
I recently moved my photos from iPhoto on my iMac to Windows Live Photo Gallery (WLPG) on my Windows 7 PC so I figured I’d compare the two. The short version is that iPhoto is a mature application that has gone through many iterations of enhancements while WLPG is newer and less feature rich. I used iPhoto mainly as an organizing tool for any images I didn’t take – screenshots for my website, graphics for the website, pictures from others and from the web. I rarely edited those images and [...] Read the rest »
OS Wars
The OS wars are heating up again with Windows 7 and Snow Leopard nearing release and Google announcing Chrome OS. Since this site is called The OS Quest I should probably add my own tw0 cents. Feel free to ignore me as you should every other analyst. Google Chrome OS Despite all the buzz and claims of vendor interest Google Chrome OS is nothing more than a press release. There’s already Google Android which has been pretty slow to get traction in the cell phone market despite some early buzz. [...] Read the rest »
WordPress 2.8.2
It figures, I just get everything up to WordPress 2.8.1 and the next day a new version gets released. WordPress 2.8.2 fixes a XSS security vulnerability. The good news is that it was quick easy to update my WordPress installations since they are all now maintained using svn. There were only 8 changed files which made the update quick. Certainly a lot easier than downloading, extracting and copying the entire installation. The following command upgraded WordPress when it was run from the WordPress installation directory: svn sw http://core.svn.wordpress.org/tags/2.8.2/ . Read the rest »
Firefox 3.5
I just updated my main machine to Firefox 3.5. No major problems, but a few speed bumps. Google Gears told me it didn’t work with Firefox 3.5 and there wasn’t an update available. I uninstalled the current add-on and installed the latest version from gears.google.com and all was well. I had the same problem with the Evernote clipper add-on. Firefox 3.5 said it was incompatible and no update was available. An uninstall and install of the latest version resolved the problem. Firefox 3.5 is supposed to be faster than version [...] Read the rest »
WordPress Updates & Converting to SVN
WordPress 2.8 came out awhile ago and there was immediate talk of WordPress 2.8.1 to fix some issues. So I was in no rush to do any update despite liking to stay up to date. WordPress 2.8.1 was released so I decided to bring all my sites up to WordPress 2.8.1 and to update the theme or convert to svn as appropriate. I had tested using svn to maintain WordPress awhile back but this site and a couple had yet to be converted. It was time to convert them now [...] Read the rest »
OS X 10.5.7 Lockup Update
As I’ve previously written about here, here and here I’ve had problem with my iMac since installing OS X 10.5.7. I’m pretty much at the point of installing everything from scratch one last time and extensively test after each and every update. Until today when I realized the easiest way for me to reproduce the problem was to minimize iPhoto or iTunes to the dock. (These are the only two apps left on my iMac that I’m using.) So just for the hell of it I decided to switch the [...] Read the rest »
False Positive From Avast Antivirus for Windows Live Photo Gallery
[Update: It looks like Avast has resolved the problem. Virus defs version 090719-0 do not have the problem. Right click the Avast icon in the system tray and go to the updating menu if you need to force the update. I removed the exclusion I had below and all was well.] I went to start Windows Live Photo Gallery a little while ago and Avast popped up a message that it was a generic trojan. I was 99% sure it was a false positive as I’d run the program earlier [...] Read the rest »
Apple Hardware Test
After all my problems with the OS X 10.5.7 update the next step was to run hardware diagnostics. No sense doing a third fresh install unless I knew it wasn’t a hardware problem unearthed by the upgrade. Unknown to me, until I started checking was that every Mac comes with hardware diagnostics on the bundled DVD. This Apple support article describes which DVD the hardware diagnostics are on and how to run them. I’d also recommend you disconnect an non-Apple peripherals including hard drives, which I did. Some things to [...] Read the rest »
