I’ve done a bunch of VirtualBox installs, upgrades and VM migrations recently. I’ve found that the automated Guest Additions installation hasn’t always kicked off. Typically the installation can be started by selecting Device -> Install Guest Additions from the menu when the VM is running. But this wasn’t working for me, so I needed to manually install the additions. This was done with both Windows and OS X hosts with Windows guest OS’s. This procedure gets down to the basics. In most cases I did not have to locate the Guest Additions [...] Read the rest »
Bento Tip: Syncing A Database Between Macs
I use Bento a bit and I’ve been using a symbolic link to point to the database in a Dropbox folder. This has worked pretty well, except occasionally the symbolic link would break. I recently changed things up a bit and eliminated the symbolic link. Read the rest »
Rearranging Windows Home Server Hard Drives
One of the nice features of Windows Home Server is that the existing drives can be moved around without breaking anything. I benefited from this recently and did mention it in my last Trail Log but figured it was worth highlighting as a tip. If you need to rearrange disk in a Windows Home Server or move them to new connections you can do so without any special work (other than shutting down WHS for the move). When I moved the warm hard drives from the internal bays to the [...] Read the rest »
WordPress: Bulk Category Move
I needed to change the category for several hundred of my posts. Rather than use a plugin I found that the built-in admin tools in WordPress worked just fine. Read the rest »
Disabling WordPress Post Revisions
Sometimes it takes awhile for things to sink in through my skull. WordPress added post revisions back in version 2.6. So after months of seeing those post revisions listed, and those messages about there being a newer version than what I had posted I decided to do something about them. Since it’s introduction I haven’t used the post revision feature so the decision to turn it off was a no-brainer. This is done by adding the following line to the wp-config.php file: define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false); This doesn’t delete the existing post [...] Read the rest »
Flushing the Mac OS X DNS Cache
I was doing some website work this weekend which involved a DNS change to move a website to a new server. These DNS changes usually go pretty quick for me although I don’t usually change servers. In this case it had been over 24 hours and I was still getting the old site from my iMac. I did a DNS query and everything pointed to the new server. Since I use OpenDNS I was also able to verify what address their name servers had. So finally I fired up another [...] Read the rest »
OS X Intelligent File Saves
It’s a small thing, but something I really appreciate. When saving or renaming a file in OS X just the name portion, not the extension, is selected. To change the name all I have to do is start typing. The file save dialog: When renaming a file: Windows Vista selects everything, including the extension, Although the extension is automatically added back when the file is saved, it’s not quit as intuitive and it is less efficient if all I want to to is append a version number to the file. [...] Read the rest »
Getting Icons For OS X Applications
I wanted to capture the iTunes icon for a related blog post. I couldn’t remember how I extracted icons in the past, either or small app or a screen clipping. I figured there had to be an easier way and sure enough there was. I found it at Keith-Knipling.com. The short version is to "Show Package Contents" for the application in finder. Then browse to the resource folder in the package contents and locate the icon(s) you want. The files typically have a .icns extension. Open the file in Preview [...] Read the rest »
Tip: Avoiding OSX’s .DS_Store Files on Windows Shares
This tip applies to OS X when accessing a remote file system of various types (SMB, NFS, etc…). I was reminded of it while exploring my Windows Home Server. Mac OS X will create a .DS_Store file in each directory when accessed through Finder (and in some other cases). These are hidden from OS X but can be visible under Windows. They have the hidden attribute but Windows can easily be set to display hidden files. To prevent these files from being created open terminal and run: defaults write com.apple.desktopservices [...] Read the rest »
iTunes Tip: Re-Ordering Downloads
I subscribe to a lot of video and audio podcasts through iTunes along with a couple TV shows. If iTunes has been shut down for a day or more there’s frequently quit a few files to download. It never seems to fail that what I really want to listen to or watch first is at the end of the download list. So today when that happened I decided to try re-ordering the downloads. I found we can drag individual downloads up or down the list to set the order in [...] Read the rest »