Adding a Mic to a Mac

The other day my buddy Jeff sent me a link to a video someone had put together that was one of the funniest things I had seen in a long, long time:

The Web Site is Down

Warning: you have to have been in an IT capacity to really appreciate the support desk style humor involved. What was amusing about this was that Jeff and I both thought man, Skype (which figures prominently in the video) looks pretty cool. Determined to check it out I decided that I needed to add a microphone to my Mac Pro in order to get this up and running properly.

When I switched from Windows to Mac I had a number of peripherals that were suddenly available. While most, like printers, USB hubs, memory card readers, speakers, etc. just plugged in and worked, my little standard boom microphone didn't. I plugged it into the back of my Mac Pro and it just didn't record sound.

The reason is the back of the Mac Pro has an audio-in port and I mistakenly assumed was a mic-in port. It's actually a line-in and requires a preamp if I wanted to use my standard mic. Since it was a freebie Creative boom microphone that I'd had for years I decided to just plant it on my Ubuntu machine and get a nice replacement for the Mac Pro.

I ran off to my local Best Buy where I've become such a familiar face that they greet me by name. That's never a good sign. I checked out the mid-range desktop mics and settled on the Rocketfish Digital USB Microphone. My needs for a mic are quite simple and the $24.99 I paid for it didn't seem too bad.

I popped it into a USB port, pushed the little ON button on the top and it was ready to go. I fired up Audacity to see what my recorded voice sounded like and it came through loud and clear, though I did need to set the input volume pretty high.

Now with a functioning microphone attached to my Mac Pro I'm going to give Skype a whirl and see if it's as cool as it looks in that video.

Without a voice that sounds like I've been breathing helium that is.

Some cool Firefox add-ons

For the last week and a half I've been trying out Firefox as my primary web browser. Back when I was a Windows guy I switched to Firefox because of the innovations it introduced and most importantly the extensions available for it. Now that I'm exclusively a Mac / Linux guy I figured I would check out the Firefox add-on market and see what's available.

It's important to note that the web browser is more than just a device to view web pages. I personally do a lot of data entry through web pages, mainly with this blog. Since I use Blogger I end up composing these posts using the in-page editor. Obviously if you comment on this blog you will be using a simple text editing surface to enter your comments. This can extend further when you look at online products like those offered from Google, including e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets.

I also do a lot of my development work using a web browser. In some cases it is to simply see the results of the application I am working on and in others I am trying to work out CSS issues or image alignment problems. Fortunately the Firefox add-in space has an extensive library of tools to make life easier.

Given that as an introduction, what follows are the add-ons I found tremendously helpful.

Foxmarks
As I have for many years I use several computers in my daily work. I have my Mac Pro, which is my primary development machine and overall workhorse. I have my new MacBook Pro, which I use when traveling and for taking to meetings. I have a great little Ubuntu workstation that I use for some testing and to host certain external services and goofing around in general. Each of these machines is running Firefox and as a result I have 3 different sets of bookmarks.

Foxmarks is an add-on and free online service that synchronizes your bookmarks. Not only does it keep your bookmarks synchronized it also provides a web site that you can access from anywhere (my.foxmarks.com) where you can view the bookmarks. While this is very similar to the bookmark component that's offered with Mobile Me from Apple, the service is free. Since Mobile Me does not support Firefox bookmarks you now have a way to keep those bookmarks synchronized as well.

BBCode
I spend a fair amount of time in forums and responding to comments in this blog. In these cases being able to insert HTML links, character formatting and image references can be a bit of a pain. BBCode provides some nice context sensitive menu help to formatting. I have used this extension for years and if you spend any time in online forums you will really appreciate it.

Forecastfox
Though I have more sources of weather information than I can shake a stick at I love being able to glance down at the status bar of my current browser window and get a reading on the weather. Forecastfox, something I've used for years, fits that bill perfectly. Not only can I see a little radar view of my area I can click and get access to a detailed AccuWeather forecast.

ColorZilla
One of the challenges in doing web based design is matching up colors perfectly. Sometimes you just need to make sure that your web page's background matches the RGB color of a part of an image. ColorZilla provides a nice little way of "color dropping" any part of your web page and then seeing the RGB value for that.

Once you've selected a color you can copy it in standard formats to the clipboard, making it easy to insert into HTML or CSS.

Firebug
If you do any web development work at all, Firebug is an outstanding addition to Firefox that gives you extensive control over HTML, CSS and Javascript on the web pages you are visiting. Calling this an add-on is a bit misleading; Firebug is so powerful it feels like a full development environment.

So there you have it, my first cut at some great Firefox extensions. I didn't count 1Password, though technically that does appear as an add-on to Firefox. I'm still looking for a decent dictionary reference to replace the fact that Control-Command-D does not work in Firefox. The number of add-ons and themes for Firefox is incredible; well over 5,000 of them. While quantity is no indication of quality, there are several more that I really am looking forward to trying out.

Got a favorite that I didn't include? Let me know!

My critical applications 5 months after switching

It's now been 5 months since I switched to Mac, time to update the list of Mac applications I use regularly and have found invaluable for me. My list has changed over time as applications have fallen in and out of favor and the tasks I have done with my Macs have changed. I've done this a couple times before so you can see how the list has changed.

Quicksilver
When I sat down to write this article I outlined the applications I use frequently and Quicksilver was not even on the list, yet here it is at the very top. Why is that? One of the phrases that is referenced by Quicksilver is "Wei Wu Wei—Act Without Doing". Quicksilver has become an intrinsic part of my workflow, so much so that I don't even notice it is there.

Though I use it primarily as an application launcher much like I used to use Spotlight I have become quite addicted to Quicksilver's snappy user interface. The potential for automating tasks and accessing files with Quicksilver is quite extensive and I feel like I'm just scratching the surface with it. The plug-ins are also interesting—especially the Clipboard plug-in—which allows you to see that last 10 (user definable) items copied to the clipboard.

One bit of caution with Quicksilver: it can be overwhelming if you are new to Macs. If you've just switched you are better off working with Spotlight for at least a month or two before branching out with Quicksilver. I tried using it when I first got my Mac and was unimpressed—it seemed so complicated. I didn't appreciate the value of it until my second attempt at using it, once I had become comfortable with my Mac.

Firefox
I'm still playing with Firefox and given that I spend so much time in a web browser it's not surprising that this ranks so highly. I still like Safari as a web browser, though Firefox 3 has proven to be a worthy competitor. I haven't played with the Firefox Add-ins since Firefox was my default browser on the Windows platform so I'm looking forward to rediscovering the Firefox add-in market in the near future.

As I mentioned before, Firefox 3.0 is a really nice release and if you tried it in the past but bailed out on it like I have you may want to try it out again.

1Password
I would be lost without 1Password. It makes it so much easier to keep track of the web sites I have accounts on, remembering my passwords for me. I also use the wallet feature to keep important information locked up on my machine like credit card information (so that I don't have to run off and grab my wallet) and standard contact information, making completing address forms very easy.

Terminal
Though not really application in the traditional sense I have really begun to appreciate the power of the command line interface with the OS X terminal. The seamless copying and pasting between OS X applications and the command line interface make it easy to work with. The multi-tab support means I can have several BASH shells running at the same time in one compact window so that I can move between them very easily.

Having recently moved to Ruby on Rails as my web development platform I've found myself spending a lot of time in a terminal window. It is so much more powerful than the DOS command line I used to use it's not even in the same league.

Textmate
When I left Windows for Mac I knew one of my highest priorities was going to be finding a replacement for my beloved UltraEdit text editor. Textmate was highly recommended by a number of people and since I planned on writing code with it there was no question that this was the editor to choose. What makes Textmate special is it's ability to add functionality with "bundles", a series of commands and macros that can be tied to a file type, effectively turning Textmate into a specialized editor. The Rails bundle that I am using has been a huge help in writing code and the Git bundle makes version control painfully simple.

Mail
I've gone back and forth on using Mail to connect to my Gmail accounts and lately I'm back to using it again. Gmail's IMAP interface seems to have improved, though every once in a while it acts up and loses it's connection, requiring that I restart Mail.app. Other than that little challenge I've found Mail to be a nice, light application for sending and receiving e-mail.

iStat menu
If I'm using a Mac without iStat menu I feel that I'm driving a car without a dashboard cluster. On my MacBook iStat helped me understand which applications were pegging the CPU. On my Mac Pro I used iStat to see what kind of network activity was going on in the background. On my MacBook Pro I used iStat to help me keep an eye on the temperature of my CPU and the speed of my CPU fan. There are other applications that can handle this but nothing is as simple, clean and easy as iStat menu.

iPhoto
Though I do still struggle with it at times I've come to appreciate iPhoto and have moved all of my digital photos over to it. iPhoto is fine for doing the kind of minor edits I generally need with my photos: cropping, straightening, large scale adjustments and red-eye removal. I've used it to create a great slide show for my wife, tracking each of our kids as they grew up over the years.

The Ken Burns effect is excellent, adding a real sense of motion and drama to photos. About the only problem I had with it was that if used automatically it would occasionally use the effect to hone in on an inappropriate portion of the photo. Occasionally the focal point of the photo would be a part of the anatomy you don't necessarily want zoomed in on, especially when it's photos of your children as they mature. Needless to say I often had to take over manually and that can be rather time consuming.

Other than this little nit I've found iPhoto to be very serviceable for my needs.

Pages
When I bought my MacBook Pro I decided to purchase a copy of iWork as well since I was able to leverage the educational discount. I used the trial for Microsoft Office for a pretty long time and had started to get used to it but the application seemed too sluggish to me. Not that MS Office is all that bad but after using each for a period of time iWork seemed much cleaner to me. The UI is uncomplicated and I haven't had a problem finding anything that I need.

Since I'm no longer using trial versions and have made the plunge on iWork—spending actual $ to get it—I expect that I will find ways to make it work in every situation. In the event that someone sends me a file that I cannot view in iPages I expect that I will simply berate them for using a non-standard file format, much as I had been berated for doing the same thing in the past. I rarely push word processors, spreadsheets or presentation software very hard at all so I don't anticipate this being a problem.

OmniGraffle
When I was looking for a Mac replacement for Visio I had a number of people recommend Omnigraffle. Not only did it meet my needs, effectively doing everything I did in Visio, it did several tasks much better. The library of templates available for Omnigraffle are extensive and I am now able to mock up some great UIs very quickly and generate Rails style database schema.

NetNewsWire
I haven't found a better RSS reader than NetNewsWire and that's in part because I haven't bothered to look. NNW does exactly what I need and does it well. The fact that I can synchronize what I've read between my two Macs and my iPod Touch makes me very, very happy. I love it when applications leverage the web in unique ways.

iTunes
My use of iTunes predates my use of Macs by several years since I've been an iPod user for a pretty long time. The integration of the iTunes store into it is nice and seamless, making the purchase experience about as easy as it gets.

Adium
I still switch back to iChat occasionally but for the most part I use Adium as my chat client. I love the way Adium allows me to quickly review chat logs from prior conversations. I like the way the it can be customized and create an incredibly compact chat window. The price is also excellent (free). The only downside is that I cannot do video chats, which is why I switch back to iChat every once in a while.

So there you have it, my list of critical applications that I use nearly every day on my Macs. I'm not talking about the built in functionality (other than Terminal) because that's enough for an entire blog post on it's own. Spaces, Quicklook, etc. are also critical to my needs. I also have quite a few other applications loaded and available like Cyberduck and VMware Fusion, though lately I haven't been using them nearly as much. This is more a function of my recent application needs though.

Living with the MacBook Pro

It's now been a couple of weeks since I bought a MacBook Pro and handed my MacBook down to my youngest daughter. In that time I've used the MBP quite a bit and overall I'm quite happy with the upgrade. The only issue that I've had with it has been the heat it generates, though to a large degree I haven't really noticed it any longer. Either my left wrist has adjusted to being slightly warmer than my right wrist or the Fan Control I installed has helped keep the machine running a little cooler. I actually believe it's a bit of both.

I've now used the MBP sitting on my lap and worked with it comfortably for about 2 hours and I didn't even need to use the Belkin Cooling Pad I bought, though I do still use that every once in a while.

The overall performance of the machine has been excellent and—as I mentioned earlier—I love the display. The battery life from the machine has been very good for me and after a couple of hours on battery with moderate use I'm down to about 45% of my battery charge remaining.

One of the things I didn't appreciate until the last couple of days is the way the display adjusts to the ambient light. When you combine that with the backlighting on the keyboard the MBP is a completely useable machine in very low light conditions. 

The quality of sound from the MBP is also a big improvement over my MacBook or any of the HP or Dell laptops I've had recently. If I have a video or piece of music that I want to share with the family then everyone can hear it quite easily.

ExpressCard 34

About the only thing I didn't quite understand on my MBP was the purpose of the ExpressCard slot on the side of my machine. It's a slick looking little slot with a door that pushes in and smoothly rounded edges. I figured it must be a Mac thing so I did a little research on it.

Turns out the ExpressCard slot is the 34mm version of the PCMCIA card that PCs have had forever. The more traditional format—54mm—is what you tend to see in larger PC based laptops. If you're interested in reading about what this stuff is all about Extreme Tech covered the announcement of this new standard. Five years ago. Still, it's a worthwhile read if you want to understand what this is about.

So what exactly can you plug into this? With USB 2.0 and Firewire 800 there's not a lot you really need out of ExpressCard that isn't more easily handled with a simple external connector. The most popular devices that I found from NewEgg appear to be external SATAII interfaces that provide full 3.0Gps rates.

I can see that a memory card reader—something I wish Apple had just included on the machine—is an option, the Compact Flash format my Canon DSLRs use are too large to fit in the slot. There is a CF reader from Verbatim that fits into the ExpressCard/34 slot but it sticks out a bit. On the bright side it claims to be up to 5x faster than a USB based device. When I transfer photos from a nearly full 4GB CF card that may come in handy.

If you know of a killer ExpressCard use or have experience with it compared to comparable USB based devices (like CF card readers) please comment about it! I would be really interested in finding out if people are getting considerable performance gains using this technology.

Fixing a Windows virus makes me appreciate my Mac

A good friend of mine called me on my cell this morning.

"Yo! Hey brother, I have a problem with my laptop. Can you help me out?"

Walt's a really bright guy but isn't into computers at all. Computers are just another tool for Walter, giving him access to e-mail and the web while he is out on job sites. He works from his truck so it has become his mobile office, with a little Sprint broadband device allowing him to get electronic access from nearly everywhere.

The company he works for is small and since he works hundreds of miles from the headquarters it's up to him to maintain his own computer. He was not a happy camper because Windows was telling him that he had some virus infections and that he needed to clear them out. At this point his machine had become unusable and he wasn't sure what to do next.

Since he was in the area I asked him to swing by so I could take a look at it. The machine itself was a newer Dell laptop running Windows XP. Sure enough, there were a bunch of dialogs popped up complaining of virus infections. But something seemed really wrong.

Though the dialogs looked like they came out of the Microsoft Security Center they looked... I don't know... odd. I had never seen those particular dialogs before and had never had Windows prompt me to click a button to scan for viruses.

Apparently the latest trend in Windows viruses and spyware is to create windows that tell you that you are infected and to follow their steps to remove the crap from the machine. They masquerade as very official looking Windows dialogs. The giveaway for me was that I haven't seen Microsoft use an Always on Top window for a warning before. They may make it system modal but never something that simply covers other windows.

When I asked Walt what he used the machine for he said e-mail through Outlook and looking up manufacturers web sites for information. That was it. Nothing else I asked? "Not even porn" was the smiling response. Obviously in one of his web searches he clicked on a link that he thought contained a legitimate site for his job but was wrong. Who knows, maybe he just clicked the wrong link in a search result.

I went to the PC Tools web site, downloaded and installed PC Tools Spyware Doctor with Anti-Virus. Sure enough his machine was infected with something that was generating all of these little error dialogs. After a couple of successive scans and repair cycles we were able to get the machine clean and I made sure the system was set up to keep the machine relatively safe, at least for the year that the subscription lasts.

While this was going on I mentioned that I had switched to Mac and that problems like this were not something I even worried about anymore. Walt looked at me with the "that's nice" stare. This was a company supplied machine and he sure as hell wasn't going to be getting them to buy him a Mac. He just needed this machine to be able to work so he could get his day back on track.

Walt of course really appreciated the help. It only took me about 45 minutes to get everything resolved for him before he was able to pull out of the driveway and head off to the next job site. While his truck drove down the street and I walked back inside I thought to myself, I'm so glad I'm not dealing with THAT any longer.

What, me worry?

Sure, there are viruses trojans that have been created for Macs though they are few and far between. Macs can be hacked and compromised and pretending they cannot be is just plain unhealthy. The reason Macs have been left relatively unscathed while Windows machines are easy pickings is because there are literally tens of millions of unpatched and unmanaged Windows machines just sitting on a live internet connection.

It is really hard to run a Windows XP based system without commercial virus protection. I don't run any on my Macs because I'm very cautious about what I download and install. I do believe that the Mac will continue to grow in popularity and with that growth a bigger target will be placed on them. Until that happens though I'm going to continue to enjoy not going through what my buddy Walt just went through.

Screen sharing with Leopard

It was a beautiful day outside so I decided to grab the MacBook Pro and enjoy the delightful weather out on our screened in porch. I had some online reading to do as I am trying to get a handle on Git, the version control system I am going to be using.

While sitting here enjoying the breeze and working through the Git documentation I remembered that I had left Adium running on the Mac Pro downstairs. Many of my friends contact me through AIM and I usually put up an away message if I'm gone for a while. But I just sat down and got comfortable - getting up seemed like a lot of work to me. I decided that now was the perfect time to try out Leopard's Screen Sharing capability.

For some reason Apple decided to bury Screen Sharing down in the following location:

/System/Library/Core Services

I navigated to that in Finder and then dragged it into my Dock to get easier access to it. Once I had that fired up I simply entered the name of my Mac Pro into the Host window and pressed Connect. I was immediately rewarded with my entire Mac Pro's screen, miniaturized and scaled to fit on my MacBook Pro:

Even my dual monitors were represented. I tried playing around a bit and found it to be quite responsive. I had the option of either viewing the screen in scaled mode or by scrolling it. I found the scaling worked better for what I needed to do. Granted, the menu bar was extremely tiny but I could make out the little Adium icon and quickly set my status to away.

One machine to rule them all

Having accomplished this little mission I thought to myself: I wonder if I can gain access to my Ubuntu machine from the comfort of my screened in porch too? It physically sits right next to the Mac Pro and resides on the same network. I use SSH all the time to remotely connect and run tasks but I had never tried accessing my Ubuntu machine using a remote screen sharing application.

Apple's Screen Sharing program is based on VNC, which I knew was available for Ubuntu. With this little hacking challenge on the table I decided to dig in. First I ran SSH and connected to my Ubuntu machine. Next I followed LifeHacker's nice little four step instructions for getting VNC up and running on Ubuntu—something that could be handled through my SSH connection.

Within a couple of minutes I had my Ubuntu machine ready to be accessed. I fired up Screen Sharing again and entered in the name of my Ubuntu workstation. I got a couple of warning dialogs but within a few seconds I was rewarded with my Ubuntu screen up and running on my MacBook Pro:

The performance of the connection was terrible compared to the performance I got from the Mac Pro, though it was functional. I didn't tweak it at all; I just did it because I could, so I'm sure there is room for optimization.

I don't know why but there is something tremendously satisfying about remotely controlling a machine, especially one you didn't have the ability to control when you sat down. With my little remote adventure out of the way and this blog entry written up I better get back to that Git documentation.

It's not reading itself.

The now daily Time Machine Error

Rarely a day goes by now that Time Machine doesn't produce the dreaded Time Machine Error warning: "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume." Ironically I get this more on my Mac Pro with dual internal hard drives that check out fine rather than my little MacBook with the slow USB based drive for backup.

Since Time Machine runs hourly I'll get 23 to 47 backups that work fine, then the error. It's always a single file that seems to blow out the backup and generate the message: 

I haven't encountered this on my MacBook Pro yet, only on my Mac Pro. The time machine icon in the menu bar shows this:

I first encountered this problem at the beginning of June and it is definitely a byproduct of the 10.5.3 update. Jeff McCord has documented similar problems on his blog. There seems to be two solutions that work for me:

1) Try again. About half the time just telling Time Machine to try again seems to work.

2) Look at the backup volume. If there is a file on your backup volume that ends in "inProgress" then drag it to the trash can. You'll be prompted to enter your password. Once done try Time Machine again.

I'm getting a lot of hits on this blog from people searching for Time Machine Error so hopefully this abbreviated solution set will help them clear the error until Apple fixes it.

I have read reports of people saying this may be related to using Growl—which I use with several of my applications—though I only seem to be seeing this error consistently on my Mac Pro. Though a relatively minor error that is easily recovered from, often by doing nothing but letting Time Machine try again, I would really like to see it eliminated.