Mac Switching update, Wed 21 Sep

Just some quick notes, because it’s really late…

  • Dell sent out another replacement monitor today. Even though this is still a refurb (apparently after the first 30 days, even though you’re within warranty, you’re not automatically entitled to a brand new replacement), and one of the earlier A01 revisions, this particular one actually works, and doesn’t suffer from the backlight bleeding at all. It has two stuck sub-pixels, one red and one blue, and one dead blue sub-pixel, but they’re well out of the way, and unnoticeable unless you’re using a screen utility to actually detect them. Overall: I’m happy with it now.
  • When I installed the IntelliType software to make the Mac recognize my (Windows) keyboard, I left the command key mappings at their default settings, which mapped the Windows key to the Apple clover key, resulting in a Ctrl-Apple-Option layout at the left hand side of the keyboard. In the IntelliType settings, there is a toggle that switches the position of the Apple and Option command keys, and I turned that onearlier this evening, giving me a more Apple-standard Ctrl-Option-Apple layout. Since then, I’ve found using keyboard shortcuts a lot more natural. I think it’s something to do with the natural resting position of my thumb while I’m typing…
  • When installing MySQL on a Mac Mini, make sure to grab the right version, i.e. not the 64-bit edition.
  • If you’re using MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser, and connecting to your local machine, you need to make sure that you change the connecting socket (under “Advanced Options”) to “/tmp/mysql.sock”. The default value for the socket “(null)”, and that doesn’t seem to work, and you get lots of highly non-descriptive error messages.
  • Camino (v1.0a) doesn’t warn you when you try to close it down with 20 tabs still open. Grr. I only wanted to close one tab, but hit Q instead of W. I think I’ll be sticking to Firefox for now….
  • I’ve got the Dock visible again. I like being able to see at a glance what I’ve got running, without having to use the mouse to activate it. Also, I found the half-second delay before it came up a bit annoying