Legends of the Sun Pig

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

Well, that’s my Thunderbird email now moved from the PC to the Mac. Just as with iTunes, this turned out to be quite simple:

1. Installed Thunderbird on the Mac
2. Located my profile directory on the Mac: /Users/martin/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/XXXXX.default/, where “XXXXX” stands for whatever random combination of letters and numbers it has chosen for me.
3. Made a backup copy of everything in this directory.
4. Located my profile directory on the PC: C:\Documents And Settings\Martin\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\YYYYY.default\, where “YYYYY” is a different random combination of letters and numbers.
5. Copied all files and directories from the PC’s profile directory into the Mac’s profile directory.
6. Started up Thunderbird on the Mac…and everything works, multiple accounts, saved passwords and all.

I had considered using the Mac’s own Mail.app for email, but I think I’ll leave that for later.

On the text editor front, I’ve installed SubEthaEdit, and I plan to give TextWrangler a try, too.

Web browser-wise, I’m still flipping between Firefox and Safari, but with Opera now being free, I’ll probably throw it into the mix as well, and see what sticks.

Next major task is to get Apache and MySQL up and running, and install a local copy of Movable Type. It’s all looking rather good, right now.

• As Dave has been suggesting, under System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard shortcuts, there is a setting that allows pressing the Tab key to move between all types of field, rather than just text boxes and lists. I had thought that this wasn’t working, when in fact it was only not working in Firefox. On the Mac, Firefox has its own tab settings, which you can change by going to the about:config page, and changing “accessibility.tabfocus” from 1 to 7. (See also: “Mac OS X Hints” on Macworld.) It now all works perfectly.
• Thanks for Phil Gyford, I now have my keyboard mapped correctly: i.e., hitting Shift+2 gives me a double-quote, and the @-sign sits two keys to the right of my L. As James had indicated, it’s a matter of installing a custom keyboard layout. You can use Ukelele to create these, but Phil Gyford has a British-Windows keyboard layout available for download from his site–complete with instructions. Marvellous.

Two minor (yet major) niggles knocked on the head in a single evening. Good progress. But the big ticket item of the evening was moving my iTunes music library from my PC to the Mac. I’d expected this to be weird, but it turned out to be ridiculously easy:

1. On the PC, I had all of my music in a single directory (with subdirectories), but this sat on a separate disk (E:\Music) rather than in the default iTunes music folder (My Documents\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music). Using an external HD rather than a slow (wireless) network transfer, I copied everything from D:\Music into the default location on the Mac, i.e. /Users/martin/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music.
2. On the Mac, I made a backup of the two key iTunes library files: “iTunes Music Library.xml” and “iTunes Library”, just in case it all went horribly wrong. (These are both in the /Users/martin/Music/iTunes/ folder.)
3. I copied the PC versions of these files over the the Mac. (The PC versions reside in My Documents\Music\iTunes\)
4. I renamed the “iTunes Library.itl” file to just “iTunes Library”, without the file extension. (Although I’m not sure if this is critical, because looking at the file name in Terminal, the extension is back there…the Finder just isn’t displaying it.)
5. Started iTunes. iTunes spent a couple of minutes with a progress bar updating its music library, and at the end of that process…everything was there. All my ratings and play counts were present. I clicked on music and it played.
6. With iTunes, I de-authorized the PC, and authorized the Mac, and all the protected downloads from the iTMS opened up, too.

Wow.

Based on my experience restoring my iTunes music library from a dead PC, I should have figured that the process of migrating from PC to Mac would be similarly easy, but my gut just wasn’t entirely convinced. I love it when software works like this: you plug stuff in, copy the files, and you’re done. No complicated setup routines, no magic registry settings to hack if you want to restore your stuff after a disk failure…it just works. That rocks.

Also, after setting up iTunes, I plugged in my iPod. iTunes recognized it immediately, and started synchronizing. I don’t know why it decided to re-copy 849 files that should have been on the iPod already, but I can’t say that really bothers me, because IT’S CHARGING AT THE SAME TIME AS IT’S SYNCHRONIZING! WOOHOO! Honest, whatever flaw that was stopping my iPod from charging over USB has been bugging the hell out of me since I got it, and now it’s gone. Yay! No more stepping on the bus in the morning and finding that I’ve only got an hour of battery power left, because I forgot to change plugs after grabbing a new batch of podcasts.

Oh, and one more little, but lovely thing for the day:

• Partially transparent Terminal windows. Rock.

Up next: moving Thunderbird email from PC to the Mac.

• Dell sent out a courier with a replacement monitor for my faulty 2005FPW today. Not happy. The replacement is a refurbished monitor rather than a new one. It’s a 1st revision model (rather than the 2rd revision one I had), and as such suffers from a very annoying backlight bleeding. It has one stuck pixel right in the middle of the screen, and one dead pixel close by. (The previous monitor had one stuck subpixel, but it was right at the edge of the screen.) The new monitor also has a bash at the top. Not happy at all. This one is going straight back again on Monday.
• I’ve ordered the David Pogue Mac OSX book, which will hopefully enlighten me about the hidden corners of Macdom.
• I’m still not liking the Apple Pro keyboard. I’m a hard typist, striking the keys with a lot of noisy force, and I’m finding that I’m getting a lot of duplicated keystrokes. Or do you think this might be a fault in the keyboard?
• I’m having a hard time getting used to the altered control/alt key modifiers. Copy and Paste is the worst one: I’m so used to hittting the Ctrl key with my left pinkie, and then picking up C or V with my left forefinger. The Mac keystrokes are [Apple]+C, and [Apple]+V, and the [Apple] key rests under my thumb. Getting my pinkie over there feels unnatural, and using my thumb instead feels unnatural. The whole thing is freaking me out a bit. I suppose I just need to give it more time.
• Mouse tracking is also causing me some problems. For small mouse movements, the mouse cursor doesn’t accelerate as quickly as it does in Windows. For large mouse movements, no problem. But when moving in small increments, trying to hit smaller targets (like menu options, or &*%$ checkboxes–see below) feels “sticky”. It’s like my mouse has picked up some dirt, and isn’t moving properly.
• I’m really hating not being able to tab to drop-down lists, checkboxes, or controls other than textboxes. There must be a way that I haven’t found yet. I’m hoping that the Pogue book will hold some clues.

On the positive front, iPhoto is rather nice. And Quicksilver looks like it will add some keyboard lovin’ to the whole system.

More updates soon.