Apple TV upgrade not upgradeable itself

Upgrade to 2.0 .... try upgrading to 2.1 : forget it, there is a bug whereby it can't download the 2.1 software. Rebooting the AppleTV does not work, nor does sitting there pressing it 80 times.

Restoring to Factory settings does - meaning back to version 1.0 before forward to version 2.1

Lame.

.Mac sync craziness - Microsoft could have done better

More needless policing from .Mac in respect of syncing files.  

I do have two Macs. The other has not been on for a week, whereas this one I use daily. 

.Mac is telling me there's a conflict.  Its wrong there is no conflict. Indeed there are not 76 conflicts.  It sees some incompatibility between file times on the server versus my MacBook Pro.  

I guess both use NTP for time synchronization, so this is confusing. 

More confusing perhaps as this did no

t popup yesterday or last week as an issue, and I've done nothing to affect this.

Then it vetoes my attempt to choose "use most recent version" making you wonder why it could not have known that in advance.

Lastly, why can't it understand something about the contents of a file.  That's revision control 101, and Apple seem to have missed it.  These files have not changed, its just that the dates are a little askew.

Apple pay your developers a bit more, and fix your usability bugs will ya.  Jeez, Microsoft could have done better.

There is a problem syncing the file "About your iDisk.rtf"

Can't see it in Finder of course, but from the command line it's like so:

    -rwxr-xr-x+   1 paul staff       64393 Mar 16   2007 About your iDisk.rtf

Its the extraneous + on the permissions that is wrong.  It gets restored properly to my local system when I sudo/rm the file. 

Good work Apple. 

Two MBPs, same problem, same stretch of freeway, same day

Yesterday, my MBP just froze on my journey to work.  I waited five minutes then powered it off. On reboot, it just sat on the boot screen with an Apple logo and the spinner going.  Further reboots just took me to the same place.

You can see multiple people talk about similar things in discussion forums.  

That was my corporate MacBookPro and my personal one was fine (but sulking from non-use) and it was able to see the failed Mac's hard drive in target mode.  Only after thinking about mounting it for 2 mins, and issuing a warning (which I cannot recall the wording to), did it mount in read-only mode.

My colleague Alex Chaffee arrived in work an hour later and reported the same problem encountered on the same stretch of freeway.  He could see his drive in target-mode his too. 

Mine the phammant.sparsebundle 'folder' had moved out of /Users/phammant/ and gone to the /Users/ directory.  I could copy the whole sparsebundle thing off the dead mac and onto the good one over firewire.  Mounting it was easy :

  hdiutil attach /path/to/sparesebundle

This morning my personal MBP froze on the journey to work (but rebooted fine). It froze last night too.  It does not have the sparsebundle stuff activated and is a completely different install of Leopard.  I have had that keyboard-driver death thing for a while, and applied the firmware upgrade - but it still happens.  Y'all know to press and hold a key for 30 seconds to reboot the driver for the dead keyboard right? 

While typing this posting, the MBP hang a second time this morning (but reboots).  The first thing to try (after waiting for a few minutes for it to recover) is Command, Control & the Power key.  That makes it attempt a soft reboot, whereas the power key on its own, triggers a potentially hard-drive harming sudden power-off.

This morning my corporate MBP has been re-imaged.  It passed all memory/drive/drive controller tests overnight.  I've yet to reinstall important stuff though.  Alex's has been re-imaged, but the saved .sparsebundle dir is not remounting in situ. He's going to have to mount it the same way I have and copy over stuff manually.

Thanks a bunch Apple!  You recently tossed your stability out of the window it seems.

MacBookBook: Make your own MacBook Air sleeve from a Coffee Table book

First you need a 14" x 10" coffee table book. Best to hit a second hand store for that rather than take something your really cherish.

<- This is actually the finished product with the MacBook Air inside, but it could

 as easily be the starting point.  

Your first problem is that you find the book you just bought really interesting, and feel guilty cutting it up. Most of the pages I took out were intact, so there is a possibility that I could frame the better prints (meaning I could feel less guilty).

 

With a craft knife, cut out the center of book ->

The MBA is 13" by 9" and about 0.7" deep.  the recess in the book needs to be that bit, plus a little more to get it in and out.  In my case I cut the pages first before glueing, but the other way around could work if you had a Dremel (and a dust mask as there would likely be lots). 

The MBA is thicker at the back than the front. I mirrored this in the page cutting near the bottom on the book. The red edge in the picture is what remains of the front most page.  The three wide inch sheep page is first page near the bottom where the cutout was not complete. Each successive page deeper was a little wider.  

Gluing was hardest as its important that you glue the pages in a way that makes most sense when the book is closed. A book's spine is designed to allow pages to remain open if the book is open, but this project is different in that its not a book anymore and we need it to work best closed.  Thus keep the spine of the book in the position it would be if it were closed (at 90 degrees to the surface you are working on).  I used a glue stick with glue that went on blue and dried to clear. As the pages were high gloss and colorful to the edge, I wanted to be sure that the glue went in the right places.

<- the pages do not really line up perfectly after gluing.  Also its pretty apparent in this picture that some weight was going to need to be applied to the pages to reduce some of the rippling that had happened with imperfect line-up of each successive page.  As it happens I ripped out one page in every 20 completely, knowing that the glue would make the book thicker than when the project started out.

 

I lined the cutout with felt from an art supplies store ->

The tongue sticking out is to help lift the MBA out of what is quite a snug fit.  

This 'case' is not really for shock-absorbing as the case is designed for home use not travel - there is nothing to stop the book cover opening other than gravity.  

It is also unsuitable for a bookshelf use.

<- Here is the MBA in situ.  Note that the tongue to lift it our with is a little long.  

You can't quite see it but the MBA is perfectly adjusted height-wise, thanks to the extra recess for it being thicker at the back.  

The finished product is about the same weight as the original book. 

The only think I'd like to do to it is add some velcro, so that there is a chance it could survive a small tumble.