Tiger Notes, vol. 3
When copying a file in Tiger, the progress box and the text within it have both become smaller. I like it.
Spotlight has taken over the world. It is now quite fiddly to do a simple Finder search for one named file in the folder you currently have open. Update: MacOSXHints recently noted that enclosing your search term in double quotes ( " ) seems to restricts the search to 'by name' only.
The truly awesome mail notification plugin Mail.appetizer no longer works, although Mail didn't actually notify me of this until after I had updated to 10.4.1.
DoubleCommand still hasn't been updated. Web browsing feels broken without one-handed page downs.
H264 demo videos
The Mac Observer today linked to two great demo videos in H264 format. TMO notes:
Headline of the week
For me, and I suspect a significant proportion of other RSS users, the language of the headline plays a major part in whether or not I read the article. I have tried to reflect that in the headlines I choose for this site. However every once in a while you see a headline that just has to be shared (the granddaddy of them all surely must be 'Keegan fills Schmeichel's gap with Seaman'). So, without further ado, here is this week's Headline of the Week:
SCode reinstalled, GD issue solved
During the relocation of this site to Register1's hosting service an issue cropped up with James Seng's MT-Scode. The scodetest.cgi script was failing due to a missing GD.pm. Register1 were very helpful and had GD.pm installed within a couple of hours of my first email. However GD still refused to function - the SCode numbers weren't being drawn. From the http error log:
[Fri May 13 18:46:04 2005] [error] [client 81.151.xxx.xxx] Premature end of script headers: mt-scode.cgiAfter a dead end or two, Aaron & Isaac Goldberg provided the vital clue - it appeared to be a problem with the server's GD installation.
[Fri May 13 18:46:04 2005] [error] [client 81.151.xxx.xxx] /usr/bin/perl: relocation error: /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1/i386-linux-thread-multi/auto/GD/GD.so: undefined symbol: gdFontGetGiant
[Fri May 13 18:54:38 2005] [error] [client 81.151.xxx.xxx] gd-png: fatal libpng error: Invalid number of colors in palette
[Fri May 13 18:54:38 2005] [error] [client 81.151.xxx.xxx] gd-png error: setjmp returns error condition
Despite just having spent a fair amount of time on my GD.pm problem, Register1 enthusiastically started investigating the new problem. They weren't running CPanel so the Goldbergs' cleangd advice didn't apply. Nevertheless Register1 solved the problem two days later without any further prompting, and the previously-broken SCode installation suddenly started working. They explained how they fixed it:
We had to downgrade the version of GD from 2.23 to 2.11 and use a pre-compiled Perl-GD rpm available from Redhat as opposed to a self-compiled version.
SCode was the one stumbling block to a complete migration to Register1's servers. With that solved, this site's old address is now officially defunct, and all traffic is being redirected to thoughton.co.uk/digitallife/
Comment
Register1's support has been nothing short of outstanding throughout this episode. Email replies were very quick - often within an hour. On one occasion, having just sent off a half-past-midnight email inquiry, a reply arrived at 1am! A great personal service - I've only been with them for a week but they are looking like the perfect hosts. Highly recommended, and very reasonably priced as well. They are also currently offering a "3 years for the price of 2" deal.
Server move
This site is now hosted by Register1, a UK-based hosting service. I chose them after reading many recommendations at the overclockers.co.uk forums. Migrating has not been totally hiccup-free, but Register1's support has been nothing short of outstanding.
Major Tiger bug destroys data
While doing some research on using SuperDuper as an alternative to the not-yet-Tiger-compatible Carbon Copy Cloner, I stumbled across this warning from the authors of SuperDuper. Despite the warning being a week old, I haven't seen any mention of this anywhere else. This lack of publicity would be unusual for what should be a major Apple news story so it may be that this is a false alarm, however it's always better to be safe than sorry. The essence of the bug is that mounting sparse disk images over 1GB in size will corrupt the image, destroying all data in it.
G4 Tower Media Center
xlr8yourmac have posted a great guide to setting up an old 'Sawtooth' G4 Tower as a fully fledged media center. The setup is designed to be a CD/DVD jukebox, internet radio station, TiVo-like personal video recorder, video conferencing center, web browser and (Mac) gaming console. Of course, it can still do all the other things you might want to do with a Mac, checking email for instance.
Spotlight refinements
The venerable TidBITS posted an interesting note on adding qualifying keywords to Spotlight searches. It seems they had just complained about the lack of information when Apple updated a Spotlight Tips page. The keyword tips are useful, if a bit cumbersome to type, but the highlight of the page is the reappearance of Apple's sense of humour:
Widget weakness
The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a reference to an interesting article on stephan.com on virus-like activity via Dashboard Widgets. The danger exists if you are running Tiger and have Safari's Open "safe" files after downloading option checked. See the stephan.com page for a (harmless) example.
Happy tenth birthday, DragThing!
DragThing, one of the greatest accessories in Mac history, is celebrating its 10th birthday! The author James Thomson has posted a great history of the program which is well worth a read. There's a lovely 'coolware' anecdote in there as well 
The article will be updated regularly over the next 10 days with even more DragThing trivia, and also contains a link to a US$10 discount page.
When I started reading the article I was convinced that I had been a DragThing user since System 7, but after looking at the comparison 'about page' screenshots, I now suspect I jumped on the bandwagon with DragThing 2 and OS 8. I seem to recall that my first use of DragThing was when it shipped with my PowerMac 6100/60 which would place it sometime in 1994/95, but the year seems wrong so perhaps I'm thinking of my subsequent Mac, the 8600/250 (bought in late 1997). In any case, I have used DragThing without interruption since then, right up to DragThing 4.5 which is installed on my Mac right now. I've been so happy with DragThing 4.5 for the last couple of years that I haven't even tested any newer version! Sorry James! :)
Tiger notes, vol. 2
Spotlight is still slow. Top tip of the day: don't make any spelling mistakes in your spotlight query.
Solution: possibly re-install QuickSilver and use it solely for launching apps.
Safari RSS no longer works with HSBC's online banking site. Safari didn't work at first too. That finally got fixed by the 1.2 update. Back to square one. 
Solution: use FireFox.
DoubleCommand no longer loads.
Solution: Daring Fireball notes that Apple have added some of DoubleCommand's functionality, but alas not including the ability to remap a PowerBook's 'enter' key. The developer's says on his site that he is aware of the incompatibility, but is unsure when a patch will be available.
KeyChain Access has changed for the worse. It now takes several extra clicks to make clipboard copies of certain information.
Solution: none yet.
Not specifically Tiger related, but since my copy of iClock vanished after installing Tiger I took the opportunity to upgrade to iClock 2. However there is a major problem - this new version has an annoying iClockWarnings icon taking up valuable dock space :?
Solution: none yet. May try and revert to the old iClock.
Quartz Composer
Stumbled across an interesting blog entry on Quartz Composer today.
Update: Someone's already launched a dedicated site.
Apple's education discount
It is fairly common knowledge that Apple has a forward-thinking policy about students and has always offered a great education discount. The discount doesn't seem to be explicitly stated anywhere, but is usually around 10% on hardware which can amount to decent chunk of change. What I only just discovered today is that the discount applies to teachers as well! As it happens my better half is a teacher, and our home network needs a new server 
Related reading: How to buy an Apple Computer (although this article also misses out on teachers getting the discount).
Tiger review revisited
Not to be outdone by Ars, AnandTech have published their own Tiger review. It's a good review, and very detailed (although not to quite the geek level of the Ars review).
Tiger notes
My Tiger notes so far:
Spotlight is quite slow on my 667MHz G4. Using it to launch apps (granted, not it's primary function) is several times slower than with QuickSilver.
Dashboard is fast. Especially once you remove all animated Dashboard widgets since they hog so much CPU - the analog World Clock widget eats around 5-10% of my CPU, but the third-party Dash Monitors is by far the worst culprit (up to 40% CPU in full graphical mode).
Automator is fast (and awesome). My favorite workflow so far is Mail Images.
iPhoto was broken. Trashing plists and library did not fix it.
Solution: delete and reinstall.
iSync crashes upon launch. Trashed plists. Now launches but crashes as soon as I attempt to connect to the phone.
Solution: None yet.
Little Snitch was broken.
Solution: install new 1.2b3 version.
iClock had vanished.
Solution: downloaded and installed newest version.
Fire crashes on launch.
Solution: Apparently recompiling from source using XCode2 will fix this. I've switched to AdiumX.
MySQL acting strangely. After a reboot mysqld sometimes (but not every time) jumps to 100% CPU and gets stuck there.
Solution: force quitting mysqld and manually restarting in terminal fixes the problem (until your next reboot).
BitTorrent official client crashes on launch.
Solution: use Tomato Torrent Bits on Wheels (having to find a new BT app led me to discover Bits on Wheels. It's much more informative than both the original client and Tomato. Azureus provides similar information, but the obvious java-ness really grates on me).
Ecto behaves strangely. For instance Command-Shift-U used to insert a hyperlink of the clipboard contents. Now it sometimes does this, but at other times it does nothing.
Solution: Upgrade to new 2.3 version.
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