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Some time back I was lamenting that IP over Firewire didn't seem to be working in Leopard. I routinely use IP over firewire in the data center to have out-of-band communications (backup, heartbeat etc) between servers. With an early version of Leopard (10.5 or 10.5.1) it wasn't working at all. Today I was getting back to checking for possible work-arounds. Fortunately before digging in too far I decided to try it and low and behold it works just like it used to.

At the end of June I ordered a [amazon title B000YQWQ4I]. I've had the previous version of the drive for a couple of years and it just rocks. They are a little more expensive than other drives but it's loaded with features from a great heat sink, leather carrying case and a triple interface. The goal was to get it before the July 4th weekend and get some data loaded for the OSCON trip later in the month. Everything looked good and the drive arrived a day earlier than scheduled. Things were busy but I plugged it in a couple of times and then finally sat down to load it up. This was the third time I'd used the drive. When I came back to the computer the drive wasn't responding. After rebooting the computer didn't see the drive. Using several computers verified that the drive was in fact dead. Plug in any of the three interfaces and it wouldn't spin up. The light was on but the drive wasn't spinning for anything.

So on July 8 I went to the G-Technology website and created a ticket. Late the following day I got an email with return instructions and the following information about what to expect:

As soon as we receive the drive, we will diagnose the problem and either repair it or send you out a replacement. Turn around time is estimated at a) Ok To Erase: five to ten working days after we check in your drive or b) Save Data drives require ten to fifteen working days after we check in your drive for service.

In talking to a fellow Drupaler recently I realized I'd started to setup APC on the server some many months ago and then was sidetracked before it got done. A quick search revealed this article has the necessary steps. (PECL installation doesn't quite work on OS X using the Entropy PHP distribution).

A fellow Drupaler, earlmred, mentioned an application tonight in #drupal that I just had to try. Fluid is a handy application that creates single-site web-browsers. These single site browsers aren't technically limited to a single site but are designed to be small applicaitons that separate many of the web applications we use every day into separate applications. No more hunting for which tab is that Unfuddle account open on. Now I simply go to the "Unfuddle" application. Better yet, it works well with QuickSilver so now instead of opening a new tab it's easy to switch back to the active application where you left off. So it's only been a little while but I'm already digging Fluid.

Recently getting into job looking mode has led me to brush off the Automator routines for combining PDF documents into one document. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be working in OS X 10.5 (or 10.5.1). A Apple Discussion Forum post suggests I'm not the only one encountering the problem.

When you run the action in Automator it works like a charm. When running the action as a plug-in in the Finder the action swirls for a moment and then nothing happens. From my testing it does not seem to matter what is done with the output of "Combine PDF Pages" nothing happens from there on.

Apple's page trumpeting sync services in Tiger makes it sound great:

Sync Services Supplied Tiger advances the state of the art by integrating intelligent, high-performance sync services right into the operating system. In Tiger, the preferences and controls for what, when and which devices you want to sync appear inside your favorite applications, such as Safari, iCal, Address Book and Mail — including multiple Mail accounts, Mail rules, signatures and Spotlight-driven Smart Mailboxes.

Indeed these features were prominent two years ago when Tiger was making its way to release. It is puzzling then that the state of sync is so poor in OS X. Here's a brief list of the most disappointing:

Chronos the makers of SOHO Organizer have posted a paid upgrade to version 6. I spent time troubleshooting the last paid beta the company released over a year ago. Presently while I am not in the market I have to wonder at the fact that the Chronos technical support forums have been "discontinued". On January 26, 2006 Chronos had posted a policy that helped make the forums ineffective when customers, tired of delays, broken software and broken promises, took to posting comments that revealed the incomplete and broken nature of the software. Evidently sometime between January 2006 and mid-2007 the forums were taken down. One wonders if the reason for this was to help prevent would-be purchasers from discovering what past buyers thought of the money they'd spent.