dfbills.com blog

Several years ago, I settled on Chat Transcript Manager from Unsanity to archive and search through my extensive iChat log files.  I conduct extensive meetings and have fully integrated IM into my workflow and Chat Transcript Manager was really well designed and easy to use.

Unfortunately, the tool was broken when Apple changed the format directory structure for the iChat log files in Leopard.  It doesn’t see the new logs in which are in subdirectories.  Unsanity hasn’t updated the software since the end of 2006, but luckily the fix is simply to flatten the logging directory structure.

The chats are stored here: 

~/Documents/iChats/

I suggest coping the logs rather than just simply moving just in case something blows up.  Don’t for get to set an actual path to your_destination.

find . -name ‘*.ichat’ | xargs -i cp {} /your_destination

After flattening, Chat Transcript Manager has no trouble indexing the files and I was able to pinpoint the conversations I wanted.

Somehow I lost the ability to sync my Transmit bookmarks via MobileMe.  Not a big deal but as passwords began to change, I was getting frustrated that my bookmarks were breaking. 

The fix is quite simple:

~/Library/Application\ Support/Transmit/TransmitSync.app/Contents/MacOS/TransmitSync—registerClient

This will register the Transmit Sync Client in MobileMe and you should see it immediately appear in the Sync tab of the MobileMe preference pane.

If you’re having trouble printing under 10.6 to Fiery-powered printers:

Go to http://www.efi.com and download the “Fiery Print Driver update for OS X v10.6”

It’s located on the website in Support/Downloads/EFI Software.

This corrects issues with drivers already installed on your previous 10.5 system.

I’ve been dealing with an intermittent issue for about a year now where some of my mail messages never appear in the Gmail inbox.  I usually access my Gmail using IMAP and rarely use the web interface. 

Up until now, the only way I’ve had to find them is to search for unread messages and page through listservs and all sorts of junk looking for messages with no labels applied.

Today after waiting for an email that apparently never arrived, I decided to do something about it.  First step, determine how many messages were really affected and find a search string to display them.

That string turned out to be:


is:unread -label:[gmail]-Meetup -label:[gmail]-ListServ-w3 -label:[gmail]-pr -label:[gmail]-listserv-su-alumni -label:inbox


After seeing the results of that query, all I could say was “Wow, this issue with my gmail not going into the inbox is much larger than I’d previously thought.” 

So, I did some digging around in Google Labs and found the “Quick Links” add-on which let me save this search so that it’s never more than one click away.

Then, I spent some time going through hundreds of messages that went back nearly a year and found what I had been missing.  Along the way, I could only think of two reasons this could be happening:

1. I’ve filed certain messages away in the web interface and Gmail has continued the “thread” in a mailbox other than Inbox.

2. I might have an IMAP email client configured incorrectly and it may be filing messages into non-existent mailboxes.

3. There’s some sort of glitch in Gmail.

More testing is required to get to the bottom of this, but at least now I can find the messages that are “missing.”

For some reason this error has crept up on several of my machines recently when starting Adobe Photoshop CS 4 on the Mac:

“One or more files in the Adobe Application Support folder, necessary for running Photoshop, are missing. Please run the Photoshop installer and re-install Photoshop.”

Surprisingly, the solution was both quite simple and posted on Adobe’s website:

Solution 1: Copy the Adobe Unit Types file to Library/ScriptingAdditions.

Copy the Adobe Unit Types file in the Previous System folder to /Library/ScriptingAdditions.

Solution 2: Create a new ScriptingAdditions folder, and then reinstall Photoshop.

Create a new folder in /Library and name it ScriptingAdditions.
Remove and reinstall Photoshop.

Solution 3: Make sure there is not a space in the ScriptingAdditions folder name.

On two of my Snow Leopard machines, the ScriptingAdditions folder was missing.  I restored from another computer and the error was gone.  On my third machine, the file and folder were there, but the Adobe Unit Types file was created in 2005.  After replacing with a more recent copy, I was back in business.

Update 02.03.10: Adobe has posted a new 64bit clean version of Adobe Unit Types.osax (version 2.1.0) in a TechNote titled “Error about unit type conversion occurs when running an AppleScript in Photoshop (Mac OS X 10.6).”  This updated version works great for me on 10.6.2.

iTunes 9 introduces a new iTunes Media Organization option.  Previously, the iTunes folder is organized like:

• iTunes
  
  • Mobile Applications
  • iTunes Music
    • Movies
    • Podcasts
    • Ringtones
    • TV Shows
  • iPod Games

The new organization scheme puts all content into folders related to the content within the iTunes Media Folder:

• iTunes
  
  • iTunes Media
    • Audiobooks
    • Automatically Added to iTunes
    • iPod Games
    • Mobile Applications
    • Movies
    • Music
    • Podcasts
    • Ringtones
    • TV Shows
    • Voice Memos

I decided to upgrade my organization by choosing File > Library > Organize Library.  The process appeared to go very well with only 12 old artist folders remaining in in my iTunes Media folder. 

After examining these remainders, I found that some contained orphaned music files, some had jpg files and some were just plain empty.  I dragged the music files to iTunes (which immediately moved them on the new organization scheme), deleted the images and the remaining empty folders.

Then came the shocker, my next Time Machine backup wanted 400GB+ to complete.  I let it backup, but I’m planning on going back and deleting my old iTunes Music folder in the backups once I’m satisfied that there are no orphaned files.

A quick check using “List MIAs,” tells me I’m clean, but experience says I should wait a few weeks.

Update: Apple has posted a support article titled: “iTunes 9: Understanding iTunes Media Organization”

Here’s my fix for the MobileMe keychain sync process wanting to delete all keychain items:

1. Set sync mode to manual on all computers
2. Reset MobileMe keychain sync on a known good keychain computer
3. Open Keychain Access on other computers and delete the affected keychain
4. Create a new keychain with the same name
5. Set new keychain as default and enable MobileMe sync in the Keychain settings
6. Sync, and choose the option “replace data on computer”

Complete the testing with a few back and forth syncs to make sure that a large number of changes aren’t detected.  (This technique works well for other sync types, but deleting the data can be much more complicated depending on how it is stored.)

If you’ve been wondering how to disable the Exchange serve PIN requirement, here’s how to remove it. (at least partially)

1. Jailbreak

2. Use PhoneView to download /var/Managed Preferences/mobile/com.apple.springboard.plist

3. Edit the plist file and adjust settings as needed:


<key>PolicyInformation</key>
<dict>
<key>maxFailedAttempts</key>
<integer>5</integer>
<key>maxInactivity</key>
<integer>5</integer>
<key>minLength</key>
<integer>7</integer>
</dict>


4. Use PhoneView upload and overwrite com.apple.springboard.plist

5. Reboot your phone

6. Go into Settings.app and turn autolock and pin off

Note: The KillExchangeLocks application from Cydia does not appear to work.  Some people have pointed to a tightening of Apple’s security policies as the reason.  The app hasn’t been updated since the fall of 2008.

The plist is automatically updated approximately once per day, so I’ll be looking into a cron-based solution soon.

On my system, only the “passcode required” value seems to reset.  I don’t mind a 4-hour lockdown.  It seems like a reasonable amount of security.  This is much better than the 1 minute interval I was stuck with and now I can actually keep my screen from auto-locking when I use SlingPlayer.

iChat occasionally seems to have trouble connecting when I’m traveling.  My simple fix is to enter the IP address of the AIM servers directly into the settings. 

Here are the IP addresses that you can plug in to make iChat work as of 04.06.09:

SSL
—————
Name:  slogin.gslogin.oscar.aol.com
Address: 64.12.161.184

Non-SSL
—————
Name:  login.messaging.aol.com
Address: 64.12.161.153

After searching numerous times on this topic “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available,” I finally came across the answer.  ArcSource posts this simple solution:

Reinstall Flash 10.

Yes, there is a fix for those who don’t have Google Accelerator and it’s so simple that I’m going to type it again- Reinstall Flash 10.

That is all.