Brendon Bushman's dashboard

Brendon Bushman asked a question in Apple on March 18, 2009 17:45:

How do I get **reliable** wireless printing over AEBS without constantly restarting it?

My printer (Samsung ML-2510) works with wireless printing on the Airport Extreme, but is flakey; we have to restart the printer and/or router after every 2nd or 3rd print due to "loss of communication". Any ideas for troubleshooting and/or solving this problem? Is it more likely to be in my printer drivers or the airport AEBS? I've had this problem with other printers (HP 1220C) on both our AEBS and over mac printer sharing.

A comment on the question "Can I sync To Do's with my iPhone?" in Apple:

I don't know, even as trueblue iPhone fan, this seems crazy to me. Though... not as much a loss, as when it comes to tasks, I'm an Omnifocus man, myself. FWIW, they now have an AMAZING iphone version as well - syncs over the air with your desktop install, and in a lot of ways, at least for actually COMPLETING (not as much planning) tasks, the iphone version is even better... – Brendon Bushman, on August 21, 2008 16:07

A comment on the question "How do I prevent iPhoto launching when I sync my iPhone?" in Apple:

Edwin- thanks for the clarification... my instructions were written before I had leopordized my machine. :) – Brendon Bushman, on April 25, 2008 15:07

A comment on the question "How do I prevent iPhoto launching when I sync my iPhone?" in Apple:

Lane- the launching of iPhoto relates to it wanting to pull photos from the camera portion of your iPhone, and has nothing to do with photo syncing (dropping existing photos onto your phone.) So I don't THINK this will do it. :( But I haven't tried either, so it's possible. :) – Brendon Bushman, on April 25, 2008 15:07

Brendon Bushman replied on April 25, 2008 15:00 to the question "How do I prevent iPhoto launching when I sync my iPhone?" in Apple:

Dear "dumbass" - no worries!

Image Capture is a built in application in Mac OS X to handle, appropriately, the capture of images, whether from Cameras, flatbed or slide scanners, etc. Or at least those it has drivers for. ;)

When attaching a camera, you can actually choose to automatically use either iPhoto OR image capture, depending on whether you just want to pull images off, or whether you want iPhoto to manage a fancy-pant library for you.

As far as where to find it... it's in your main applications folder:

/TheNameOfYourHardDrive/Applications

The Applications folder should also be available by default in the sidebar of any open finder windows. AND, when in doubt, use spotlight (the magnifying glass in upper right hand corner or hit apple-space by default) - just type in "Image Capture" and let your mac find it for you. :)

Double click it and rock and roll per the instructions above.

Hope that helps...

Brendon Bushman asked a question in Apple on October 26, 2007 16:30:

Anyone have recommendations or success stories for express/34 FW800 cards for their macbook pros?

I've got the earlier version of the 15" MB Pro that doesn't have Firewire 800. I've got FW800 RAID boxes I was using with my old powerbook, and now that I'm getting back into recording (with a firewire audio interface) I'm hurting on performance through the built in FW400 channel. Obviously that's also because I'm using a single channel for both these functions. I could try and sell it for a new one with FW800 built in, but I'd like to explore the expansion option first. Anyone have experience with this?

Reviews at lowerendmac and xceler8 your mac are confusing, conflicting, and generally unhelpful. But someone out there has to be doing this...

Brendon Bushman asked a question in Apple on October 26, 2007 16:30:

Anyone have recommendations or success stories for express/34 FW800 cards for their macbook pros?

I've got the earlier version of the 15" MB Pro that doesn't have Firewire 800. I've got FW800 RAID boxes I was using with my old powerbook, and now that I'm getting back into recording (with a firewire audio interface) I'm hurting on performance through the built in FW400 channel. Obviously that's also because I'm using a single channel for both these functions. I could try and sell it for a new one with FW800 built in, but I'd like to explore the expansion option first. Anyone have experience with this?

Reviews at lowerendmac and xceler8 your mac are confusing, conflicting, and generally unhelpful. But someone out there has to be doing this...

Brendon Bushman asked a question in Apple on October 26, 2007 16:30:

Anyone have recommendations or success stories for express/34 FW800 cards for their macbook pros?

I've got the earlier version of the 15" MB Pro that doesn't have Firewire 800. I've got FW800 RAID boxes I was using with my old powerbook, and now that I'm getting back into recording (with a firewire audio interface) I'm hurting on performance through the built in FW400 channel. Obviously that's also because I'm using a single channel for both these functions. I could try and sell it for a new one with FW800 built in, but I'd like to explore the expansion option first. Anyone have experience with this?

Reviews at lowerendmac and xceler8 your mac are confusing, conflicting, and generally unhelpful. But someone out there has to be doing this...

Brendon Bushman asked a question in Apple on October 21, 2007 19:24:

Why can't I sync 1 or more LEAST recent TV shows or Podcasts to my iPhone?

This seems like a far more likely use case than what is offered, which is only variations on how many of the MOST recent (in general or unwatched) shows to sync.

I mean, I can see that there may be scenarios where "freshness" is preferred, but a lot of Television and Podcast content is sequential or episodic in nature, so I'm obviously going to want to watch episode 1 before episode 13, if both are unwatched. I can't be the only person who only has room for 1-2GB of video on their iPhone or iPod, nor the only person who hasn't already watched all but the last 1-2 episodes of the wire?? :)

I know i can work around this by manually updating my own playlist (or maybe making a smart playlist that figures this out and set my iPhone to sync that, but come on - this can't be an uncommon situation, can it?

So ?: is there an option or modifier-key trick that I'm missing here? Or a reframing of the problem that is obvious and I'm missing?

And suggestion: Apple, perhaps could you add the ability to sync/sort by Oldest as well and newest (or at least by Episode for TV content?)

Brendon Bushman asked a question in Apple on October 21, 2007 19:24:

Why can't I sync 1 or more LEAST recent TV shows or Podcasts to my iPhone?

This seems like a far more likely use case than what is offered, which is only variations on how many of the MOST recent (in general or unwatched) shows to sync.

I mean, I can see that there may be scenarios where "freshness" is preferred, but a lot of Television and Podcast content is sequential or episodic in nature, so I'm obviously going to want to watch episode 1 before episode 13, if both are unwatched. I can't be the only person who only has room for 1-2GB of video on their iPhone or iPod, nor the only person who hasn't already watched all but the last 1-2 episodes of the wire?? :)

I know i can work around this by manually updating my own playlist (or maybe making a smart playlist that figures this out and set my iPhone to sync that, but come on - this can't be an uncommon situation, can it?

So ?: is there an option or modifier-key trick that I'm missing here? Or a reframing of the problem that is obvious and I'm missing?

And suggestion: Apple, perhaps could you add the ability to sync/sort by Oldest as well and newest (or at least by Episode for TV content?)

Brendon Bushman asked a question in Apple on October 21, 2007 19:24:

Why can't I sync 1 or more LEAST recent TV shows or Podcasts to my iPhone?

This seems like a far more likely use case than what is offered, which is only variations on how many of the MOST recent (in general or unwatched) shows to sync.

I mean, I can see that there may be scenarios where "freshness" is preferred, but a lot of Television and Podcast content is sequential or episodic in nature, so I'm obviously going to want to watch episode 1 before episode 13, if both are unwatched. I can't be the only person who only has room for 1-2GB of video on their iPhone or iPod, nor the only person who hasn't already watched all but the last 1-2 episodes of the wire?? :)

I know i can work around this by manually updating my own playlist (or maybe making a smart playlist that figures this out and set my iPhone to sync that, but come on - this can't be an uncommon situation, can it?

So ?: is there an option or modifier-key trick that I'm missing here? Or a reframing of the problem that is obvious and I'm missing?

And suggestion: Apple, perhaps could you add the ability to sync/sort by Oldest as well and newest (or at least by Episode for TV content?)

Brendon Bushman replied on October 16, 2007 02:05 to the problem "Mint only gets the balance for my Chase card, not the transactions." in Mint.com:

Mmmm. I had chase issues earlier asa well, but they appear to have cleared up. FWIW, both my Chase and my Providian/WashingtonMutual card show up at 0.0 APR, which I'm fairly certain to not be the case. ;)

Brendon Bushman replied on October 16, 2007 01:57 to the question "Can I delete DMG files after installing apps?" in Apple:

Tuff Customer:
SHORT ANSWER: YES! :)
Qualifier: If you've ACTUALLY installed the app first. :)

To explain: DMG files are disk images. Double click them, and then mount a virtual "disk" to your computer/desktop. (Most of the time, safari will go ahead and mount it automatically for you the first time.)

When it gets mounted, usually you'll see a new window, and see the contents (usually your new app + and maybe a readme file or something. But if you look in your sidebar, you'll see the "volume" or disk name for that virtual disk/disk image, and you could find it that way as well.

ANYWAY: long story short: after a disk image gets mounted, you don't want to run the app off the disk image- you want to copy it (just drag and drop) out of there into your applications folder. That's all you got to do to "install it".

After you've done that, you can "eject" or unmount the virtual disk by:
- clicking the eject button on the right side of the disks icon in your sidebar
- right or control clicking the disks icon on your desktop and choosing "eject disk".

UPON having copied/installed the app and ejected the disk, you are MORE THAN WELCOME to safely throw the DMG file in the trash (and empty at your leisure.)

It sounds a lot more complicated than it is. :) If you have further questions let me know...

PS: a few developers go ahead and script the process of mounting, copying the app, and unmounting the disk image for you.

Hope that clears it up - enjoy your new mac!

Brendon Bushman started following the question "Can I delete DMG files after installing apps?" in Apple.

Brendon Bushman replied on October 14, 2007 22:31 to the idea "Mac OS wishlist" in Apple:

PS: re: the tabbing thing again- if you are running tiger and Safari doesn't do this for you, I guess there's a chance I didn't have this before I downloaded the Safari 3 beta. I swear I did, but can't even remember where I left my keys last night, let alone precisely how long I've been tabbing into pull downs. :) But I swear it's been quite a while...

Bon a petit.

Brendon Bushman replied on October 14, 2007 22:28 to the idea "Mac OS wishlist" in Apple:

The following is based on the existing version, Tiger/10.4, not any experience with the upcoming leopard:

AFAIK, what skabaru is often true. Also, I think key commands can be bound to them as well (when you hit command-eject, for instance, you can choose the restart, sleep, shutdown and cancel by hitting r, s, enter/return, or apple-period respectively. Regardless, I'm fairly certain this behavior is up to the developer.

As far as form fields in the browser- Safari definitely exhibits the behavior you are looking for, and once you do TAB to a pulldown, spacebar will open it up, and you can jump to you choice with arrow keys OR just start typing the first few letters of your chosen option).

This is the primary way I move around forms, and would go batshit without it. :)

Firefox doesn't appear to always allow me to tab to select boxes, but I swear sometimes it has- I don't know if it has something to do with whether or not the developer has specified a tab order and/or accessibility attributes. I honestly haven't given it much thought... I only live in Firefox for JS debugging and testing.

Regardless, this second attribute isn't a system wide "Tiger" or "Leopard" issue, it's intrinsit to the mac build of your browser of choice. And Apple's browser does it quite well. :)

I DO have a wishlist of my own, yessir, but no time for that here and now. Next time your on a Mac tho', give ye old tab + spacebar a shot when you're fillin' in forms!

peace,
B

Brendon Bushman replied on October 13, 2007 23:57 to the question "Can I sync To Do's with my iPhone?" in Apple:

Definitely a very sad omission, that one would have to hope will be resolved officially at some point. Some folks are hoping/dreaming/speculating that after the release of the upcoming Apple operating system "Leopard", that may get rolled back in, the thinking being that leopard has a number of system level task/notes/calendar things going on that they may want to tie into for mac users. Obviously only time will tell.

In the meantime, for a platform agnostic, web-based hack solution, I'm also a big fan of Ta-Da Lists.

If you are on a Mac, OmniFocus is a GTD style taskmaster (still in beta) that features a built in webserver and iPhone optimized web interface, so you can access and update your tasks remotely on your phone, which I'm enjoying greatly.

Brendon Bushman replied on October 13, 2007 23:45 to the discussion "I love you, but you just broke my heart because my iBook is toast." in Apple:

mm-

I'm sorry for your hardship - I'm afraid I can't be much help on the logic board/replacement mac front, but since you mentioned your data, I did want to note that said board shouldn't prevent you from getting your data off.

If it's not TOTALLY fried yet, you can but in target firewire disk mode (more here).

Otherwise, if it is complete hosed, pulling the drive and dropping it into another mac, a 2.5" firewire case (Other World Computing has a reasonably priced, easy to use model) or something like the Wiebetech DriveDock for laptop drives should do the trick, and then be cloned over to a new machine. I would ASSUME the apple genius bar would apprise you of these options, but thought I'd mention it in the event you decided to recycle/sell/crush-office-space-style your old (un)reliable. :(

Brendon Bushman replied on October 13, 2007 23:29 to the question "How do I prevent iPhoto launching when I sync my iPhone?" in Apple:

Peter - this solution isn't particularly granular, and as such has (obvious) repercussions:

If you launch Image Capture and open up the preferences, you'll find a place to specify whether to launch Image Capture, iPhoto, or DO NOTHING when a camera is attached. Selecting the latter should solve your iPhone+iPhoto woes.

Apparently, while iTunes recognizes the many-splendid-thing that is your iPhone, to iPhoto, it's 'just another pretty camera'. ;)

You may well have known of this and been unwilling to manually launch iPhoto for other cameras, but this worked for me. Lemme know if you find it acceptable or find anything better...

Brendon Bushman started following the question "How do I prevent iPhoto launching when I sync my iPhone?" in Apple.