Monday 31 March 2008

Quicktime focus issue - update

I just found out that simply clicking inside the window on the video itself as opposed to the window brings the focus back to the window correctly after switching from fullscreen. So just to make it clear after returning from fullscreen using command+f, I have to click directly on the video thats playing (twice) in order for the focus to come back correctly so that keyboard control will work. Clicking once brings the focus back to the window but not keyboard control.

Short update - slow shutdown

So I managed to find some time to look at the slow shutdown issue again, well at least a couple of minutes anyway. I created a new account on the mbp and started in that, making sure that none of my startup items from my present account were loading (I left the ones in the /library/preferencepanes on purpose. Sure enough it took a while to shutdown as well, which suggests that its a system wide issue as opposed to being limited to my user account.

During the weekend I also prepared and partition an external hdd ready to install leopard onto for further testing but I still want to see if I cant get to the bottom of this.

The thing thats been holding me back though is "Life on Mars", which is a BBC TV series, so far its been great and if Ive managed to find some time somewhere I have been watching that instead... bad bad but its definitely worth checking out if you havent done so already.

Maybe when I finish watching it I will finally sort this problem out? ;)

Wednesday 26 March 2008

Quicktime focus issue - spacebar etc not working

One issue that Ive came across with Quicktime (and judging by the number of posts about it that Ive came across on the internet Im not the only one), is the issue where Quicktime stops responding to keyboard commands, for example the spacebar no longer plays or pauses and so on.

It mainly seems to occur if you put a video into fullscreen and then for whatever reason, close fullscreen but still live the window with the video open on the desktop. Afterwards it will not respond to any keyboard commands unless you put it back into fullscreen.

Tabbing between applications until you get back to Quicktime does not resolve the problem, neither does moving it to a different workspace.

Other posts on the internet suggest reinstalling Quicktime by downloading the standalone file from Apple. Although I havent tried this yet, I have found a workaround that seems to fix the issue temporarily.

It appears though, that minimising Quicktime to the dock and then restoring it, is enough to put the focus back on the application.

Update : It seems that my solution may not be as reliable as I first thought, Ive tried it just now and it didnt work... will take another look at it and post anything I find here.

Saturday 22 March 2008

Syncserver crash

Every time I opened mail.app (under Leopard 10.5.2), I got a dialogue that syncserver had quit unexpectedly. I couldnt find anything wrong though and a quick search on google also didnt turn up anything that seemed to relate to me. I did see a post about someone getting the error while using .mac though and this caused me to check my .mac syncing.

Funnily enough it had been disabled which was weird, so I reenabled it and then had to tell it to rewrite the items on .mac with what was on my computer but afterwards it synced ok and also took away my mail.app problem.

Noise Ninja

If you take any photos in higher isos - say 400 upwards or just in dim light, you should really check out Noise Ninja, it does an amazing job of removing noise from the photos. I bought a license for it today as it really impressed me with what it did for our photos.

Vmware

Unfortunately this post wont be as interesting as I hoped it would be, in the sense that my father-in-law didnt want me to try converting his laptop into a vmware image, so in the end I just did a basic vmware/windows xp/ms office install for him.

Hes quite happy now that windows is working as he uses ms money a lot but for some reason outlook is really slow. Or is now after he imported his calendar into it. If I start it in safe mode though (outlook /safe) it starts up and works instantly. Hes planning to reinstall it when he gets back home though, so its not really that big a deal...

Friday 21 March 2008

Sleep, blessed sleep :)

I havent done too much with my computer for the past couple of days, including looking some more into the slow shutdown problem, simply because Ive just been too tired to do anything after getting home from work.

Mostly once we've got our daughter to sleep, we've just been relaxing (or sleeping) ourselves.

Tonight (or tomorrow), Im planning to try to convert my father-in-laws windows laptop into a vmware image that I can then port into vmware fusion on the mac for him. Hopefully it will work but if not then I'll just install windows and ms office for him.

Im still stumped with the slow shutdown thing too, so if any of you would happen to have any ideas, I really would appreciate it.

Wednesday 19 March 2008

Slow shutdown - The console strikes back

I just found a comment in an earlier posting on this subject from Tyler (thanks Tyler!) that raised a good point. He was commenting on the difference he noticed in the shutdown speed after upgrading from 2GB of RAM to 4GB.

Now by default the "new" (all intel MBP's I believe) MBP's create a sleepimage file by default as they are set to hibernate instead of sleep, so you could draw a conclusion from this that a 4GB file would take longer to create than that of a 2GB file but this would only make sense if you were sleeping the MBP, not I would have thought, shutting it down.

It also doesnt explain why, on a fresh install of Leopard, that my MBP shuts down just as quickly with 4GB as with 2GB of RAM, which can only mean that its something I have done in terms of a program I have installed.

Tylers point made me think though if the "quality" of the RAM could factor into this equation as well? Then again, am I just over complicating this?

Slow shutdown revisted

This os really driving me nuts, the only thing that Ive managed to find when digging in the console is an error with the EyeTV Helper not quitting but even if I manually quit this and then try to shutdown there is no change.

Im seriously thinking about installing OSX on an external drive and then migrating things over to it one by one until I find the culprit but it seems a bit excessive for this. Ive posted a log file here in the hope that one of you can see something that Im missing. If you do and if you could let me know I would really appreciate it. Thanks in advance...


UPDATE Further adventures in my slow shutdown saga can be found using the links below.

http://badwolfsblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/slow-shutdown-console-strikes-back.html
http://badwolfsblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/short-update-slow-shutdown.html
http://badwolfsblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/slow-shutdown-with-leopard-update.html

3/19/08 6:13:38 AM com.apple.launchctl.System[2] launchctl: Please convert the following to launchd: /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisoryd.plist 
3/19/08 6:13:38 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.cups.cupsd) Unknown key: SHAuthorizationRight 
3/19/08 6:13:38 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.ntp.ntpd) Unknown key: SHAuthorizationRight 
3/19/08 6:13:45 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] VMware Fusion 72241: Starting VMware Fusion:  
3/19/08 6:13:45 AM de.jinx.SmartSleepDaemon[40] SmartSleepDaemon: machine does not support sleep. 
3/19/08 6:13:45 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] kextload: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/kexts/vmmon.kext loaded successfully 
3/19/08 6:13:45 AM de.jinx.SmartSleepDaemon[40] SmartSleepDaemon: machine does not support sleep. 
3/19/08 6:13:46 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] kextload: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/kexts/vmci.kext loaded successfully 
3/19/08 6:13:47 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] kextload: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/kexts/vmioplug.kext loaded successfully 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] kextload: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/kexts/vmnet.kext loaded successfully 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Internet Software Consortium DHCP Server 2.0 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 The Internet Software Consortium. 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] All rights reserved. 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Please contribute if you find this software useful. 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/dhcp-contrib.html 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Configured subnet: 192.168.99.0 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Setting vmnet-dhcp IP address: 192.168.99.254 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Opened:  
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Recving on     VNet/vmnet8/192.168.99.0 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Sending on     VNet/vmnet8/192.168.99.0 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Internet Software Consortium DHCP Server 2.0 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 The Internet Software Consortium. 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] All rights reserved. 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Please contribute if you find this software useful. 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/dhcp-contrib.html 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Configured subnet: 192.168.205.0 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Setting vmnet-dhcp IP address: 192.168.205.254 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Opened:  
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Recving on     VNet/vmnet1/192.168.205.0 
3/19/08 6:13:48 AM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[41] Sending on     VNet/vmnet1/192.168.205.0 
3/19/08 6:13:52 AM org.ntp.ntpd[14] Error : nodename nor servname provided, or not known 
3/19/08 6:16:59 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.UserEventAgent-LoginWindow[288]) Exited: Terminated 
3/19/08 6:17:16 AM SystemUIServer[322] 
    MenuCracker
    see http://sourceforge.net/projects/menucracker
    MenuCracker is now loaded. Ready to accept new menus. Ignore the failure message that follow. 
3/19/08 6:17:23 AM SystemUIServer[322] failed to load Menu Extra: NSBundle (loaded) 
3/19/08 6:17:31 AM Overflow[337] Custom ColorPicker class with name .com.freeverselib could not be loaded.
 
3/19/08 6:17:30 AM [0x0-0x17017].com.elgato.eyetvhelper[338] EyeTV Helper version 3.0b1 build 266 
3/19/08 6:17:34 AM SystemUIServer[322] MenuCracker: Loading 'iStatMenusCPU'. 
3/19/08 6:17:35 AM SystemUIServer[322] MenuCracker: Loading 'iStatMenusMemory'. 
3/19/08 6:17:35 AM SystemUIServer[322] MenuCracker: Loading 'iStatMenusDisks'. 
3/19/08 6:17:35 AM SystemUIServer[322] MenuCracker: Loading 'iStatMenusNetwork'. 
3/19/08 6:17:35 AM SystemUIServer[322] MenuCracker: Loading 'iStatMenusTemps'. 
3/19/08 6:17:36 AM SystemUIServer[322] MenuCracker: Loading 'iStatMenusFans'. 
3/19/08 6:17:38 AM SyncServer[330] Ignoring exception NSObjectNotAvailableException trying to remove lock file: Can't remove existing lock for /Users/andrew/Library/Application Support/SyncServices/Local/conflicts 
3/19/08 6:17:39 AM textexpanderd[340] textexpanderd 2.0.5 at your service 
3/19/08 6:28:06 AM com.apple.launchd[305] (0x40d500.Locum[374]) Exited: Terminated 
3/19/08 6:30:47 AM com.apple.launchd[305] (0x40c5b0.Locum[389]) Exited: Terminated 
3/19/08 6:31:53 AM DashboardClient[391] JavaScript says: missing ecb currency on: ecb_ZAR 
3/19/08 6:31:53 AM [0x0-0xa00a].com.apple.dock[318] 2008-03-19 06:31:53.391 DashboardClient[391:10b] JavaScript says: missing ecb currency on: ecb_ZAR 
3/19/08 6:32:12 AM [0x0-0x2a02a].com.apple.iTunes[395]
3/19/08 6:32:12 AM [0x0-0x2a02a].com.apple.iTunes[395] >{length = 6, capacity = 6, bytes = 0x0 
3/19/08 6:32:12 AM [0x0-0x2a02a].com.apple.iTunes[395] 01ec20f8490} 
3/19/08 6:33:42 AM com.apple.launchd[305] (0x40d020.Locum[398]) Exited: Terminated 
3/19/08 6:38:34 AM textexpanderd[340] bye 
3/19/08 6:38:35 AM [0x0-0x17017].com.elgato.eyetvhelper[338] ***Wakein::CancelEvents: requested event type: wakepoweron 
3/19/08 6:38:35 AM [0x0-0x17017].com.elgato.eyetvhelper[338] ***Wakein::CancelEvents: requested app name: com.elgato.eyetv 
3/19/08 6:38:35 AM [0x0-0x17017].com.elgato.eyetvhelper[338] ***Wakein: 0 entries in power event schedule table 
3/19/08 6:38:45 AM com.apple.loginwindow[24] Shutdown NOW! 
3/19/08 6:38:45 AM com.apple.loginwindow[24] System shutdown time has arrived 

Dual Turbines (for speed?)

Due to the testing Ive been doing with GOW, COD4 and HL2 etc, Ive spent some time in XP on my MBP and noticed how when playing games that the fans were kicking in full blast. Needless to say in a house with a baby (and a wife), this isnt always conducive to good relations but it seems that there isnt a fan solution available under winx for the MBP to manage this (if Im wrong about this please let me know and share the solution).

I came across a work around of sorts though, if you install SMCFanControl (a free utility - check for it on version tracker, Im using version 2) under OS X to set a fan speed, then restart the computer into Windows XP, the fan speeds carry over.

So for example if Im in OSX and I fancy playing something, I open up smcfancontrol, select my gaming preset (fans at 4000 rpm) and then restart into windows xp. Dont worry this doesnt put the fans into these speed and keep them there, rather they start at 2000rpm and ramp up but when they do, they still seem a lot quieter than when running xp without smcfancontrol.

Hope this will be useful for someone too.

Gears of War Save Games

I got tired of trying to find a solution to my slow shutdown problem and instead spent the time install (re-installing) Windows XP on my bootcamp partition to replace Windows Vista.

As part of the reinstallation I needed to reinstall Gears of War and have not been able to get my save games to work. I still have the original windows vista partition, so I copied the save game over from the Windows Live folder (sorry the exact path escapes me right now) and I also copied over the checkpoints (although this shouldnt matter) but every time I start Gears of War it puts me right back at the very beginning.

After a couple of hours off and on fighting with this, I came across the following solution of sorts, in Gears of War, open the console (usually tilde ~) and type open (for a list of map names just google, its easy to find).

When the map loads it will be a mess but just quit back to the menu and restart the level and everything will be ok again. So although I wasnt able to get back to exactly where I left off, I was able to get pretty close which was good enough for me.


Sunday 9 March 2008

Screenflow - a wonderful app

Words cant do this app justice, go to the link and check out the video to see for yourself.

Saturday 8 March 2008

Leaving on a jet plane

Not too much to say again Im afraid, I havent had much opportunity for anything computer related since the last post as Im leaving on a business trip to Amsterdam that Ive had to prepare for in advance.

Besides in a news sense, the biggest news of the past couple of days is that the iphone sdk is out and that it will (in June) support Exchange via activesync. None of which is much use to me as we cant buy iphones in the Czech Republic yet.

Once I get back from Amsterdam (or maybe during if I have time), I will post again, hopefully something a bit more interesting and worth reading :)

Wednesday 5 March 2008

No new is good news?

I still havent managed to get to the bottom of my slow shutdown problem but to be honest I havent had time to really focus on it. There were a few things that cropped up at work that needed my attention, we also had to take our daughter to the doctors and finally this coming weekend I leave for a business trip to Amsterdam for a few days.

I have managed to get vmware installed though and when I find time I plan on giving it a try to see how it compares to parallels.


Monday 3 March 2008

Slow shutdown

One of the things I noticed after getting my new MBP was how long my old one took to shutdown. For example from the time that I clicked on shutdown to the computer being off it took around 55 seconds. On the new MBP it took around 7 seconds. Just for clarification the install of leopard on my old mbp was a clean install not an upgrade and afterwards I reinstalled all of the applications etc, so it means that either something I have installed since then or something in one of the software updates (not likely) has caused the problem.

On transferring the data/hdd from the old mbp to the new, I also transferred the slow shutdown speed as well and decided to see if I couldnt do something about it or at least determine the cause.

I checked under console and saw that one of the last things that it was trying to do was to allow parallels to close down its network connections etc, so I decided to try uninstalling parallels and see if that made a difference.

Unfortunately in order to uninstall parallels I first had to update it to the current build so that the uninstaller would work, which required a couple of reboots but even after it was uninstalled, there was no change in the shutdown time.

So back to console and this time I notice  a message that the EyeTV helper failed to quit, so I went into activity monitor, quit it manually and tried the shutdown process again and again it took around a minute.

Im going to go have a look in the console again now but I'm really curious what could be causing this...

Any ideas?


Sunday 2 March 2008

Parallels or VMWare?

One thing that I noticed on my old MBP was that it was taking a while to shutdown each time. I looked in the console and the only thing I can see there, is at the end of the shutdown cycle parallels is closing its connections/devices etc.

Before I put the new drive into the new MBP, I booted it up with the factory installed drive and afterwards when I shut it down, it was so fast that I at first I thought something must be wrong. This again put me on the trail of finding out what was slowing my old MBP and now my new one that its running the cloned image and again I ended up on Parallels.

Can any of you out there using parallels confirm this? Is the same also true for vmware? Ive downloaded the demo for vmware and am thinking of uninstalling parallels and trying that to see but I thought first of all that I would ask and see if anyone has similar experiences.

Any comments?

MBP is up and running

An update to my last post below, I was seeing the same speed issues (or lack thereof) with CarbonCopyCloner as with SuperDuper!, after about 4 hours it was still only on 30 or 40% and I couldnt or rather didnt want to wait a whole day for the computer to be ready.

So I did what I should have done from the start and opened up the new Macbook Pro again, took the drive out and put it into an enclosure, I then used SuperDuper! to clone the drive from the old MBP to the new drive in the enclosure. The whole process took around 3 hours for 170GB.

I then put the drive back into the new MBP and booted up, boot was a little slow the first time but since then its been working perfectly.

The problem was that I was trying to make my life easier, having a baby in the house and so as a result not having as much time to focus on the computer as before, I decided it would be faster and easier to mount the new drive into the new MBP, which obviously wasnt the case - I guess for me the moral of the story is to stop and think a bit more next time, which if I had, would have made me realise that the enclosure was the way to go from the start.