row1.info

Windows is kind enough to merge folders together when copying into an existing folder hierarchy, while a Mac is unkind enough to delete the existing and then copy the folder.
This is not only annoying but physically dangerous.
This tool to merge folders is fantastic. Download. Enjoy. Persist.

I saw the below Google advertisement a while ago which reads "Buy Microsoft Xbox", the interesting/ridiculous thing is that it is a Sony VAIO advertisement...

My wife doesn't let me blast my ultra music collection much while I am lounging at home and my noise canceling headphones live at our new open plan office, so I figured it was time to get some new headphones for at home. I read somewhere that wired headphones are so passé, luckily my friend had recently shown me the Jaybird Sportsband Bluetooth stereo headphones. I had bad impressions of Bluetooth headsets thanks to the guys (and possibly girls) who walking around yelling at seemingly no one and acting all nonchalant, but these headphones (which also feature as a headset) look a bit more traditional and not so attention seeking.

I paid $169 Sing ($89 USD from the site) which is a tad expensive, but considering that they work with my Android phone (headset/music), Playstation 3 (headset) and computer (music/Skype) I find the price to be very reasonable. The headphones feature 5 buttons: play/pause/answer, previous track, next track, volume up and volume down. The buttons all worked as expected when changing volume, answering a phone call and playing and navigating music in iTunes and the HTC music player (the track skipping controls don't work on the iPhone).

The build quality is very sturdy and they feel like a quality piece of hardware. The earpieces can be adjusted vertically and slightly rotate which is a nice touch, they sit quite well even while getting your sprint on. Bass seems to be the headphones strong point and the overall sound quality is good but far from spectacular. An issue is that everything is so minimalistic that the packaging doesn't mention any requirements (e.g. Mac OS/Windows version) and the instructions are very basic consisting of just a few basic diagrams and not any troubleshooting or care instructions (they do mention a link to a full manual but this just ends up being a pdf of the same basic document). This ends up being a problem for those less technical as Windows doesn't include A2DP support and you have to install a new Bluetooth stack which may (works on my Lenovo S10) or may not work with your hardware. They do provide a good range - I can be five meters away in the kitchen and it works through the concrete walls.

The big issue is probably more to do with the hardware you are using with the headphones rather than the headphones themselves. As mentioned earlier Windows does not work out of the box (I could not get A2DP working in Boot Camp) but Mac OS 10.5 and above does. Your hardware must stream the audio to the headphones which involves re-encoding the audio and you sometimes encounter skipping when your computer/phone can't keep up, this happens occasionally when tested on my HTC Hero and frequently on my Mac Mini when copying files onto a network drive. Bluetooth has limited bandwidth so if you are using a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse you may also encounter skipping and low audio quality.

In conclusion I have found the headphones to have been a decent purchase and it is great to be free of wires, but having had some serious issues with Bluetooth and the encountered skipping it really seems like Bluetooth is the headphones strongest and weakest point. If you can live with wires I would recommend buying some high quality phones over these.

Contrary to Apple personally (...kind of) telling me that Mac OS X Snow Leopard is the easiest to use, most secure and stable operating system in the history of science, I have found it to be somewhat of the opposite and have had a few small issues as well as a huge one in the space of three weeks.

Mac OS does render fonts differently from Windows and I do find that windows produces crisper fonts, but I was getting some seriously blurry text on my HP w2228h 1680x1050 monitor.

On the left you can see a screenshot from a friends Mac and on the right you can see a screenshot from my Mac. Notice that the fonts on the right are bolder. This bolder font actually looks ok on this screenshot, but when you start browsing the web and visiting pages with bigger/smaller fonts and with dark backgrounds the fonts become too bold and very blurry.
I tried this fix, but it did not work for me. Just to be sure that it wasn't an issue with the DVI cable I installed Windows 7 via bootcamp and it looked crisp.

I cannot consistently connect to Linux or Windows PCs on the network using hostnames, the majority of the time the hostname cannot be found and I have to connect via IP address.

The big issue I had was with Bluetooth. I bought some A2DP headphones last week which worked reasonably well (save that for another post) and then a few days later they just stopped. I could still connect to them but whenever I started to play music I would be prompted with a warning that the Bluetooth device had stopped working. Even worse was that it stopped Wifi internet access and crashed the AirPort (Mac Wifi card) - I could turn the AirPort off but it would not turn back on. The fantastic Wifi analyzer said the Wifi channels were clear, but I thought it could still be picking up some interference so I tried moving things around and changing the wireless channel but it still crashed. Even though a bad device should not bring down the entire subsystem I checked that the headphones were not faulty, they worked fine on my HTC Hero and a Windows 7 netbook. I also tried transferring files over Bluetooth and again it crashed the AirPort, but if I turned the AirPort off it would be fine.
The next step was to try and see if the Mac Mini had a hardware fault. I booted into Window 7 and transferred 100 MBs worth of files while browsing the net without any issues.
I then booted back into OS X and tried to remove all the Bluetooth connections and preferences and I also tried creating a new user, but neither worked.

Last Resort: I did a clean install of Snow Leopard 10.6 and amazingly all three problems are now gone. The fonts still don't appear to be as sharp as on Windows but they are far less blurry and are not bold by default.
I can connect to other PCs on the network via hostname, only time will tell how consistent this is.
So far the headphones are working well (possibly better than before) and I will be giving them a good thrashing and hoping that they stay that way.
I am very glad that it appears to have been a software problem rather than a hardware one, I will not be updating to 10.6.2 anytime soon!

If anyone in Brisbane needs their pool serviced then they should check out MAC Pool Services.

I have been using my new Mac for five days, so far I find it a bit annoying :)
This took me a bit of time to figure out so I will share it.
I have my project stored in SVN and was previously using TortoiseSVN to maintain it. I want to keep my the repository where it is on my Windows PC's file system (did not want to set up an http SVN server) and access it from my Mac, the problem was that I couldn't figure out the correct path to use.
First you need to mount the network drive (command+k from finder), then you can access it via:
file:///Volumes/SHARE_NAME/Repository_Name
I was incorrectly trying to access it via the IP address using the Windows way of accessing a network share, but it must be done via a mounted volume.

Update: It seems like the above works for checking out but does not work for committing:
Can't get exclusive lock on file '/Volumes/Repositories/Simple Review/db/txn-current-lock': Operation not supported
Looking for workaround...

Update 2: There didn't seem to be a solution to the file locking problem so I ended up installing VisualSNV Server. All I needed to do was use the management interface to add the users and copy/move my existing repositories into the VisualSVN repository folder (you may be able to point to your existing repository during installation but I didn't want to risk it).