WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin ROCKS
Posted on October 29, 2007
Filed Under WordPress | 1 Comment
Have I whined enough about how much of a PITA it is to do these little incremental WordPress upgrades? Well, no more. This Plug-in makes the process painless.
Not that it was ever difficult…just time consuming. The Plugin does the following steps in order, prompting you to check to make sure the step was done correctly before moving on to the next:
- Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
- Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
- Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
- Puts the site in maintenance mode.
- De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
- Upgrades wordpress files.
- Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
- Re-activates the plugins.
Worked like a charm to upgrade from 2.3 to 2.3.1 in about 5 minutes.
Bar Mitzvah lessons
Posted on October 28, 2007
Filed Under Kids, Life | Leave a Comment
Laini’s Bat Mitzvah is scheduled for March 7, 2009. This year at her Hebrew School, all 6th grade families have to go to regular meetings and events focused around our kids’ big day that will happen next school year. Oy gevalt.
Last night, the meeting was a movie night and we all watched Keeping Up With the Steins. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s a cute, likeable comedy about the “true meaning of a Bar Mitzvah.”
There’s one small section where the young hero’s best friend gives him advice on how to make it though his Haftorah without getting nervous. He tells him when he’s up there on the beemah, he should reach in his pocket and squeeze his balls. Later, during the Bar Mitzvah, you see the boy really nervous and fumbling the words but then he suddenly gets his confidence and completes the prayer beautifully. The camera pans to the beaming parents and relatives and then to the boy as he removes his hand from his pocket and his friend gives him a knowing thumbs up. Ha ha snicker snicker. Wasn’t exactly the kind of humor I like sharing with my kids, but oh well.
After the movie, our Rabbi led a discussion with the kids about what they learned from the movie. They talk about it being more important to love your family than the party. They talk about how you can get really over the top with the party and that’s not right. You don’t need to have a theme for your Bar/Bat Mitzvah party. Yadda yadda.
Then one of Laini’s 11 year-old classmates earnestly and sincerely pipes up with the line of the night…
“I learned I should wear pants with pockets.”
Just what is taking up so much space?
Posted on October 28, 2007
Filed Under Macintosh | Leave a Comment
As I’ve posted, I’ve always been running tight on disk space on this MacBook Pro. Even after going through my Documents folder and using AppZapper on applications I no longer want (it gets all the stray bits, as well as the application itself), I only have 21 GB available on a 120 GB drive. I know it’s probably silly, but I like having at least 20% of a drive free. Preferably more. This evening, I downloaded DiskInventoryX to try and figure out where everything is.
The results:
- Assorted work/personal documents of varying kind: 12.6 GB C3-related stuff is the majority of it. Not entirely negotiable to archive off-disk. I find I still have to pull up really old documents from time to time. We’re starting to use Box and Basecamp for a lot of our work product, so that helps.
- Parallels Virtual Machine: 11.7 GB. When I was using Windows XP more, I increased the disk to accommodate my ever-expanding Outlook files. Now that I only use Windows XP for IE-only websites, Quicken, QuickBooks and some Salesforce utilities, I can go back to the default 8 GB size. But that would mean starting a fresh VM and reinstalling everything. Just haven’t been in the mood.
- iTunes Library: 11.5 GB. I winced at the thought of one of those new super-capacity iPods. Sounds great, but where would I store the data locally? I have an external Firewire drive, and of course I could move my iTunes database off to there. But it’s a standard external drive which means it doesn’t travel with me. I’ve hesitated to move anything to it that I may want to get to when I’m not home. I’m seriously considering getting a portable drive that I can keep in my bag and keep plugged in at all times. Then I can move data like this off to it. But are those drives reliable for day-to-day use? Eric has toasted a couple.
- iPhoto Library: 7.7 GB. Same issue as above. Fine to keep it external when I’m home, but it would be completely inaccessible otherwise. This may be a worthy concession, since I don’t access old photos nearly as often as I sync my iPod.
After that, the next largest folder takes just 286 MB and isn’t worth worrying about, and it goes down from there.
My largest disk-space hogs total just 43.5 GB. My Applications folder takes 8.1 GB. 51.6 GB accounted for. That means that assorted small files that would take years to clean up effectively are filling 35.5 GB of space. I’m thinking I will save a few GB by dumping GarageBand, iMovie and iDVD off to the external. I never use those applications and I can see the sample files and themes are taking up space.
Lesson learned: No matter what, buy a notebook computer with the largest internal disk capacity you can get. I could have gotten a 160 GB drive. I’m kicking myself now that I didn’t. RAM is easy to upgrade/add on. Capacity isn’t. Upgrading an internal drive on a MacBook Pro is not trivial.
Letting the cat nap some more
Posted on October 27, 2007
Filed Under Macintosh | 3 Comments
I never planned to upgrade to OS X 10.5 (Leopard) this weekend. Eric is out of town, and I have too much going on.
I was thinking about swinging by the Marlton, NJ Apple Store early next week and picking it up. I changed my mind. I’m going to sit this one out for a while.
Why? Some thoughts:
- As with any major OS upgrade, there are bugs and gotchas. For this one, there are a bunch of reports of Blue Screens of Death. Unlike the Windows version of the dreaded problem, it’s literally just a blue screen after startup. The login window never loads. Chances are I won’t have that problem, but if I do I can’t afford the downtime in troubleshooting. Let’s wait until folks definitively target what’s causing the problem first.
- If it ain’t broke…my MBP has been quite stable lately. After I repaired permissions from the Tiger install DVD, I haven’t had anything to complain about. I’d like to keep it that way for a while.
- I just got a Sprint EV-DO USB modem. It works great. Does it work with Leopard? I have no idea and I’m not holding my breath for Sprint or Sierra to say anything on the subject. Let someone else find out first.
- While Adobe was nice enough to put out a PDF regarding Leopard support in their products, they didn’t go into detail as to why Acrobat 8 Professional requires a patch:
Requires update to 8.1.2 for full compatibility. Expected to be available in English, French, German, and Japanese in late January 2008.
Additional languages expected shortly thereafter.What does “full compatibility” mean? Is it some obscure feature or something mission-critical that doesn’t work? Let someone else find out first.
- There are over 300 new features in Leopard, and that’s great. But are there any that will make a tremendous difference in how I work? No, not so much. I already backup my drive religiously so Time Machine is not that tempting. An operating system is just the foundation. The magic comes in the applications. With Tiger, I waited until enough truly useful tools were coming out that required 10.4 to make the upgrade hassle worth my while. CoverFlow in the Finder, while fabulous, is not reason enough. And can I say it? I don’t love the Stacks feature in the Finder. One of the first things I’ll be doing when I eventually upgrade will be switching the grid view to be the default.
- Leopard’s best features are the ones that require your family/colleagues to also be running Leopard. The kids’ Mac Mini is 2.5 years old and Eric’s MacBook is 2 years old. They’ll run Leopard, but not great. So that rules out a lot of the sharing and parental control features that are improved over Tiger.
- I have a 120 GB drive. At one point recently, I had only 8 or 9 GB free. After careful pruning, I managed to get up to 21 GB free. More than enough for Leopard, however I’m constantly pushing older files off to external drives to get more breathing room. I’ve read reports that Leopard grabs ~3 GB of space more than Tiger did when all is said and done. Do I want to give up that space without a really clear reason other than it being the “new shiny?”
- The final nail in the coffin? I won’t be able to sync my Blackberry using MissingSync until a patch is released.
Q: Is Missing Sync compatible with Leopard?
A: Not yet. We’ve been testing on pre-release versions of Leopard and have determined that updates will be required for Leopard compatibility. We are well underway in making the required changes to support Leopard and expect to post free updates to the most current versions of The Missing Sync for Palm OS™, The Missing Sync for Windows Mobile™, The Missing Sync for Blackberry™ and The Missing Sync for PSP within 90 days of Leopard’s commercial release.* We recommend that The Missing Sync not be used with Leopard, pending the official release of these planned updates.I only sync contacts and notes with the Blackberry, but still, it would be a huge hassle to have to maintain my address book on the Blackberry separately.
Finally…I’d like to ask a favor of my fellow bloggers…STOP COMPARING LEOPARD TO VISTA AS A LEOPARD SELLING POINT. That means you, too, Apple. It’s like trying to convince someone to move to New York City because the bagels are better. Yes, that may be true. But there are one or two other factors that go into a decision to pack up your entire life and move to a new city.
I’ve switched. Both ways. It isn’t easy and it shouldn’t be done simply because there’s a new bell or whistle that caught your eye. Anyone who runs out to buy a Mac instead of a Windows PC just because Time Machine seems like a nifty way to backup is going to be sorry in the long run. You have to think about your current licenses, including fonts and utilities. You have to think about your peripherals. You have to think about your colleagues and work processes. There are many, many good reasons to switch to a Macintosh-based workflow over a Windows-based one (or visa versa!). The fact that Apple just came out with an operating system upgrade isn’t one of them.
Making a very mobile life work
Posted on October 26, 2007
Filed Under Internet & Technology, Kids, Life, Macintosh, mobility | 2 Comments
Lately, it’s been more like Momneverathome.
I got back from the Convio Summit last Saturday at 12:30 am. Eric left for Melbourne, Australia at 12 noon that day. He’ll be back on November 3rd, then he leaves for Boston on November 5th. Back on November 9th. He leaves for Zurich on November 10th, returning on November 21st. Then Boston again December 3rd-7th.
It sucks.
Not anything he can control. Unemployment sucks more, so we deal.
I have such admiration for single parents who don’t have an end date in sight. I don’t know how they do it.
As I may have mentioned before, Laini is going to a private school that is 40 miles away and we don’t have transportation. So with Eric on the road, I set out with her every morning at 8 am for the hour-long drive to school. Instead of making the long trip back after dropping her off, I bring my MacBook Pro with me and stay in the area near her school to work. I head home with her at 2:45 pm, pick up Emily at an afterschool program and do the afternoon run around with the kids including homework. I’m averaging around 3-3.5 hours a day behind the wheel.
There are a lot of places with wifi within 10 miles of the school. We signed up for a T-Mobile Hotspot account so we have a few Starbucks and Borders Books to choose from. There’s also a Panera Bread, McDonalds and even a Dunkin’ Donuts offering wifi at various fees (or free). Unfortunately, after a few weeks of doing this I’m going out of my mind. Some folks love being around strangers and find themselves more productive with the buzz of conversation and latte machines. I am not one of those people. I can do semi-mindless tasks in these places. And surfing is certainly comfortable enough. But blogging? Editing? Making/receiving important phone calls? Forget it. It’s just not working. Literally.
I need to be able to find a quiet place to work in the area without worrying about whether wifi is available. So this afternoon I stopped by a Sprint store and picked up a Sierra Wireless AirCard 595U. It’s a USB EVDO modem, $79 after discounts and rebates. Service is $60/month. Sprint coverage is excellent around here and it works very well. I still have to find that quiet corner with a power outlet, but at least now I don’t have to worry about it being a hotspot, too. My Mom suggested looking at fancy department store bathrooms. They usually have “ladies’ lounges” where women can hang out for hours. If there’s a power outlet, it may be worth a shot.
I’m giving Jott a try. I’m coming up with a lot of ideas and I’m remembering tasks while I’m driving, with no possible way of writing them down. With Jott, you call a number and record your thought, and the service translates it to text and emails it to you (or to someone else if they’re in your Jott contact list). Of course, I have a Bluetooth headset for my Blackberry which has an excellent voice dialing application. “Call Jott” and my hands never leave the steering wheel (except to push the button on my ear) and my eyes never leave the road. Safety first.
I use Toodledo as my task manager. Toodledo supports email->task using a special email address. I configured Jott with my Toodledo email address, and now I can call in tasks and they appear in my task list. Or, if you Jott to “Reminder” and give the date/time, Jott will nag you at the appropriate time. I wonder if there’s a way to email a calendar entry to Google Calendar or otherwise Jott it in? I’ll have to look in to that.
It still sucks, but I’m doing everything I can to make this ridiculous situation bearable.
