April 09 Easy Hackintosh Components Shopping List
For the second time this year, my iMac HD died. OK, to be fair this time it’s an external drive.
Anyway, I really like and have always like Apple’s software but their hardware seems to be…well, let’s just say that it doesn’t strike me as sturdy.
So, I wandered by the local Fry’s store yesterday and took a few notes. Yes, I know the spreadsheet below is missing keyboard, mouse, audio…that’s because these things are negligible, price-wise.
The components I selected to build this spreadsheet are well known for working easily with Leopard. In fact, if you use these components you should be able to load a vanilla kernel and accept all Apple updates.
Four columns: absolute cheapest, quite expensive, and two reasonable configurations. Note that you can lower these total prices quite a lot if you already have a monitor.
Disclaimer: Not that I would encourage you to build your own Hackintosh. It would make baby Apple cry.
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Chris’ Weekly High-Protein Tweets
If you are drowning in Twitter updates or simply missed a few of my Tweets, here is a list of what I consider worth reading this week.
By that, I mean that less interesting, personal and topical tweets are not in this list. This list will be published every week, save the occasional attack of laziness.
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Twitterified v1.3 is out: bug fixes, usability improvements, Present.ly support
Well, the title pretty much says it all: v1.3 is out and it’s an evolutionary release.
- Bug fixes - lots of ‘em
- Usability improvements, such as text overflow indicator
- Support for the awesome Present.ly Twitter-compatible protocol
Get it while it’s hot!
(If you are confused as to where to get it, all you need is to go to http://twitterified.com, log in and follow this link)
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SXSW ‘09 Microsoft Accelerator Tally
Winners:
ribbit Innovative Technology
tubemogul Video
weardrobe Social Network
popcuts Music
High hopes:
moontoast Very nice concept for remote learning.
zoomorama Very useful technology.
klout Great concept but there are concerns over cost.
Neutral:
spawn labs
echodio Impressive technology but confusion regarding their business model.
gigotron Cool app but suffers competition from turn2live
mugasha
Lukewarm:
otherinbox Another inbox? Why? Does it work with Microsoft products? Are they going to sell my data?
cubeless What makes you different from all the other players in this market?
piryx Apparently the founder was a bit too confrontational for the judges’ taste.
motionnotes Both judges and audience were, it seems, wondering, what their differentiators are.
hourville Successively compared to linkedin, craig’s list, guru.com… Business model not clearly articulated. Obviously these short sessions (2mn + 10mn) are killers.
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Twitterified Client v1.3 Almost Ready
I should be able to release this new client tomorrow or day after tomorrow.
I am currently battling a couple bugs with beta support for Present.ly:
- Time zone discrepancy: all posts appear as seven hours behind
- Avatars are too big!
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Good Panel Transcripts From SXSW ‘09 - Sunday 15
For all the poor saps who are not able to attend SXSW this year ( including me this time, no more smug scoffing at all the “non-SXSW jealous masses” ) here is a list I compiled of people who were nice enough to put online transcripts of the panels they’ve attended so far.
In some cases they may have blogged about other panels but I only listed the ones that had enough “meat” and were actually legible.
Mish’s Playground
Michelle Tampoya is a marketer from Canada, so you know what panels to expect:
- Building your brand with Web 2.0 tools
- Twitter for Marketers
- Lessons in Community Management
- The Future of Social Networks
- Profit by Mobilizing your Online Community
- Emerging Trends of Mobile Technology
- Interactive Beyond the Screen
- Social Engineering
- The ecosystem of news
- UGC State of the Union
Daniel Slaughter
Daniel is the author of the Switch Board PHP Framework and is interested in, well, a bit of everything:
- Everything You Know About Web Design is Wrong
- Accessible AJAX
- Building a Bridge with Barcodes - The QR Code Invasion
- From Freelance to Agency: Start Small, Stay Small
- So, you want to be a Game Developer?
- Change (v2)
- Even Faster Web Sites
- Oooh, That’s Clever! (Unnatural Experiments in Web Design)
- CSS3: What’s Now, What’s New and What’s Not?
http://almostdaniel.com/
Apparently this Daniel is not quite as “Daniely” as Daniel Slaughter, according to his blog title. He works in IT with web services and it shows:
- CSS3: What’s Now, What’s New and What’s Not?
- Core Conversation: should i build my startup on ruby on rails?
- Designing our way through web forms
- Journey to the center of design
- Version Control: no more save as…
- Microformats: a quiet revolution
- Try Making Yourself More Interesting
- Oooh, That’s Clever! (Unnatural Experiments in Web Design)
- Try Making Yourself More Interesting
- Video Blogging: Turning Wine into Gold
- From Flickr and Beyond: Lessons in Community Management
- The Future of Social Networks
- My Boss Doesn’t Get it: Championing Social Media to “the Man”
Rebecca Caroe
Rebecca is a marketing consultant specializing in new business development.
- Nerd network - building an online network in B2B
- Branded Entertainment: Brands Driving Content (casual chat)
- Is spec work evil?
- Marketing Meets New Media: Building Your Audience Online
- Are PR Agencies a Dying Breed?
- When Common Sense is a Startling Revelation
Alex de Carvalho
Alex is the co-founder of StartPR, an online service for reputation management. No surprise in his choice of panels.
- Everything You Know About Web Design is Wrong
- The ecosystem of news
- Try Making Yourself More Interesting
- Building Your Brand with Web 2.0 Tools
Jeffrey Barke
Jeffrey studied Geographic Information Systems and is now an information architect.
- Notes from “How Social Networks Are Killing the Revolution”
- CSS3: What’s Now, What’s New and What’s Not?
- “Kick-Ass Mash-Ups with Punk Rock APIs”
- Neocartography panel
Katie Laird
Katie is a web marketer and an avid social networker.
- Are PR agencies dead and done?
- Wisdom. Crowds. Design. Derek Powazek.
- Crafting your Blogging voice (with obsession) at SXSWi 2009
Just Kate
These marketing people seem to be the ones the most prone to sharing the knowledge!
- Building your brand with Web 2.0 tools
- From Freelance to Agency: Start Small, Stay Small
- Interactive Beyond the Screen
- When Common Sense is a Startling Revelation
Chat Clussman
A real Austin native. And yet I am oddly fascinated by the fact that Chat lived for a while in the Bahamas.
- UX Team of One Panel (Unedited Notes from Presentation)
Russ Somers
Are you surprised to learn that Russ is a marketer?
- When Common Sense is a Startling Revelation
Ted Coe
Not Jim. Gotta love the web :/
- Encouraging Creativity at SXSW
- Zoe Margolis - Blogging How not to get Fucked
- Social Media Marketing
- Beyond the Screen
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PHP classes and Javascript: S2ajax says “hi()”
Sajax is a ‘managed’ AJAX framework that was created by the fine folks at Modern Method a few years ago.
What’s so great about it is the seamless communication between your back-end and the web page itself: you write your PHP code, tell Sajax which functions to export and they are now accessible from Javascript.
For instance — from the ‘example_types.php’ file:
function return_string() { return "Name: Tom / Age: 26"; } |
The corresponding Javascript call would be:
<button onclick="x_return_string(display_result);">Return as string</button> |
OK so this is a pretty great package, no doubt.
Unfortunately there are exactly three things that bother me here:
- The choice to prefix all remote calls with ‘x_’ which feels less natural, even though it is a convenient way to avoid namespace collisions.
- More importantly, Sajax does not support PHP classes and I am not comfortable working with strictly procedural code. After all, object-oriented PHP has been around for quite some time now.
- Of course, it would seem that the last Sajax release happened sometime in 2006, which would explain #2
Thus, S2ajax was born.
If supports classes and methods, does not require prefixing and the export() calls are now more powerful.
The syntax is still very straightforward and relies on clean Javascript code.
And the license, obviously, is still the very open BSD.
Additionally, this S2ajax can be easily integrated with PHP 5’s magic class and methods loading. For instance, it works with my own PHP framework.
As usual, all this goodness is available at github.com!
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Wordpress Toolbar Plugin and Wordpress Prefixes: A Fix
First of all, that’s an awesome plugin that will allow your visitors to have a look at external links while retaining the ability to comment locally on your blog. Get it!
Unfortunately, if you have modified your Wordpress database prefix, for instance because you are using Wordpress MU or the Virtual Module, the toolbar will fail to display.
Here is my very modest fix that will make it work.
1. Open wordpress-toolbar/toolbar.php
2. Find, near the top of the file:
$resultset = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM wp_options where option_name in ('wordpress_toolbar_social','wordpress_toolbar_excludedomains','wordpress_toolbar_skin','wordpress_toolbar_custom')"); |
Replace with:
$resultset = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM {$wpdb->options} where option_name in ('wordpress_toolbar_social','wordpress_toolbar_excludedomains','wordpress_toolbar_skin','wordpress_toolbar_custom')"); |
3. That’s it!
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Fixing permissions after a Wordpress prefix change
Let’s say that you renamed your Wordpress tables.
There may be several reasons for this. For instance, you installed Virtual Multiblog to support more than one blog with the same setup.
And now, you are facing the dreaded “You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page”
What to do, what to do?
Turns out, after some research, I found out that there is a proper procedure for us lazy webmasters:
1. Download the force-upgrade script and run it. It’s a fairly old script but since it all it does is invoke Wordpress’ upgrade mechanism, it still works very well with 2.7. I know, it’s not an upgrade! But you can also run the script to right some wrongs…
2. Using your favourite SQL editor, edit the “usermedata” table. Let’s say that your old table prefix was ‘wp_’ and your new prefix is ‘wp_new_’ you would type this simple SQL command to make sure that your first user is still admin:
update wp_new_usermeta set meta_value='a:1:{s:13:"administrator";b:1;}' where meta_key='wp_new_capabilities' and user_id=1; |
You’re all set.
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Chris’ Weekly High-Protein Tweets
If you are drowning in Twitter updates or simply missed a few of my Tweets, here is a list of what I consider worth reading this week.
By that, I mean that less interesting, personal and topical tweets are not in this list. This list will be published every week, save the occasional attack of laziness.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
