Me and my Mac

When was the last time you got a thank you message from a big game developer, in writing!?

I certainly can’t remember. With the upcoming moving i’m going through my stuff and decided to throw out a lot of crap and old things and came across this flyer included in the Unreal box.

Saying:

If you’re a hardcore gamer, please read this.

When we started creating Unreal almost 4 years ago, our goal was to make the best 3D action game of all time. At long last, we feel we have done just that. To those people that have been following unreal’s development and anticipating its completion as eagerly as ourselves, we truly thank you. Your interest, encouragement and enthusiasm have kept us going through the hundreds of thousands of hours we’ve spend working on this game. We are now very proud to say “it’s done.” Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say “it’s begun.”

With Unreal, we have made our best attempt to push 3D action gaming to new limits. To this end, we have added many features and multi-player game types for the hardcore gamer, like yourself. For example, fully configurable deathmatch, team-play, and co-op play modes are all easily launchable from Uneal’s menu. However, we recognize that we are not perfect, and (like most games) a few bugs may have slipped through into the initial release of Unreal. Additionally, like most new software products, Unreal has some evolving to do, especially since we intend to continually enhance and tweak it to give you a game for the millennium. The key area we plan to work on is, of course, network play. We expect to learn a lot from your feedback and will make improvements accordingly. Please post any and all comments on the Epicgames messageboard at: http://www.epicgames.com

How cool and nice is that We all know Unreal (the real one, not Unreal Tournament), if you don’t know it, you’ve been missing out on one of the greatest games ever made. Both in single player AND multiplayer.

Enable iPhone Tethering with iTunes 8.2 final

If you’re like me and occasionally want internet on your laptop while travelling. You might want to enable tethering on your iPhone if your carrier does not allow this. T-Mobile Netherlands does not explicitly forbid it but does not tell us how or even enables you to. So we need to upload a custom carrier settings file which enables the tethering option.

I used this application* (Mac only). But everywhere i looked on sites like Gizmodo they require you to downgrade your iTunes to some pre-release.

I think it’s bullshit and it’s easy to work around to get ALL iTunes 8.2 versions to accept the carrier file.
Since all update files are IPCC files apple could not just deny that file from being loaded. If they did, the iPhone 3.0 software or any future updates cannot be installed anymore.

So what did they do? They disabled loading IPCC files from the “iPhone Carrier Support” folder. So all you have to do it move your carrier settings file (TMobile_nl.ipcc for example) outside that folder. I put it on my desktop.

Then it’s easy, start iTunes, hook up your phone. Press and hold ALT/Option and click “Check for updates” in the iPhone screen in iTunes. Then release the ALT key ofcoure and browse to your IPCC file. ANd presto. within seconds you can enable Tethering.

This is done in Settings > General > Network. Your mac should tell you there is a new network device. Allow this to be added and when you enable the tethering slider in your phone this new network device will become active and start streaming internet to your laptop.

* I did not make this app, i do not take credit for this app. I am not responsible for ANY negative results of ANY kind that might happen to you, your computer or iPhone.

Events 2.0

A big update for Events. With some important changes!

First, the old way of adding events lists to your posts and pages is no longer supported. For a few versions the new method has been:

[events_show]

This is the way forward. Refer to the manual on how to use the new method!

2nd, Finally i have figured out a way to add recurring events again. It’s actually quite simple if you think of it. You create one event and among the settings is an option to repeat the event ever day or week, etc. Also there is an option to repeat it up to 20 times. Combining the 2 gives you a solid and simple recurring option. Try it out!

Changelog:
[change] The old shortcodes are no longer supported. Refer to the manual!
!! UPDATE THE WAY YOU ADD EVENTS TO YOUR POSTS/PAGES !!
[change] Moved contents of the stylesheet into the function where it’s used
[fix] Credits links and descriptions
[new] my RSS feed right into your dashboard
[fix] Updated remove-old-events query
[new] Editing of category names
[update] Cleaned up Widget code, renamed functions more logically
[fix] Minor background color glitch in the adding form
[update] Removed last traces of $plugin_tracker of of the Data Project i attempted earlier this year
[update] Fixed the uninstaller dashboard in Settings to match the rest
[update] Updated the uninstaller to correctly remove and deactivate Events
[new] Simple repeating algorithm for events

More information:
http://meandmymac.net/plugins/events/

Download:
http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wp-events.2.0.zip

AdRotate 2.4.4

A small update to AdRotate today. Minor tweaks and fixes here and there. And the “how” column in the management page got a makeover.

Changelog:
[fix] Query for dashboard widget is now working fine.
[update] RSS feed is now compatible with my other plugins.
[fix] Counting accuracies when editing banners
[fix] Start and End dates for managing banners
[change] Column “how” moved on dashboard management
[change] Column “how” now has icons instead of text

More information:
http://meandmymac.net/plugins/adrotate/

Download:
http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/adrotate.2.4.3.zip

The new MacBook Pro

Well, i’ve had it for a few days now… But i finally got it all working.
Last week i bought the latest and greatest MacBook Pro, the 13″ 2.53Ghz model. If anyone wants my Early 2008 laptop… Be sure to check with me for details!

Anyway, i’d expected things to go smoothly by just moving the contents from my earlier laptop to this one and be on my way. Nothing was less true . Apparently there are some changes in the hardware that prevent the system from working with “older” installs even if they have all updates and latest patches.

After the first day i re-installed the system doing an Archive and Install. But that didn’t help much. It only resulted in a broken System Preferences and my user password being reset to something unknown. They keychain somehow remained intact… Odd.

Then i reinstalled it cleanly and used Migration Assistant. Do it the Apple way… But that broke most preference panes again and again things were not working properly. Sluggish, unresponsive trackpad, forced verbose mode by starting the computer. And so on…

I found that out after a day or 2… I was so fed up with things by then i just erased everything. Did a clean install and moved a few files, folders and preference files over from the other computer manually. So much for ease of use of copying data and using Migration assistant.

It’s all good now! Finally, and i love the new features.

The trackpad is amazing, it actually works is responsive and magically seems to know when and when not to do things. I can control the entire computer much more easily now. Yay!

The new Video card.. It works. Not much to say there. But the screen… The colors are brilliant. I was a bit sceptic about Apple claiming the colors would be more vivid and alive. But it’s true. There is a noticeable difference between the earlier laptops and the iMac. Were it seems the colors are more dull or i don’t really know how to describe it. Less vivid!

The keyboard takes a bit of getting used to… But after an hour of usage it’s all good. Good pushy keys. Not to soft like many other keyboard. You feel you have to actually press a key, which i like a lot.

And well overall, it’s a fine laptop. Now to save up for a Solid State Drive…