The Adventures of Systems Boy!
I just got a new (well, actually it's used, but it's new to me) 6x8 Wacom Intuos3 tablet. A friend of mine had one, sans pen, that he was willing to unload for a pittance. Mind you, I'm moving up from a four year old Graphire 4x5, but so far — and I've barely even used it — I love the damn thing. In fact, I'm gonna go make out with it right now.
Mmmm... Tongue...
I organize my mail in Mail.app in folders named for the sender. So all email sent to me by Jim, for instance, goes in the "Jim" folder, and all email sent to me by Gina goes to my "Gina" folder. Sometimes, however, I want to view a thread that involved both Gina and Jim, but now, since they've been filed away in separate folders, the thread is broken. Or so it would seem. Actually, if I command-click the Gina and Jim folders, they are presented as one, and as long as "Organize by Thread" is ticked, I can view my Gina/Jim thread. A bonus: if I command-click my sent folder, my responses are included in the thread as well.
Today I had a computer with a major problem. The machine would boot and then hang just before the login window normally appears, sitting with a near-full progress bar indefinitely. Fortunately, I was able to ssh in to the machine and check its system log, which told me that loginwindow.app was crashing.
From /var/log/system.log:
Dec 14 16:05:45 ComputerOne crashdump[450]: loginwindow crashedDec 14 16:05:45 ComputerOne crashdump[450]: crash report written to: /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/loginwindow.crash.logDec 14 16:05:46 ComputerOne launchd: /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow port /dev/console exited abnormally: Trace/BPT trapDec 14 16:05:46 ComputerOne launchd: getty repeating too quickly on port /dev/console, sleepingReading this led me to check the crash log of loginwindow.app, which showed the below.
From /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/loginwindow.crash.log:
Library not loaded: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DisplayServices.framework/Versions/A/DisplayServicesReferenced from: /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindowReason: no suitable image found. Did find:/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DisplayServices.framework/Versions/A/DisplayServices: unknown file type, first eight bytes: 0x64 0x73 0x74 0x37 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x01"Hmmm..." methoughts, "Sounds like there's a corrupt file in the DisplayServices.framework."
Indeed.
So, using the magic of scp, I copied the DisplayServices.framework from another, working machine, and voilà! The machine was able to proceed to the login window without delay. It's working fine now.
I've noticed when I log in to my computer at work first thing in the morning, it's very slow the first time. The machine does not go to sleep, spin down hard disks nor shutdown, so it's not an Energy Saver issue. After the first, slow login, subsequent logins are normal and speedy. But what's weirdest of all is that this does not occur on my home system, which is actually a slightly slower machine. I figure it's probably got something to do with my home account settings, or network settings, but I'll be damned if I can figure out the difference. And still, why would login times change after a long idle period. It just doesn't make sense. All I can think is maybe it's stale cache being flushed. Either way, it's a little weird and a slightly annoying way to start the day.
Theories? Anyone?
This one actually got printed on MacOSXHints. The Mac has always had an easy way to trace back to the original file of an alias. Select the alias in the Finder and choose 'Show Original' from the File menu (or just hit Command-R), and the Finder will highlight the original file. What I did not realize until recently is that this functionality also extends to multiple files.
So, if you have aliases to several files, say, in a Burn Folder, and you click 'Show Original,' the Finder will highlight all the original files. If the original files are in the same folder, they will all be highlighted in one window. If they reside in different folders, each of these folders will open in a new window with the original items highlighted. This saves a lot of time and brainpower if you want to label — or perform any action — on multiple files in your Burn Folder, or any other folder full of aliases.
Maybe this was obvious to most people, but it was certainly a pleasant surprise to me.