Install OSX on MSI Wind / Advent 4211

You can find plenty of places that tell you how to do this.

- Some talk about getting the Wind / 4211 to boot from the USB/DVD. I had no problem with this. Went into the BIOS by pressing the 'del' key and set the DVD drive to be the first boot device. I used a plain vanilla IDE drive with a USB adapter like this one from Maplin.

- I did have a problem with the first boot routine getting stuck. After selecting the region and then the keyboard it goes to the transfer data / settings "transfer from another mac" screen. I've got nothing to transfer so I select "I dont' want to transfer data at this time", but it gets stuck and after 2 minutes goes back to the select language screen. I solved it by booting into safe mode by holding down the shift key on boot. Then go into the terminal and type:

sudo touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

You should also create a user account and change the administrator password, which is blank at this point.

- The update to 1_Kalyway_UpdCombo10.5.3 seemed to fail. It got stuck at 96%. After 30 minutes I force quit the installer and moved onto the 2_Kalyway_10.5.3_kernel. This installed OK and on reboot I did the 'update -v' as instructed.

The supplied wireless is not supported, so I installed one I got from Ebay - click this link. You have to turn on the wireless by using the hotkey which is Fn+F11. I find 10.5 to be fairly poor with WPA anyway, and the kalyway one is not exception! So if you don't get onto your AP at first go, be patient.

Opening the case is easy. Use a small cross-head screwdriver to undo the screw, then gently prize off the bottom case. I used a wooden lolly pop stick so as not to damage the case. The wireless card is held on with a screw so undo that, take off the aerial connectors and reverse to fit the new one.

The Fn+F11 hotkey also turns the Bluetooth on, but it seems to be a toggle with the wireless ie I don't seem to be abe to have both on together. If this turns out to be a problem, I can use a Belkin USB Bluetooth adapter which is natively supported.

The camera turns on and off using Fn+F6 and is useable in Photo Booth so I guess thats OK.

The screen res and some other 3rd party KEXTS have intermittent results. For example when I boot only sometimes do I get 1024x600. When I do its great. Sometimes I get a cros through the battery, even though it has a battery.

Also I do not seem to be able to get the wired ethernet working. I'll try installing the KEXTs again.

So right now the only thing of note that doesn't work is the wired ethernet.

Uninstall CISCO VPN client OSX

If you have the joy of running the Cisco VPN client on your Mac, you will rejoice the day you can remove it. Actually that could be unfair.

Whatever. There is no uninstaller, so you need to use to following command from the terminal:

sudo /usr/local/bin/vpn_uninstall

You are prompted to remove all profiles and certificates.

If you answer yes, all binaries, startup scripts, certificates, profiles, and any directories that were created during the installation process are removed.

If you answer no, all binaries and startup scripts are removed, but certificates, profiles, and the vpnclient.ini file remain.

Nokia Maps 'waiting for device' 'unable to read all information'

So you've read my adventures with Nokia Map Loader, well it turns out that v2 should be able to load maps from PC Suite when the phone is in PC Suite mode.

Well maybe. If you launch Map Loader and it just sits there saying “waiting for device” then you need to delete a directory on the SD card in the phone.

OK, you say. But check the directory. Its where the maps are. So the advice is delete the maps and download them all over. Grrrrr!

From Nokia forums, posted by Nokia person:

- People having problems with “waiting for device” or “Unable to read all information…”, you could try the following:

1. make sure you have maps 1.2 wk30 or later (or 2.0)
2. connect the device in mass storage mode, it will show up as a drive in windows
3. delete the folder E:\Private\20001f63 (including sub folders)
4. start maps on the device once, it will recreate the folder in a different location
5. connect the device in pc suite mode and start maploader

Yes, great. I'll connect in Mass Storage mode, thank you!

Nikon D70 - reset file numbering

Now that I've got the Nikon D300 (and what a great camera) I'm selling the D70. I've found most of the accessories for it and the deal is done.

But the new owner is not going to want to continue the file numbering from me, they will want to start from zero.

To do this you go to the menu, go down and select the 'spanner' (setup menu) and in there is an option 'File No. Seq.'

You have three options:

- Off which is the default. File numbering is reset to 0001 when a new folder is created, a memory card is formatted or a new memory card is inserted in camera.

- On - file numbering continues from the last number used, even if a new folder is created, memory card formatted, or a new memory card inserted in camera.

If a photograph is taken when the current folder contains photograph numbered 9999, a new folder will be created automatically and file numbering will begin again from 0001.

- Reset - As for On, except file numbering is reset to 0001 with next photograph taken (a new folder will be created if current the folder already contains photographs).

So for most people the best option would be to change to 'On' anyway.

What I will do is to select 'reset' when I hand it over.

Nokia Maps Part III - problems with mapping in France

Following my previous adventures with Nokia Maps involving some basic things like loading maps, and using the advertised bluetooth, I (eventually) got France downloaded to the 2Gb card in my N73, because we were getting the ferry to Calais and then driving to the Bayeux area. To the best of my knowledge Calais is in France.

So what happens to the hi-res maps of France north of Boulogne? They stop thahts what.

When we got off the ferry at Calais at the default zoom there was nothing, so we had to revert to 20th century navigation ie paper maps.

About 30 minutes later I tried again, and this time all is working OK. After investigating it seems the Nokia France map is missing quite a lot of Northern France, and worse at certain zooms levels shows nothing.

Of course I know this whole thing is (mostly) free, but whats the point. And what if you paid the subscrition?

Picasaweb: unlisted does not mean private

There is a misconception that Google's photo service, Picasaweb, has a private option. There is an 'unlisted' option, but no 'private' option. There is a clear difference: the unlisted option required an Authkey to access to album, but if you have this then you get access with no further input required.

If you put the link to an unlisted album with its Authkey on a web site indexed by Google, then your unlisted album becomes findable and accessible.

This has happened quite a bit as you can see by using the search term "http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=picasaweb.google+inurl%3Aauthkey&btnG=Search". You get back 40,000 hits in Safari, and 60,000 in Camino. Curious difference!

You can refine your search by adding, say, "London" (5 hits), or Bankgkok (4).

You can also add your own Picasaweb / Gmail ID to see if any of your own albums are findable.

Gmail now have fulltime https

As reported in the Register, consumer gmail now has an 'always use https'. You can choose to stay opportunistic if you want. The difference is that always on means if you try to load http://mail.google.com after (https) login you'll be re-directed to https://mail.google.com, while with opportunistic means after login you'll go plain http, although you can manually change to https.

Personally I don't see why youldn't want to use fullltime TLS.

Read more here

To use the fulltime https, go into Settings and scroll to the bottom and select "Always use https", save the changes and off you go.