Computers & Tech posts page 14

Backing up quicken files via rsync evidently doesn’t work: the resource forks are destroyed, which the files “need”. Files saved in this way will just give an error message when opened in Quicken, “Unable to open file.” However, the data is not lost at all. The data file is actually a package. If you show package contents, you will get to the actual data file (/Data\ File/Contents/Data\ File). To recover this data, use vim or some other text editor that can handle the data properly. TextEdit or many other similar programs won’t work. You need to get the Contents/Data File from a working data file, perhaps a newly created one. Yank all the data from the file with your data in it: there are a lot of lines, so ‘500dd’ or something like that will get them all, or simply using the graphical version to select all. Then open the working file and replace all with the yanked lines. This worked great for me.

After my recent hard drive crash, I had to use whatever I had backed up. Quicken wise, I had backed up about 15 days before the crash using rsync. I also had an old file from nearly a year ago. Unfortunately, because of my saving methods, the data in both seemed to be from more than a year and a half ago. I soon discovered that the recent data file had been rsynced to the inside of the contents of the data file I had intented it to replace. This was the actual recent data file. Unfortunately it would not work. I searched the web for solutions, but no one seemed to have one. I did get information that the resources were removed by rsync, however. I decided to figure out how to put the new data into a data file that worked. Simply copying via the finder the Contents/Data\ File didn’t work. I tried replacing the contents via TextEdit, but that didn’t work either. I tried modifying a single line in the working data file with vim, and that worked. I then tried replacing the whole file contents, and that worked well.

I’m working on getting my computer to boot to a text console at startup instead of GUI. I had done this with previous versions of OS X, but never got around to it since installing Tiger. I really just want to figure out how to do it, but I could save some memory and a little bit of CPU time, and add to the coolity of startup by getting this to work.

In /etc/ttys, near the top, there are two lines that say console followed by some stuff. I commented out the second and uncommented the first. I have the verbose flag set as well (sudo nvram boot-args=”-v”), twice actually, but this doesn’t work once I change the line in ttys. I get the starting mac os x progress bar, which goes on forever instead. If I hit command-V to boot to verbose at startup, I can get to console. I read someone say that the progress bar screen is simply covering up the console, so I will look into disabling it. I don’t want to have to hold down command-V every time I restart, with penalty of having to hard-restart again if I forget.

For some reason, logging into >console doesn’t work in Tiger. I simply get an error message, then have 30 seconds or so to sit and wait till the login window reappears.

I should update this once I figure more out.

[Update:]I renamed /usr/libexec/WaitingForLoginWindow. Now boot goes through verbose startup direct to a console login prompt, which often has some additional startup messages after it. Thus startup is fine now. I got a startaqua script gathered from macosxhints.com that allows me to start up the regular mac interface. See http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030716220410216 for the script and other instructions/discussions relating to this modification. The script must be run by root.

I found a strange and for some reason hard to access feature of excel. Functions such as ‘sumif()’ allow you to sum one column based on the content of itself or another. But some very desirable formulas are too complicated for sumif().

One possibility is multiple condition columns. Typing “=sum(if(a1:a100=’Red’,if(b1:b100=’June’,1,0),0)” should be a good formula to count all flowers that are red and bloom in june in the proper table. It should sum the range the results of the first if, which will be 1 if both ifs are true, or 0 otherwise. But excel doesn’t understand this, and can’t normally handle ranges in non-ranged functions.

Another example, which I discovered this by (something like the above is the example I found that allowed me to figure this out, thanks http://www.mrexcel.com/tip011.shtml ), is to sum the totals of only negative numbers in a column. I wanted to do this for a worksheet I have monitoring the amount of gas I have used from my propane tank. One column has use, which is negative if it was filled. I wanted to sum all fills. Sumif() didn’t work at all, so I tried (based on Mr. Excel’s example) to put “=sum(if(a1:a100<0,a1:a100,0))”, but that didn’t work either.

The solution to allowing Excel to handle ranges in regular functions is simply to hit control-shift-enter after entering them. Suddenly, they work properly. The formula then has curly brackets around it in the formula bar. Every time the formula is changed, you must hit control-shift-enter. If you hit regular enter, it will revert back to a non-functioning function. You must click on the formula in the formula bar to get this to work again.

I don’t know why Excel hides this functionality behind a rather unknown and unusual key combination. The functions are worthless otherwise, so there is no reason to have the non-CSE functionality when entering these functions. They add a great amount of power to the analysis of data, allowing many of the possibilities that otherwise only real databases would allow.

I recently recorded some music through an external USB device called a Powerwave. It allows me to record one stereo track through a 1/8th inch jack or RCA jacks. I used Apple’s Garageband to do the recording. It does have a strange problem of not allowing one to see or edit anything past 33 minutes into a track: you can only listen, and only by starting it from sometime within the first 33 minutes and then fast forwarding to where you want it. But it is much more stable than Audacity, so I felt more confident in using it. However, I used Audacity for some initial testing of the setup. I had it play through the speakers while recording, since the input wasn’t a mic.

When I finished with Garageband, I disconnected the Powerwave, and the input device was changed back to the internal microphone. For some reason, the mic was continuosly monitoring even with all audio applications closed. I went in to Garageband to try to turn it off, by various means, but was unable to. I left it go for nearly a day, and nearly forgot about it, save for an occasional crackling noise I heard when I got home from work, which I at first thought was a mouse. I finally found the solution to the problem. Audacity had left the audio driver or whatever monitoring the input, and after I removed the Powerwave, it was still monitoring (though I had been able to turn it off for some reason from Garageband while using the Powerwave). Switching this off in Audacity preferences wasn’t enough to turn it off: I had to record a track to make the settings take effect.

I say boo. After all these years of touting the advantages of the PowerPC, I’ve really come to prefer them. Some have pointed out that Intel is doing well with mobile processors, but I think the PowerPC is doing well enough: good computing to power consumtion ratio as compared to Pentiums anyway. Via I am more interested in for mobile devices.

For numerous reasons, this is a very odd change for Apple, and their reasons don’t seem to make much sense. There is speculation that Apple is covertly making this change-over to later announce it has been bought by Intel. I wouldn’t have put any thought into it, except for the extreme oddity of the move on Apple’s part. Still seems a little far fetched, but it would certainly explain Apple’s recent decision.