I had some trouble getting Rekall to work with my MySQL server, but in the end I succeeded. Here’s what I needed:

• MySQL binaries (I’m using 4.1.14-max)
• MySQL source code
• Rekall-2.3.4 and Qt-3.3.4-mini binaries from ATG
• MacPython 2.4.1
• Apple Developer Tools (from your Tiger Install Disk)

The short road installing just the binaries lead to an error:

dlcompat: Library not loaded:
/usr/local/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient.14.dylib

The reason is that the original MySQL binaries are built with the --disable-shared flag and contain only the static libraries instead of the dynamic ones.

Many years after most users I have jumped on the iCal train too. I’ve dumped my very old Palm and started using iCal as my main calendar.

But iCal itself is not good enough:

• it doesn’t know how to calculate Easter. For this I have subscribed (free!) to project24, which is very nice for Swiss holidays (for German and Austrian ones too).
• it doesn’t show the week number. project24 comes to the rescue again.
• I want to print/export real lists, not just empty boxes with a date. Some calenders have less than one event per week and I wanted a list with all events. All iCal does is filling pages with empty days and once in a while a day with an event. Clay Spinuzzi mentions the Ruby iCal module, which did the trick for me.

What I haven’t got working yet: iSync limits the calendar period that is copied to my mobile to 8 weeks and I haven’t found any hidden plist entry or any other hack to fix that.

I just installed Postfix Enabler to be able to send my emails through a SMTP server on my own powerbook. I didn’t want the hassle to configure the postfix server myself, so I went for a software doing it the Macintosh way.

The default configuration was a little too open for my taste. I want others (that is me on the PC nearby) to use the postfix server only if they know a password. Using the Postfix Enabler configuration tab to setup password authentication still lets anybody on the same subnet send mail without a password.

Longtime Apple developers probably know this intuitively, but I needed some time to figure it out: When CVS-ing files with a resource fork, you must not use the /usr/bin/cvs that ships with OS X!

Because Apple used to separate data and metadata, most files in the pre OS X era had a data fork and a resource fork, but for the user this was transparent; the user just manipulated one file. Tools without this “Classic” background know nothing of the resource fork. Files without data fork appear in the Terminal to have 0 bytes.

It is exactly two years that I ordered my first Mac, a 12 inch Powerbook. It’s compactness and completeness (almost everything built-in without protruding parts, Bluetooth and fast WLAN, except the second and third mouse key) make it still the right choice. And with OS X it has a decent operating system that lets you use the mouse if you want to, but the power of the command line is integrated in a better way than with Windows and Cygwin.

After four years I had again a PC assembled, but this time as a gaming PC for K (and for the rest of the family, too ;) ).

At work we have a PC department that assembled the PC according to my wishes. The installation of the OS I like to do myself; I chose Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) over XP Pro, because it’s less expensive but has almost all features of XP Pro. The Media Center itself I don’t need; the PC hasn’t got a TV card.

A friend’s PC had lost its ability to dual boot (Windows 2000 for work and Windows 98 for games). I had installed BootMagic to switch operating systems some years ago and it worked fine until it was broken this month during some harddisk cleanup.

I completed the cleanup of the Win98 partition with a new installation. After installing PartitionMagic and BootMagic again, Bootmagic would still not work, and the Windows 2000 installation (which I didn’t touch) booted, but after a successful log on I was always logged out immediately.