Technocrank

Well, this is weird.  A recent bug in the OSX 10.5 Unit Convertor Dashboard Widget which some believe was introduced by the Safari 4 beta has caused millions of dollars to go missing.  Okay, not really.  Just me thinking I was losing my mind when trying to convert currencies.

The fix has been documented on Mac OSX Hints.

Well, looks like I can retire WebKit for a little while.  The Safari developers have released a beta of version 4.  I had a bit of trouble starting it at first (Mac OSX 10.5.6).  It was the Glims plugin which was crashing it.  I removed it from /Library/Application Support and Safari started up nicely.

Update: Turns out Google Gears doesn’t work in this Safari 4 beta.

Update 2: The Glims developers have release a new version which doesn’t crash Safari, but is missing a chunk of functionality.

Update 3: Safari, even in the development WebKit nightlies exhibited an irritating “bug” with the WordPress 2.7 administrative interface.  It would cause a modal overlay dialog to hang.  The dialog appears when editing a post with the visual editor (e.g. add a link, upload images, etc.).  This is still quite present in 4 beta.

Update 4: (June 11, 2009) The bug mentioned in Update 3 with the modal dialog has been fixed in Safari 4.

I was having problems transferring files from one external USB drive to another. They were both attached via a powered USB hub. I tried running TechTool Pro on the drive I suspected with having a problem but it kept hanging.

The system.log showed this whenever it happened:

AppleUSBEHCI[0x6dfc000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfa, timing out! 

I finally switched cables and removed it from the hub and plugged it directly into the computer. Seems to work fine now…but I should check it with the old cable again…

I have a little Folder Action set up on a “dropbox” type folder that automatically adds a given file (usually MP3s) to my iTunes library.  I created a dumb-as-bricks Automator workflow and saved it as a plug-in of type Folder Action.  Worked flawlessly in 10.4.

With OSX 10.5, for some reason it runs the action but doesn’t actually execute it properly.  I found this little article which provides a workaround but doesn’t actually fix anything.  You have to edit the AppleScript file from something like this:
[sourcecode language=’plain’]on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
tell application “Macintosh HD:Users:MyUserName:Library:Workflows:Applications:Folder Actions:Name Of My Workflow.app”
open added_items
end tell
end adding folder items to[/sourcecode]
to this:
[sourcecode language=’plain’]on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
tell application “Finder”
open added_items using alias “Macintosh HD:Users:MyUserName:Library:Workflows:Applications:Folder Actions:Name Of My Workflow.app”
end tell
end adding folder items to[/sourcecode]
…essentially getting Finder to do what you’ve already done.