I HATE APPLE

yes, there is!

http://www.apple.com/sg/macosx/features/fastuserswitching/

well, actually, this is more helpful.

http://www.usingmac.com/2008/1/21/leopard-fast-user-switching

oh yes, thank you so much! i was really missing this

why can't you just tell Time Machine to back-up once a day instead of once an hour?

You are not to be trusted with such decisions.

(but you can give this a shot)

The regular backups are incremental, so it's not really so much stress on the computer. If you are doing something where you need all available I/O, you should probably just turn off Time Machine while you are doing it.

I have the oldest possible G5, and I'm always doing super powerful intensive pro computer user things. I'd rather not have to always be turning the thing on and off. Seems like such an obvious option.

Here is something that may help. Put the following in a file called TimeMachineOn.applescript or something like that and set a cron job to run it at midnight or something (e.g., 0 0 * * * osascript /Users/danselzer/Library/Scripts/TimeMachineOn.applescript <-- this in yr crontab). Make a similar script and change "is 0 then" to "is 1 then" and have it run when you get up or whatever.

activate application "System Preferences"
tell application "System Events"

	tell process "System Preferences"

		click menu item "Show All Preferences" of menu 1 of menu bar item "View" of menu bar 1

		click button "Time Machine" of scroll area 1 of window "System Preferences"

		repeat until exists window "Time Machine"

			delay 0.2

		end repeat

		if value of checkbox 2 of window "Time Machine" is 0 then

			click checkbox 2 of window "Time Machine"

		end if

	end tell

end tell
delay 1
tell application "System Preferences" to quit

You have to have GUI scripting turned on for that to work by the way.

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine AutoBackup -bool yes

^ i think this should make it only run manually (from menubar)

That's not really desirable either.

I guess you could flip that on and off with a crontab so it only backs up during the night

oh shiiiit

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/\
com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int SECONDS

http://www.makemacwork.com/command-time-machine.htm

make screenshots from Preview pngs instead of tiffs:

defaults write com.apple.Preview Preview -dict-add PVImageScreenCaptureFileFormat public.png

wtf are you people talking about. I want to be able to open Time Machine prefs and select "daily". End of story. I don't know who CRON is and I don't want to know.

And I thought screenshots defaulted to pngs anyway.

yea, I want that too ;_;

Sorry, Dan. That's not available. If you want additional functionality in that vein, I'm afraid we're going to have to charge you.

Also, the pony you requested is not available for retail purchase.

oh man, speaking of charging for additional functionality...i got an ipod a few years ago and it came with a plug-in charger, a usb cable, and a pair of headphones with pads over the earbuds. it eventually broke (apparently you're not supposed to go running with a small hard drive, it doesn't like being shaken around....) and i bought an ipod nano, and it didn't come with a plug-in charger or pads on the earbuds! how cheap and annoying!

i wish i was l33t enough for the command line :(

okay, i need to change my privileges on my itunes music folder (apparently,though looking at it through the command line I don't know why it doesn't work), but when I do get info on that folder, I have NO lock icon to unlock to change permissions via the GUI. Anyone know why?

Did you expand the arrow next to "sharing and permissions" or are you a mouthbreather?

I did that and it just says "you can only read"

I only breath through my mouth when severely congested.

breathe that is. fuck I cannot type anymore.

Can you sudo chmod/chown the folder, or will it not let you do that, either?

Also, how did you iTunes music folder get into a state where you can't read it? Unless you've done something genius like change your own user ID number, you almost certainly already own and have red/write permission for everything in your home directory. Check with iTunes first, and see if it's still looking for the right directory.

My point being -- ownership and permissions is some mission critical shit -- don't mess with it if you don't absolutely have to. (I have learned this the hard way, through a few particularly daring acts of stunning dumbassery, like deciding I wanted to be the owner of everything on the drive.)

http://www.pang.com.au/2006filmposters/2006/Drama/brick_ver8.jpg

I had permission problems in iTunes when I moved my hd off my airport extreme back to a wired connection to my MacBook. Evidently the hd sharing on airport adds its own ownership, rather than just giving it to you or admin. So I ended up just doing a bunch of chmods for the directories that it took possession of (basically, whatever I'd added to iTunes wirelessly). If there's a better way, that would be great---was reluctant to just do a recursive chmod throughout my whole iTunes directory.

kenan is starting to learn the ol' axiom that it's PEBKAC 9 times out of 10.

If I don't learn it the hard way, I don't learn it at all. :(

Oh btw, thanks for the tips and scripts on the Time Machine cron -- that's immediately useful to me. At the office they're going to use TM to back up to a network drive for all the Macs, and it would be nice to set that up to only happen at midnight or some such.

Question, though -- I know that TM doesn't like smb shares especially much, and I that's what they're going to set up, if I know my Windows-lovin' IT department. I told them that it would be slow, so they're making sure the server and the machines all have gigabit ethernet. Only I'm not sure that's really the problem. I mean... is it? (I guess we'll see.) My idea is to give all the machines a static network IP and set up an NFS share on each volume that only exports to the one computer that needs access to it. Right?

kenan is starting to learn the ol' axiom that it's PEBKAC 9 times out of 10.

which actually means PEBEAU (problem exists between engineers and users)

computing is easily the most immature industry in the world right after hydrogen-powered cars

anyway I can't decide whether I hate Apple or not today, my iMac died (PSU kaput) on Saturday and the Pentagon City store staff were (again) way more helpful than I expected, plus the speed bump and price drops mean that I got a better machine to replace it for less money than I had paid for my 2005 iLemon (shipped to me with bad mobo, which appears to have shortened the lifespan of every other major component in the system, no point throwing any more good money after bad especially since I'm probably lucky the HD even still works)

really it's my dumb ass fault for not purchasing AppleCare while the thing was still under warranty, or asking for a fresh-box replacement as soon as they figured out the og mobo was faulty

bonus: got free HD data transfer even though the Geniuses are going to have to extract the drive from the case to fire it up in a separate housing + they're going to get my cristian vogel CD out of the optical drive that stopped ejecting months ago + govt employee discount on everything

weird, my post earlier didn't go through. this directory is on an external HD which was used with a windows xp machine until now (NTSF formatted); ownership is the same as the standard 'music' folder on the mac machine, it appears (owned by me); but maybe if itunes itself is copying the files, the system needs to own it? or they need to be in the same group? I think the group here is wheel, I dunno, I'm actually at work now. I'll fuck with it tonight, probably have to recursively run chmod/chown until it works. I kind of hate permissions shit, it's something that I seem to not understand incredibly well even when I think I do.

Sounds like akm's problem is PEBAirPortExpressAU, which is one of the reasons that I gave an AE a good two-week fighting chance to impress me, and then... no more. The fabulous USB port for network sharing should come with several asterisks.

not using airport express, this is just a usb drive.

which actually means PEBEAU (problem exists between engineers and users)

That's not quite what I meant by PEBKAC. When folks use computers according to SOPs, employ common sense, and research or ask for help when necessary, there's never a PEBKAC to be found. What I'm talking about is when folks get a little to "ambitious" with their computers w/o knowing how to reverse whatever the hell optimization they're trying. E.g., when someone's mail notes stopped working (moonship?), the problem turned out to be user optimization: the note font had been removed or deactivated! That's classical PEBKAC, and no matter how mature the industry becomes, it'll still happen.

Tom I got a new computer this weekend too. But who has the biggest wang

xpost: http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/power.users.html

asking for a fresh-box replacement as soon as they figured out the og mobo was faulty

will they do that? i don't think that's in the warranty terms.

ha ha yeah that was me. no "marker felt", no mail notes!

my problem was just not connecting the two things in my head. i deactivated the font, several days later i realized the notes weren't working. i never would have thought that not having the font would break the program - i figured it would just do notes in geneva or whatever. and i'd been doing a bunch of other stuff w/ mail in the meantime (trying to get imap to work right).

i guess that's an argument for scrupulously documenting everything you do to your computer.

I watched them do that for a lady who came in after me with her macbook pro which was acting up, actually. Dude took a look at it, listened to her issues (I wasn't there for the whole thing, just saw him pop the battery out and put it back in) then left and came back with a brand new one in the box and asked her if she needed data transfer.

xpost Man, if my notes in college had been 1/3 as detailed as the computer/network notes I have in this special spiral notebook...

i guess that's an argument for scrupulously documenting everything you do to your computer.

i would say it's an argument for verbose and clearly worded warning messages when a non-root account attempts to do something that will break a dependency, but my undergrad was in liberal arts.

will they do that? i don't think that's in the warranty terms.

if I ever have a similar experience I'm going to request that they do that, since I have now learned that nothing that was ever plugged into a bad board can really be trusted afterwards. I've no way of knowing how much collateral damage was done by it beyond the fried SODIMMs that they also replaced under warranty, but the techie agreed with me that it's likely that the entire thing was a ticking bomb.

actual quote from "Genius" to salesgirl: "This is Tom. His iMac has failed him miserably, and he needs a new one."

my problem hardly warrants a new computer. it's just a cable replacement, to keep the screen from flickering when i move it. i just can't give this fucking thing up for a week right now.