redemption in a blog

How to setup your Trash/Sent/Drafts folders for IMAP on Mail.app. “Select mailbox, Mailbox -> Use this mailbox for…, Sent”. (OK I misspelled ‘trash’ in the post title - see trackback below.) (1)

MacHeist Mission One 101

November 14th, 2006

Update: seems like several people are coming into this thread after searching for “MacHeist combination” - this post is for last year’s MacHeist. For spoilers and solutions, I suggest you go to the MacHeist Backroom forum.

If you are a Mac user you’d probably have heard of the much-hyped MacHeist. (I bet non-Mac users were probably annoyed with the coverage of MacHeist at some point on sites like Digg.) Even I was late to join up with MacHeist because of its “I’m not gonna tell you what it’s about but it’s gonna rock your world” press and the oh-so-exclusive invite system (which is surprisingly rather effective despite being probably the most used viral “marketing technique”) - I got into the whole MacHeist thing courtesy of the registration link posted over at TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog). (Oh and yes, I do know that by blogging about it I’ve fallen prey to the MacHeist hype, but I can’t help myself. Or maybe I just need to blog something that’s easy to write about.)

And so I signed up, and after being completely muddled about what this MacHeist thing is all about, came upon a mission briefing with a very well-done voiceover (love that voice, sounds just right). Turns out MacHeist is a detective (or insert snooping, heist-related adjective here) game where you (try to) accomplish missions and get “loot” in return.

Not what I’d expected, and I almost didn’t play along until I checked out the MacHeist forums (requires a MacHeist account) and saw that the sheer volume of activity. A few thousand posts in a couple of hundred topics may not look like a lot, but it’s pretty amazing for what I assume is a small user base (invite-only system) and you always have to remember MacHeist is really only a week old or so.

Now that got my attention again. Lurking around the forums a bit, I found general praise of the “loot” from completing Mission One. And turns out the “loot” is a bunch of free Mac software, which I really should have guessed. “Free”, “legitimate”, “Mac software” - ze Mac lover in me cannot resist! I went back, re-read Mission One, and sent out an email to what I hoped was an automated email bot (it would be disturbing if someone was actually replying to all the MacHeist emails) in an attempt to dig out what I was told were much-coveted iPhone specs. It was fun for a while trying to convince the email bot to send me what I needed, but it got old when I had to, you know, get the damn answer without running in circles (with circular email).

Lurking around the forums more when I got stuck, I came across this stickied Official Mission #1 Thread and it was all easy mode from there. So yes, the answers are all there if you’re lazy or impatient (I am both).

After completing the mission, you get the combination code to your safe, where you can find the fruits of your labor, loot! Well, about the reward, I have to say I was disappointed - perhaps I was expecting something like free licenses of TextMate or Parallels, or even Disco (though I have actually purchased licenses for all 3 - this Mac thing is turning me into someone who actually buys software - the horror!). Anyway, the rewards were full copies of Chat Transcript Manager, Assignment Planner, and Soulver. Two out of three applications for students… I got Soulver to play with its gimmicky maths functionality, didn’t bother with the rest (not to put them down, but personally don’t have any use for Chat Transcript Manager being a full-time Adium user nor for Assignment Planner).

Despite the anti-climax, I really think the MacHeist guys have done an awesome job (they got me for sure - I’m already anticipating the next heist and more loot!). It’s an excellent way to promote Mac software (some of the lesser known products as well), and to get people talking. I can imagine they aren’t doing too shabby with ad placements and sponsorship. And really, that’s a damn polished setup they have there with the missions. Oh and before I end this post, if you need an invite, let me know (just leave a comment), still have 4 to give out. Well, if the registration link posted over at TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) no longer works that is.

Posted by Chu Yeow at November 14, 2006 SGT | Permalink | Comments and TrackBacks (1) | Category: Applications, Fun, Mac

Muting the Mac startup sound

November 1st, 2006

One of the mildly annoying things of owning a Mac laptop is how it can draw unwanted attention with its startup chime when it boots up. There was once it went off rather loudly while I was on the train and I’d imagine I must have looked rather sheepishly embarrassed. From then on I kept trying to remember to lower or mute my Mac before shutting down, but it still slips my mind most of the time. To be honest, I think that even the Windows startup chime sounds better than the one on my MacBook Pro.

So I was rather pleased when I saw someone had created a simple application (preference pane, rather) called StartupSound.prefPane that allows you to control the startup volume or mute it completely.

Intel Mac owners take note: I grabbed version 1.1b1 of StartupSound.prefPane off the MacUpdate page for StartupSound.prefPane though, as I noticed it said “StartupSound.prefPane now works on an Intel-based Mac” for that version. Wouldn’t want to try the stable release version (1.0.4) since it’s for PowerPC-based Macs.

Posted by Chu Yeow at November 1, 2006 SGT | Permalink | Comments and TrackBacks (4) | Category: Applications, Mac

Native magnification in Mac OS X

September 30th, 2006

Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) had an minor update (version 10.4.8) not long ago and while the changelog seemed pretty uninteresting on the most part, there was one unannounced feature that’s pretty cool - Zoom Using Scroll Wheel. If you’ve already updated to 10.4.8, you can try it out for yourself now by holding the Ctrl key and scrolling up the mousewheel. Cool, yeah? You can still do whatever you want in the magnified view (I took a screenshot) so it’s not simply a cheap static magnification (just as Expose windows aren’t static screen captures of your open windows).

Posted by Chu Yeow at September 30, 2006 SGT | Permalink | Comments and TrackBacks (0) | Category: Mac, Operating Systems

Duplicating CDs/DVDs in Mac OS X

September 30th, 2006

When my dad asked me to duplicate a video CD, I decided I’d try to get it done on my new Mac (to, you know, get wow-ed by how easy it is on a Mac compared to the old way I used to do things on Windows). As it turns out, I was rather disappointed by the default Mac OS X burning functionality provided via Finder and Disk Utility, though I’d say it’s still way ahead of the default disc burning in Windows XP. Burn folders? Dig them. Creating and customizing .dmg files (disk images) and then burning them? Love the UNIX toolbox-y goodness of how all this is done in Disk Utility.app. Duplicating CDs or DVDs? Not that great.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I couldn’t get the “create image from CD, then burn the image” method to work with Disk Utility - it created a .dmg file without my files in it and I didn’t burn it because I didn’t want to risk getting a coaster.

I asked a couple of Mac users and they didn’t know how to duplicate CDs easily as well (one of them copied the files to disc and then burn them onto the blank disc). Some Googling turned up this thread which, while rather old, seems to show that there’s no easy way to duplicate a disc with Mac OS X.

Hmm, this just feels wrong to me, or more likely, Apple decided to intentionally leave disc duplication out (probably for digital rights issues or the like). I’m really missing the functionaliy that Nero provides with an easy “Duplicate disc” function. Does anyone know how to easily duplicate a disc in Mac OS X or can recommend a good application that does so?

Posted by Chu Yeow at September 30, 2006 SGT | Permalink | Comments and TrackBacks (5) | Category: Mac, Operating Systems