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Tag: tracks

balm or poison

Don’t try
to follow the previous post unless you want to end up in a neverending
(sic!) series of re-installs, unrecognized harddisks at start-up and a
few kernel-panics!

At this moment I know of NO safe way to use Carbon Copy Cloner
to make a bootable clone of my HD. Here is the only way I managed to
make a bootable copy :

– before you start, click on the
target-partition of the external HD and use _File/Get Info_ and
uncheck under _Ownership & Permissions_ the box _Ignore
ownership on this volume_
– this might be enough for you but I
had to use DiskUtility to _Erase_ the externet HD-partition.
– then follow the previous post (that is do _sudo open_ on CCC
and then proceed as usual BUT make sure in your
prefernces only the box _Make Bootable_ is checked and certainly
no syncing-options!)

A bit too drastic for me. Its a bit like
: make a DMG of your MacintoshHD and do a restore on an empty external
partition. It seems that Tiger and Panther have very different
DNA-samples bringing a lot of excellent free- and shareware developers
near a nervous breakdown. Have the Apple-people ever heard of something
like _backwards compatibility_? Anyway, I’m not going to try
making another backup again until Mike Bombich has released a
Tiger-version of CCC!

Also, don’t try to follow the suggestions
of my Tracks
post
. It certainly is not enough to get tracks running under Tiger
(and probably also not under Panther as at the time I did a strange mix
of following this path and doing some manual installs using the Hivelogic
page
. This time, I got strange errors coming from the Ruby-MySQL
dialogue. I’m not going to try installing MySQL, PHP and Tracks before
someone like Marc
Lyanage
tells that it is safe to use the Panther-packages under
Tiger!

So, for the moment I’m just going to use my minimal
system (Tiger+Xcode Tools+TeX (following the instructions from this page
)+some excellent free and shareware like DevonThink , Pod2Go
, VoodooPad , SubEthaEdit ,
QuickSilver , Transmit and NetNewsWire ) until the
experts have tamed Tiger. Meanwhile, I’ll just confine myself to the
_Dashboard-Kintergarten_ !

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tiger days 1

It
should be really day 2 but yesterday evening I was a bit overoptimistic
and tried to get MySQL, Ruby, Rails & Tracks installed and in the
process totally wrecked my Ruby-system (and probably a few things more).
Besides, I found out that the _Carbon Copy Cloner_ work-around
doesn\’t really work (that is, one canNOT boot from the cloned copy)
etc. etc. In short, a lot of frustration. So today, I started all over
again (using the install notes below to guide me and so I could reduce
the total time to about 2 hrs). But, as this was the easy bit (still to
come : MySQL, PHP, WordPress+LatexRender, Ruby&Tracks etc.) and I
don\’t want to redo everything again when I do something horribly wrong
I changed my overall tactics. I\’ll keep identical copies on my iBook
and on my iMac and do the next batch of installs on just one machine and
check whether everything works before syncing it to the other. If
something gets messed up I resync to the state of the previous day. Just
one question left : what program to use for the backup/restore now that
CCC seems to be broken? Fortunately, there is still PsyncX which still
seems to work fine (at least today…). Below, for what it is worth,
yesterday\’s log of events :

Okay, I checked that I can still
TeX papers and connect to the printer on the iMac (after Archive/Install
to Tiger). Most other things have broken down, such as my mind on tracks
and my MySQL-database, but I\’m quite hopeful I can rebuild them all.
So, time for a drastic _Erase/Install_ on my iBook.

12:04 : One final safety check. Connect the external
HD, select the _Carbon Copy Cloned_ partition as StartUp Disk and
do a Restart to verify that it can be cloned back should everything go
terribly wrong. Seems to work nicely, so change again from StartUp disk,
restart and disconnect the external HD.

12:16
: Printed the macdevcenter install
tips
and made a fresh pot of coffee. Took the unread part of the
newspaper with me, connected Jan\’s iPod, made it the new StartUp disk
and did another Restart.

12:24 : Selected
\’English\’ as the main language. Selected _DiskUtility_ from the
_Utilities_ menu (before you have to select a Disk destination).
Selected the HD, clicked _Erase_ and choose _Erase Free
Space_ first, then choose the SecurityOption to \’zero out data\’.
(Both steps require a lot of extra time but what is the point of doing
an Erase if you don\’t erase properly? Btw. the macdev-article does not
agree with me on this point.) Meanwhile, had some coffee and a
read…

13:23 : Did quit DiskUtility
which brought me back to the Installer. Selected the HD and clicked on
_Options_ to select Erase&Install and clicked Continue. Then
clicked on _Custom Install_ to choose which Packages to Install.
Did choose _all_ Printer Drivers but in _Language
Translations_ only selected : French, German and Dutch. Didn\’t
select X11! Clicked : _Install_ and had yet another cup of
coffee…

13:45 : Restarted! Got me into
the SetupAssistant. Didn\’t choose to transfer info from another Mac. It
selected our wireless network immediately, and asked me for my .Mac
account info. Did create my main account and finished at
13:53 Only had to stop iTunes from wanting to put
PodSoftware onto the connected iPod… Checked for SoftwareUpdate
but there was none. Am connected to internet but had to add my other
mail-account. Done and received email at 14:05 Found
our Printer but did gray out two-sided printing (have to remember later
how I did set this up…).

14:12 : Time
to add the _Xcode Tools_ : opened the folder on the iPod and
clicked on _XcodeTools.mpkg_ . Followed he default installation.
Finished and deconnected the iPod at 14:24 Took a break
to decide how to continue. (21.97Gb available) Update today : do a
custom install using also cross-development!

14:37 : Okay, first things first : get myself a
working TeX-system starting from this page
to get the latest version of TeXShop and the i-Installer and place both
in the Applications folder and in the Dock. Placed the _To Your
Library_ folder of TeXShop in my ~/Library (containing the texmf
etc. path for pdfsync). Then followed this
page
and the i-Installer to install the packages in the right order
:

  • FreeType 2
  • libwmf
  • Ghostscript
    8
  • ImageMagick
  • FontForge
  • TeX (did a
    Full install with 2005 Devel.)

Had a brief look
through the other packages and maybe I\’ll install _Latex to RTF_
and _RTF 2 Latex_ later. Created a _DMG_ folder and put
the downloaded disk images into it. Created a_PAPERS_ folder and
transferred the last version of the paper with Stijn to check TeX but
clearly it couldn\’t find the _diagrams.sty_ file (I know I have
to quit using this, but I\’ll better get it over for backward
compatibility; put it into ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/. Ran TeX again
without problems this time and checked the nice source-PDF syncing
(apple-click to jump). Finished : 15:37

15:56 : As long as administration sends me
_Word_ documents and expects me to read them, I have no choice
but to install _Office X_ . The upshot was that while searching
for the OfficeCD I found also the HP LaserJet 1320 CD and installed the
driver so now I can print 2-sided (using Printer Setup Utility) . Done :
16:15

16:45 : Used the
_.mac System Preference_ to get syncing started with my iDisk to
get adresses, calendars and passwords etc. on my iBook. Also filled in
the Sharing Preferences. Now that I have the passwords at hand, it is
time to get the latest versions of some of the shareware I own (and copy
their disk image to the DMG folder)

  • DevonThink
  • DenonAgent
  • Pod2Go : the site seems to be down at the
    moment but fortunately, I have a disk image of it which will have to do
    for now (note to self : check later whether the site is permanently
    dead…) Update today : it is up and running again…

and while I\’m at it I may as well get my wallet out and
purchase the full version of _Lite_ versions I like and use a lot
:

Fortunately, there is also a lot of excellent freeware that I
want to use

One of the following days : MySQL, PHP and perhaps Tracks but
first I desperately need to do some maths to kick off from all this
nonsense…

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mind on tracks

I just
started putting my mind on tracks but it will take
me a couple of days to offload most of the crap that keeps me awake at
night. There are three main components to Tracks: Next actions, Contexts
and Projects.

Contexts are very flexible, and can
be places, states of mind or modes of working in which actions can be
taken. Next actions can be assigned to and sorted by context so that you
know when you are able to make progress with items. e.g. “Library”,
“Shops” or “Tired”.” So far I added only 10 contexts : _@inbox_,
_@books_, _@email_, _@home_, _@neverending_,
_@courses_, _@other_, _@papers_, _@computer_
and _@personal_. Probably I’ll have to add others such as
_@refereeing_ etc.

Projects : any goal
which requires more than one next action to take it to completion is a
Project. In Tracks, you can view your next actions by Project.” So far I
added the first few things that came to mind ranging from small-easy
things such as _Learn
VoodooPad_
over _Paper with Jan_ to neverending-things
like Write nag@n !

Next
actions
: These are the heart of GTD. They are the very next
physical action that can be taken on something. It’s best to phrase
these in an active way e.g. “Call Bob about the committee meeting” or
“Search for a reputable garage”.” Up to now I merely added the next
foreseeable action in each project together with a few urgent persoanl
matters. It is a good idea to give each of these a deadline so they
appear on the screen with a color-code giving the date and red (urgent),
orange (coming up) to green (some day). I realize I’ve been rather
relaxed about my projects so far!

More information on tracks can
be found here. Try it
out!

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