Author: jeff

Upgrading a Hard Drive on a Macbook

A little over a week ago, I ran out of space on my 80 GB hard drive. I didn’t think that would ever be possible. For the first time, “df -h” showed available space in kilobytes!

In an ideal world, I’d replace the drive, put a fresh installation of OS X on it, install all my applications anew, and move my data over from the old drive. But since this is incredibly time-consuming, I decided simply to clone everything from my existing drive to a new one. I’d never done this on a Mac before. All seems to have gone well with my upgrade, so I’m posting some notes on my process. Standard caveat: while they worked for me, they may not work for you!

After some hunting and price comparing, I bought a 250GB Seagate Momentus (ST9250315AS) drive at Office Depot and a generic USB disk enclosure at RE-PC. I would have preferred FireWire, but they seem difficult to find in brick-and-mortar stores and they’re more expensive.

Third-party applications exist to clone entire drives, but it turns out Disk Utility works just fine for this. After connecting the drive to the Macbook via USB, it should show up in the application’s drive list in the left pane. There are three steps to prepping the disk (adapted from this site by one “A Brody”):

1) In Disk Utility, select the drive and click the “Partitions” tab. Select “1 Partition” for the Volume Scheme. Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for the format. On Intel-based Macbooks, the drive should have a GUID partition map scheme, so click “Options…” for a dialog and make the appropriate selection. Click “Apply” to perform the partition.

2) Click the “Erase” tab and erase the disk.

3) Open a Finder window, ctrl-click on the newly created volume, and select “Get Info.” At the very bottom of the window, there is a checkbox pertaining to ignoring ownership and permissions. Change it so the computer DOESN’T ignore these!

Now the drive is ready for data. This part is a bit counter-intuitive: in Disk Utility, select the “Restore” tab. Drag the old volume from the list into the “Source” field. Drag the newly created empty volume from the list into “Destination.” Click the “Restore” button to start the copy. Copying 73G (the actual size of the drive was smaller than the nominal size) took a little over 2 hours.

After the copying is finished, shut down the computer, and swap out the drive by following Apple’s instructions. I needed to use a Torx T8 size driver for the screws attaching the drive to its mount. Be aware that Macbooks and Macbook Pros might use different size screws.

And that’s it! The machine should boot off the new drive.

FixedGearGallery Index 2.0

I created a new interface for my FixedGearGallery Index. What better way to procrastinate than spending a few hours on code?

The original purpose of the index was to provide an easy way to browse through the relevant pages of a particular make/model on FGG. My first version accomplished that goal, but it’s awfully clunky. After using it a while, I discovered how annoying it was to toggle between windows and keep track of where I was in the list.

The new version places navigation controls in a small area at the top of the page. It loads content from FGG into an iframe, eliminating the need for switching among windows. And the previous/next links allow you to browse sequentially, making it much easier to keep track of what you’ve already seen.

It’s not perfect but it’s definitely an improvement. I have fancier ideas for organizing FGG content but I don’t want to go too far by pirating Dennis’ site. I’m grateful he gave me permission to do the index at all when I emailed him about it a few months ago.

On The Death of Newspapers

The hot topic lately among the local blogs and news media is the death of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as we know it. It’s looking likely that the organization will keep a small staff and move to a controversial online-only format that will include aggregation.

Back in January, Erica C. Barnett wrote some smart remarks on SLOG about how frustrating it is to repeatedly hear the same alarmist voices about the death of newspapers. That blog posting really struck a chord with me. Barnett makes a moderate prediction on how the whole “real journalists vs amateur bloggers” debate will eventually shake out. She seems to keep the focus, though, on questions of quality and professionalism. But I think what people don’t talk directly enough about are the particular interests that are inevitably at stake in different venues of reportage.

I was reminded of this again recently with this week’s On the Media program on NPR about how ethnic newspapers are thriving. That show really gets it right. It points out how the ethnic composition of society has been rapidly changing while mainstream newspapers have remained stubbornly focused on their target demographic of the suburban white middle-class.

The death of newspapers isn’t about the triumph of new media, no matter what people may say. When people argue that newspapers have been vital to democracy, I can’t help but laugh. When have mainstream newspapers ever been venues for populist voices or organs for the oppressed? In actuality, they’ve tended to be ideological proponents of middle class values and maintainers of the status quo.

No, what this is all about is the growth of new social classes: vital immigrant populations, younger generations who refuse the strict divisions of being either a consumer or producer, previously “fringe” groups eager for publishing/interactive venues to develop their own social and political interests and subcultures. It is these new social classes, and not simply the new publishing opportunities of the web (which, alone, are inert), that threaten the hegemony of traditional journalism. I think a lot more needs to be said about what kinds of stories and information the so-called “new media” as well as the alternative print press are producing in the age of the newspaper’s death. What new interests are we seeing at work in blogs? Who gets to have a voice now, and who is still left out? How is all of this redefining what counts as worthwhile or credible stories or events? These are the real questions of substance—with real implications for democracy—that will determine what the death of newspapers will ultimately mean.

When Your Blackberry Loses Its EDGE

An old entry about my T-Mobile phone gets some search traffic, so I thought posting about this experience might be helpful to other desperate googlers as well.

Two days ago, the Internet access—that is, the EDGE connection—on my Blackberry Curve stopped working at my apartment. Voice calls still worked fine. Occasionally the signal would flicker between GSM and EDGE, which has never happened in the past. If I walked four blocks away, applications like the browser and mail client would work again. EDGE also worked on campus, four miles away. So, for some mysterious reason, this problem was location-specific to just the tower near my apartment. It took two days to even figure all of this out.

Three separate calls to T-Mobile did no good, mostly because I didn’t have easy access to another line so they could troubleshoot my Curve. They did something called a “location reset,” if I remember correctly, but that didn’t help. So I started googling some forums and experimenting.

From what I’ve pieced together, the problem above can occur if Service Book settings get corrupted. The way to fix this is to get a new set of Service Book data sent to your phone from the provider. On the Curve, you do this in the following way:

– Select “Options”
– Select “Advanced Options”
– Select “Host Routing Table”
– Hit the Menu key and select “Register Now”
– The phone will re-register with the provider, who will send new Service Book data to the phone.

Obviously, EDGE has to be operational for the data to be sent, so this fix only works if EDGE is broken in certain locations but you can still make the registration request elsewhere.

Hope this helps someone.

The GoDaddy.com Auto-Renewal Headache

Today I got two emails from GoDaddy.com. One informed me that a few of my domain registrations were about to expire. That was expected; I no longer wanted them. The other was a puzzling order confirmation. My credit card had been charged for renewal of “business registrations” for those same domains.

So while I no longer owned those three domains, I did now have active business registrations for them costing $4.99 each. (I actually can’t even remember what those are or why I had them in the first place.) Great.

It actually took me a few minutes of navigating the insanity that is GoDaddy.com’s website in order to figure out what had happened. Under “Domain Manager,” my settings had auto-renew set to Off for each domain, which was correct. But under the “Business Registration” page, there is no such setting. The interface only allows you to edit profile information. There appears to be NO WAY to turn off the default auto-renewal for business registrations.

To their credit, I was able to call their billing support number, explain my situation, and get a refund. The person I spoke understood immediately what had happened and was extremely helpful.

Beware, GoDaddy customers.