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I love Parallels.  Parallels is virtualization software:  it allows you to create a pretend (virtual) machine on your Mac, on which you can install Windows or Ubuntu or Slackware or whatever.  It’s a powerful concept:  you can create a dedicated Linux machine for Web browsing, or a Windows computer that never connects to anything except your bank.

Generally Parallels is easy to use and set up.  The hardest thing about it is spelling the word “Parallels.” I find this to be difficult: there are three separate places where you have to decide on double- or single-consonants.

So I’m eager to try the new Windows 7 public beta on Parallels.  After some adventures (mostly stupid), I got Windows 7 to install OK under Parallels, and I find it to be quite zippy (totally unlike Vista).

But I can’t get networking to go.  I can’t get Windows 7 to recognize my imaginary network card.  It recognizes all the other imaginary hardware… so what’s the deal?

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January 15th, 2009 | Tags: imac, parallels, windows, windows 7 | Category: Apple, windows | Comments (26)

I’m trying out Windows 7 on my old Intel-based iMac, and it’s going pretty well. One of the ways I’m doing this is with VirtualBox (a free, open-source virtualization tool from Sun).

I had some adventures, mostly stupid, getting it installed.  But now it’s working, and mostly correctly…  with some issues.

In general, Windows 7 is sprightly and responsive running in a child window on my 2.16 GHz dual-core Intel Mac.  It hogs up most of my 2 Gb of RAM, and works the CPUs hard, but that’s good, I think.  It takes just eight seconds, total, to start VirtualBox and restore the Windows session.  Sweet!

Video playback is smooth, even when Windows is doing other things in the background like initializing a “Homegroup.”

But so far I haven’t been able to get a peep out of the sound card.   Not so much as a bzzt.  Windows says that “no audio devices are installed.”

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January 13th, 2009 | Tags: imac, sound card, virtualbox, windows 7 | Category: Apple, windows | Comments (10)

I’m trying to install a beta of Windows 7 in a VirtualBox on my iMac.

VirtualBox is a free, open-source application that lets you run one operating system inside another.  I use it at work, to run a relatively bulletproof Ubuntu install on my Windows laptop, and I use it at home, to run Windows XP on my Mac.  I love it, and it generally works very well.

The idea is that you create a virtual machine, and a virtual hard drive, and then you download an .ISO file, and tell that virtual machine that it’s a CD-ROM.

Generally it works great.

So I downoaded the .ISO from Microsoft, and started the install.

The installer loads and starts up fine.  But it quickly stops with a (very attractive!) dialog box that says:

Windows could not collect information for [OSImage] since the specified image file [install.wim] does not exist.

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January 10th, 2009 | Tags: virtualbox, windows, windows 7 | Category: Apple, windows | Comments (21)

I recently attempted to replace all of the supermarket cards on my key-ring with images of the cards , on my iPod Touch.

I now have a fair-sized result set, with uniform results, on a range of several different kinds of scanners. I have concluded that THIS WAS A STUPID IDEA.

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July 22nd, 2008 | Category: Apple | Comments (1)

Like most people, I carry a bunch of store-loyalty cards. I realize that there are serious privacy implications, and sometimes it amuses me to provide fake information (I am known to Dick’s Sporting Goods, for example, as Reginald Fink-Nottle, and to Barnes & Noble as Loretta Sponge). But the money that they save makes it pretty much mandatory to carry them.

But what a drag it is to have a dozen of these on your keychain, and then to have to paw through them to find the right one at check-out time!

SO: I saw (on LifeHacker) a suggestion that one scan one’s cards into one’s iPhone, claiming that the contrast on the iPhone screen was sufficient for reading by the supermarket scanner.

I’ve scanned my cards, and notice that they are all in terrible shape. I can’t see how the scanner reads them.

But I’ll try it. I will update this post with the results.

Plus, as one person said on LifeHacker: After the cafe punches 10 holes in my iPhone, I get a free latte!

Update 1:
The Harris Teeter card (pictured above) doesn’t work. But I don’t think that proves anything, because the card is a wreck. I’ll try some of the cleaner ones elsewhere.

Update 2:
Results gathered from many attempts. Conclusions here.

May 31st, 2008 | Category: Apple | Comments (1)

After a successful jailbreak, my iPod Touch was effectively bricked. It would work normally for several seconds, and then pause, and return to the home page, displaying an informative message about how to make the icons wiggle so that I could rearrange them.

Nothing I did would make it stop, and it wouldn’t connect to iTunes. Utterly useless.

But:

None of these disasters affected the ssh daemon, or the WiFi. I was able to establish a ssh connection, immediately, with my shiny new root password, via the swell radio.

I don’t know many UNIX commands, so picking a favorite one is easy: it’s “top”. This command shows you the top ten or so processes in your brain, every second or two, in an attractive text-mode display. I found out that an application called “Springboard” was crashing, and restarting, over and over.

I eventually learned that Springboard is the application launcher, and that it apparently expects the root password to be “alpine”.

Astonishing.

Well, that’s easy to fix. I set the password back to “alpine”… No joy. I rebooted it repeatedly (you can just type “reboot” at the command line). Still no luck.

At this point, I was getting pretty disturbed.

Finally I found a blog post from a dude named Dave Smith.

Dave ’splains, quite cogently, that that I needed to get the iPod into “DFU mode.” “DFU”? I would have called “BFU.” Whatever. This is a state that will indicatse to iTunes that there is a bricked iPod that needs to be restored.

To do this, I needed to make Springboard quit. I found the application, at /System/Library/CoreServices/Springboard.app and renamed it to SpringBoard.BiteMe.

I rebooted, and the machine never got past the apple logo.

I plagiarize herewith from Dave, who’s a pretty good writer, and explains how to put the little machine into the holy BFU mode:

• Turn on your iPod (in my case it would only get as far as displaying the Apple logo
• Hold the power and home buttons down (the iPod will power off after 10 seconds, but keep holding those buttons down)
• After the iPod powers off, release the power button (but keep holding the home button down

After a few more seconds, the Mac announced that it had connected to a BFU’d iPod.

“Excuse me,” intoned the Mac. “Your iPod is BFU’d, and so are you.” (Or words to that effect.) I released the home button.

iTunes restored the machine to its original state. Nothing was lost, except for my swell HP calculators.

I intend to re-jailbreak it immediately.

April 19th, 2008 | Category: Apple | Comments (10)