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Having bought my second Western Digital MyBook 1TB, I faced an annoying issue: I couldn’t get rid of the virtual CD. This may seem a small problem, but I dislike when I have to deal with stuff, I didn’t ask for in the first place.

My first thought was to delete the part of my hard drive that contains the files. That didn’t work out well, not to say not at all. Not even my beloved gParted could get rid of it.

Step two was the visit of Western Digital’s website for more information. (Only a geek would understand why this wasn’t my first step. ) I ended up here but wasn’t happy with that solution. Yeah I know, I’m difficult.

My final solution was the cleanest in my opinion and includes typing the following into the terminal:

sudo sh -c "echo UUID=`diskutil info /Volumes/WD\ SmartWare/ | grep 'UUID' | awk '{print $NF}'` none hfs rw,noauto 0 0 >> /etc/fstab"

After a restart there’s nothing but a clean desktop and my Finder isn’t unnecessarily cluttered either.

Seems that I’m in a spacer / blank icon mood lately, but they really help if you’d like to cluster your apps and therefore ‘unclutter’ your working space. (I just wrote an article on how to add a spacer for iPhones here.)

Here are the few steps it takes to achieve this:

1) Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal

2) Type or copy/paste the following:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add ‘{tile-data={}; tile-type=”spacer-tile”;}’

3) Press enter and type or copy/paste this:

killall Dock

4) Once you pressed enter, you will realize that you have just created a spacer.

5) Repeat as you wish (restarting the dock in-between isn’t necessary) and exit the session by typing:

exit

6) Now the Terminal can be closed. The icon(s) can be treated like normal ones (moving and deleting).

Enjoy your new found tidiness.

Since I started using a Mac, my mouse (Logitech G9) didn’t work as well as I was used to when I was still using a PC. The reason was the inability to use and / or configure the mouse buttons. I tried to install Logitech’s driver but that didn’t end up well. (Maybe because there isn’t a dedicated driver for this mouse.) Directly after I restarted my machine, I had the feeling that it isn’t running smoothly. I uninstalled the software and lived without features such as going back one page by clicking a mouse button within Firefox.

Luckily I found an app called SteerMouse. This fine piece of software allowed me to set the mouse buttons up the way I like them to work. Now I can not only go forth and back within Firefox, I can also zoom in and out. This finally allows me to use my mouse the way I was used to and even gives me features (zooming, switching between apps) that I wasn’t used to, but that make my daily life a lot easier.

This should work with most mouses  (or mice – to find out more about that topic read this) and help you to get all the features you would expect from a mouse that has all those buttons that await to be used.

During my pre-Christmas cleaning I decided to sort my Mac mini as well. I really like it clean and fast. A nice article at lifehacker.com may also help you if you find your Mac sluggish, or if you simply are a neat ‘freak’ like me.

The article describes how you can find programs that take a lot of your system resources, and how you can make your Mac start faster by disabling programs that start automatically when you switch on your system. On top of that, software that will delete unnecessary left-overs from uninstalled apps and system checks is introduced to you. While the article isn’t the newest, the hints offered are still up-to-date.

I bought a Time Capsule (an AirPort Extreme is essentially the same, just missing the harddisk) and it’s working flawlessly, after a little work on setting it up. The following article should make it clear how to  set up the router (Siemens) that is provided by the German DSL provider Alice (Hansenet).

To set up the TC, simply follow the explanation given in the setup guide. If you can’t be bothered to read that – and I assure you I know that feeling – just plug in your ethernet cable and install the software that came with your device, as weird as that may seem. I didn’t install it in the first place but was warned that I have an older version currently running. After installing it, I went to:

Applications -> Utilities -> AirPort Utilities

Just click yourself through the process. If you should encounter issues or have questions, this may help (and eventhough it’s quite old, it sure helped me). The most important thing to set up is DHCP. Even if you have PPPoE in mind, just use the suggested option. Now your internet should be up and running (because you Mac will still connect via your entered PPPoE network settings, as the cable is still attached).

Now log in to your Siemens router that Alice sent you, by visiting the following IP with your preferred web browser:

192.168.1.1

Then set up your login details:

Username: YourTelephoneNumber@alice-dsl.de

Password: YourBirthdate (ddmmyyyy)

While you’re at it, set up a password for your router, if you haven’t done so already. Nothing is worse than setting up a secure network and leaving the router open for others to change the passwords.  Simply save your configuration and you’re basically good to go. Basically. You will also need to log in to your own, just created wireless network with your Mac. Now you can plug out your ethernet cable if you made the initial backup already. Otherwise I’d suggest leaving it plugged in until you finished that. I then restarted my Mac, but it should work without doing so.

As you can see, there isn’t much to it. I expected it to be either really difficult or impossible, after reading many discussions about this online. If you still encounter problems setting it up, or if you have further questions, please leave a comment and i’ll get back to you a.s.a.p.

Using iTunes as my main – and most likely only – media player started off quite badly. Not only that I had to change every single video I have into a *.mov-file, I also found *.mp3-files that would neither play on my iPod nor within iTunes. Trying to add these files via iTune’s automatic adding function would move them to the not added folder instead.

The MP3 Validator for Mac OS X neatly solved this issue for me. Just download the software and open it, before you can simply drag-and-drop your mp3-files into the program. It will show which failure persists and repair it. Just checked my whole library and found quite a lot of failures on files which I didn’t suspect in the first place.

PS: Windows-user might be happy to read that MP3 Validator is doing the same for them.

PS:PS: Thanks to Trevin Chow for this helpful piece of information.

Since the beginning of mankind, people tried to communicate as efficently as possible and the introduction of the e-mail, which enables us to share information worldwide, sure had a massive impact on how we see and live communication today. Google intends to take it a step further and creates something new: Google Wave.

If you don’t know what Google Wave is, watching the following (unofficial) video may help:

I was happy enough to receive an invitation and currently I’m trying to understand all the features and possibilities that Google Wave offers at the moment. A nice to know information for new ‘Wavers’ is the following search:

search:public

This will enable you to find publicly written waves, as you may not know many people that have an invitation yet. This way you will get to know the features and can help to make this preview a beta soon.

If you still have no idea what Google Wave is, where it fits in between Facebook and Twitter, or if you simply would like to read more about it, you will find a good article here.

At the moment it’s quite slow and I encounter some issues once in a while. Nevertheless, this seems to be the next big thing and I’m looking forward to seeing the impact it will have on the communication over all and for me.

Just one more thing.

The so-called Web-Apps for the iPhone aren’t really newsworthy, but in regards to Google Wave it may be interesting to know that an added Google Wave home screen bookmark will not show the Safari wrapper, but look like an independent app.

Sharing appointments with others, inviting them and syncing it to your portable device are all features the Google calendar provides. When I tried to create a calendar to share information with my girlfriend though, I faced the problem of different time zones. Not happy about cluttering my calendar with additional calendars for each time zone, I was happy to find Google having thought of this already.

If you want to share a calendar crossing time zones, simply follow these steps:

0) A Google account is necessary. If you dont have one, please create one in order to follow the steps below.

1) Go to your Google calendar.

2) Visit the Settings page.

3) Mark the Display all time zones field. (Alternatively choose the country you would like to be shown and click on the additional time zone field to choose a city within the country you just selected. Skip Step 4.)

4) Choose the countries you would like to have displayed.

5) Save your settings.

6) Enjoy!

Games have come a long way. I’m about to buy the first three games of the GTA series and for everyone who knows this game series, you know what I’m talking about, for those that don’t know this game, well… I don’t know, but I doubt those actually exist. What I’m trying to say is that a few years ago a highly equipped computer was necessary to play games. Nowadays, while this partly remains the same, games are also running within browsers. A lot of people may think of small flash games, but this isn’t what I’m talking about. Games such as Quake are now playable within the browser and therefore are working with Linux and Mac.

I’m sure there are more games available but if you like MMOFPS, which stands for Massive Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter – so I learned – you will like these two:

Quake Live:

Operation 7:

Depending on where you’re from, your legal age to play these games may vary, so keep that in mind before you find yourself shooting other people’s heads of. If you know additional games, please leave a comment.

A lot of people wonder why I would use Ubuntu, when ‘…everything is so difficult and complicated with it…’. I beg to differ. To me, a lot of reasons why people love Apple and their Macs will work for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions just fine. Ubuntu is stable, fast, has no viruses to be afraid of and moreover, it’s not only customizable without limitations, but it’s also free! It’s getting some time to get used to the installation process of software and the folder-system, but are you still wondering why I’m using it? Bringing a conversation to this point will ultimately lead to this: ‘…but you can’t use MSOffice, Itunes or play games…’. While the gaming part might be right to some extend (DirectX 10 is available only on Windows Vista and Windows 7, but CodeWeavers are working on Linux and Mac support), I smile about the software part.

To use Windows programmes, a few virtualization-tools are available; VmWare and VirtualBox for example, to name just two. VmWare does cost money but might have features you’d like to have or need. A while ago, that was USB 2.0 and DirectX 9.0 for example. I didn’t use VirtualBox because of this for quite some time now, but checking the newest version, these features have long been added. I won’t go into details which one might be better, but will show you how to install VirtualBox simply for the fact that it’s free. VirtualBox is available from Ubuntu Sources but since I prefer having new software installed (no need for direct updates), I’ll show another way to get it up and running.

Installation

- download VirtualBox and install it directly using your package installer

- enter your password

- you’re basically done now – basically…

- create a user group:

# General

sudo adduser <name> vboxusers

# Yourself

sudo adduser $<name> vboxusers

Instead of <name> type your login name and/or the name of the user(s) you would like to add.

- start VirtualBox (found in the System Tools)

- click New to configure the system you would like to virtualize by following the provided steps

Done.

Tips

I encountered a problem after I tried to start my virtualized system. A failure message told me that I didn’t have my kernel driver installed. Shocker!, I really didn’t know that I haven’t done that – but nothing to worry about really, as it will be solved after entering this into your console:

sudo aptitude update

sudo aptitude install dkms

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

For further information or questions please leave a comment.