So I have a 500GB Time Capsule stuck somewhere in the house, to which all the Macs are backed up by Time Machine. Well, actually, my work MacBook Pro gets backed up on the TC’s internal hard drive, while all the other Macs (that’s one G5 iMac, a G4 iBook and a core2duo MacBook) are backed-up to a 500GB USB HD that’s hooked-up to the TC.
The great thing with TC/TM is that, since a couple versions of Leopard, the backups can be done over the LAN via Ethernet OR Airport. While TM does backups to external HD as simple subfolders, when you backup to a network drive, TM creates a sparsebundle disk image using your computer’s name and mac address (well, the MAC address of the network interface you used when doing the first ever TM backup of said machine).

On Monday, while TM was doing it’s hourly thing, there was a power outage in the house. When it went back live, I found out TM couldn’t backup my MacBook Pro anymore, it threw an error saying that it could not find the backup disk. I checked and could see the TC alright on the LAN, and the sparsebundle for my laptop was clearly there… So I rebooted the TC, but to no result. Them I tried to mount manually the sparsebundle: the Finder grinded away for a loooong while before giving up and throwing an error stating that the image had “no filesystem”. Yikes!

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YES!
The 10.5.3 update to OSX finally fixes the problem where the Aperture Library would get backed up from scratch multiple times.
In previous versions of OSX, if you had Aperture open while a backup started, Time Machine would skip the Aperture Library until you closed Aperture. Then, the next backup would do a complete copy of your Aperture Library. yes, the WHOLE Library, not just the changed files… like I explained in this post (and as Apple explained in a KBase post).

So, yesterday, after reading that the 10.5.3 update “Addresses compatibility issues with Aperture 2.” I decided to give it a go: I removed my Aperture Library from Time Machine’s exclusion list and let it get backed-up (that’s about 37GB). As soon as the first backup was done, I launched Aperture and let it open until the next backup started. After the second backup was complete, I quit Aperture and had a look at the backupd logs for the third backup… and voila! it only backed up a couple new pictures I had added to Aperture.

Thanks Apple, it took you an awfully long time to fix this (and why the bug was there in the first place, when they control the whole OS/apps/hardware???) but finally it is fixed.

About the Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update:

Addresses compatibility issues with Aperture 2.

If it indeed fixes the problem where Time Machine would do a complete backup of your Aperture Library if you had Aperture open the last time Time Machine backed-up your system, then I’d be happy… this was really a pain… too bad Apple isn’t more explicit.

As Apple states in the update’s KBase page:

About the Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update:

Includes additional RAW image support for several cameras.

Well, it would be nice to know which ones.

[UPDATE]
Well, hot on the heels of the 10.5.3 update, here’s the Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 2.1 that brings RAW support for the following cameras:

• Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi/Kiss Digital x2/450D
• Epson R-D1
• Leaf AFi 7
• Leaf AFi 6
• Leaf AFi 5
• Pentax K200D
• Pentax K20D

Note that this update is available for MacOSX up from 10.4.11, which is nice seing Apple continue to bring out updates for the previous version of OSX.

VistaPerfection 2.0:

So, like, urgh, they even have the boot screen with ugly progress bar and all.
Hmm, maybe if they have been really good, they have managed to reproduce the slowness, the bugs and even the annoying UAC behavior (maybe the iPhone will ask you for your PIN code every time you want to make a call, read an SMS or - GASP - browse the ‘net).

I can’t think of why anyone would install this on their iPhone…

Betalogue » Blog Archive » Word 2008: How to assign command-G to ‘Find Next’:

Microsoft has decided that command-G shortcut should be assigned to “Go To…,” and they won’t ever change their minds. So you have to customize Word just to make it behave the normal way, i.e. use command-G as a shortcut for “Find Next.”

“Easy,” you say. “Just go to the ‘Customize Keyboard‘ dialog box, find the ‘Find Next‘ command and assign command-G to it.” Right.

I’ve been raving for YEARS about not being able to hit command-G to go to “Find next…”… And you know what? Word’s UI is so well done I actually NEVER even managed to reassign the keyboard shortcut because… well, read the post and you’ll find out why.

p.s.: oh, by the way, I totally agree, Word 2008 is so bad.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

So, I posted a couple days ago about a really annoying bug where Excel 2008 documents with celles formatted using the € currency get “converted” to $ when you close and reopen them.

Well, I sort of found a cure. A workaround really… Well, two actually.

1) Simply save your document using the .xsl format instead of the default new .xlsx format and the problem goes away. Or,

2) instead of using the Format Cell menu option then choosing Currency and €, simply use the € icon in the formatting toolbar, or use the Financial cell format (that’s what the € icon does). It does almost the same as the € “currency” format, simply adding a space between the number and the symbol…

Don’t you love M$ products?

And so I continue my venture in the shadowy depth of Mac Office 2008, wondering whether I shall finally stay with the 2004 edition… not that it was great (it wasn’t, on an Intel machine), but the 2008 edition fixed almost no bugs from the 2004 version, and added a whole lot of new bugs.So what could they have been doing down in the Mac BU during these long years? I think I might have found part of the answer: they fell in love with Aqua and all the shiny widgets and decided they might as well spend some time on creating their own… and so, I hereby introduce the “Enlarging, Blueishing, Splashing Widget”.Watch this video closely: you’ll recognize the widgets that live at the bottom of your Word document windows, and allow you to swap between display modes (Page, Outline…).

yes, you are not dreaming, this is a triple-action widget: when you roll over it, it enlarges, it gets blue, and there’s a splash animation within it. Said animation is probably done using raytracing and specular reflections on terapolygonal vertices, since simply mousing over the widgets taxes my 2.3GHz Core2Duo CPU… well, on some occasions, for on the video it doesn’t register much on the Menu Meter CPU display (it did 5 minutes ago, and Activity Monitor pointed to Word using up to 25% of one CPU, while doing nothing more than mousing over… and I am running a 2.3GHz core2duo MacBook Pro) but a friend of mine running on a core solo Mac mini managed to get the CPU to 75% by mousing over.Well, I hope I’ll have some new nuggets to report to you as I’ll be heavily trying out this 2008 edition to see whether I shall migrate or stay with Office 2004.