A long long way from home

Two days ago I picked up a brand new MacBook Pro 15-inch with a Intel core i7 CPU from my local hardware pusher. I have to admit it’s a DAMN fast machine, especially after fitting it with a Corsair SSD disk. However, it has one major grievance in my opinion – the button-less multitouch trackpad. My old 2007 model MBP has a physical button located below the trackpad, and I have gotten accustomed to resting my right hand thumb there when using the trackpad.

The new multitouch trackpad does not come with a physical button, but it can detect “idle” fingers on the trackpad so when resting my thumb I can still use the trackpad as if the thumb was not in contact with the pad. Most of the time. If I am to move my thumb only the slightest – which I typically do when I try to tap-to-click with my index finger – it will start interpreting my movements as multitouch gestures and very diffrent things than I intended will start to happen. Most annoying.

After searching for a software solution to disable the lover one third of the trackpad I got pissed of and typed “I hate the macbook multitouch trackpad” and guess what, I am not the only one. First hit in the result list is Kustaa Nyholms site over at sparetimelabs.com, which on his Multitouch page explains why he hates the trackpad and what he did to fool it into behaving properly. I have to admit, It’s a sexy solution

Now my thumb rests nicely on a piece of former DVD case, and my erranous click rate has gone down to zero. It even looks good, although I will try to get some thinner double sided tape and do a better job with my scissors to get it perfect. Thanks Kusti!

As a little reminder to self, here is how you do it – from macosoxhints.com via Bytex. If you don’t limit the size of the DMG you will apparently run into problems with Time Machine (TM) killing off your entire backup. I currently use a smallish USB disk for backup, but I would much rather have TM back up over the network, preferrably via SSH. Unfortunately, ExpanDrive does not support this officially. I am planning on giving it a try over ordinary sshfs in Fuse. I’ll be back with more.

I forretningsverda er det blitt slik at det er vanleg å topp-poste. Dette medfører at istadenfor ein vanleg tekstflyt lyt ein begynne nederst i eposten og lese oppover for å få med seg heile historien. Personleg brukar eg utruleg mykje tid på dette i høve til å kunne lese ein korrekt sitert epost. Difor oppmodar eg alle om å legge til denne vesle tankevekkjaren i signaturen sin – på fritt vald målføre:

  A: Fordi det er heilt motsett av den måten menneske vanlegvis les tekst.
  Q: Kvifor det?
  A: Topp-posting.
  Q: Kva er det mest slitsame i epost og på news?

  A: Fordi det er helt motsatt av den måten mennesker vanligvis leser tekst.
  Q: Hvorfor det?
  A: Topp-posting.
  Q: Hva er det mest slitsomme i epost og på news?

  A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
  Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
  A: Top-posting.
  Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

Meir om det same:

http://audun.norblogg.net/2007/01/10/sitering-av-epost/
http://home.online.no/~vidaandr/news/OBSquoting.html
http://antibiomatika.net/usenet/quoting.html

I started using Linux in 1997, and fell in love with virtual desktops right away. A real productivity-booster. When I turned to Mac OS X in 2006 after a hard breakup with Linux on my laptop one of the first things I installed was VirtueDesktops. It worked very well, and  I used it all the time.

Then came Leopard bringing not gifts, but Spaces. Spaces is one of the worse implementations of virtual desktops I have seen.

1. Impossible to turn off the animations when switching desktop. Theese animations tend to get slower during the day also.
2. Impossible to have more than 4 columns of desktops
3. When you Cmd-Tab around in your applications you also switch desktop. With the whole animation and all this is horrible. Just ask Nick Santilli over at theAppleBlog.
4. You may not set up your own keyboard shortcuts for direct access to each desktop. You must live with <Modifier>+<Number>

The first three annoyances are something I cannot remedy that easily. But number four is something you may actually do something about! Or at least, there is a workaround.

Enter Butler.

Butler is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. Like launching applications. It’s much like QuickSilver in many ways. The Butler website has some challenges as I write this, so I enclose the install DMG here.

Download Butler:  butler.dmg.zip

Now, for the setup. I want to have a grid of 4×2 desktops. I want the upper row to be accessible with Cmd-Esc to Cmd-F3, and the lower row with Cmd-1 to Cmd-4.

So, what to do?

* Start Butler.

* Modify your spaces settings. Set the “Switch directly to a space” key to be Option, as you want Cmd as your future hot
key, and Control is convenient for having as the real spaces shortcut. See illustration below.

* Configure/Customize Butler. Add a new Keystroke Smart Item.

* Then add a name to it, like “Workspace 1″. Also give the keystroke that you want Butler to generate.

* Now select the “Triggers” tab, and give the hotkey wanted for switching to that workspace. I prefer my first workspace to be on Cmd-Escape:

* Repeat the process for all your desktops/workspaces, then go back to System Preferences and make the hot key for “Switch directly to a space” to be Control (^).

Voilá. You now have your own hotkeys for navigating directly to a desktop in spaces.

I have now switched to Leopard, and wanted to test out the much anticipated Time Machine that supposedly makes backups a breeze. So I happily plugged in a empty USB drive, Time Machine asked me if I wanted to use that disk as a backup disk, and then it started backing up my data so that I can easily restore them… or not.

You see, I am one of those paranoid geezers that like to keep their files encrypted in case someone steals their laptop. So I use Apple’s built in encryption, FileVault, for my home folder. And it seems Time Machine does not play as nice with FileVaults as it does with non-protected data. Time Machine itself states, albeit not in that exact wording, that it sucks with FileVault:

Another thing that annoys me with Time Machine is that you cannot make bootable backup disks with it. When your laptop gets stolen or your disk crashes and the customers are calling you every ten minutes the luxury of just plugging your USB/Firewire disk in, boot from it and have your complete work environment ready is pretty priceless. I’ve been there. Spending time reinstalling may not always be an option.

My current backup scheme that allows for this consists of two parts:

• Using RsyncX for backing up my entire system. This approach has the same caveat as Time Machine – I prefer to log out and back in as a second Admin user in order to successfully unmount the sparsebundle (sparseimage in Tiger) that holds my home folder, so that I am sure that it gets backed up properly. There is one “problem” with this – I only get the latest snapshot of my complete system. I can live with that, as I can boot from it. This method is not new, I used this howto from 2005 to get it rolling.
• Using plain rsync over ssh to get incremental backups of my home folder. I used a slightly modified version of the “backup to a central backup server with 7 day incremental” from the rsync examples page. Since this runs over ssh to a server at home I may take backups while on the run with my laptop, so I do not have to lug around the extra USB drive in order to get backups done.

The combination of theese two methods makes restoring my system in case of a disk replacement as easy as two rsync commands after I boot from my USB drive:

1. Rsync the entire contents of the USB drive into the new disk after partitioning it. The backup USB disk is, needless to say, also the perfect rescue tool.
2. Log in as my FileVaulted user and update my home folder from the server via ssh.

However, if bootable backups is not a priority and you are OK with carrying the extra Time Machine backup disk with you and risk getting BOTH your laptop and your backups stolen – then Time Machine is for you. Also, if you are a home user with a desktop Mac Time Machine is also probably perfect for you. But as a laptop user with security needs Time Machine is not an ideal solution. The rsync setup is also more of a hack, and could be more seamless.  Any hints towards a seamless, fast restore, backup regime for security-minded laptop users is greatly welcome