I recently changed the folder structure of my site. Because of this, some of your bookmarks may have been broken. These changes also broke my rss widget, so I updated it to find the new feed location. You can download 1.3 from the Downloads page.

The only reason I've ever wanted to convert a DMG to an ISO is so I can burn that DMG on a dual layer DVD on a Windows machine. Unfortunately, there is no way to convert a DMG to an ISO in Disk Utility. That's where a handy little Terminal command comes into play.

hdiutil convert /path/to/filename.dmg -format UDTO -o /path/to/savefile.iso

Just replace /path/to/filename.dmg with the path to the DMG that you want to convert. An easy way to do that is to just drag the DMG into Terminal.

Then replace /path/to/savefile.iso with the path to where you want to save the file. You may get the .cdr extension at the end of the new ISO, but you can just delete that extension and change it to .iso.

The way Stack in Leopard assume the first icon of whatever is in the folder of the Stack pretty much sucks and looks horrible. However, this is a way to make them a little less ugly. Optica Optima has a beautiful solution with their beautiful semi-transparent icons.
Download the icons.
Mirror on Justin Allard dot com.


Getting the icons to stay at the top of the Stack is the real trick, and involves a little a little Terminal hackery. The following Terminal command is an example of what you may have to type.

cd /Applications
touch -mt 202001010101.01 ApplicationsIcon

What the first command does is change the directory of where you are working, so change it to the place you put the icon. If you don't know the path, just drag the folder to the Terminal after typing cd.
The second command uses touch which changes the date modified of the icon to January 1st 2020. Because of the date change, you can sort the folder by date modified and the icon will remain at the top.
Alternatively, you could just name the icon with a 0 as the first character, and sort by name. Use whatever works best for you.

Credit to Optica Optima and XD.

This little how-to can always be found in the Leopard Tricks section, along with some other tricks.

Are you not a big fan of the new login wallpaper in Leopard? I wasn't a huge fan either and luckily, there is a pretty easy way to change it, and I'll tell you, and show you, how. Just a disclaimer, I am NOT responsible if you screw up your Mac in any way, shape or form. This process worked for me and it should work for you. Also, CoreServices contains some important system stuff, so if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it.

Read the how-to

or

Watch the screencast

SurveillanceSaver is a Quartz screensaver for OS X, but not just any screensaver. SurveillanceSaver pulls live streams for unprotected web cams and displays that as your screen saver. It really is quite neat, and contrary to what I believed, it isn't very processor intensive, which means the fan on my MacBook won't annoyingly spin up.

SurveillanceSaver is currently in alpha 0 (I know, scary isn't it?), but it seems pretty darn stable. Go check it out, it's a free download.

I'm moving stuff around in the Macish section. I've now made two separate categories for Mac Apps and Tips and Tricks. Mac Apps will have all the Mac apps that were in the Macish section. Tips and Tricks will eventually contain tips and tricks for Leopard and Tiger, and maybe even Windows.

I apologize for broken bookmarks to all of my Mac apps pages.

The Milky theme is back. I didn't like the other theme as much as Milky, and I figured out how to make the title smaller, so now it's back.

Earlier this week I got maybe 5 Kernel Panics in one day. I thought is was due to me running a Leopard dev build, so I re-installed Tiger (whose GUI and Dock I much prefer over Leopard's) hoping to solve my problems. But it did not. When I was updating from 10.4.6 to 10.4.10 I got another Kernel Panic. Needless to say, that KP hosed my install of Tiger. That last KP got me thinking that my RAM may be bad, so I put in the two stock 256mb sticks and re-installed Tiger using the Upgrade command. (I should say that right now I am very thankful for back ups). Unfortunately that Upgrade didn't work out and resulted in a Kernel Panic at boot up. That really got me angry. I again re-installed Tiger this time zeroing out the hard disk and doing a clean install. After Tiger installed I copied back all of my data over night.

The next morning I had to put one 1GB stick of RAM in so I could install Photoshop for my photography class, so I put in the one stick that I was pretty sure was not bad. Later that night I put in the other 1GB stick of RAM that I thought might be bad. So far I have yet to have another Kernel Panic with my 2GBs of RAM, so now I am thinking that they may have just needed to be re-seated.

I now have a new theme on my site that I like, and I hope you guys do too.