monline

If you've a running VM (Windows XP in my example) and you want to attach an ISO image as the virtual CD/DVD drive to this VM, VirtualBox brings up the Virtual Media Manager. However if you've an ISO image in the "CD/DVD Images" list that you've deleted previously, then VirtualBox hangs. Not just the Virtual Media Manager, but the respective VM too. Apparently it tries to access the missing ISO image file in an infinite loop. So take care not to delete any ISO images "manually" (in Finder) that are already added to the Virtual Media Manager "CD/DVD Images" list. Remove the image first from VirtualBox and only after that from your disk (Virtual Media Manager does not cause any problem with missing ISOs if it's not invoked from a VM's "Devices / CD/DVD Devices / More CD/DVD Images" menu).

Describes various basic tasks like cropping, trimming, converting, deinterlacing, etc.

It seems the memory cache cannot be cleared without a restart of Safari. I've tested this: running the "Empty Cache" functionality clears the disk cache (that is at $HOME/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/Cache.db) immediately, but loading pages (eg. by clicking on links on webpages) that I've visited before I cleared the cache does not result in new downloads of the various content (eg. images). I used the Charles Debugging Proxy, but any other proxy can do. Please, leave a comment if you know a method for clearing the memory cache without restarting Safari. (In case you'd suggest: the "Reset Safari" functionality is no better than "Empty Cache" ... at least regaring the memory cache).

It seems that the QuickTime plugin in Snow Leopard (/Library/Internet Plugins/QuickTime Plugin.plugin) cannot be forced to open movies (eg. the ones at trailers.apple.com) in the old player, "QuickTime Player 7" (which is an optional component and once installed, it's at /Applications/Utilities/QuickTime Player 7). If you don't know why this is necessary, then you didn't try to open a QuickTime movie (*.mov) from a website yet. But all is not lost yet, because there's a workaround: exit QuickTime X and start QuickTime Player 7 _before_ you'd open the movie in your browser. It appears that in case there's already a running instance of a QuickTime player, the browser plugin will use that one (if there's no running player instance, then it'll always start QuickTime X).

sudo scutil --set HostName

By default the Mac OS X version of jEdit starts with 192MB of heap memory and the maximum size of text files that can be opened is limited by this parameter. In the jEdit forum there's a post on how to change the maximum size of Java heap memory of jEdit by altering the Info.plist file in the /Applications/jEdit.app/Contents directory. However this imposes a permanent change and jEdit will start with the increased heap memory pool every time (or you can make a copy of jEdit.app and launch that for large input files). Probably you just want to start jEdit with an increased heap memory to be able to open and process one single large text file.

If you create the disc (or disc image) with Roxio Toast, it'll put a few extra files in there no matter what you do (namely the files "Desktop DB" and "Desktop DF"). However there's a better way which will put in the filesystem(s) only the files you want it to. Use the hdiutil command in a terminal!

HashTab makes it easy (using context menu items in Mac's Finder and Windows' Explorer) to generate all kinds of checksums of a selected file (unfortunately it does not support multiple file selections). In v1.2 of the Mac port the following hash functions are available: CRC32, HAVAL (32-3, 32-4, 32-5), MD2, MD4, MD5, RIPEMD (128, 160, 256, 320), SHA (1, 224, 385, 512), Tiger, Whirlpool. My personal favourite is Whirlpool, but for file integrity checking MD5 became the defacto standard, ie. this is the one you'll most likely encounter on download pages.

I've done a little performance test of these two virtualization solutions for Mac OS X using a Windows XP SP3 for the guest OS. My conclusion is that they're pretty close in most aspects ... or at least in the aspects that are relevant to me. And VirtualBox being free for personal use makes it a clear winner for my needs (at home).

We've a desktop DVD recorder with a built-in TV tuner and a hard disk as a substitute for the old VCR technology. Sometimes I've to create a video from such TV rips, either in MPEG-4 or H.264 format. Since this recorder has no digital output (like an USB or Firewire connector), we used to copy the titles to a rewritable DVD disc and I recode the contents with HandBrake on my Mac. I'll put down now the parameters that I've found to produce a good result. These are by no means "the" optimal parameters, I'm just saving them for future reference and in case somebody else might profit from it.