matsu

Firefox 2.0 – hold-clicking no longer brings up the context menu on Mac OS

Here’s the solution to bring back the hold-clicking action (click and hold to bring up the context menu) now disabled by default on Firefox 2.0 (it was enabled by default on previous versions):

1. On the location (address) box, type about:config (this will bring up a list of all configurable settings)
2. On the filter box, type click_hold – this will single out the ui.click_hold_context_menus setting, which has false under the value column
3. Double click the ui.click_hold_context_menus line to turn false into true
4. Close and restart Firefox, click holding will now bring up context menus

Portability

Matsu was hosted on an older Compaq Armada E500 laptop, with a 11GB disk, and only 128MB of RAM, running Windows XP. Of lately, it was suffering a lot of downtime, either because the Apache server was crashing, or because it was losing connectivity with the wireless LAN. Being the lazy boy that I am , I wasn’t exactly in the mood of moving matsu from it’s failing abode, so I did something better – I virtualized it and moved into my P4! How? Easy!

1. Go to www.vmware.com
2. Download the beta VMWare converter
3. Install it in the machine you want to virtualize
4. Run it – it’s really easy, if you have any doubts about the process, google it
5. Choose the destination folder on a networked or external storage drive
6. After the process, move the created VM folder to the machine where you’re going to run the image
7. Again, at www.vmware.com, download the VMWare player to install on the new machine
8. Run your older computer inside your newer computer!! You can configure the virtual machine with it’s own separate IP address, so you don’t need to re-configure your router’s port forwarding settings and such.

It works – if you’re reading this, this is being run in a WAMP installation (Windows XP, Apache, MySQL, PHP) inside another computer running Windows XP. I’m planning, when I’m not feeling so lazy, to do a very light LAMP (same thing but with Linux) image to run matsu in, that is portable to any machine running Windows or Linux (and hopefully Mac OS some day). As a bonus, it’s running much faster virtualized like this than it was on it’s own (albeit slower) dedicated machine.

Mac OS X Address book iPod disaster recovery

For some reason, the Address book on my Mac reset itself to default. I sync my Nokia N70 with it, but when I noticed the problem, the sync had already deleted everything on the Nokia. Luckily, I also sync my contacts to my iPod. Here’s how to retrieve the info, easily:

1. Plug your iPod on another computer (so it doesn’t sync automatically with the bogus version of your Address book);
2. Don’t pair the iPod with that computer/iTunes;
3. Enable the iPod as a drive if not already;
4. On the iPod partition, there will be an iSync.vcf file inside a folder named “contacts” – copy it from that computer to your computer;
5. On the Address book, from the File menu, choose Import, and vCards (or command-O), and choose the iSync.vcf file you copied;
6. You should now have back all the contacts you had before the crash, from the last time you connected your iPod to your computer.

Hope this was useful to you!

Kite power!

If the claims of Italy’s Sequoia researchers end up being true, the future of wind generated power is much brighter than it was deemed possible.  KiteGen, an ingenious system of kites attached to a “merry go round” horizontal generator, is claimed to be scaleable up to 5 gigawatts per system, at a cost 30 times below normal wind power.  This is electricity at a scale and price of atom generated power, but without any of the environmental drawbacks.   Via the Portuguese Liberal Social blog.