iPhone text message chiming in silent mode

Midway through my UMN lecture on computerized physician order entry my 3G iPhone started pinging. My 12 yo was texting me.

Thing was, the phone was in silent mode (red dot on the ring/silent switch). It's not supposed to chime. It wasn't ringing when I tested however, so I knew the switch was working.

I shut down and restarted the phone and changed the text message sound. Of course power cycling makes sense, but the I had a reason to change the text message sound too. That comes from my OS X experience; sometimes changing settings will fix a corruption problem.

That worked. The phone no longer chimes when in silent mode.

VMWare Fusion 3: Migration, PowerPoint and Shrink Disk

I've used VMWare 2 with Windows 2000 and Office 2003 on my MacBook for almost a year. I hardly ever use it, but it's compact and fast.

I wasn't sure I'd bother installing VMWare on my i5 iMac, but then I discovered how lousy PowerPoint 2008 really is (an especially bitter discovery since my first impressions were very positive).

So I downloaded the 30 day trial version of VMWare 3, installed VMWare Converter on my creaky XP box, and created an XP image on my iMac including Office 2003. I'm pleased to report that PowerPoint 2003/Win in the Fusion VM is at least ten times faster than PowerPoint 2008 for OS X.

Here are some discoveries of note:

• VMWare on the iMac had trouble connecting to VMWare Converter. I had to restart the XP box to make it work. I think a pending install created a problem.
• The conversion took an hour or two.
• On VM startup it looked at first that only one account had been created -- the XP box had had 3 accounts. I restarted the VM and it showed all 3.
• I couldn't get VMWare Tools to install. I had to login and connect to the share then run setup. This took a couple of tries I think, and a restart or two. It wasn't as smooth as VMWare 2, but my previous efforts didn't involve migration.
• I had to re-authenticate the VM XP box with Microsoft. That took a few minutes. I'm still running the old box so I unplug the network cable when the VM is running. I'll be putting the old box out to pasture soon. (It's amazing how silent the office is when only the iMac is running.)
• The VM migration created about 50 2.5 GB files in an OS X Package (executable folder). This can be changed in settings. It's done to get around FAT max file sizes; I wonder if it might help with backup. (If you create a 100GB single file VM, each time you open it you'll create a 100GB file that needs backup.)
• I didn't remember than I had two drives in the XP box. The VM had both drives; one held an old redundant backup. I deleted that drive (Settings:Hard Disks) but the VM didn't shrink. I used the "Clean Up Disk" function and that shrank it to a nice 50GB.

See also:

• Experiment with VMWare -- for free
• Parallels to VMware - my experience (Win2K install)
• VMware academic discounts: Fusion and Windows Workstation
• Why I'm downloading Windows 7 RC tonight ... (It runs on my MacBook)
• VMWare Converter - turn your XP box into a VM platform
• How to fix permissions in an OS X Package and how deal with VMWare Fusion Insufficient Permission problems

Update 3/11/2010: It's been performing excruciatingly slowly. I haven't been able to find any explanation. Startup times of about 3-5 minutes, intermittent very slow operations. It behaves like it has no working memory.

Update 10/26/10: I finally get around to speeding it up.

I now have gDrive

Today my Google Docs shows the "Upload any file" link.

So I have the promised minimalist version of "gDrive". To get the good stuff though I'll have to upgrade our family domain and/or my personal Gmail account. That's not necessarily cheap at current prices.

You can't actually upload any file. Executables, including OS X apps. can't be uploaded.

Update 1/20/10: I found my first bug. I uploaded a PDF and viewed it. From the viewer I obtained the share link. The public link didn't work however. When I clicked "preview" it reported "Sorry, the page (or document) you have requested is not available."

How to fix permissions in an OS X Package and how deal with VMWare Fusion Insufficient Permission problems

In this one post I shall now solve two mysteries not currently addressed anywhere Google can find.

The first mystery is how, in Snow Leopard (10.6), to change the permissions for all the files in a Package. (Have I mentioned how much I hate the OS X/Unix permissions model?).

It's easy to change the permissions on a Package (a folder that appears in OS X to be an application), but that doesn't change the internal permissions. Unlike a folder, there's no GUI option to apply the changes to "enclosed items".

The answer is to right click on the package and choose "Show Package Contents". Inside the package, create a folder. Move everything into the folder. Apply your permissions change to "enclosed items". Move everything out and delete the folder. (Of course you should backup first.)

The second mystery is how to move an OS X VMWare image between users. In VMWare 3 this is a a Package, and every file in it has the original owner's permissions. Moving it to a the "Shared" folder doesn't change permissions - because the OS X permissions model is irretrievably broken.

Changing permissions on the Package is not enough, VMWare will report that the package cannot be opened: "Error while opening the virtual machine: Insufficient permissions to access the file ..." (The actual error message will reference on specific file in the package.)

I changed Permissions on the Package, then I used the above trick to change permissions on all the files in the Package.

That worked.

A Google calendar with contact birthdays

It's a secret, but for some time there's been a Google Calendar with Contacts birthdays and events.

It's in Other Calendars:Add:Browse Interesting Calendars:More:Contacts birthdays and events.

No, I don't know what "events" means.

The Contacts Birthdays and Events is public by default. So if anyone knows the URL, they can add it. So you can share it with your spouse and vice-versa, in which case you'll want to give each distinct names.

Obviously it has only those birthdays you've added to Contacts information. This calendar will be more useful if I'm ever able to integrate my OS X/MobileMe address book with my Google Contacts (currently the data models are too dissimilar). So, for the moment, it's more curious than useful.

These published calendars can add up. With this one I have 20 calendars available to my account, though I display only about 5-6 at a time. The calendars I display vary by season.

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USB 3 and Gigabit ethernet: two articles on the gap between marketing and reality

Vendors lie. It's the nature of things.

Ski resorts lie about their snow coverage, and tech vendors lie about performance. Marketing, for example, convinced most geeks that USB 2 was as fast as Firewire, but that's certainly not true under OS X.

In the same vein, here are two articles that contrast real world performance with marketing claims:

Coding Horror Gigabit Ethernet and Back of the Envelope Calculations: A 2005 article that showed Gigabit ethernet is about 3 times faster than 100 mbps ethernet -- not 10 times as fast. Great discussion.

Dans Data review: USB 3 drive box and controller card kit (Jan 2010): In most available machines USB 3 is 3 times faster than USB 2. (So it's probably faster than Firewire 400 and maybe comparable to Firewire 800).

Threefold improvements are nothing to sneeze at, especially in the post-Moore's Law era. It's just not quite what marketing promises.

Mac users need not feel USB 3 envy -- we get Firewire 800.

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Relational database 101: A Microsoft gem hidden in plain sight

Colleagues sometimes ask me about where to get a basic introduction to databases. My informatics students should be asking that, but they usually don’t.

I’ve not had a very good response. It’s been eons since my first encounter with data models, ER diagrams, keys and the like. I dimly recalled the monstrous Microsoft Access manuals of old, which often included quite good tutorials.

That’s what led me to crack open the Table of Contents of Microsoft Access 2007. It took me a while to figure out that how to do that. You can either click on a tiny blue circle/question mark in the far right of the app bar, or you can type old F1. You can then click the wee blue book icon to see a Table of Contents or you can look at “Browse Access Help”. From either location you’ll see “Database design” as shown here in the Table of Contents:

Microsoft has put a lot of material behind that little Database design link:

Starting with Database design basics:

Wow. I feel like I’ve entered a dusty old library frozen in time, and opened a book untouched for decades (I did that once in rural Bangladesh – quite memorable). Microsoft’s tech writers are terribly underappreciated.

The materials include demonstrations, references to sample databases, etc. The vast majority of this material is applicable to any relational database, from poor little Access to Oracle.

Many students and tech workers have an unused copy of Microsoft Access near at hand. Even if you never intend to do anything with Microsoft Access, you might as well take advantage of the excellent interactive textbook that comes with it.