Paul Wilkinson's Weblog - Apple

Reformatting a FAT32 drive to HFS+ - Never trust a GUI

nospam@example.com (Paul Wilkinson) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:55:41 -0700

I bought an external drive for a relative to use with Time Machine. Of course it cam pre-formatted as FAT32 and while this would work it wouldn't give the best performance, so I wanted to reformat it as HFS+.

I fired up Disk Utility, selected Journaled file system and click erase...and error.
A bit of googling suggested that selecting the option to zero the disk would resolve the problem. I tried this but I decided I wasn't prepared to wait the 4 hours it was going to take to zero a 600GB drive - there had to be an easier way.

I decided to try the command line - I thought that this may give me a more meaningful error message if nothing else.

Anwyay, much to my surprise the command diskutil eraseDisk "Journaled HFS+" "Back Up" disk1 resulted in

Started erase on disk disk1
Creating partition map
Formatting disk1s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name Back Up
[ + 0%..10%..20%..30%..40%..50%..60%..70%..80%..90%..100% ]
Finished erase on disk disk1
Finished partitioning on disk disk1

And it just worked, so hopefully Google will find this and it may help someone else.

Mac "Large Type" Function

nospam@example.com (Paul Wilkinson) — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:28:50 -0700

Dear LazyWeb,
I am looking for sample code that demonstrates how to achieve equivalent functionality of the Addresss Book "Large Type" option.
I have successfully created a transparent NSWindow into which I can place by view, but I am not sure how to put that window on "top" of the screen rather than just on top of my application. Do I need to use something other than Cocoa to achieve this?

Thanks,
Paul

Update 11/10/2006 For the sake of Google and posterity, the answers can be found in the Round Transparent Window example on Apple's Developer site. I had figured most of it out myself - the key item is [iconWindow setLevel:NSStatusWindowLevel]; in order to have the window appear on top of everything else.

Apple...working to keep the skies safe

nospam@example.com (Paul Wilkinson) — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 07:04:19 -0700

According to an article in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald

US Homeland Security officials were warned the bombers were plotting to use liquid explosives hidden in sports drinks or other containers in their hand luggage.

Once on board, the suicide bombers would detonate the explosives using a battery from a simple device like their camera or an iPod.

But, we all know iPod batteries aren't user replaceable

Its not a bed...its an iPod Dock

nospam@example.com (Paul Wilkinson) — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 09:21:32 -0700

Whilst shopping for beds recently I came across the Pause by NZ company DesignMobel. The available accessories for this bed include a Bose soundsystem and iPod Dock built in to the bedside table.

Microsoft has announced their intention to ship a music player by Christmas. I think it is a good indication of what they are going to have to compete against when companies are building beds with iPod compatibility.

Big and Beautiful

nospam@example.com (Paul Wilkinson) — Mon, 06 Dec 2004 07:18:22 -0700

After nearly three months wait I finally have my new iMac G5 20". It was well worth the wait. When you sit in front of it the screen practically fills your field of view.

The upgrade process was also particularly seamless - very Apple. When you turn the new Mac on for the first time it asks if you want to transfer data from an old Mac - if so you simply hook the two machines together via a FireWire cable and come back in about half an hour. No need to spend hours or days reinstalling all of your programs.