Found this article discussing why Apple may have taken it out as well as a hack to get it back discovered by user  “radiv78″  on the Apple Support forum.

Love me some Front Row. Thanks guys.

#tycam

…and I am still online… Generators FTW! Actually its more of a gimp right now but it’s better than nothing.

#tycam

I have been using Adium on my Mac as my primary IM application for quite some time now and I have loved it. Once Facebook chat support was added I instantly started using that feature. However, recently my Facebook contacts stopped showing up. If someone online messages me first they pop up and I can have a conversation with them, but once they disconnect it still shows them online. I had tried updates, reinstalls, and configuration changes with no avail. Doing a quick google search I found that others had the same problem and it seems to be a bug with the Facebook Chat API. I then discovered that you can connect to Facebook chat using the Jabber protocol.

1. Add a “Jabber” account (as opposed to a Facebook account).
2. Type in your Facebook username, followed by @chat.facebook.com, for examples “JoeBob@chat.facebook.com”. You’ll need to activate your username in the account preferences (Account → Account Settings → Username) of your Facebook account, using the website.
3. Set the connection server to “chat.facebook.com”, on the options pane.
4. You are ready to go and connect! Remember to turn off your old Facebook account, or remove it.

Here a couple screen shots for your convenience. Seems to work great. Enjoy.

So I’ve noticed that if you have a program crash on you Mac while running it hard, a process called spindump is started that consumes 100% of your CPU. The man page of spindump says

“spindump is a tool used by various system components to create reports when an unresponsive application is force quit.”

While this is helpful for Apple developers to solve the problem that caused you app to crash in the first place, it can be quite annoying because every running program becomes unresponsive and you can’t even start the Activity Monitor to kill off the spindump process, which if you manage to do it will just spawn up again even if you restart the computer. So here is the solution I found after poking around in the system launch daemons

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.spindump.plist

Went out of town over the weekend and forgot to publish this post so here it is:

Overall I was very impressed by Apple’s newest product releases. This obviously comes as no surprise since I am such a fan boi. With the release of iTunes 10 comes Ping, which I hope turns out cool. If you value my musical opinion Follow Me on Ping. I was concerned that Jobs said they had re-designed every iPod in the line up but they failed to mention anything about the iPod Classic. Does this mean it’s possible we could lose the portable storage giant? As an true audiophile who wants all his music everywhere he goes, this presents a problem because none of the new generation iPods have the storage space I require. Even the 160GB is now too small and I don’t want to go through the trouble of creating a playlist of music that I might want to listen to at any given moment. Most of this problem has been solved for me with my streaming audio server, however not always am I at a computer or have internet service while in the backwoods. As for the big news, the new Apple TV, I was a bit disappointed in the implementation and the emphasis on renting only. I currently have an Apple TV and love it. I have been converting all of my DVDs to H.264. The new direction taken of streaming only is fine since I can still stream all my movies from my computer, however I think taking “My Movies” out of the Movies menu was a mistake. I feel like the Apple TV should focus on my collection of movies and not ones I have to pay per view. I realize storage management is a problem for most people and I think the new Apple TV will get streaming HD content to many, but as a computer geek I want to store and backup all of my digital media myself and not have a company dictate how and when I watch it while taking my money every time I view content that I have already legitimately purchase via physical media (i.e. DVD or BlueRay). That said, I was impressed that Apple decided to incorporate Netflix being a competitor in the streaming market. Either way I will still be purchasing a new Apple TV for my bedroom. What are you thoughts?

27" iMac

Once again I have made a few changes. I think I spend more time dinging around with my site and moving things around than actually posting anything. I decided since my blog redesign turned out pretty cool and that I was never going to get around to my Flex build of this site that I would just make the blog my site again like it once was. Maybe in a few months when I post again I will have changed it back who knows lol.

Just as an update I am stilling kickin it doing web development though I have changed it up a bit. I took a full time job at one of my clients (Christopherson Travel) and am back to doing Monkey Scratch Designs on the side. It has been a pretty good deal to have consistent work in this economy, in fact I have been swamped with work between the new job and Monkey Scratch clients (tonight happens to be laid back, hence the reason for writing this post). I’ve really enjoyed working with the guys at Christopherson Travel, they are super l337 programmers and I have learned a ton, especially in the realm of Java.

iPad

Because of the recent changes, the home office build up has got put on hold because I am not home enough these days to justify it, and trust me I am good at justifying. I did, however, get a 27″ iMac at Christopherson which is totally awesome! I was also excited to see the recent release of the Apple iPad. I know some of you think it is just a big iPhone and that dispute may have some merit, but because I am a so called “Mac Monk”, as coined by my Christopherson pals, I will have to get one just because it’s THAT cool. In fact, one in every room in the house would be sweet! (I do have a logical argument for this so if your curious just ask) Some of you may be thinking “That’s ridiculous Ty!” but honestly would you expect anything less from me? So thats the skinny. If we haven’t chilled for awhile then we should so give me a shout!

Well I finally found a little time to update the look and feel of my blog. I have been busy with work which is a good thing but it has distracted me from stuff like this. I recently upgraded all the servers on my rack and finally got everything (including this blog you are reading now) migrated over, so in my spare time I have been playing with them rather than writing. For those of you that like tech specs here is the basics of what I got on my rack:

• 24-port 100BASE-T switch with 2 Gigabit ports
• 8-port KVM
• Firewall – Quad Core Xeon w/4GB RAM & and a 4-port network card.
• Web/App Server – Dual Quad Core XEON w/8GB RAM
• Database Server – Dual Quad Core XEON w/8GB RAM
• Monitor & Keyboard

All systems have RAID 1 (Mirroring) for redundancy and protection against any single drive failure. The entire rack is also on separate circuit breakers as well as battery backup. Later on I will expose the details of my setup. I am currently in the process of building the ultimate desk, or in my mind a personal NOC/Command Center. Majority of the desk is still in the design phase, however I did just get my Ergotron LX arms for my triple monitor setup which is soon expanding to a penta-monitor setup (hopefully). Anyway thats the down low as of late. I plan to create an entire page here on my home office/server room setup that I will keep as up-to-date as possible. Until next time I hope you have enjoyed my ramblings.

Hello! I would like to dedicate this post to my cousin Jennica who said I need to update my blog. This is my first post ever from my iPhone. I have had the capability to do this before however I never bothered trying. The WordPress app for iPhone is pretty slick and you should give it a try if you have an iPhone and blog with WordPress. So far Thanksgiving weekend has been good, spending it with family and all. More details coming soon!

I finished up the ethernet wiring in my house and I am way too excited about it. I took out all the RJ11 jacks (standard phone plug) and replaced them with RJ45 Cat5e jacks. Honestly who needs a landline phone these days? As long as I got my iPhone and Internet access wherever I am at (including by the dishwasher) life is good! As far as my computer setup goes if you are reading this post you are pulling the content from my liquid-cooled linux server sitting on my desk, which of course is nothing else other than Ubuntu. I got my Macbook Pro hooked up to my multiple monitors along with an Apple Time Capsule that backs everything up. What’s that you say, no Microsoft Windows? Sorry to disappoint. I have a few other computers and firewalls that I haven’t integrated into my home network yet but as soon as I do you’ll be sure to hear about it. I have some serious nerd plans that include a full blown server rack, ya its overkill but I’m Ty (might as well be Jaguar Paw) and I’m not about to do things half-assed. This is just the beginning, stay tuned…