drew

Just spent almost the entire day trying to figure out what I was doing wrong when trying out many different flash multi-file uploading widgets. All of them would give me a 302 redirect http error, even when testing locally.

So after much searching and reading and studying… and finally testing this on my Windows machine (which works fine); I’ve decided this is a bug in Flash 9 for Mac.

There’s not a problem when it’s uploaded to a script directly which returns a 200 OK header response first. But when you use a framework that uses mod_rewrite for every URL, it’s not easy to get around that.

If anyone else has had experience with this I’d love to hear from you. Very frustrating! Maybe it’s fixed in the Flash 10 beta? Maybe it’s not a bug; it’s a “feature”, right?

UPDATE: I went ahead and installed Flash10 hoping for the best, but with no luck. I was able to contact someone at Adobe who told me the Flash scripts will have to be recompiled in Flash10 to see if Flash10 would help. So installing Flash10 on my computer won’t make the scripts any different.

Upon getting my Mac, Spaces was one of the first things I checked out. I had tried Virtual Desktops in Windows and Linux, but never found them to be too terribly helpful. Not to mention I used a dual monitor setup with my Windows machine, so I felt I had plenty of room for things.

Despite having a nice big 24″ screen, I have often felt my desktop to be cramped and cluttered; especially coming from a dual monitor setup. So the idea of Spaces seemed perfect, except using the keyboard shortcuts felt too slow and like to much work just to get to another application or space. (F8 + Click on a space OR Cmd + Arrow) So this tip from Mac Os X Hints sounded like the perfect solution. Although they don’t actually offer a tip on how to do it (just the tip to do it), this is what I’ve done:

1. Assign Spaces to use the Cmd + Arrow keys too switch between Spaces.
2. Use SteerMouse to assign the right and left mouse scroller to use those combinations (Cmd + Right Arrow) (Cmd + Left Arrow)
3. There is no three!

I’m using 6 spaces now, for web browsing, coding, FTP, RSS Feeds, iChat and iTunes.

Any other suggestions on a good/better way to do the key assigning let me know!

I’ve been a Mac user now for 24 days; and I’m loving it. I’ve been anxious to write several blog posts about the highlights of my experience in switching to a Mac + PC workstation. I have several stickies on my desktop with notes about what to include in these blog posts; and to be sure I’ll still write them.

But my experience just 15 minutes ago with my brand new 24″ iMac scared me like my Windows machine has never done before; and has prompted (or incited) me to be active on this blog.

I’m really getting the hang of the Mac OSX system. I’ve already purchased Coda for a development environment and I have lots of things going on at once when I’m developing. This is about the time when a kernel panic decided to happen. I’ve read about it before. The Mac equivalent of the famous Windows blue screen of death. But I have now experienced it first hand. Some people even think this is a good joke (and it is).

It happened when I had clicked on a link in my browser, so I figured perhaps some javascript had really done Firefox wrong and in turn messed everything else up. So per the on screen instructions, I held the power button down to reboot. I was greeted with 2 low beeps, followed by 3 beeps (repeated). Not cool. I was initially a bit upset (read: mad)… this is not supposed to happen. This is a Mac, right? I thought it’s just supposed to work.

I ran through standard problems: overheating (it does get hot), bad hard drive, bad motherboard. Unfortunately, it turns out the beeps meant bad RAM. I have switched over just about everything to my Mac (except e-mail), and I don’t have a backup Mac (yet) in case something like this happens. Lucky for me, I had bought 4GB of RAM to be used as a Christmas gift for my dad for his Mac. And lucky for me, the RAM is just about the only accessible thing on the iMac.

Sure enough, popped the 1GB stick out and put the new one in and it’s up and running again. Not cool Apple. Is this really the type of RAM you charge $700 for a 4GB upgrade? (No, I didn’t buy my 4GB from Apple). Could just be a fluke though, I’ll give them that. =) But it is frustrating… what if I didn’t happen to have that 4GB of RAM sitting around for Christmas? I would be dead in the water until I took it to an Apple service center or went and just bought (read: spent more money) for RAM.