It seems that Apple has once more made it necessary to explicitly state the MySQL default socket. As stated in this post Mac, WordPress: “Error establishing a database connection” you should edit the mysql.default_socket = line in your php.ini file to read mysql.default_socket = /tmp/mysql.sock . 

If you don’t know where to look it’s to be found in an invisible folder at the root of your hard drive called “etc”. To get there go to the menu bar when in the Finder: Go -> Go to Folder… or use this shortcut: [Apple]+[Shift]+G ) then type: /etc .

I’d recommend the excellent (and free) TextWranger to edit the file – as it makes it a breeze by automatically authorizing your changes with a prompt for you admin password when needed.

The change is easy – find the line that reads mysql.default_socket = then add /tmp/mysql.sock to the end.

The line should now read  mysql.default_socket = /tmp/mysql.sock

Save the file the restart your Apache webserver by going the System Preferences and stopping, then starting again Web Sharing (found in the Sharing pane).

What’s this about?

Well I tend to use open Safari windows/tabs to help keep me focused on foreground tasks while minimising backround/interesting/to-do articles etc. Occasionally I forget to restore all my windows after restarting Safari for a quick session (usually whilst preparing for shutdown/restart/software update).

Next time you try to restore all your windows and don’t get what you expected – remind yourself this is why that extra Time Machine disk was such a useful investment.

Hope this helps.

Cloud enabled local web development? That’s an oxymoron — right? Explain. I prefer to develop/design using MAMP as it’s quicker and doesn’t rely on a sketchy internet connection. While I have a main powerhouse of a Mac Pro under my desk I also use a very capable little MacBook Pro.*

Anyway

I was on the road today – and finally felt the full advantage of getting myself fully into The Cloud.

The main issue? Synchronising my digital self across more than one computer. Storage and email are the main issues…

While according to some Apple’s dot Mac/MobileMe may well be the current cream of cloud subscription services in North America – out here in backwater Europe performance is sh*te. Particularly iDisk. While Apple’s webmail is good – it’s trying too hard to be a desktop application and failing.

For storage I can’t recommend Dropbox enough and for e-mail there’s Gmail…

Dropbox

Now I’ve got my Sites folder (and  a few salient folders of Work In Progress) in Amazon’s S3 cloud via Dropbox. The free service is great (2GB) and the paid versions (50/100GB) are not expensive…

• It’s easy.
• It’s speedy. One of the technical features of the system is that files are stored as blobs of hashed deltas (wikipedia says it betterer )… popular files are recognized and appear online without having to be transferred – for example some reference books and software libraries that uploaded very smartly.
• It’s nimble. As the thing works with deltas and blobs it’s also quick to mirror things when you’ve just been making minor edits or rearranging things.
• 30 days of versioning for all your files - TimeMachine in the Cloud!

Syncing external folders (e.g. ~/Sites ) across multiple machines with Dropbox

Thanks to this post I found the answer…

[NB - your short user name needs to be the same on all your Macs! If not then go here and read part three "The Full Monty"...]

The steps to synchronising your ~/Sites folder (or any folder that you don’t want to move into the Dropbox watched folder ) between two or more Macs are:

1. temporarily turn off Dropbox on both machines
2. make your first sync manually between them (use a direct connection – or load up a USB stick/external HD)
3. create symlinks into your Dropbox folder on both machines. Create the symlink by typing a command into a Terminal window… it goes a little something like this: ln -s  /path/to/folder/name_desired_folder ~/Dropbox/desired-folder
4. then restart Dropbox on both machines

Now I’m coding on the go with hassle-free syncing and backup. That is nice.

Email

Well I’ve become a Gmail man. It may not be pretty but Gmail has threaded conversations done properly and labels. Took me a while to get used to threaded conversations [takes me a while to get most things!] but now I find them indispensable. Gmail’s generally very good at keeping quoted text out of your face making the threads very readable. Obviously threaded conversations aren’t so useful if people veer off-track or forsake the reply button in favour of the new message. Offline access was not robust in Safari and now it’s not an option as Mac OS 10.6 won’t have it.  So I still use Mail.app as a backup.

Still on MobileMe/dotMac

The missing links… I’m still on Mobile Me and using it for Address Book, Calendar and Keychain synching. [My FTP favourites too thank's to Panic's Mobile Me implementation in their FTP app Transmit]. Tied into this is Apple’s iSync application which is keeping my mobiles in step. Until Google’s address book improves drastically I’m not considering a move.

*Not just for the occasional bit Road Warrior stuff but also we do sometimes vacate this town for more than a couple of days plus mains power is also a bit of an issue round here! Sometime I need to use my laptop in the office (I do have a UPS but it doesn’t last very long with the beast.)

Update 2

Thanks to this great list of open-source apps for Mac OS X there another option to look at: AbiWord. I’ve not tried it yet but it looks set to beat my non-starting attempts with OpenOffice (office Mac is PowerPC without X11). Even better – it seems to state that it can do the job. TBC.

——–

Update

What a difference a day makes

Despite yesterday’s test proving otherwise – today it seems that I can use Paste Special in to GoLive and keep all formatting. Today I can “Paste As” and chose “Cleared HTML (Removes exotic Markup)” over the limited “HTML” option which was all I could do yesterday. Just a few extra non-breaking spaces and p tags for the line breaks – but otherwise perfect unicode for the web.

I think that I may have not been pasting directly from word. Not sure. Anyway this is now the best solution for when I’m about to help update content.
——–
[Posted to the Microsoft Word forum here]

I’ve been searching for a while now and have found no simple solution for this issue. I’m working to set up a CMS (Drupal in this case) and want to find a way to enable the writers – using Word 2004 – to upload their own content, properly styled in clean XHTML.

I want to avoid any extra steps as more steps leads to more chances for errors to creep in. The only formatting needed is semantic content; just HTML body content without extraneous Word Roundtrip information or formatting at all as all design should be defined by using CSS stylesheets.

I just want the basic stuff i.e. h1-h6 headings (defined at the authoring stage, using Word’s standard styles), bold, italics and quality typography (all accents, “curly” quotes and em-dashes) properly encoded into human readable XHTML entities (ie “&” becomes “&”).

I’m worried that I’m going to have to compromise on quality or make, what to my mind should be basic functionality, a laborious and error-prone process…

Does anybody have a solution? Is this doable by hacking/editing the “Word Conversion Options” or “com.microsoft.Word.prefs.plist” files?

[The basic structure: headings and paragraphs; bold; italics and accents (as unicode) can be handled by the CMS's interface thanks to TinyMCE and its Paste From Word function - but this cannot handle typographic features such as proper curly quotes and em-dashes.]

For the full experience you’d need a canvas (or theme) that accommodates the Flickrslideshow minimum dimensions which are roughly 580px wide x 360px high. Right now this site’s main content div is only 500px wide – so there’s a bit of clipping on landscape images. But not enough to worry about too much just yet.

The code is this: <iframe style="border:0" width="500px" height="400px" src="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lazydada/sets/72157603491230286/show/">

Currently here. Childrens’ TV from way back in the seventies. You remember this one? I do. The theme tune is baked into my memory for ever.

Flickr viewer

Tiltviewer is a very cool way to see your Flickr stream. Or mine. I like what it does; somewhere between a slideshow and browser. Much cleaner interface than Flickr’s pages. Smells of the future. Very clever. Here is their ‘ome page, Mr ‘iggins.

Carbon Copy Cloner

I’ve stumbled upon the fact that this backup software stalwart for Mac OS X has finally been updated. Time to give it a whirl again. Which reminds me …

Hard-drive upgrade. Again.

Not quite two years since the last upgrade I’ve done it again. This time not precipitated by a dead-disk but by a severe lack of space. 160GB drive swapped out from my LaCie external drive. Not a quick fix but a good one. And I took to opportunity to give the old girl a good clean. How nice. Shinny Aluminium. Thanks to the folks at iFixit for the online guide.

Photogasm

Last but by no means least. My friend Mick Partridge created Jude Edginton’s website. Jude’ photo’s are really very good. Really. Nice site Mr. Partridge.