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Since yesterday I’m happy owner of MacBook Pro! I’ve waited long time and had many other desktops and laptops in the past, but finally I have it:) And it was a good deal, so double win, or like Americans like to say win win. And guess what? Yes, you’re right I’m writing this message from my new Mac!

As I’m still a newbie everything keeps amazing me. I’m really surprised what Mac OS offers right out the box. I’ve read a lot before I’ve bought it, but still shocked how easy it is to do anything on this computer. From the moment I’ve took it out from the box to be completely operable passed like 2-3, and it was already connected to the Internet! No more drivers. Most programs I need for day-to-day usage was already there, so to customize everything to my needs took me a lot less time than with Windows. And of course my favorite terminal is here! I can now log in to my Linux servers without third party programs. Pretty amazing. Hope everything be so fine in the future of my Mac journey.

Today I’ve faced embarrassing situation, I’ve forgot my root password to my Debian VM. I know this is lame. But happened, so I’ve started looking for solution and after viewing few more or less helpful websites I’ve compiled my own solution. To reset root password on Debian (Lenny) do following:

1. During start of PC when there is your boot manager displayed press “e”.
2. Move arrow on the keyboard to highlight “kernel”.
3. Press “e” again.
4. On the displayed line change “ro” to “rw” and add “init=/bin/bash” at the end. Without quotation marks of course.
5. Press Enter and then “b” to boot your Debian.
6. Debian would boot to bash console with root privileges. Now execute “passwd” command and input your new password.
7. Reboot your system.

That’s it. Your root account is now back. Enjoy!

I’m using VMWare Workstation a lot to virtualize my testing environments. Along with many other OSs that I’m using there are Linux systems and one of the most useful functionality in Linux are (in my opinion) virtual terminals. Virtual terminal is like your another monitor, so when doing many things you can avoid mess by using few “desktops” instead of one. In Linux you’re creating and switching between terminals by pressing CTRL+ALT+F1-12. Problem with VMWare is that CTRL+ALT has special meaning there, so pressing mentioned combination does nothing. Instead you can use workaround, first press CTRL+ALT+SPACE, then release SPACE and press F1-12 button.

For about a month I was receiving notification that there is service pack 2 available for my Office 2007 package via Windows Update. So I’ve chosen to install it, but it always returned error when installing. Today I’ve decided that it’s about time to update my Office, so I’ve navigated to MS site and downloaded update manually. Started installation and boom, error again! But then something came to my mind, “wait a minute, I have English version of Vista, but Polish version of Office!”. Of course, it was so simple. I’ve downloaded Polish version of service pack 2 and installation went smoothly. Yeah! But why Windows Update cannot recognize that I’m using Polish version. Is it making decisions only basing on version of OS? Apparently yes, but it’s stupid. Hopefully it would be fixed in Windows 7.

To all admins! All the best!

Quick tip of the day. If you want to install Google Desktop on Vista 64 bit do as follows:

1. Click Start menu -> Run or tap Windows sign and “r” at once on keyboard.
2. Type “cmd” and press Enter.
3. Navigate to folder which contains GoogleDesktopSetup.exe (Google Desktop installer).
4. Type GoogleDesktopSetup.exe /force

That’s it! Your installation was just started, proceed with the wizard to setup application. Enjoy!

UPDATE:
Now Google Desktop supports 64bit operating systems! Read here.

Last night I’ve moved from Linux to Windows hosting. And this showed the new WordPress issue (or my lack of skills). I’ve moved everything and migrated SQL DB, but it didn’t worked. I was receiving error 500. As Google is giving me only tips how to migrate from Windows to Linux, not backward, I was forced to figure out something. As you can see I’ve succeeded. Blog is up and running, however Flickr plugin isn’t working properly, but I hope to fix it in few coming days. Enjoy!

Must start saving money. When this baby would hit the European stores… It would be mine!

Screw you Mac Air!

There is new service called Wolfram which is being called by some people “the search engine”. But it’s not, it’s more like question/answer service, but using software instead of other humans to answer. For instance if you would look for “zamosc” (my hometown) in Google y0u’ll find links to several websites with word “zamosc” on it. But if you will search for the same phrase in Wolfram then you would receive data like population, current weather and so on. Hope it clarifies a bit what Wolfram is (if not please check it out yourself on Wolfram webpage, it’s in alpha phase, but it works pretty good).

Totally true!