Just Won a Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3

Updated on Friday, August 5, 2011 at 15:03 by Willem

Panasonic G3The title says it all. Nuff said.

I entered a photocontest a couple of weeks ago @ fotowedstrijd.nl, and totally forgot about it... until today. I received a phonecall from the organizer stating that I had won. At the time I had no idea with which photo (I had to ask....).

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Leica Blog

After I acquired a Leica M9 with peripheral equipment, I decided to document my M9 learning experiences on a seperate blog on my website. I don't know if I'll keep it like this. I might move the content to this blog. Don't know yet. Time will tell.

Anyway, in the mean time I've added some content to the new Leica blog. Check it out. I hope you'll find it usefull.

Where can I find the iTunesHelper App?

The iTunesHelper application is used to automatically detect iPod's/iPad's and iPhones, when you connect these to your Mac. The application launches iTunes, and (if configured) synchronizes stuff. Very handy, but it can be quite annoying.

E.g. I have an iMac (main 'PC' around the house), and a MacBook. All the synchronization stuff is done on my iMac, and I don't sync anything on my MacBook. But when I attach my iPhone to my MacBook for Internet access (tethering), it launches iTunes and wants to synchronize with an empty iTunes. Something I definitelly don't want.

This feature can be turned off by removing the iTunesHelper application entry from the Login Items in your account settings, but turning it back on is something completely different. I accidentally removed it from my iMac, which wasn't supposed to happen....

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Google Apps Harassment / Spam

My mailbox receives e-mails from Google on a daily basis. All these e-mails are regarding the 'upgrade' of MY Google Apps account. The problem is, I don't have a Google Apps account. I have a Google Analytics account for some of my websites (this being one of them).

At first they say you have an account.

Google Apps Spam

And when you try to login to that account, they say that I don't have an account.

So explain this; why do I get upgrade e-mails for something I don't have?

A typical example of using existing database information for luring people into getting other services.

Why I Should Buy a Leica M9

Updated on Tuesday, June 7, 2011 at 21:01 by Willem

Since the Leica still lingers in my head, these videos aren't really helping. Thankfully, my bank account isn't cooperating at this moment.

Or so is this blogpost (by the same author).

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Jamiroquai @ Ahoy Rotterdam

This Wednesday, Jamiroquai played @ the sold out Ahoy in Rotterdam (Netherlands). At first it was uncertain if he could perform, since they had to cancel their german performance due to Jay Kay's flu the evening before.

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Triggerfinger in Paradiso

Last night we went to a concert/CD-release of the Belgium rockband Triggerfinger. This was also the first time I brought my new Nikon P7000. The following photos and video were shot with this new Nikon Coolpix Perfomance series compact camera.

The concert was great. Great enough to get their latest CD in the lobby. I hope we're gonna hear more of them.

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OSX CardDAV Server

After the challenges with the iCalDAV server in OSX, I gave up on getting the Addressbook server up-and-running. Somehow, the clients couldn't wouldn't connect. No matter what configuration parameters I tried.

This week I tried to get it up-and-running again. Mainly because I can't concentrate for longer than two hours for my Cisco exams next week. Sometimes you need to clear your head.

For some reason I found the solution within the hour. No idea what the original problem was exactly.

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iMac 1TB Disk Went Missing in Action

Updated on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 19:54 by Willem

Updated on Monday, December 20, 2010 at 12:44 by Willem

Updated on Tuesday, December 21, 2010 at 14:35 by Willem

Updated on Saturday, December 25, 2010 at 11:41 by Willem

It's been three weeks exactly (well, almost), and my new iMac i7 27" went to the repair shop.. (*sniff*).

The iMac booted normally this morning, but after a couple of minutes, the fans started kicking in. A new sensation for me. I have never heard a fan in this, or my other (i)Macs. At first I thought that my external drive (Drobo) started making the noise, but the Drobo was silent.

Turned out the fans in my iMac started blowing (hard), and the airflow was relatively warm. Too warm for a Mac which has been switched on for about 10 minutes with no real CPU intensive tasks running.

First I checked the Activity Monitor and 'Top' in the Terminal app to see if there was some program that consumed too many CPU cycles. Nothing there. On average, the CPU was 3% busy.
Next thing to do was resetting the PRAM/NVRAM by holding the Option-Command-R-P combination during a power-on of the iMac. This also made no difference (booting went a bit faster though).

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Microsoft Office 2008:Mac - Office did not install correctly

Come on.... it isn't even Monday. It's Friday for crying out loud.

What happened you ask? Well.....

I got an e-mail with a XLS file attached (I know.. shit happens). So I tried to open it, but I got a reminder that I hadn't (re)installed Office 2008 on my new iMac. But not to worry. I have the official Microsoft Office 2008 DMG (with matching serial number) on my Drobo, so the installation was done in a matter of minutes.

This is when it happened. Starting office resulted in this error: "Office did not install correctly". It even had a link to a Microsoft article explaining I needed an update. But the update wouldn't install since it was for OSX 10.4 (or something). Installing the latest update didn't solve it either.

Well, remove Office and reinstall it then... That didn't work either. Still the same error.

Searching the Interwebs resulted in a suggestion to remove everything Microsoft from the Mac.... And so I did. Especially the locations like:

/Library/Preferences/
~/Library/Preferences/

should be free of everything Microsoft. After trashing the Trash I reinstalled Office 2008. This time I was asked to enter my name and serial number. Something that didn't happen the first times. Then it occurred to me; I had copied my preferences (and other settings) when I migrated from my old to my new iMac. I guess that Microsoft doesn't support that.

It would have been nice if they had an option in the Removal Tool (which they generously supply) to remove EVERYTHING. I think that they didn't forget it. I think that this is by design. Just to screw with us Mac user.