Unable to Upgrade Firefox on OS X

Today I tried to upgrade Firefox 5.0.1 on my iMac to version Firefox 6, but it failed with some 'weird' error;

The operation can't be completed because the item libsmime3.dylib" is in use.

Weird because I didn't have FireFox running at the time. Removing Firefox didn't work either, since I couldn't remove it from the Trash (same error).

Turned out that I had the Cisco AnyConnect VPN installed on my system (process name: vpnagentd). To 'unload' this process enter the following in Terminal:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.cisco.anyconnect.vpnagentd.plist

Install Firefox, and enable the vpnagent again by entering the following in Terminal:

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.cisco.anyconnect.vpnagentd.plist

And all should be well.

Install KatzEye Focusing Screen in Nikon D300

Focussing manually has it's advantages. First, the number of potential lenses for your body sky-rockets. There are numerous old and new extraordinary good MANUAL FOCUS lenses available for the modern DSLR. Examples are lenses by Voigtlander, Carl Zeiss, and the old Nikon (Ai-S) lenses. The problem is that most of the modern cameras lack a decent (visual) indicator for when your object is in focus. My Nikon D300 has a small indicator (a dot) in the viewfinder which notifies you when you've got focus. But when you shoot with large apertures (e.g. f/2, f/1.8, f/1.4 or f/1.2) on MF lenses you have to keep track of your composition (through the viewfinder), and watch the 'in-focus' indicator. Something I find very hard to do. I allways seem to miss at least one of them. Missing composition is easy to fix in post-processing, but fixing focus can't be done.

Thankfully, there's a solution to this problem; Katz Eye Optics. These guys offer old-skool focusing screens for the modern digital SLR's. All you have to do is replace the focusing screen with theirs. You can do this yourself, or your camera brand service-center should be able to do it for you (at additional cost). I did it myself though, and ran into a problem (of course). But more on that later...

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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.

Adobe Coldfusion 9 on CentOS 5.4 (x64)

Updated on Monday, April 5, 2010 at 18:53 by Willem

A while back I figured out how to install Adobe (could have been Macromedia back then) Coldfusion MX on an Ubuntu linux server. This config still runs as it should, but in the mean time several things have changed in the world of software. I've been leaning towards Centos 5.4, and Adobe released Coldfusion 9 somewhere in 2009. These two 'events' made me decide to combine the two.

Before I continue, I must warn you that the Coldfusion installer is still broken..... So there's some manipulation of code involved.

Since the new 'server' is going to run in a virtual environment I started in a VMWare Workstation. This way I could make snapshots of my progress. This made it easier to start from scratch. The problem with Linux and me is that I tend to reinstall the OS when things go haywire. So VMWare is a safe way out in this case.

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