Macking 106

Personalizing your Mac under X
Many people get a new iMac or other model and then don't change a thing. Part of it is due to lack of anyone to tell them how! Well, I'll rectify that a little bit here, but I suggest that you get involved in the Portland Mac Users Group (503-228-1779) or the group nearest to you. There you will meet others who can tell you things you could not have figured out on your own.
Also: Get a book or two. Robin Williams' OSX book is a good place to start; so is MacOSX Killer Tips by Scott Kelby.
Change desktop picture: Open your System Preferences and click on Desktop (or Desktop & Screen Saver). There are folders containing presets and a Choose Folder option. Use that to locate your existing photo collection and then choose any image. It will appear on your desktop. Ideally the image will be the same size as your screen resolution, but 1024x768 will work for most monitors, except wide-format ones. Those you should trim the picture to fit your aspect ratio. The Displays (or Monitors) control panel will tell you what that is.
If you make a folder and fill it with pictures you want specifically for your desktop you can also click on Change Picture and it will rotate as often as you choose. There. Much better than that pretty (but now boring) blue swirl, isn't it?
Need more pictures? One of my favorite stops is MacDesktops. Be sure to choose a picture that most closely matches your screen resolution. LCD monitors have only one setting that is native; changing that will create a fuzzy screen because some pixels will double up.
If you have a two-monitor system you can apply a different picture to each display.
OS9 users can do all this through the Appearance control panel.

Icon and Text Size
This you'll find under the View menu in the Finder. Close all open windows and choose (OSX) Show View Options. Here you can enlarge or shrink the desktop icons and the text under them. You can also Show Item Info (size of file, space in and remaining on hard drive, etc.) and also Keep Arranged by name, date, size, kind and label. This can be useful if you have a cluttered desktop and want to make it neater, and also allow any mounted volume such as a CD or external drive's icon to appear in the rightmost column. That normally doesn't happen when you have the desktop filled with files and aliases; the volume appears somewhere in the middle, under all your open windows. Panther users, no problem. Just hit the F11 key and your windows will all skitter out to the edges.
To affect your icon and text size in windows, open the hard drive icon, or any folder, and choose View Options again. Now it gets fun. You have separate choices for List View and Icon View as to the size of the icons (just two choices in List View) and a range from 16x16 pixels all the way up to 128x128 pixels. Text size can range between 10 and 16 points. You can't change the font used (Lucida Grande) but if you download a copy of TinkerTool (find it on Version Tracker) you can make lots more changes. Best thing about mucking about with TT is there is a Reset to Factory Defaults should you screw things up and forget how to back out.
You can even apply a specific color or desktop picture to any window in the View Options. This is how it's done on CD-ROMs and Disk Images now. When you switch a window from Icon View the picture or color vanishes but returns when you switch the view back later. Go ahead and experiment with this. You can't hurt anything.

The Dock
Many recent buyers have yet to realize that they can hide the Dock and reclaim that last inch of screen space on their desktop. You can simply and easily show and hide it if you just memorize the keyboard Command-Option-D to quickly hide and bring it back. Practice with it now. Also be sure to open the Dock preferences (under the Apple menu) and turn Magnification On. Now when you move the mouse over the icons, they enlarge so you know which one you are hovering over. The name also appears.
Remove those items you don't use from the dock by mousing down on them and quickly dragging upward and out of the dock. They vanish in a Poof of smoke when you release the mouse. More of this kind of info can be found in Macking 101. All of my previous columns are archived at ComputerBits or my own site. Also see more personalization tricks in Macking 103.

The New SGI Display Card
After announcing the new company (UltraFlex Incorporated) supporting, repairing and upgrading the SGI 1600 display in Macking 104, I acquired a G4 Dual 450 tower and suddenly I also needed one of their cards. (The old Number Nine card was adequate for the Beige G3 since it only ran OS9.) Shamelessly exploiting my position in the Fourth Estate, I asked them to send me an evaluation unit to see just how good it was and if it did the job.
There were a couple of surprises. First, it isn't a complete display card. It works with your existing ADC card, the one you would normally plug an Apple Cinema Display or other monitor into. All it does is translate the ADC's DVI signals into a form that the SGI understands. It also uses the proprietary socket that the display needs. You need to use the enclosed DVI to DVI cable to link the two cards together.
But that isn't quite enough. To use the industry-standard DVI port, you need a $35 cable from Apple, Dr. Bott or other manufacturer that converts ADC to DVI. This is not the opposite device, the DVI to ADC box that normally costs $150 and includes a power supply. That is what owners of first-generation G4s and Blue&White G3s need to supply power and signal to Apple's current line of displays. (Apple's original 1600x1024 Cinema display and their 15" Studio Display had separate power supplies.) So I had the UF card but couldn't use it so I got on the phone to see where I could find a cable.
There are five Mac retailers in town: The Mac Store, PowerMax, PowerMacPac, MacForce and the Apple Store. There is also a Mac department at CompUSA and I suppose we should also count Fry's in Wilsonville. One after another I called for this cable adapter and no one had it in stock! Finally, I reached the 2nd farthest outlet from my house, PowerMacPac, and they had what I needed. Next morning, off I go. Remember this if YOU plan on making this purchase: you gotta have that adapter cable to use the UP card so don't wait until it arrives before shopping around. My advice to UF: On the web page include a picture of the needed cable and on the order form have the option of buying it along with the card. UP could probably make a good deal for quantity buy and add a markup while still keeping it below the $39 or so retail price.
Plugged in and working, the difference was dramatic. First starting under OS9 (which worked with the Plan Nine card) I launched the SereneScreen fish tank screen saver and marveled at the speed increase. Before, it would update the fish movement once a second. Now the animation is fast and smooth and without compromise at about 43 frames per second. By comparison, my PowerBook 12" 867 MHz single-processor plays at 33 fps in dual-monitor mode, and when the 12" screen is all that's on, it jumps between 79 and 90 fps. (Speed drops when new fish come on screen.)
Next step: Switch to OSX. I started in Verbose Mode, which you attain by holding down Command-V at startup. This command removes the grey Apple screen and the stupid spinning gear that is designed to hide the traditional UNIX startup from the user. No pause, no hesitation, perfectly happy running off the video cards.
The only remaining complaint is that controls for brightness and color balance are not available except for four DIP switches on the card itself. The packaging explains what the settings should be, but if you want to change them, you have to shut down and pop the case. This adds a +n to the annoyance factor, but the developer says that future versions of the card will have a more traditional software-based adjustment. That said, the original Plan Nine card had software adjustments and I never changed them once I had the screen set to my liking.
All in all, this is a very good thing for SGI owners, and an even better thing for people who might want to buy one of the refurbished displays now. The price is competitive with any other display on the market including the slightly-denser Apple 20" (1680 pixels wide) but resting on a stand that lets you raise and lower as well as adjust tilt which Apple's won't do. And UF is there to replace the backlight once it burns out, which is normally good for thousands of hours. You can also find the SGIs on Ebay.

Website of the Month
It's been a while since I ran this segment; time for a return with a motorcycle tour of the town of Pripyat, a large city nearest Chernobyl. The photographer, a woman named Elena, takes us on a tour of the ghost city, abandoned in a dead rush eighteen years ago and not inhabited since. Scary, amazing pictures of something that could happen here.

Burnz Saves the Disk
Two months ago in my list of recommended shareware I mentioned Burnz as a good alternative to the built-in CD/DVD burning software under OSX. Well, it saved the day for a client who had let his hard drive get too full.
Download Burnz and it gives you ten free burns before you must pay the fee and register it. His hard drive had less than a gig (out of 40) free space, so there is no way that the built-in software could work. It needs free space equal to the target CD or DVD to create a disk image first.
Burnz has no such restriction. It creates a simple directory and then loads the files off of the HD onto the DVD. 4.2 gigs at a crack (not the claimed 4.7) is plenty to help clear up all those archived files. All you do is create a folder and put stuff into it; the folder name becomes the CD or DVD name. Burn the disk, then delete the files to clean off your drive. Simple, cheap, easy to use. It just takes about 45 minutes on a PowerBook.

Bypass iTunes Copy Protection
Jon "DVD Jon" Johansen writes, in reference to VLC's support for iTunes's M4P DRM format: "In case you didn't know, I'm a VideoLAN developer. I reverse engineered FairPlay and wrote VLC's FairPlay support. It's been available in VideoLAN CVS since January, but the first release to include FairPlay support is VLC 0.7.1 (released March 2.).
"Just wanted to let you know that once you have generated the user key file(s), you can copy them to as many computers you want and play your M4P files there using VLC."
DVD Jon is the programmer who created the Linux program that bypassed copy protection and regional coding on DVDs, allowing them to be played on Linux computers. Up until then, the movie industry had made no attempt at creating a legal method for Linux users to play DVDs. Oh, did the MPAA scream bloody murder at THAT. OSX users can find VideoLAN Client at http://www.videolan.org/.

Letters:
As Palm sinks slowly in the sunset...
"Wish I'd read Macking before I bought a new Palm Tungsten E. Also, I can't sync, same as my old Palm IIIe which is trying to die. A dialog box says I need "HotSyncLib.PPC...." which of course I can't find in my files, at PalmOne or at Apple. And I can confirm that Palm support is in India. Very pleasant lady, Cynthia and with good English, but of course very limited real tech knowledge. It was afternoon here and she said 4:15 am there.
"And then I have a problem with a $200 computer that must be disposed of when the Lithium battery dies because it can't be replaced. I mistrust Chinese products also and resent that I have no choice. All the Palms I've seen lately are from China. I may yet go back to my pen and pencil. They are very low maintenance and I don't need ANY tech support or batteries!
"Keep up your good work with Macking... and thank you.
Don Sparks"
Things started to fall apart when Palm spun off its own software division to PalmSource. It's a shame. Sure, a PocketPC can be made into a PocketMac with 3rd party software, but soon there will be no well-integrated PDA for us unless Apple releases one. Maybe... one can hope. The iPod won't do it well enough. Meanwhile, see last month's Macking 105 for more options. My own Tungsten T is Chinese as well, and the battery isn't holding a charge as long as it used to. I may have a similar decision forced on me before too long.

No Microsoft products were used in the production of this column.

email mp at moonmac dot com. (I took out the mailto link because that's how the spammers find me.)