If there’s anything I’ve learned from breathing web applications over the years, it’s that the simplest method often wins. Twitter, Basecamp, Delicious, Bit.ly, Instapaper… they all identify a problem and solve it with elegance and simplicity.
Posted on Mar 25, 2011
Posted on Feb 17, 2011
Apple’s discouraging new rules
In case you’ve missed the news on Apple and their new subscription service, you should read the following: http://www.blog.montgomerie.net/thoughts-on-ios-content-purchase. What Apple is doing is pretty lame, considering until now everyone has had to deal with the fact that Apple hasn’t had subscription functionality in place. And now that they do, they’re saying “screw any solution you may have previously used” if you want to continue offering your services on the app store.
Not that it would in any way be enforceable, which is why they didn’t do this, but they should at least have some sort of grandfathered in system for apps like Netflix, Pandora, etc. that have up until now been on their own.
Posted on Oct 22, 2010
My must-have jailbroken apps
Cydia apps are ever evolving and updating as Apple releases new iOS version. I now have an iPhone 4 and some of the stuff I’ve said is a must-have previously are no longer important. The following are critical apps to enjoy the newest version of iOS. Here’s my list:
- LockInfo
- Backgrounder
- Auto Silent
- FolderEnhancer
- MultiIconMover
- FullScreen for Safari
- iFile
- Installous
- QuickReply for SMS
- SBSettings
- ScreenDimmer
- SpringFlash
- SwitcherMod
- YourTube 2
- Serious HD SBSettings Theme
Posted on Jan 19, 2010
Disk Utility: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)
Hello, Disk Utility. You’re usually a great tool. Not today. All I wanted to do was Verify Disk Permissions and you would immediately spit back at me:
Error detected while verifying/repairing permissions on disk4s2 Server HD: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)
There were no physical disk errors reported and I just had a gut feeling that there was something else going on.
Turns out, there was. /Library/Receipts. This directory is incredibly hard to find documentation on, which is why I’m writing about it here.
The problem:
Permissions for the entire Disk Utility receipts directory structure was wrong causing it to error immediately upon check.
ls -l /Library/Receipts
drwxr-xr-x 31 axl admin 1054 Nov 23 13:41 boms
drwxr-xr-x 3 axl admin 102 Jan 12 16:50 db
The fix:
Recursively give the boms & db folders the right permissions.
chown -R _installer:wheel /Library/Receipts/boms
chown -R _installer:admin /Library/Receipts/dbls -l /Library/Receipts
drwxr-xr-x 31 _installer wheel 1054 Nov 23 13:41 boms
drwxr-xr-x 3 _installer admin 102 Jan 13 10:46 db