When you place your trust and confidence in an online service, even something as huge as Google, you’re probably thinking that it’s infallible. Which is what I thought about Google and its services too, especially Gmail, which I personally use on a daily basis (actually it’s more like on a 5-minute basis).

Then this happened:

Scary? It definitely scared me.

I have my own web hosting account, so I had the habit of downloading all my stuff via POP to my computer, which I then back up regularly. So backups are something that I do already – but if you don’t, then you should really start thinking of backup plans, especially for your important data. Important data in my definition is ANYTHING that, once lost, will inconvenience you. If you aren’t doing your backups already, or feel that you might need some more information about backups, then check out this site about how to backup for help and tips on backup strategies and information.

I had the fantastic opportunity to be the lucky recipient of kernel panics on my Macbook Pro that happen once every 24-48 hours. I’ve been trying to troubleshoot and resolve the kernel panic, because as you can imagine, it’s extremely counter-productive.

I finally resolved it by removing a wonky KEXT (kernel extension) that turned out to be the culprit – turns out it was USBOverdrive’s KEXT, and this all started when I used USBOverDrive to configure my bluetooth mouse because the default Apple configuration utility just couldn’t do a good enough job.

The whole process of finding this KEXT though, was LONG and TEDIOUS. Most of these steps had to be performed when I was asleep, so it was usually a repetition of:

• Try one method
• Wait to see if the kernel panic happens
• Actually experience the kernel panic happen
• Curse
• Repeat

Here are just some steps that I took to try to resolve and fix the kernel panic that I was having:

1. Run A System Scan

If your Mac is still covered in Apple Care, then you can download Tech Tool Deluxe from Apple’s website free. This is a powerful diagnostic utility tool developed by Micromat that allows you to test your computer’s critical system components, such as the processor, RAM (random-access memory), VRAM (video random-access memory), the hard disk, and more. TechTool Deluxe can also repair your computer’s disk structure and rebuild its directories as necessary. So download this tool, let it run, and see if any errors pop up.

2. Run Disk Utility

This is a utility that comes with Mac OSX that allows you to verify that your disk runs properly and that permissions are correct. To access this utility, go to Applications >> Utilities >> Disk Utility. Sometimes you might need to restart to use this tool, but if you do, just follow the instructions that it prompts you to follow.

If this step passes, you can be reasonably sure it’s not a permissions problem or a superficial disk error that’s causing your kernel panics.

3. Run Apple’s Hardware Test

Apple ships a DVD containing a bootable hardware test with all their Macs, and so you should have a copy of this in your Mac’s box. Load this DVD, and boot up following the instructions (typically by rebooting while holding down the D key). When you do this, you’ll be able to come to a hardware test utility that allows you to test your RAM/memory. Leave this test running for a few loops. This, however, is a pretty superficial tests and is well-known to NOT find more serious RAM errors.

4. Run Rember

To EXTENSIVELY test your memory, a pretty good open-source tool is Rember. Load that up, and leave that running for a few loops at least. If there are any serious errors with your memory, this utility should be able to find them out.

5. Update Your Applications and Mac OS

Sometimes when kernel panics occur, they occur because of a conflict within your applications and your Mac OS. What you can do, is to update all applications and drivers to the latest version, and ensure that it’s fully compatible with your current version of Mac OS. At the same time, you should be updating Mac OS to the latest version as well. To do this, click on the Apple icon on the upper left corner of your screen, and click on “Software Update” – that’ll let you know if there are any updates for your system.

6. Uninstall Applications

At this step, you can be pretty sure that your hardware should be fine, so you should really be looking for non-hardware causes. You should be isolating the problem to either your operating system (Mac OS) or the drivers/applications that you’ve installed. So give your applications a good look-through to see if there are any applications that can potentially give you troubles. Typically, these are applications and drivers that modify with the kernel (kernel, kernel panic, heh), such as mouse drivers, keyboard drivers, webcam drivers, ANY sort of drivers, applications that modify your kernel’s run-time, power management, and so on.

7. Uninstall Any KEXTs

This is the absolute furthest that I got. To check the KEXTs that are running on your system currently, type this command in Terminal (Applications >> Terminal) and hit enter:

sudo kextstat

Again, look for any suspicious kextstats – ideally no extraneous third-party KEXTs should be installed. If they are, remove them with these instructions on how to remove KEXTs from Mac OS.

8. Reinstall Mac OS

The fault could be a problem with a corrupted Mac OS installation, which is more probable if you upgraded from a major version (e.g. Tiger to Snow Leopard). If so, reinstall this by booting up with your Mac OS DVD, and choosing to install Mac OS again. This will not affect your data and currently installed applications – but still, please do backups!

9. Format and Install Mac OS

The very last step. At this point, your hardware seems fine, and your software seems fine (or unrepairable), so you might be better installing a fresh copy of Mac OS, and starting off from there. Before you do this, you HAVE TO backup your data. If you’re unfamiliar with backups, this site teaches you how to backup data.

What you want to do is not to backup your full system, but to backup only the data and files that you want. That way, when you restore your data on to your fresh system, you won’t be copying over any corrupted files or buggy system data.

Once on your brand new Mac OS installation, be VERY selective on what you install, and keep your installations to only applications that are fully compatible with your version of Mac OS. It was only after a reformat that I found the root cause of my kernel panics, so you may have to resort to this step after all. What would help is to have a good, easily accessible backup so that restoration of your critical apps and data will be quick and easy.

10. Go to Apple

This is the absolute last step because while you might be covered under Apple Care, it takes so much time and effort just to get your laptop fixed (and it doesn’t guarantee that they might find the error too). Once you’re on this step, you can confidently say that you’ve done all the necessary steps to isolate the fault to something related to hardware, because you’ve pretty much done all you could.

Well that’s my 10 steps. Hope this helps you with your kernel panics

The Mac runs on Unix, which makes it incredibly powerful. You might be running MAMP or a stand-alone version of Apache, and one of the things that you might want to run is cron, which is a scheduling tool. Instead of cron though, you could actually have your Mac just run a launch daemon.

Just go to terminal, and type:

cd /Library/LaunchDaemons/

Now type:

sudo vim yourfile.cron.plist

You’ll be asked for your administrator password, and after entering it, you’ll be brought to the vim screen. Press fn+i to go into insert mode. Now paste the following in:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>KeepAlive</key><false />
<key>Label</key><string>yourfile.cron</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>curl</string>
<string>-s</string>
<string>http://localhost:8080/cron.php</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true />
<key>StartInterval</key><integer>1200</integer>
<key>StandardErrorPath</key><string>/dev/null</string>
<key>StandardOutPath</key><string>/dev/null</string>
</dict></plist>

Once done, press esc, and type :wq to save and quit.

This will actually create the property list file that will contain the information of the task that you want to run. Just paste in the following code, remembering to change “yourfile.cron” to your actual filename (notice this is the same as your filename, but without the .plist extension), and modifying the Program Arguments to fit your needs.

StartInterval is currently set at 1200, which is 20 minutes in seconds (20 minutes * 60 seconds). So if you want to, change this value too.

When you’re done editing, just hit esc, and type in :wq to write the file and quit. Now that the file is saved (you will probably need to enter your administrator password), just run the following commands to load the daemon:

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/yourfile.cron.plist

Or unload the daemon:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/yourfile.cron.plist

And there you have it – the way to run cron or cron-like jobs with your Mac!

The following is a pretty creative way to advertise on Google Maps using Street View!

Originally from Creative Advertising With Street View On Google Maps.

I recently got a bunch of zip files, some sequential (X1.zip, X2.zip, etc), and others not. The thing is, they number in the hundreds, and most contain RAR files within them, and simply extracting each one won’t do. I had to find an automated way to unzip all the zip files, and the utility that i usually use (BetterZip) didn’t seem to help.

Finally after trying a few methods (including the unzip command in Terminal), I found this method that was relatively straightforward and quick. In the folder that contained all the zip files that I wanted of a particular series, I would select all of them, and open them in Finder. This will execute the default Archiver unextract command, and you’ll have a bunch of folders now, which will each contain the contents of their individual zip files.

In that Finder window, search for “.rar” and you’ll see the list of RAR files that you’ve extracted. Now select all of them, and copy them to another folder. Now you can extract all of them at once.

That’s it! Hope this helps.

KEXTs are Kernel Extensions, and I realised that a program that I installed in the past (SteerMouse) had left its KEXT behind even though I uninstalled the program. You can see the list of KEXTs in your system at /System/Library/Extensions/, but do note that Mac OSX only loads whichever KEXT is needed.

As you can’t just delete the KEXT from within Finder, I had to find out how to remove it. Turns out it’s just one command in Terminal:

rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/SteerMouse.kext

My KEXT is named SteerMouse.kext, but you can replace that with the KEXT name of your choice. Once you’ve got it deleted, reboot your system and the KEXT will be gone.

There are several things that I hate, and one of them is spam. The problem with spam is not actually reading the spam, but having to live with all the workarounds that have now surfaced to reduce the onslaught of spam. For example: anti-spam filters in your mail program. In the past, like 10 years ago, all email would go straight to your inbox. With the advent of spam, spam filters have also surfaced, and now spam, or spam-like messages automatically gets sorted and placed in your spam box. It’s great in theory, but in reality, it doesn’t work perfectly, and in some cases, good mail gets categorised as spam, and you might just miss an important mail because of that.

This is a problem that happens to Gmail as well.

I use Gmail not through its web interface, but as a POP service that I access with Apple Mail. This didn’t pose a problem to me until one day when I realised that I wasn’t getting mail from my friend. He claimed that he had sent the mail, but I never got it in my inbox. After some digging, I found it – the mail was in my Gmail spam box, and because it was spam, it never got downloaded together to my Apple Mail inbox.

So I had to disable Gmail’s spam filter. It seemed like overkill, because the problem only surfaced with maybe 1 mail out of 10,000. However, that could be an important mail, and I wasn’t ready to risk that happening.

Next problem: Gmail doesn’t have a “Disable spam box” or a “Disable anti-spam” function. I was hoping for something in Gmail’s option that I could just check, but apparently that doesn’t exist. So a workaround was needed. This is what you need to do, to disable Gmail’s spam filter.

Step 1: Create a new filter (Under options)

Put in the term is:spam as the terms that you’d like to filter in the “Has the words” box. Now when you click on “Next step”, Google will prompt you with this message, saying that it’s not recommended. Click ok for that message.

Step 2: Check, and Click

The next step’s really easy too. On the next screen, you just have to check the option “Never send it to spam” and then click on “Create the filter”.

What do you know, you’re done! Gmail’s anti-spam filter is now disabled for your account, and if you’re using POP to access Gmail, you should now receive ALL mails.

Some projects require activation of the GD library, and this is especially true when you have to do image manipulation with your PHP script. If you’re using WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP) in Windows, then good news: WAMP comes with GD library, just that it’s not activated by default.

To activate the GD library, go to your WAMP’s PHP.ini file, which can be found by clicking on the WAMP icon in your system tray. Go to “Config files”, and you’ll find it in there.

Next, in PHP.ini, search for the following line of code:

;extension=php_gd2.dll

Now remove the semicolon from the beginning of that line, so that the line now looks like this:

extension=php_gd2.dll

Restart WAMP, and your GD library will be activated.

Microsoft has just recently released its latest phone OS, named Windows Phone 7. What’s interesting is how the multitude of phone OSes such as the iPhone OS, the Blackberry OS, and the Google Android OS has created this environment of competition and innovation. Ultimately though, the winner will be the consumer because of all the newest, latest toys and gadgets that will be in the market.

Because of this, I think brand loyalty does not have the strength that it once has. In the past, people who choose Brand X because Brand X was the leader and that they had a track record of creating good products. Now, there is less that prevents a consumer to switch from one brand to another, especially if the other brand has something cooler and more fun to offer. Just look at Microsoft, Apple, Google, and their products – whoever would have imagined a world where Microsoft would actually face trouble to establish itself in the OS space? As a result, I think past successes play a much smaller part, and that to be continually successful, a company has to innovate…or die.

Surprisingly, the transition from a Windows to a Mac wasn’t as jarring as I had thought, and it turned out to be pretty uneventful. It’s been 4 months since I bought my Macbook Pro, and the overall experience’s fantastic, save for 2 cases.

1. Windows-only Applications

I deal with Windows-only applications that do not have alternatives on the Mac, and the only way to run these is in a virtualised Windows environment on my Mac (I use VMWare for this). Problem is, it’s equivalent to running 2 systems on one machine, and I don’t like the performance hit that I’m taking because of this. One workaround that I use is to connect to my Windows server (I have a VPS that I use from Vodien), so all my processing is handled there.

2. Kernel Panics

I have NO idea why, but I’m getting kernel panics on my Mac. It’s annoying as heck, especially since I’m used to never ever shutting down my computer. I find it such a huge disruption in my workflow that I have to have everything reset when the computer boots up from scratch. Oh, and I like to call it BSOD – not Blue Screen of Death, but Beautiful Screen Of Death. Still a BSOD, still annoyingly infruriating. For the Mac though, the BSOD gently slides in from the top, and presents to you a multi-lingual description of what you must do (namely, reboot).

I checked the RAM on this Macbook Pro by running the memory test on extended loops (5 loops, no errors found), TechTools didn’t find anything, but then I suddenly had the haunch to try Disk Utility, and -gasp- I found disk errors. It’s something to do with invalid file counts and volume records. Doesn’t sound like something that would cause kernel panics, but I’m hoping badly that it is, and that I’ve seen the last of the kernel panics.

So I fixed the disk errors by booting up with my Mac Snow Leopard Install DVD and running Disk Utility off it to repair the errors. If you need to do this too, just put in your DVD, and restart your computer while holding down the “c” button until you’re brought to the Mac OSX installation screen. Instead of hitting continue, just go to Utilities in the top menu bar.

I’m not sure if these disk errors are the root cause of all my kernel panics, but I’ll be monitoring this closely – hopefully I don’t get the BSOD anymore.