Backup / Restore a user on OS X

I can’t say enough about how important it is to occasionally backup your data. I’ve had several instances where doing this really saved me, and I’ve had friends who didn’t do it, and it has really cost them. I’m a firm believer in the awesomeness of Time Machine on the Mac. I’ve used it a few times to restore my system to a previous state, after I thought my system had been compromised, and it’s just a thing of beauty…for the most part.

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Installing PHP on OS X

As many of you may have noticed, one of the purposes of this blog is to act as my own personal notebook on how to configure things, but I’m glad to see it has provided benefit to others as well. That being said, it has been far too long since I’ve posted any information on this blog. Setting up my new laptop really through my routine out of whack. So as part of my New Year’s resolution, I resolve to do better, and post articles on a more frequent basis.

Speaking of my new laptop, I am now able to run OS X 10.6 or better, so all of my posts from now on will be discussing the newer OS.

But this post is about how to get PHP up and running on OS X, so let’s dig in.

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Dreamweaver CS5 adds support HTML5

Just saw that Adobe has added support for HTML5 and CSS3 to Dreamweaver CS5. You can find the extension at Adobe Labs.

The extension adds support for CSS3 and some HTML5 tags in Live View, HTML5 and CSS3 code hinting, HTML5 starter documents, plus some other things. I’m expecting the features in this extension to improve in the future as more HTML5 features get rolled into browsers.

I’m really looking forward to getting a chance to play with this. With that, and the additions of Drupal and WordPress support, Dreamweaver CS5 looks to become quite a useful tool for doing web development.

Christmas in April, Part II

We began discussing what an interesting month April has been in Christmas in April, Part I. Now we’ll get into what’s happening with Apple.

Apple kicked off the month with the official release of the iPad. I personally think the device is a huge deal. I can definitely see where it would fit in with my day to day activities.

Then this week, the released the long awaited MacBook Pro. As I said in the previous article, I’ve been holding out for this machine for a long time, and I’m super excited to get one. Continue reading

Christmas in April, Part I

This is a pretty exciting month for the tools we use in our business, and technology in general. Monday, Adobe annouced CS5 and Microsoft finalized Visual Studio 2010. Last week Apple released the iPad, and this week it released the new Core i5 & Core i7 MacBook Pros.

For me, it is beyond time to upgrade my systems, so this is about to be a very expensive month. I’ve literally been waiting on these new MacBook Pros for two years, ever since I read about these new processors from Intel. And with this new computer, it is also time to upgrade the Adobe software, so this year’s tech budget is pretty much gone.

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A few thoughts on Apple’s iPad announcement

Today, like many Tech aficionados, I was eagerly following the posts about Apple’s new iPad. And I must say that I’m quite interested in the device.

First let me say that I was a little taken aback when I looked over at Yahoo’s Tech Blog, and those guys panned it. They pointed out all the things that the rumor mill said it would do that it didn’t. Sorry dudes, there is only so much tech you can cram into a device this size without blowing a massive whole in your unit cost.

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Tablet Mania at CES

Today I’m going to talk briefly about technology.  All this business about tablets, netbooks and e-readers is really generating lots of hype in the press.  Personally I’d love to have an e-reader or tablet, so I can stop filling up my bookshelf.  I’ve been preparing myself for a black and white screen, until the technology improves.  But then I saw Qualcomm’s Mirasol color screen, so now I’m hoping for good color offerings in e-readers/tablet soon.

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Automating Drupal cron with OS X’s launchd

Found this great post on Configuring cron on Mac OS X Server 10.5.x in the Drupal documentation. I’d been wanting to do that with my original post on Building a Drupal Multi-Site development environment, but I hadn’t had time to figure it out.

The title of the page at Drupal says “Mac OS X Server“, but there’s nothing that says you can’t use this technique on OS X Client, and I believe it will work on everything 10.4.x and up.

So I’m going to show you how to tie it into the Multi-Site setup I created on my local machine for the previous blog post.   Continue reading