Mac OS Mavericks 2013 – Google Calendar issue

Problem

If you just get upgrade/fresh install the free Mac OS X Mavericks, then you might be scratching your head on this issue.

When you attempt to enable “Calendar” for your Google account under System Preferences -> Internet Accounts, you will see a spinner and after a few minutes, it displays an error message “A secure connection couldn’t be established”.

Unfortunately no solution so far and it is quite annoying. However I found a few peoples are having the same issues and you can check these forums and see if any solution helps:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/f7BGvVBbvaI

Note that some solutions proposed might work – but not completely. For example:

• Use Google caldav server: This only allows you to import your Google Calendar into Mac Calendar as read only. You cannot update any Google calendar entries in your Mac or add new Google calendar events in Mac Calendar.

Meanwhile, I just have to manage my Google calendar from my iOS devices rather than Mavericks.

UPDATE

09/12/2013 – After several tries and checked the forum above, finally the following works for me:

1. Thanks Ben Blazak and others that suggested the solution at http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/f7BGvVBbvaI and https://discussions.apple.com/message/20175844#20175844. There is a tweak or something that needs to be aware, where I found out why it works for others but not me.
2. Open iCal in Mavericks.
3. Go to Calendar -> Add Account…
4. Make sure you select “Add CalDav account….”
5. Enter your username (this is the tricky part): I use my gmail username without @gmail.com, and this is the trick that you need to be aware of. Use the full google account name, if your email address is test@gmail.com, then you enter the full email address.
6. Enter your password and type “www.google.com” as the server name.

Mac OS X 10.7 - Mavericks - Workspace

If you have recently upgraded to Mavericks or just start using Mavericks 10.7 Mac OS X, you might be curious about what is workspace and how to assign certain applications only open in specific workspace.

Workspace

Workspace can be defined as a copy of your desktop that you can create and use it to open different applications.

Imagine you have to different bundles of physical files and papers that you need to organise and work on, and you have a few tables. You can organise each related bundle on one table and work on them one at a time. Every now and then you can switch between them, but your focus is a specific table at any one time.

Workspace is the same. You can create multiple workspaces, and group any similar applications in one workspace.

How to create a workspace

If you are using Mac, press F3. This will trigger what we called "Mission Control". If you are using trackpad, swipe up with three finger and it will have similar effect.

You will see a screen similar to the following

The top part of the screen shows your current workspaces, with the left most being the dashboard. Dashboard is another “workspace” that contains all your widgets. You can switch between different workspaces by swiping four fingers left or right.

If you hover over the top right corner, you will set a “+” symbol. That allows you to add additional workspace to your current collection.

If you want to remove specific workspace, hover over the workspace at the top of Mission Control, after a second, there will be a “X” symbol shown at the top left corner of the workspace, clicking on the X will remove the workspace.

If you want to switch between workspaces but not in Mission Control mode, you can swipe four fingers in the trackpad (left or right).

How to assign applications to specific workspace

Now you have learnt how to create and use workspace to group applications together. You might be wondering what if I want certain application to open in a specific workspace only?

In Snow Leopard, you can do this in Settings. However, there is no such setting in Mavericks anymore.

The easiest way to assign application to specific workspace is:

• Choose the application that you want to assign a workspace to (preferably in the Dock)
• Right click on the application and select Options.

• You will see the options of “Assign To”. In this case, I have two monitors, which corresponding to Display 1 (External monitor) and Display 2 (Macbook Pro).
• Each desktop has its own name and I have two workspaces created in Display 1.
• Pick one of these options and you are done.

The nice thing about assigning applications to specific workspace is when you restart your Mac, all applications will be open in their assigned workspace.

If you do not assign any workspace to application before you restart your Mac, all applications will be opened in current active workspace, and then you have to move applications to the relevant workspace.

Further information

Please visit Mac support to understand more about Mission Control.

Mac OS X - How to show filename extensions in Finder

This post describes a simple trick to enable filename extensions to be displayed at all time in Finder.

I like to know and see what is the filename extension - because sometimes I would like to change them to different type.

By default, Mac OS X will not display the file extensions for known file type, such as .pdf. This could cause confusion because you might see some files that has filename extensions, but some don't.

In order to set Finder to display all filename extensions, go to Finder -> Preferences. Click “Advanced”.

Ensure “Show all filename extensions” is checked.

What you have now is all files will be displayed with filename extensions.

Managing iTunes album art

Album art is a wonderful idea for digital audio collection and make navigating between albums so much easier in iTunes.

Since iTunes version 7.0 onwards, you can download the album art of a song or a group of them from iTunes store.

Open iTunes, right click on a song or a group of them and select "Get Album Artwork", iTunes will download the album cover and store them accordingly.

There are two issues with this feature:

• Portability: If you switch to another media player other than iTunes, the downloaded album art from iTunes will not copy across.
• Customization: How to customize the album art of your own.
  

This article will examine these two issues.



Portability
By default, iTunes will store all the downloaded album art under iTunes/Album Artwork folder. This means when you switch to another media player, the new media player will not understand how iTunes organize the artworks.

In order to support portability of the album artworks, you will need to embed the album artwork into the mp3 itself. There are two ways you can do that with your existing album artwork from iTunes:

• Manual cut and paste: If you right-click on a song in iTunes (with album artwork downloaded from iTunes store before) and select "Get Info", go to "Artwork" tab and you will see the album art. Click on the album art and perform a Cut (Command-X in Mac) and Paste (Command-V in Mac). Click OK. This will embed the artwork into mp3 now instead of storing into the default iTunes folder.
• Use Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes: This script will re-embed the artwork into mp3 of the select files. Note that this script requires some knowledge on how to install custom scripts in iTunes. Check out the link above for installation instructions.

Note that embedding artwork into mp3 will allow you to bring along/transfer your music collection easily without worrying about additional data. However, by doing this, you are increasing the file size of the mp3 and hence might consume more space.

Customization
Although iTunes store has a lot of album arts available for download, sometimes you might come across some of the albums have no artwork on the store. For example, foreign language albums, or singles, or you might want the exact album artwork in different countries, etc.

In this case, you can find the actual album artwork (an image) that you want to associate for certain tracks and following the instructions below to associate artwork:

1. Right-click on a track/group of tracks in iTunes and select "Get Info".
2. Select "Artwork" tab (if you select only one track) or check "Artwork" checkbox (group of tracks).
   
3. Click Add or double click on the Artwork space and select the image that you want to associate.
4. Click OK.

 

Portable Cross Platform Personal Wiki

Problem

I have been using Atlassian Confluence Wiki Personal License (free) at home for a while now. Basically I used Confluence to record all important information, such as how I setup my own server, what directories store what, command bash command prompts and useful scripts etc. Wiki is really useful is keeping track of all the little "findings" and tricks for the future.

Besides Confluence, I am using another wiki engine at work. This creates a problem where a lot of the time, my "knowledge" is stored into different places and quite hard to search for something. At home, I cannot get access to work's wiki and vice versa.

Wouldn't it be great to have a portable personal wiki that you can bring with you no matter where you goes (at work, at home, etc) and still manage to keep track of everything that you think is important?



Quest

The problem above has led me into search for the best solution in fulfilling what I want. There are few main requirements that I want from a Wiki:

• Portable: This means I can bring it with me no matter where I go. Having a personal wiki hosted on some site probably help but what I might not be able to access it if company firewall blocks it or for some reason, I am situated at a location with no Internet. The obvious solution to this would be a USB thumb drive. Nowdays, USB thumb drive is so small (keychain size) and easy to bring around. Furthermore, their storage capacity is getting higher and better.
• Cross platform: I am using Mac at home but Windows/Linux at work. So I need a portable wiki that could run seamlessly in both environment.
  
• Small Footprint: Given the need for portability, the Wiki probably needs a small footprint (in terms of the environment to run the wiki), so that I don't need to install anything on the host machine that I am using.

Over the years, I have been trying to find the holy grail for the problem and have attempted the following:

• XAMPP and MediaWiki
  

XAMPP is an Apache distribution that contains MySQL, PHP and Perl. It allows the user to install everything on a USB thumb drive. This is really useful if you are a Web developer (PHP for example) and want to carry your work with you everywhere. XAMPP has different distributions for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris.

Once we have the XAMPP installed on USB drive, we then install MediaWiki, which is a Wiki engine written in PHP using MySQL to store the data.

There are various articles that describe how to install XAMPP and MediaWiki:

Lifehacker - Run Your Personal Wikipedia from a USB Stick

Also MediaWiki provides a manual to describe how to install the Wiki using WOS Portable / Uniform Server (both on Windows platform).


Verdict

I have been playing around with XAMPP + MediaWiki combination. There are few issues with it and it does not meet my requirements.

1. Slow: Install XAMPP on my USB thumb drive took around 1 hour or more - perhaps it is my USB drive (formatted to FAT32?). Everytime I need to start XAMPP, I am required to start the XAMPP console and start both MySQL and Apache.
2. Cross-platform: Although XAMPP provides different distribution for Mac and Windows, unfortunately I have to install both distributions and might need to migrate data back and forth for the Wiki data stores in MySQL. To get around this problem, I am using a Windows VM on my Mac to be able to use the XAMPP (Windows). This provides a consistent Wiki usage at home and work.

XAMPP + MediaWiki seems a bit fiddly and too much preparation and work (start XAMPP, start Apache and MySQL) for my requirements.

At last, I found what I am looking for:

Wiki on a stick

According to the website above, "Wiki on a stick" a personal wiki that lives in one self-modifying XHTML containing software, interface and data. Very useful for creating small websites and mantaining notes or todo-lists; completely javascript-programmable, supports images and files embedding.

Basically it is just a simple HTML file. Once you open the HTML file in your browser, you can start create Wiki pages. Everything is manipulated with javascript + XHTML in a single HTML. How cool is that!

This immediately fulfill all my requirements - portable, small footprint, cross platform! It is nothing more that a HTML page and what you need is a modern browser that supports the javascript that it needs (I am using Firefox 3+).

I have been using a while now with "Wiki on a stick" - and I truly like it. It is very portable and don't need to fiddle around the environment/platform that allows you to run the Wiki on.

However there are some gotchas that needs to beaware of when using this, which I have summarise my experience below.

Experience with "Wiki on a Stick"

Although it looks like this is the best solution for me, there are some gotchas:

• Don't expect full blown Wiki functionality: As this Wiki is designed for its simplicity and small footprint, do not expect bells and whistles that other more powerful Wikis have.
• Might not suitable for enterprise and multiple update: As I am not looking for multiple updates/concurrent updates, this suitable me well. However if you are looking to use this Wiki and allow concurrent updates, I would strongly recommend using other Wiki engines, such as MediaWiki, JSP Wiki, etc.
• Binaries: Although this wiki supports images and files embedded, as you know, this is a single HTML file, embedded large binaries might not be a good ideas in a single file (imagine a Microsoft Word with 100+ images embedded). My solution to this is create a separate folders on USB drive (relative to the HTML Wiki) for images, attachments, files, etc, and use or other HTML tag in the Wiki to refer to those files.

Since using Wiki on a stick, I have also found similar personal Wiki called TiddlyWiki. It has much more support and plugins than the former.