Blogging with Ecto 3, and a quick tip.

I was a prolific user of Ecto when I first stumbled upon it back during the version 2.4 days. Ecto is now up to version 3 and it is as awesome a blogging tool as ever. It looks like http://ecto.kung-foo.tv no longer works, but that's ok, because the Ecto software and forums are now hosted at IllumineX.

If you are an Ecto 2 licensee, your license for Ecto 2 will get you access to Ecto 3 free of charge.

One snag I came across when I started using Ecto 3 was an error coming back from both the Amazon Helper and the Flickr Helper.

For the Amazon Helper, the error was;

"The request must contain the parameter Signature."

For the Flickr Helper, the error was;

"Failed to get data from Flickr!"

So a quick search rendered the following forum post at IllumineX, which led to the following page explaining how to install the new plugins.

So basically both Amazon and Flickr have updated their API, and therefore the plugins need to be updated.

Here are the quick links to both.

• Amazon Helper



• Flickr Helper

Follow the instructions here and you'll be rolling again within a minute.

Ok let's test the plugins;

Amazon

"Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies" (Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff)

Flickr

That's really nice!!

Yes, you can get the new MacBook in different colors

Via Apartment Therapy Unplugged.
Colorware will apparently take several different types of electronics and skin them in different colors. The service is prohibitively expensive, for me, but it's probably for the best that I can't get this done to my new MacBook.

ColorWare

Cool Tools: Rescue CD 3.11

Thanks to F-Secure for putting out this cool tool;

Now it is time to release the new Rescue CD for which we put out the beta some time ago. We decided to update the version number to 3.11 since we added a couple of useful utilities to the CD image. Otherwise this is the same version as is available on our Internet Security 2010 installation CD.

Take a look a the release announcement and download here.

Quick impression of the new Macbook

As you are probably aware Apple recently released a new line of low-end Macbooks with updated specs and an updated body mold. I picked one up today to replace my amazingly loyal but aging Powerbook 12". Actually to be more accurate, this Macbook will take the place of three different systems that I use. My Powerbook, an ancient Ubuntu Thinkpad 600E, and a Windows/Ubuntu desktop.

Since this is the low-end, I don't have a Firewire port, or an SD card reader, but to be frank I won't miss either of those features. If I was a professional photographer or videographer that might get in the way.

I opted for a 4GB RAM upgrade, since I do a lot of "multitasking" and I sometimes work with Parallels, simulating Linux and FreeBSD installs. The 4GB of RAM has paid off, I think. If you get a Macbook, opt for the RAM upgrade. People always say "Macs love RAM", and it's still just as true.

So far I'm very impressed with the horsepower this laptop packs. Even as Apple's lowest-end portable offering, it's taking everything I can throw at it. The fan is pretty quiet despite my running of flash videos and Second Life in the background. It's staying fairly cool overall although there are some hot spots.

I notice when the graphics card kicks in to high gear, the keys (WSAD in particular) start to heat up, but so far it hasn't been a big deal. I can't comment on how much it might cook my groin, because I've got a laptop lap-table thing that I swear by.

The physical build quality feels sturdy, considering it's not aluminum like a Macbook Pro. But it's still plastic, there's no doubt about it. As much as I loved my aluminum Powerbook, I couldn't justify the $800+ premium for another Aluminum bodied laptop, at least in this generation of Apple computers. Let's see what happens in a couple of years.

I've popped the back off of it to take a look inside (had to, I couldn't help it!) and you can get to pretty much all of the components with little fuss. This is a huge change from most Apple laptops I've dealt with in the last decade. I changed out the hard drives on both my Blueberry iBook and my Powerbook, and each time was a huge production requiring documentation of every step, and of which screws went where.

When the time comes, I'll be able to drop a 500GB SATA drive into this MacBook without giving myself any new wrinkles in the process.

Let's see how I feel in a month, but at the moment, I'm more than happy with this Macbook as a replacement for my Powerbook AND desktop systems.

Invalid node structure under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

So my Finder froze up today during a Time Machine backup operation.  After trying several standard tricks to get my Finder back, I finally rebooted.  Upon rebooting, Timebook, my Time Machine drive, wasn't mounting.

Bah!

This wouldn't have made me so nervous, but my iMac had a drive freak out about two months ago, and I had to recover fully from a Time Machine backup.  So there was a better chance than not that both could die on me if I didn't get this fixed soon enough.

Upon running Disk Utility, I received the always hair-raising Invalid Node structure.

From the logs;

Apr  7 10:39:19 magneto Disk Utility[456]: Invalid node structure^[
Apr  7 10:39:19 magneto Disk Utility[456]: Volume check failed.
Apr  7 10:39:19 magneto Disk Utility[456]: Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.
Apr  7 10:39:19 magneto Disk Utility[456]:
Apr  7 10:39:19 magneto Disk Utility[456]: Disk Utility stopped verifying “Timebook” because the following error was encountered:\n\nFilesystem verify or repair failed.
Apr  7 10:39:19 magneto Disk Utility[456]:
Apr  7 10:39:24 magneto Disk Utility[456]: Verify and Repair volume “Timebook”
Apr  7 10:39:24 magneto Disk Utility[456]: Starting repair tool:
Apr  7 10:39:24 magneto Disk Utility[456]: Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Apr  7 10:39:24 magneto Disk Utility[456]: Checking Extents Overflow file.
Apr  7 10:39:24 magneto Disk Utility[456]: Checking Catalog file.
Apr  7 10:41:02 magneto Disk Utility[456]: Invalid node structure^[
Apr  7 10:41:02 magneto Disk Utility[456]: Volume check failed.
Apr  7 10:41:02 magneto Disk Utility[456]: Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.
Apr  7 10:41:02 magneto Disk Utility[456]:
Apr  7 10:41:02 magneto Disk Utility[456]: Disk Utility stopped repairing “Timebook” because the following error was encountered:\n\nFilesystem verify or repair failed.

When you do a Google search, some sites suggest using the command line utility fsck_hfs with the -y option (assume Yes to every question.. if you run an fsck on a damaged filesystem you'll usually see why this is a good idea).  That didn't work for me, it would just crap out again the same way Disk Utility had.  What DID work was the following.. (after a sudo su -)

# fsck_hfs -rf /dev/disk1s3

Now, a lot of people suggest Diskwarrior to fix this problem.  I agree this is probably a good idea for Mac disk maintenance tasks.  The problem; Disk Warrior is $99 USD, and I'm cheap.  Hell, the Timebook was on or about $99 USD.  Disk Warrior will have to wait, but I will likely invest in it in the future.

After I ran the fsck command with the -f flag (to force fsck to check `clean' filesystems when preening.. don't ask me how or why this works over a -ry) the drive was mountable from Disk Utility. The first Time Machine run had this error in the console though, but I think it's harmless.

Apr  7 19:13:02 magneto /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1000]: Starting standard backup
Apr  7 19:13:03 magneto /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1000]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Timebook/Backups.backupdb
Apr  7 19:13:07 magneto /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1000]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Apr  7 19:13:07 magneto /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1000]: Node requires deep traversal:/

Here's the full text of the command output below, for reference;

magneto:~ root# fsck_hfs -rf /dev/disk1s3
** /dev/rdisk1s3
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
** Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.
   Invalid node structure
(4, 75586)
** Rechecking volume.
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
   Incorrect number of thread records
(4, 32659)
** Checking multi-linked files.
   Incorrect number of file hard links
** Checking Catalog hierarchy.
   Invalid directory item count
   (It should be 1178851 instead of 1178880)
** Checking Extended Attributes file.
   Incorrect number of Extended Attributes
   (It should be 1690486 instead of 1690462)
   Incorrect number of Access Control Lists
   (It should be 1690472 instead of 1690448)
   Invalid leaf record count
   (It should be 3699221 instead of 3699235)
** Checking multi-linked directories.
   Incorrect number of directory hard links
** Checking volume bitmap.
   Volume Bit Map needs minor repair
** Checking volume information.
   Invalid volume free block count
   (It should be 36497060 instead of 29689387)
   Volume Header needs minor repair
(2, 0)
** Repairing volume.
   Orphaned file hard link (id = 8785918)
   Orphaned file hard link (id = 8785919)
   Orphaned file hard link (id = 8785920)
   Orphaned file hard link (id = 8785921)
[[ message repeated etc ...]]
   Orphaned file hard link (id = 11098150)
   Invalid first link in hard link chain (id = 11995430)
   (It should be 12024532 instead of 12023278)
** Rechecking volume.
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
** Checking multi-linked files.
** Checking Catalog hierarchy.
** Checking Extended Attributes file.
   Invalid map node
(8, 61440)
** Checking multi-linked directories.
** Checking volume bitmap.
** Checking volume information.
** Repairing volume.
** Rechecking volume.
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
** Checking multi-linked files.
** Checking Catalog hierarchy.
** Checking Extended Attributes file.
** Checking multi-linked directories.
** Checking volume bitmap.
** Checking volume information.
** The volume Timebook was repaired successfully.

Update: Jan 4, 2010 - While doing some digging, I found this article at Jthon's Place that describes how to fix a corrupted Time Machine backup.  NICE!

Blogging from the iPod touch... again!

another test post? I'll delete it later (or not).