On both my Mac Pro and my iMac, I’ve run into a problem where the iPhoto library simply doesn’t show up in the Desktop & Screen Saver System Preferences panel (in Mac OS X 10.6.x). Well, sometimes it shows up, but simply as a line reading iPhoto, but without any actual content.

When this happened the first time, I looked in Console and found the following entry for each time I’d tried to load the Desktop tab of the Desktop & Screen Saver panel (reformatted for easier reading):

1/12/12 9:09:36 AM      System Preferences[4134]
**** DesktopPref error: DSKiPhotoRootSource -loadData TIME OUT!!! There something wrong with iLife Media Browser

Googling on that error led to a number of pages, including iLife: Cannot See iPhoto Files in Other iLife Applications on Apple’s support site. But after trying everything in that article, I still couldn’t see my iPhoto images when trying to set the Desktop picture.
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Recently, I placed my Mac Pro up for sale, both on the net in general and on eBay. The eBay auction closed with a successful bidder, so yesterday, I went to prep the machine for shipping. After wiping the drives and reinstalling OS X, I had but one thing to do: solve a small but annoying problem with one of the two installed disc burning SuperDrives (name used for simplification; one was an actual SuperDrive from Apple; the other a multi-format burning drive from Sony).

The stock drive, which I had mounted in the lower slot, worked fine. So did the after-market upper drive, as long as there was a disc in the slot. If I ejected the disc and then closed the tray, the drive would grind for a few seconds, then eject. It would then stay ejected for a few minutes, until (I believe) OS X noticed it was open. It would then close, and the grind-eject cycle would repeat.

I’m posting the sordid details of my experience in case anyone else is looking for help with a CD/DVD tray that won’t stay closed on their own OS X machine; perhaps it’ll show up in a Google Mac-specific search at some point in the future. Read on for the details…
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I was never a cat person growing up; my family always had dogs. Once I got through college, I lived in shared housing arrangements for the first five years of my work life (the joys of living in Silicon Valley)—so that meant no pets of my own. My jobs were also such that having a pet would be difficult, as I traveled a fair bit. So I remained petless for many years.

In January of 1994, though, I purchased my first home (shortly after moving to Oregon). In all ways but one, it was a very typical starter home: 1970s three-bedroom two-bathroom ranch with too much dark wood, not enough light, horrendously outdated kitchen, and and orange-and-white marble-look-but-plastic guest bath.

The one way in which it differed is that the home came with a guilt trip, which led directly to my first-ever experience as a cat owner…
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With the arrival of my new iMac, my 2006 vintage Mac Pro is, sadly, no longer needed. So I’m offering it up for sale, along with the 23″ Apple Cinema Display that was my main display, and a FireWire iSight camera.

I been used this machine for nearly five years—it arrived at what was then the Mac OS X Hints headquarters in November of 2006—and it’s been a great machine. Over the years, the machine was a workhorse for me, and has never given me a lick of trouble. Well, that’s not entirely true. When new, the original video card (an ATI X1900XT) was quite flakey, as was its replacement (another X1900XT). However, those problems vanished when I upgraded the video cards (see below), and it’s been fine ever since.

The longer I kept the machine, the more I did to it. Other than the CPUs, the machine is really nothing like what was delivered. Here are the current specs:

• Mac Pro with two dual-core 2.66GHz CPUs (Xeon aka “Woodcrest”). The Mac Pro’s case is in excellent condition, with no scratches or dings.
• 14GB RAM (6x2GB, 2x1GB)
• WiFi and Bluetooth
• 23″ Apple Cinema Display (about eight years old). No dead pixels, good brightness, and (best of all) no glare! Also includes Apple’s ADC adapter, to allow the Cinema Display to plug into DVI ports.
• Apple iSight video camera (FireWire).
• Wired (white) Apple keyboard and Mighty Mouse
• Two Nvidia GeForce 8800GT video cards, supporting up to four displays. In addition to the 23″, I was driving two more monitors (2048×1152 and 1680×1050).
• Sony DW-D150A Superdrive (stock).
• Sony DRU-840A as the second optical drive.
• A total of 2.59TB of storage, spread across the four internal drive bays:
  • The boot disk is a 90GB OCZ Vertex 2 SATA II solid state drive.
  • Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB, 7200rpm.
  • Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB, 7200rpm.
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB, 7200rpm.
• Original boxes, documentation, and cabling for the Mac Pro and the Cinema Display.

How much is all of this worth? A heck of a lot less than I paid for all the bits, that’s for sure! Make me an offer I can’t refuse. If you’re local to the Portland/Vancouver area, I’ll deliver. Otherwise, buyer pays for shipping method of their choice.

If you’re interested, just send me an email using the “Email Rob” link at the top of the site. (I’m going to put this up on eBay and/or Craigslist this weekend, so please contact me before then if you’d like more information about it.)

Updated and republished for 10.7.2′s release; skip it unless you really really care about all the OS X releases. Originally published on November 14th, 2005.

Below the break is a table showing all major releases of OS X from the public beta through the latest public version, which is OS X Lion 10.7.2 as of October 12, 2011. Note that this release marks the 62nd release of OS X (counting both major and minor versions, and skipping two ill-fated updates). Wow.

Note: Click the ⓘ symbol to read Apple’s release notes for a given update.

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If you follow me on Twitter, you’re probably familiar with my iOS5 installation difficulties. Two days into the process, and I’ve still not been able to update either my iPad (first generation) or iPhone 4. This is—by far—the most frustrated I’ve been with any Apple upgrade, ever…and that covers a lot of history!

Simply as a means of venting, and perhaps to save someone else from going through what I’ve gone through (though note that I haven’t yet solved the problem), here’s what I’ve gone through to try to upgrade my iPhone and iPad.

Update: On my 48th attempt, my iPhone 4 successfully updated to iOS5. Now, on to the iPad…

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As I’m really enjoying my new 11.6″ MacBook Air, I thought it might be interesting to compare it with some other portables I currently own. Specifically, I wanted to compare the Air to my previous fave ultra-portable Mac (the 12″ PowerBook G4), a Dell Mini 10 running Mac OS X, and my current fave Mac laptop, the high-res anti-glare 15″ MacBook Pro.

What follows isn’t a comprehensive set of benchmarks done under controlled conditions. It’s more of a quick look at performance (and measurements and specifications) across a series of machines, three of which can be considered “ultra portables.”

Read on for the table…

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A few days ago, I Tweeted a message about how I’ve lost weight, dropped my blood pressure, and reduced my resting pulse rate over the last few months:

Sep 8 vs Dec 8: Blood pressure, 140/95 -> 115/75; resting pulse, 73 -> 48; Weight, 218 -> 185. Amazing what’s possible in three months.

I had a few people ask (on Twitter) me how I made these changes. My response required more than 140 characters, so I thought I’d expand on it in a blog posting here.

Warning, this is a long blog entry, mainly because I’ve not written this down anywhere before, and I wanted to get it all in text. The executive summary version is simply that cutting sodium, watching calories, and running every single day possible are the three main factors behind the changes in my weight and blood pressure.

Read on for the highly-detailed version of the above…

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After posting about my favorite roads from our summer tour around the west, a few people asked to see some pictures. Here’s an album showing some of the interesting sites and landscapes:

Summer Tour 2010

It really was an amazing journey—4,000 miles in about 18 driving days, plus another 700 miles during a one-week stay in Colorado to visit friends and relatives. More about the trip, in particular spending that much time in a car with two young children, in a future post.

Last summer, we took our two girls on a 30-day, 4,000-mile trek around the western United States (here’s the full route). The trip was made possible by my wife’s employer, where everyone is given a multi-week sabattical after 10 years of service.

Our kids are relatively young for such a journey–just four and seven at the time of the trip. To make it bearable for them (and us!), we drove relatively short distances each day, and spent a mostly-driving-free week in Colorado in the middle of the trip. (More on the lessons we learned traveling for 30 days straight with two young kids in a future blog post…)

What was great about the trip, for the adults in the car at least, was that relatively little time was spent on interstate highways–only 1,200 of the 4,000 miles, and of those 1,200 miles, 900 of them were on the first three days and the last day of the trip. So most of the time, we were on state highways or even smaller backroads. These are the roads where you can really see the country, and get away from the crowds–many times we had the road completely to ourselves.

Given how much we enjoyed these roads, I thought I’d take a few minutes and share some of my favorites from the journey. (Click the small map image for the full Google Maps view of each road.)
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