Never fear, Apache and OS X web sharing are still there: you just need to re-enable it all (gah!) So, here’s how to do it. First of all, fire up the trusty Terminal, and issue this command (replacing “<USER>” with your username):

vi /etc/apache2/users/<USER>.conf

A new file will open, and after putting the file into “insert” mode (i in vi), paste in the following (again, replacing “USER” with the necessary):

<Directory "/Users/USER/Sites/">
  Options Indexes Multiviews
  AllowOverride AuthConfig Limit
  Order allow,deny
  Allow from all
</Directory>

Save and exit (esc, then :wq in vi) and start up Apache:

sudo apachectl start

Note that this will only start up Apache for the current session. If you want it to run persistently, modify the relevant daemon setting like so:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd Disabled -bool false

Once Apache is up and running, you should now be able to hit web pages in the usual way, e.g. http://localhost/~USERNAME/somesite/index.html.

If you’re still hitting problems (for example, I was getting 403 errors), these are probably permissions-related, and you need to alter permissions on the newly-created conf file from the step above (remember “USER”!):

  sudo chown root:wheel /etc/apache2/users/USER.conf
  sudo chmod 644 /etc/apache2/users/USER.conf

Chapter 3 - A Monstrous Forest.

Chapter 3 was a huge challenge for me as I wanted the first impression of the Wormworld to be a lasting one. This chapter is the longest chapter so far and it is full of elaborate full scale backgrounds. Including prelim, concept art and layout, I worked over 400 hours on Chapter 3. I think that it shows and I hope that everyone will enjoy the ride.

And then we have something else, which I must confess I hadn’t seen coming (I’ve just been too “heads-down” lately to know what’s going on in the Java world):

Oracle Releases Java SE 7 Update 4 and JavaFX 2.1

First Java Development Kit and JavaFX Software Development Kit for Mac OS X Available From Oracle

(My emphasis). Crikey! Read more (and get the JDK) from Oracle.

To their credit, Netgear had beta firmware releases out in no time, which addressed this issue. However, one side effect seemed to be that for those of us who also use the ReadyNAS as a print server (it’s a Linux box basically, so you get CUPS for free), printing was b0rked. Bonjour detection of the printer was still OK, one could send print jobs to it, but something went awry along the way and OS X reported Unable to get printer status. Hmm.

A very helpful chap by the name of Dr. Christian Fries posted some steps on the official ReadyNAS forums to address this printing issue. I can report that whilst this tip did not work for me with the beta firmware releases, bizarrely it does now that the firmware is production-ready (I’m using the newly-released 4.1.8 for my SPARC-based NV+).

Here I reproduce Dr. Fries’ tip with some notes of my own, and I’ve also added a screenshot of the end result in CUPS (this is all assuming you’re on OS X BTW!)

1. Set up the printer as you would normally (it should just appear when you add a printer in system preferences (assuming you advertise ReadyNAS print queues over Bonjour). My device is a Canon PIXMA iP4500. It comes with reasonable drivers, but they won’t work if you use the printer on the network via a NAS. Instead, once you’ve opted to add your printer, choose the drop-down option to “Select Printer Software…” thus: … and then select the relevant Gutenberg driver for your printer (they cover pretty much everything out there). You should have Gutenberg drivers installed already, but you can always grab the latest versions at the Gutenberg site.
2. Open http://127.0.0.1:631 in your web browser. This is the CUPS page, the printing subsystem of OS X (you may need to alter the IP address or host, depending on your set-up).
3. Select “Administration” and then “Manage Printers”. Select the non-functioning ReadyNAS print queue.
4. Now choose “Modify Printer” from the “Administration” drop-down that appears below the print queue name.
5. On the resulting screen, look for the heading “Other Network Printers” and click the “Windows printer via spoolss” radio button. Click “Continue” and you should then see a screen requesting a connection string…
6. … this connection string should be in this format: smb://YOUR_NAS/YOUR_QUEUE, where YOUR_NAS is either the host name or private IP address of your ReadyNAS as it appears in the Finder (e.g. readynas.local or 192.168.1.1) and YOUR_QUEUE is the name of your printer as it appears in the ReadyNAS FrontView screen (note that you don’t need to include port numbers or extra bits like IPP as you might expect; just use the path as expressed here).
7. Done!

OK, so this is how my printer looks in CUPS (where iP4500_serie is the name of the queue in FrontView):

Read the original post - ReadyNAS forums: Re: Problems printing with 4.1.18

This is pretty handy if, like me, you use multiple addresses. OK, so here’s how to set that up in Mail.app’s preferences: go to the “Account Information” tab in the “Accounts” pane, and edit the “Email Address” field thus:

Just separate the addresses you want to use with commas: easy! Now, where things become a little trickier is in the realm of iOS. The lack of apparent multiple email address support in the iOS mail client was a bit of a bug-bear to me last week especially, whilst on holiday. Yes, you can set up multiple email accounts, one for each address you want to use, but that’s nasty—especially when it comes to downloading your mail (multiple copies ahoy).

In a moment of quiet contemplation I figured that perhaps the comma trick would work in iOS too, but you hit an apparent impasse as the mail client set-up precludes the use of commas in the “Address” field. Hmm. Ah, but a bit of lateral thinking suggests that if perhaps one has a comma secreted about one’s person (OK, in one’s clipboard), the lack of comma in the relevant on-screen keyboard becomes moot. Aha!

Well what do you know, it worked. When checking this wee tip out I found an excellent post which summarises what is required, step-by-step, with screenshots to boot. Take a gander:

Nick Cernis: Solved: Gmail, iPad, iPhone, and multiple from addresses (the link is Google-specific, but I see no reason why the tips contained therein can’t work for your provider of choice).

Splendid.

(A wee post for Mr. Google if no-one else). The Apple discussion forums are full of disgruntled iBooks users, lamenting the loss of PDFs they have sync’ed (or are trying to sync) to their iPhone or iPad, and I joined their serried ranks recently.

I updated to the latest ’n’ greatest (version 1.2), and sure enough: no more PDFs.

“What the flip?” thought I. Like many, I gather PDF-based texts as I pootle along the highways and by-ways of t’internet, and it’s super to have them to hand in one’s iOS device of choice. So you can surely imagine my dismay when oodles of lovingly-curated docs had gone the way of British manufacturing, or jobs in IT.

But do not fear! If the same thing has happened to you, here’s how I got mine back: it could work for you too!

1. Remove all PDFs from your iTunes library. Do not elect to delete the files from your machine, just from your iTunes library
2. Locate the physical files on your hard drive (normally found in the “Books” sub-directory within your iTunes folder hierarchy)
3. Move ’em all somewhere else (and remember where! Don’t use “that secret place”, you’ll never find them). Move just the PDFs; ignore any author / album folder hierarchy they may have had
4. Sync your iOS device for good measure (it definitely shouldn’t have any PDFs on it now, just epub format books and the like)
5. Highlight a single PDF in your back-up folder, and drag it to iTunes. You should see the familiar green “plus” icon as it adds the file to your library (I presume this is the same in Windows, but don’t have iTunes on that platform, so bear with me)
6. Check that the newly-added file appears in the “PDFs” list when you look at books on your iOS device (I’m assuming you’ve left your phone / iPad connected to your iTunes machine). Interestingly, my fubar-ed PDFs, prior to fixing things, didn’t appear in this list. Instead, they were commingled with books, suggesting that iTunes had become most discombobulated
7. Sync, and check that the newly-(re)added PDF is now on your device. If so, add the rest in the same way

Why has this happened? Why do you need to re-add your PDFs? Well, my theory is that some of us (cough) are quite anal, and categorise our PDFs with “artist” (i.e. author) names and the like. By default, iTunes organises one’s content on one’s hard drive, using folders for artist, album, and so on. It would appear that iBooks 1.2 takes to this badly, hence why re-organising PDFs (and leaving them be: no extra tags!) seems to pacify! (Simply reversing this tagging isn’t enough; you have to remove and add back).

So, a couple of bugs to sort out there for Apple I reckon. Oh, and whilst they’re at it, why not have iTunes start to recognise their own OS metadata for PDFs (author, date, description, etc.)!

For all those opining on the subject—how Apple should have done this, or done that, the specification is too limited, an Android pad will be better, an HP Slate will be better, Windoze Tablet is better, I can’t open the device and wire in my dog, blah blah blah—remember this: no-one did it. No-one else has created one of these things. Tablet PC has been out for what, eight years? Android’s here and has a vibrant ecosystem around it. There are many many players in the technology world. Have at it! Create something better! That’s what innovation is all about.

I’m not much an Apple fanboy: I whinge about certain things, whine about certain decisions. But I am not going to take them to task for releasing the iPad. You pays your money, you takes your choice. To the sceptics I will say this: no-one is forcing this technology down your throats. Go do something better.

Stanford University: iPhone Application Programming (iTunes link).

If you’re buying MacHeist, you’re a cheap fucking bastard, and it makes me queasy that so many in the Mac community would buy into such a thing.

Some developers and middle-men come along and do a cheap bundle deal on a load of good Mac apps, and it’s the consumer who’s at fault?

R--i-g-h-t.

It’s moronic posts like this that give Mac fans a bad rap. I don’t see anyone with a gun to their head.

Via John Gruber.

One regret? They renamed the new Javascript engine from SquirrelFish to Nitro. That’s no fun!

Apple: Safari 4 Beta.

Update: if your Google mail isn’t working, try this: grab the URL for the “basic” HTML view for mail, and open that in Safari. Should work fine. Then switch back to the standard view. Quite why this fixes things when clearing cookies / cache / history / offline email doesn’t, I have no idea!

Guy Kawasaki - Macintosh 25th Anniversary Reunion: Where Did Time Go?