Love it or hate it OS X Lion (10.7) arrived today and it doesn’t take long for you to notice (and loathe) many of the more subtle changes Apple have made in their infinite user interface (UI) wisdom. Fortunately a lot of the changes, which I personally find not to my taste, are quite easily fixed.

The issues & fixes:

• “Natural scrolling” and how to disable it
• Large font/icons in the Finder sidebar & Mail folder list
• Finder status bar missing
• Startup disk missing from Finder sidebar
• Library folder in home folder missing
• Auto correct while typing

“Natural scrolling” and how to disable it
Mimicking Apple’s iOS devices Lion implements a “natural” scroll direction, you would have noticed it as soon as you tried to read or do pretty much anything on your now Lion based machine. What it means is that when you scroll your mouse down the page moves up, which goes against any conventional mouse usage since its inception. In the words of Leo Laporte: “So. You spend 27 years teaching people how to scroll. Then you turn it upside down just for fun. I think Steve is laughing at us.”

How to fix it:
Jump in to System Preferences and select “Mouse”
On the first tab (“Point & Click”) the first option is “Scroll direction: natural”. Simply un-tick this.

Large font/icons in the Finder sidebar & Mail folder list
This one jumps out at you pretty quickly, everything, everywhere just looks BIGGER!

How to fix it:
Jump in to the “General” System Preference and look for the item “Sidebar icon size” seen below

Finder status bar missing
Are your Finder windows looking particularly thin? Missing some information about how many files/folders you have in the place you’re looking or perhaps a total file size for that folder? Well that’s because Apple have turned off the status bar leaving your Finder windows borderless on the bottom.

How to fix it:
Really simple this one. You can press Command + / on your keyboard or jump up to “View” > “Show Status Bar”

Startup disk missing from Finder sidebar
First of all the “Devices” section has been moved to the bottom of the sidebar, sorry no way to fix that one, but more concerning is that your startup disk has been removed from the list meaning the Finder is really only giving you quick links to your home folder. Sure there’s an icon on the desktop for your hard drive but that’s pretty lame if I have to go there to access it every time!

How to fix it:
Jump in to Finder’s preferences (either through the menu Finder > Preferences or by pressing Command + ,) and click on the “Sidebar” icon in the toolbar. Here you’ll see a list of items you can turn on & off in your toolbar. Down the bottom you can enable “Hard disks” if it is missing. If you have a “-” in the box next to it that means that it’s only displaying some of your hard disks in the sidebar, keep clicking it until it changes to a tick to get them all.

Library folder in home folder missing
The Library folder holds some very important information on how your applications will run and their settings. It’s also a commonly used folder by people who know what they’re doing to free up hard drive space, clean out old preference files for long deleted apps, fonts and much, much more. Apple have hidden the Library folder that’s in your home folder as (at a guess) a way of stopping people screwing up their application and OS installs. A fair move but for many they’ll want it back!

How to fix it:
This one’s a really simple one but it’s going to involve a little Terminal action. Pop open Terminal (Applications > Utilities) and paste in the following line:
chflags nohidden ~/Library/

Auto correct while typing
Further blurring the lines between desktop and mobile (iOS) experiences Lion introduces the popup predictive text box you’ve become acustom to writing all those text messages. Annoyingly it also enables the “auto correct” feature meaning that even if you type a word that you know is the one you want Lion goes ahead and places what it thinks in. As a programmer you most definitely do NOT want this function on I assure you.

How to fix it:
Another one squirrelled away in System Preferences. Open the “Language & Text” System Preference pane and select the “Text” tab.
Deselect the “Correct spelling automatically” option and I’ve found I needed to restart all the apps I had open or reboot to be sure.

Feel like getting a little crazy and pulling apart your MacBook Pro? Well this is the tutorial for you my friend. Last weekend I had the wonderful experience of installing a Solid State Drive (SSD) into my laptop and documenting the process for all you interested folk out there.

For those of you wondering why you’d want to do this…. speeeeeeed baby! My beautiful laptop is completely booted in under 15 seconds from a standing start. Less than 2 from after typing in my password on OS X’s login screen!! You have to see it to believe.

Plus, if you do this in the next 24 hours before Apple announce they’re going to sell you a Mac with this already done in it you’ll prove just how ahead of the curve you are!!

As always head over to MacTalk to get the full run down of how it’s done! Enjoy kids!!

Tutorial Link: http://www.mactalk.com.au/content/tutorial-how-install-ssd-your-macbook-pro-1411/

Unfortunately it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to do anything particularly nerdy let alone blog about it, thankfully for my adorning masses I’ve chosen to make my “back-in-the-saddle” return with a jump straight in to the deep end. That and quietly going for the record of how many cliche metaphors one can use in the same sentence.

You see just this week gone by I found myself in the unusual position of nerd boredom. I hadn’t done anything really “hands-dirty-nerdy” and my little girly hands were an itch with possibilities. The new Apple Macbook Pro’s had just been released for starters and it took all my will power to not just dash out and buy one for example but I was blessed (or smote) by the good lords of geek with the ghastly sound of a hard drive platter scraping from inside my Macbook Pro’s Aluminium enclosure. Again, scrounging every last fiber of restraint to not run out and buy a new laptop I decided to take the high road and upgrade the hard drive and keep my existing rig, both satisfying my need for nerd and keeping my costs at a 20th of the cost.

Normally, had I opted to purchase a new machine, I start from scratch, reinstalling everything, copying over Mail Libraries, Photos, etc manually and giving myself a fresh start, but as I was only giving the old girl a new ticker I thought I’d do a straight copy restoring my file hierarchy to its full glory via the use of my Time Machine backups. A trick of the Mac trade I’ve yet to make use of.

The hard drive install was as straight forward as can be, a few screws here a torque screwdriver there and Bob’s your Grandfather’s Nephew she was humming to the new tune of a 500GB 7200rpm drive. The next and what i’d also envisaged to be the more lengthy portion of the process of the restoration process then began.

Mac OS X install DVD whirring away in the drive, we arrived at the “Migration Assistant” portion of the install offering the option of “Restoring from a Time Machine backup”. Excellent, that’s exactly what I’d like to do thanks. A click or two later I had a screen asking me what user accounts and applications I’d like to restore, selecting them all and clicking Next I began the two hour wait for the copying process to complete. One movie length break later I returned to see that the progress bar and status text had indeed indicated that everything was all tikity-boo but I was unable to continue on to the next step. I thought I’d just let it whir away for a while, sometimes these progress bars are less than accurate (at a stretch) and I figured it’d all be over soon enough. Two episodes of Deadwood later and there was still no movement to which I threw it in and restarted the `puter myself. Everything booted up fine, even had my user account there for me to log in to but that was about the end of the good news. A Dock riddled with question marks and no mail to be found it looked like the only things that had actually been copied successfully was my Network System Preferences, connecting to my Wi-Fi as soon as it logged in. Balls.

By this time it was about 10pm and I couldn’t be ferked sitting there doing a manual copy so I thought, “You know what Time Machine/Migration Assistant Restore Process, I’m going to give you one more crack of the whip. Balls this up again and the engagement is off!!” So after reformatting and going through the OS X install process again to begin the restoration it was about midnight and I left it all to whizz away as I dreamt of ponies and unicorns battling to death in the Roman Colosseum; as you do.

Waking the next morn to find a beautiful dew adorning my bedroom windows there was a smell of success in the air. Perhaps it was the restoration had worked and I was about to be full of glee, yet again it could’ve been the new air freshener I’d purchased the day before permeating its aroma through out the house? Fortunately for my sanity and the now back on again wedding between myself and Apple technology it was the former and there before me stood the exact same desktop as a day before, same wallpaper, same icons, same file system, same launch items on login, had Time Machine fulfilled its end of the bargain to my wildest dreams?! It would appear so!

Everything appeared to be exactly where I’d left it prior to the transplant. Wrapped! No idea exactly how long it took to complete having let it go whilst asleep but we can safely say it was over two hours (120Gb of data to copy via USB2) and less than twelve (I slept in!) But really, who cares, IT’S ALIVE!!!

Now all of that was a few days ago… and while everything seemed perfect from the casual observers point of view, it would seem that deep down in the bowels of a file system that I roll with there have been a few “issues”, allow me to list them for you now…

• Pretty much anything out of the normal “Mac” root folders gets missed. For instance my SVN repository in /svn hasn’t been backed up or restored.
• Similarly all of the stupid OS X apache example files are back in /Library/WebServer/Documents and my /etc/httpd.conf file has been overwritten
• Aperture wouldn’t launch, my photos were fine but I had to reinstall the application
• I had to do OS X updates all over again from 10.5.2 (Which was on the discs that came with the Mac)
• My Nortel/Apani VPN software had to be reinstalled and didn’t work at all to begin with

All in all, a very small price to pay, and not a lot of work to get things back to normal considering all of my preferences, my mail, calendars, contacts, images, movies, music, applications were back and working. So I guess the question is whether or not I’d use this method the next time or not. Well, yes I would, but if it was a new Mac I was about to obtain I’d most likely stick to my tried and true method of a fresh install & manual copy. Why? Well, I come from an old school and tend to “clutter” a machine over time, an issue your average ham sandwich [person] is unlikely to have.

So go forth, propagate your Mac’s hard drive Guy Pearce style and feel safe about doing so, the process actually works.

Deciding to pack up your bat and ball and move to Canada (and work there) is by no means a simple task. In fact, had someone actually made me aware of the seemingly never-ending list of tasks that I’ve been required to perform in order to get me over to Canada I think my lazy arse would’ve just stayed in bed and watched Weeds DVD’s for the next six months instead! Now, now, that’s a little exaggerated, it’s actually not that bad, but as I’ve gotten closer and closer to my departure date (now two days away) I’ve ridden a steepening learning curve and had there been a blog post such as this one it may have made the journey a tad more easy.

Things you’ll need…

• A current passport (which expires at least 6 months after you plan on returning)
• To be under 30, or turning 30 in your year of departure
• Money. At a minimum you’ll need $165 straight up to apply for the Visa, but on top of that you’ll need $4000 to prove you’re not a hindrance on the Canadian economy when you arrive in their fair land.

Step 1 – Apply for your “Working Holiday Program” Visa
This is actually probably the easiest thing you’ll have to do. You see there’s a wonderful little agreement between the Australian and Canadian governments, not that much unlike that with the British, that allows and Australian citizen (under 30) apply for a working visa. To apply all you need to do is log on to the Working Holiday Program website (http://whpcanada.org.au), fill out the necessary form and they’ll be in touch with you shortly to snaffle your $165 application fee.
A few things to know about this particular Working Holiday Program visa…

Step 2 – Sell everything you own
You might not want to sell absolutely everything, it all depends on exactly how long you want to stay away, or if you even plan on coming back at all! That said, there’s plenty of ways to sell all your stuff. For me I created “The Great Ga-RAJ Sale“, a website that listed everything I wanted to get rid of and let people (friends & family that I spammed constantly until they bought something) place their names against items they wanted. Alternatively, if you’re not quite a big a geek as me, you have plenty of other options such as eBay, The Trading Post, and other boring ways… go on, make a website; you know you want to!

Step 3 – Book your tickets
Booking your airfares to another country again, isn’t a hard task, the trick is getting a good price! We all know airfare prices go up and down according to seasons and holidays so your best bet is to try and head over during the off season and avoid major holidays like Christmas for example. The other thing to keep in mind is that if you’re unsure exactly how long you plan on staying you’ll need to book a ticket that has an adjustable return date. Most airlines offer these types of tickets but quite often they’re limited to only a matter of weeks or not at all if you’ve bought a ticket on sale. I chose to go with a ticket that was valid for change anywhere up to a year from my departure date for a nominal fee. Be sure you get yourself a good travel agent, it can save you hundreds, if not thousands!

Step 4 – Find a job & somewhere to live
There’s this wonderful thing called the “Internet” in the world today, just in case you haven’t heard of it, it allows you to do things like look at job and housing listings in another country entirely! Cool hey!? Well, before you actually head over I suggest you jump on the computer and check out a few websites that well get your Canadian life on track.
Craigslist http://craigslist.ca/ (accommodation, jobs & more)
Workopolis http://workopolis.com/ (jobs)
Kijiji http://www.kijiji.ca/ (accommodation, jobs & more)

Step 5 – Get over there, get sorted
Whilst I may not actually be there yet there are a couple of things that are on my list of things to do that need doing once I arrive. For example, you’ll need to apply for a Social Insurance Number (SIN), Canada’s equivalent to Australia’s Tax File Number, more or less. Then there’s setting up a bank account, getting a mobile number, adding the word “ay” on to the end of every sentence and building up an intimate knowledge of every Canadian hockey player and team since the second world war. You’ll be a local in no time!

It’s all pretty easy really. There’s some minor bits and pieces that may add to the complexity of your journey but nothing that’s really going to spring out and surprise you, well that is unless you’re Diabetic like me and you need to go through the three ringed circus that is caring syringes on a plane! So not fun!