Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Here’s something I don’t like about Leopard:

Shares are not shown as mounted volumes in the side bar, but mounted disk images are.

On the desktop, both mounted volumes are shown.

That’s inconsistent and just a tad annoying. What’s the logical difference between a volume mounted from a server and a volume mounted from a disk image that determines that one is visible in the side bar, and the other isn’t? It’s not a preference setting.

Using two different sides of the same application (Finder), I have two different ways to get to the same resources. Why, every time I want to view a server-mounted share, must I perform an extra click of the server, then wait for the “Connecting…” phase, then click the share? Over a LAN that’s not a big deal, but over a VPN it can be an annoying delay. For what logical reason are some volumes a click away, and some other volumes two, depending whether you’re accessing them through the desktop or a Finder window?

Addendum: Directly connected external volumes also show up in the side bar.

So why do network volumes now show in the side bar?

Take a good look at the following screen shot from Leopard’s Screen Sharing:

That’s how you make a new connection to another machine. Connection… New… - command-n.

See how simple that is? Now get coding.

Is it me, or does Address Book in Leopard not include the ability to send SMS messages through a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone? I ask because my phone needed a third-party iSync plugin under Tiger, and I’m not sure if this missing functionality is because the plugin needs updated, or because Apple dropped that feature.

Anyone care to enlighten me?

The website for BFilter states the following as a feature:

Forwarding to another proxy (HTTP and SOCKS proxies).

However, nowhere on the site, in the FAQ or in the documentation, are you told how to do this. Really annoying. If you’re going to list features and provide documentation, document how to use the features!

I figured out how to use this feature by accident in Mac OS X. When you install BFilter, it creates new network profiles that specifically enable filtering. For instance, if you have a network profile named “Home”, BFilter creates a profile named “(BF) Home”. Selecting that profile proxies your HTTP traffic through the BFilter software.

To enable another proxy, such as a caching proxy, you need to edit the original”home” (or whatever) profile and set the proxy for that profile to the caching server. For example:

Profile: (BF) Home
Proxy: 127.0.0.1:8080

Profile: Home
Proxy: 192.168.1.254:8000

That will route HTTP traffic through both the caching proxy and the ad filtering proxy. Good stuff.

Today Apple released a logically-named update to Mac OS X, which bears the version number 10.4.10. Wow! Who would have thought? What minimally intelligent person said sometime in the past that, contrary to the stupid assertions of Think Secret and the apparently brainless people who inhabit forums and comment threads on the 1n+@rw3b!!11!! d00dz, version numbering schemes don’t stop at .9, nor do they roll over like a gas pump? Oh, that’s right, I did.

To all those who thought otherwise, you’re frigtards and I curse you for arguing about this insipid point that’s obvious to any reasonable person. Write your capitulation immediately in the comments section for this post.