How to make your Mac say anything

While reading Lifehacker's top 10 list of "things you forgot your Mac can do", I came across this neat little Terminal command that allows your Mac to "say" anything:

1. Open Terminal
2. Write "say" and then a sentence of your choice
3. That's it :-)

You can even have it read a whole text file with this command:

say -f mytextfile.txt

Totally useless but funny as hell (depending on what you're telling it to say) :-)

Euro 2008 on your iCal

This one is for the (soccer crazy fans) European readers.

What, Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 was released for Mac OS X?

Nope, sorry that you had your hopes up, but this is something much simpler than that. The 2008 European Championship is close (starting June, 7th to June, 29th) and if you don't want to miss a thing, then the best way is to put a bunch of events on your iCal (corresponding to all the matches - or just the ones from your country's team).

Are you crazy? That's a lot of work...

Did you really think I was going to send you on a quest to search for all the information regarding the matches schedules and then manually put that into iCal?

Of course not, that's why I like this blog so much :-)

Oh, how kind of you! Thanks. Anyway, about the Euro 2008 schedule on your iCal. No need to search and manually put the info on your Mac OS X's calendar application. If you didn't know, iCal supports the subscription of remote calendars, which basically means that you can have events displayed on iCal from a calendar that is managed/updated by somebody else.

Yeah, Yeah, but what about the Euro 2008?

That's what makes sites such as iCalShare and MarkThisDate so interesting. They allow you to get access to hundreds of these public calendars, including the Euro 2008 matches calendar. So, basically what you have to do is subscribe to these calendars on these websites and automatically, your iCal will display the events associated to those calendars. So, if your looking for the complete matches schedule of the European championship just click here (if you're not taken directly to iCal, then use your browser's "copy/save link" function to copy the link and then paste it on iCal's Calendar-->Subscribe menu).

After these steps, your iCal should look like this (you can choose whatever colour you wish for the subscribed calendar):

So, enjoy the Euro Cup 2008. Portugal, Portugal! :-)

My Macbook Pro's super battery

Here's something that you don't see on coconutBattery. I just unplugged my Mac from the power outlet and this was the battery power's estimated time remaining:

I would say that 186 hours and 40 minutes is a bit optimistic for a battery that usually lasts for 4 hours, right?

Installing Office 2008 for Mac SP1: part III

That's right, the problems with Office 2008 Service Pack 1 are not over. I'm now starting to notice some strange behaviours on my Mac whilst operating with Office 2008 apps:

• Sometimes, when I open certain Word documents, they open as a new document... totally blank.
• But if I then open the exact same file using the File-->Open menu, it opens perfectly.
• I'm unable to run any combination of two Office 2008 apps at the same time.
  
  • For example, if Word is running and if I try to open Excel or Power Point, I get a crash report.

Check the following video that I did:

Installation of Office 2008 for Mac SP1: part II

It seems that the fan issue (running at 6000 rpm after the installation of SP1) that I reported two days ago, was just a coincidence. Yesterday I installed Office 2008 SP1 on my Mac and the CPU fans have run under 4000 rpm since then. So, what caused that sudden change in the fans' behaviour on this first install run? Well, that is yet to be determined.

But, anyway, the installation of SP1 did not went smoothly. After installation, I was stuck (as so many other Mac users) with the recurring appearance of the Office Setup Assistant when launching any of the applications in the Office suite. Even if you go through the wizard step-by-step and click Finish at the end, the application wouldn't start.

My colleague Carlos Serrão's solution (in Portuguese), which I detail below, did not work for me:

1. Go to /Users/yourusername/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/
   
2. Remove folder Office 2008
   
3. Empty Trash
   
4. Then, next time Setup Assistant appears, just keep clicking next and finish up to the end, and it shouldn't appear again
   

So, I had to look for another one. Luckily, there's always someone in the web that is happy to post a solution for problems like these. Just remove the following files:

• /Users/username/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008/Microsoft Office 2008 settings.plist
• /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/OfficePID.plist
  

After you complete these steps, open any Office application, and then use the product key that is included with your original installation disk to complete the installation. This one worked for me.

Don't install Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 1

Microsoft has recently released the Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 1, which apparently fixes some of the issues that this Microsoft product presents on the Macintosh platform. However, my experience with it, hasn't been particularly interesting:

1. I installed the SP1 and apparently everything seemed to be working well. Office applications were still behaving in the same way and I didn't notice anything different, except for maybe a slightly improvement in performance, but nothing drastic.
2. But after a while, as my Mac became a bit hot (as it usually does, because of my CPU-intensive activities) the fans started working to compensate for the high temperature. Nothing strange here, except for the fact that suddenly my Mac, that used to be a perfectly silent machine, started making a noise equivalent to a 100 Km/H wind and it literally looked like it was going to take off into the air.
3. After googling this issue for a while, I installed the iStat Pro widget, which reveals the behaviour of the laptop fans (among other things) in real-time. Apparently, the normal behaviour of a Macbook Pro's fans when working at full speed is around 3900/4000 rpms. But after installing SP1 my Mac's fans were now working at a top speed of 6000 rpms. No wonder I thought it was going to take off!
4. I first thought that this was just a coincidence, but to be sure I totally removed Office 2008 (yep, Microsuck doesn't allow you to uninstall only the Service Pack... you have to uninstall the entire Office suite and reinstall it without adding the SP1) and reinstalled it.
5. Surprise, surprise, no more 6000 rpms fans...

I have no proof that Office 2008 SP1 is the responsible for this issue, but it sure is a hell of a coincidence.

Anyway, I'm going to keep on working as usual (with the occasional CPU-intensive tasks) for the rest of the day, to check if the noisy fan issue comes back. If not, tomorrow, I'll install SP1 again and perform another set of experiences with the CPU fans.

Keep tuned for the results!

A simple (yet very useful) view of your Mac's battery

CoconutBattery is a handy application that gives you a simple interface with some useful information on the current status of your battery.


But this app isn't just a tool which shows you only the current charge of your battery. It also shows you its current maximum capacity compared to the original capacity your battery had when it left the factory. Moreover, coconutBattery gives you information about the battery-loadcycles (how often did you fully load your battery), the current charger (coconutBattery even warns you if you plugged in a wrong charger for your Notebook) and information about the age of your Mac.

So, it seems that in the 7 months since I got this Macbook Pro, its battery has lost 4% of its original capacity. Well, I guess I have to find some tips on how to maintain my Mac's battery life...

Phun: have fun with this physics engine

First of all, if you don't know what Phun is, check out this video:



Good news is: Phun has just been released for Mac OS. So, hurry up, download it here and have hours of fun playing around with this physics engine.