I just realized that two lines of this kind are added every two seconds in my system.log (/var/log/system.log). They are shown on two lines each below to narrow the story width:

Jan 21 01:16:28 localhost mach_kernel: USB:  262.604: AppleUSBOHCI(0x188F000)::
  ReturnOneTransaction - found the end of the transaction(0x97C73F0)!
Jan 21 01:16:28 localhost mach_kernel: USB:  262.604: -AppleUSBOHCI(0x188F000)::
  ReturnOneTransaction - done, new queue head (L0x97C8180, P0x80F1E801) V0x1E8F180

It stops if I kill background palm application...

[Editor's note: Strangely enough, I do not have this entry in my log file on either machine that runs the Palm Background app. It's probably worth a quick look to see if yours is filling up quickly, though -- command-tilde then /var/log and check the size of system.log.]

I was searching for printing solutions under Classic, and had just created a Postscript file (.ps).

I was pleasantly surprised to find that double-clicking the postscript file opened TeXShop (see below) which automagically converted the file to PDF and displayed it. The .pdf file is stored in the same directory as the original .ps file.

Checking the details, I found that TeXShop 1.13, a very good and free front-end for teTeX on MacOS X, also acts as a perfect front-end to Ghostscript. Ghostscript can convert both .eps and .ps files to PDF. Complete installation instructions for TeXShop and teTeX (including Ghostscript) can be found at the TeXShop site.

Kudos to the authors of TeXShop!

Several sites have noted that once you've imported a JPEG into iPhoto, the image is no longer usable in iMovie. After a bit of testing, I verified that this was indeed true - no image in my new 1,000-image library was importable in iMovie. Knowing that the files were still, in fact, JPEG images, I figured it couldn't be too hard to find out what was preventing iMovie from seeing the image files as importable. As it turns out, my hunch was correct ... remember, you saw it here first! :-)

The Answer: If you want to import an iPhoto-captured JPEG into iMovie, all you need to do is set the TYPE attribute for the image in question to "JPEG". You can do this in Classic with ResEdit. There should be a way to do it using the "XFiles" utility in OS X, but the attributes section was greyed out on my machine. Once you've set the "JPEG" type code, you should be able to import the image into iMovie. It appears that iPhoto strips the "JPEG" type code, and iMovie only sees images that have this type code set.

I tested relatively extensively with iPhoto, and it appears there are no downsides within iPhoto. All of the images I tweaked are still functional in iPhoto, and yet they are also now usable in iMovie. Still, make these changes at your own risk (but it's easy to change them back if something doesn't work right!). I guess this is a limitation on iMovie more than iPhoto - it appears iMovie ignores any image that doesn't have it's TYPE set to JPEG (this is conjecture on my part, though).

Of course, changing one image at a time is a bit of a pain, so read the rest of the article if you'd like to know how to change a large number of images at once using the Terminal (requires the Developer Tools as well).

I just updated my copy of Quake III to go with Mac OS X on my TiBook (odd that it was installed for six months but not for OS X...), and I wanted to get better performance out of it. So I made the following shell script. i used this tip to make it launchable under the finder and this tip to make it renice without prompting for a password. Lastly, to put finishing touches on it, I put the Quake III icon on to my shell script, called "run Quake III.command�

  #!/bin/sh
  cd /path/to/Quake3.app/Contents/MacOS
  ./Quake3&
  ps -ax | grep Quake3 | grep -v grep
  sudo renice -20 -p `ps -ax | grep Quake3 | grep -v grep | cut -c1-5`

Read the rest of the article for a sample Quake3 config file that may help further increase your framerates...

If you aren't getting an audio with the alpha version of MyTV X, it may be that your Mac isn't activating the external microphone jack. With MyTV, video is transmitted to the Mac via USB, but audio is sent separately to the audio input jack.

Under OS 9, audio input sources were selected in the "Sound" Control Panel. But, under OS X, the "Sound" System Preference application does not provide this functionality. The input selection is found hidden away in the "Speech" System Preference application, under the "Listening" tab. Change the "Microphone" selection from "Internal Microphone" to "External Microphone/Line In".

Also remember that you may need to "enable" audio in the MyTV application itself. There is a check box for this under the "audio" tab.

For those of us in the unfortunate parts of the world that cannot order the gorgeous iPhoto books, we can still print those books on our own printers, or make them into equally gorgeous PDF's for sharing. It's easy to do, just choose "Print" in the 'Book' mode (not the preview view in Book mode, though), then hit the "Preview" button in the print dialog, and "Save as PDF" in Preview.

[Editor's note: It's actually even easier than this if you don't want to see the preview of the PDF file first. Just select "Output Options" from the print dialog box, click on "Save as File" and then select PDF as the file format.]

mp3s are great for compressing your music collection, but sometimes you'd like to listen to a live CD the whole way through (e.g. Nirvana Unplugged, or some classical album). Before iTunes2, listening to consecutive songs always had annoying interruptions of silence between songs (as the computer loads the next MP3 into ram and begins decoding). Lucky for us, Apple's engineers have a solution to this problem: just use iTunes2 to set the crossfade playback to 0 seconds. You can't just turn crossfading off, you must enable crossfading, and then set the slider to 0 seconds. It works great!

To set this, select Preferences -> Effects -> Crossfade Playback, and move the slider to "0".

In Palm Desktop v4, the instructions for creating your own "Letter Templates" (the letters you can automatically generate by clicking the appropriate button in a Contact's info screen) are somewhat erroneous if you are using OS X. While the Help file describes the location where these letters should be placed, the location doesn't exist!

Well, it does, sort of, but you have to "Show Package Contents" of the Palm application (with a control-click on the application itself). You'll then find the proper folder at "Contents -> Resources -> English.lproj -> Letter Templates".

By the way, if you are using AppleWorks, make sure your newly created letter exists as an AppleWorks word processing file and -not- as a "template"; otherwise, it won't show up in the selection box when you click the button (in Palm Desktop) to request the current contact's info be included in the letter.

Other than this little errata, Palm Desktop kicks butt!

As mentioned in this article about importing pictures into iPhoto, importing your entire collection can have some problems. However, if you import your album piecemeal, you might have better success. I had all of my photos arranged into individual folders. I imported one folder at a time and iPhoto associated each separate batch of imported files with a "roll". So, then in the organize view you can enable the view by Film Rolls option so you can see all of your photos segmented the way you originally wanted them.

A few notes:

1) Dragging a file or folder from the Finder onto iPhoto Organize view is the same using the Import menu command.

2) The time and date on the roll will be today, rather than when the pictures were actually taken. Therefore, you should import your pictures in chronological order.

3) I found a bug in the import command. Don't import pictures from a CD. Copy them to your hard drive first. Otherwise, the pictures will be copied as read-only and you won't be able to edit your pictures.

Option clicking on iPhoto's Rotate button will cause the image to rotate clockwise (normal clicking results in an counter-clockwise rotation). Quicker than using the menu bar or shortcuts. This may be documented but there again I never read the documentation.

[Editor's note: The iPhoto help is actually very robust. If you select Help, then click on "More..." in the News section, you'll get a list of keyboard shortcuts, including this option-click on Rotate trick. As another example, did you know that option double-clicking a photo will open it in a separate, resizable window? There's more, too, so give the Help pages a quick read-through!]