Chris Meller

Just thought I’d let everyone know that we’re still without power after our ice storm last Wednesday and Thursday. Duke Power’s automated system was estimating Tuesday night (Dec 20th after 11:00 pm) to get our power restored, so it could be a while before I’m back…

Right now we’ve got an extension cord pulled through a window from our neighbor’s garage, trying to run at least a few things. The only thing I really can’t do without is hot water. Sure, it sounds like nothing, but after 2 days without a real shower, let’s see how you’re doing…

I do have some pictures to put up, as soon as we get power back and I can actually upload them… I guess I’ll see you guys then.

UPDATE: Just checked the “Duke Power Automated System for Reporting Outages” again (can you tell I could quote you their entire script by now?). They’ve revised it to December 19th at 11pm. Still, I either won’t be going to work tomorrow morning (Monday), or I’ll be at the Holiday Inn tonight so I can take a shower tomorrow morning. Ugh…

You know what the absolute best thing to happen to the net in years is, without a doubt?

The EFF!

Just take a look at their Top 15 Things EFF did in 2005 page. ‘Nuff said…

Need a little more encouragement before you see the light? How about the EFF standing up for pearLyrics when they were slapped with a cease and desist order by the recording industry for making it easier to find lyrics to your favorite songs.

What more could I possibly say? Poke around the EFF site and check out some of the other amazing advice they have. I’m sure you’ll be just as impressed as I am once you do…

I know I’m probably unusually harsh on Google from time to time (read: all the time), but I have to admit… They finally got something right!

In case you haven’t heard, Google has released their customizable homepage API!

Now, I don’t have any brilliant ideas off hand, but just imagine some of the possibilities here. It’s all drag-and-drop, it’s all pluggable… I can add and remove virtually any content I want at any time, and access it from anywhere. And all this based on XML and JavaScript. Simply brilliant, at least if you ask me (and if you didn’t, what the hell are you doing here?).

Now, if they’d just let me dump the Google logo and move the search box around with everything else… Then I could finally give up the dreams of designing my own drag-and-drop, fully customizable homepage (that’s been going for what? 5 years now?).

Welp, I’d totally forgotten about it, but it’s Grey Tuesday!!

Snag the songs here, and check out Tom’s post here for a ton more information about what’s going on!

Ok, I wasn’t really pirating Tiger… I was pirating Panther too…

Ok, so I wasn’t really pirating Tiger or Panther (no, not Jaguar either… what? Puma? You’ve got to be kidding me…). Actually, I was just trying to figure out how to do a few simple things:

1. Convert a .dmg file to a .iso or .bin / .cue file, so it could be burned on a PC
2. Burn that .dmg file (or what it was converted to)
3. Boot a Mac off this burned CD (because it was a bootable CD in the first place).

The whole “pirating Tiger” theme was just what all the posts I found about converting .dmg files and burning bootable CDs on a PC kept accusing the posters about. I imagine most of those assumptions were probably true, since Apple charges more for its OS than even Microsoft does, but still, they didn’t have to be rude about it, did they?

So anyway, just a few simple things, right? Sounds so painfully simple, right?

Wrong!

So, in order to help all those other people out there who may be having this same problem, and keep getting accused of pirating insert Apple OS here whenever they ask about it, I thought I’d post a working solution. Now, it’s quite possible that I found the longest route to victory, but this one certainly worked (at least for me). If you find a better way, please let us all know in a comment, just so we can help further the overall knowledge of the internet populace.

Without further delay, here are the steps to get a .dmg file burned (and bootable, if applicable) on a PC:

1. Download Mac Drive.
   It’s got an insanely short useage period (5 days?!), but the trial version will work!
2. Download Daemon Tools.
   Version 4 contains crapware… Find version 3.x!
3. Reboot, since both of these above products require it.
4. Download UltraISO.
   The trial version has some limits. I think that as long as a single file on your image isn’t over 300mb, you’ll be fine. I had an existing full version already, so I really can’t verify this. Know an alternative program? Please let me know!
5. Mount the .dmg file in Daemon Tools. Mac Drive should recognize it as being a Mac-formatted disc, and translate it all for you. Yippie skippy!
6. Using UltraISO, create a .iso (or other format) image from your mounted (and translated) .dmg file.
   Strictly speaking, you don’t need to do this. In my case, I wanted to be able to re-burn this disc after my 5-day Mac Drive trial, so I wanted a working copy for future use.
7. Burn your newly created .iso (or other format) file to a CD / DVD / Punch card with your favorite program.
8. …
9. Profit!

Ok, so I’m not exactly profiting off this… If you find out a way I can, please, don’t hold back! Still, the process works (I burned half a dozen Mac .dmg images using it, they all worked), and you don’t have to shell out any $$$ (assuming UltraISO worked for you). How can you not walk away happy??

Oh, by the way… I’m loving Tiger, so go crawl back in a hole somewhere you lousy forum trolls!