CategoryTechnology

Re-Textdrive

After I got back from the US, I finally got the welcome mail to the new Textdrive servers. I transferred everything and got this blog up and running again. I’ll have to go through and make updates from earlier in the year, but at least the server transition went well. I had actually requested an EU server so things might have to be changed again. In the mean time, I ran into some difficulties with mail service on the new system. Reading the discussion groups led me to several comments that “it might be highly recommended” to use Google Apps for mail rather than the default local sendmail. This would mean turning over the last of any imaginary perceived control to giant global corporations, but I had a look and signed up for the free individual ( < 9 accounts ) domain service. Google Apps seemed like quite a great thing, but I couldn’t quite test it all out owing to non-access to MX records unless I change my DNS … to make a short story long … I figured there was no hurry. This morning I noticed a little Wired post entitled “Say Goodbye to Free Google Apps.” It looks like the free accounts ceased to exist on December 6th. Usually being the one to find out about such occurrences a day late, it is with thankfulness that my haste to set up mail allowed me to get one of the last remaining free individual slots before they faded away.

WordPress 3.3 White Editor

You’ve rushed ahead and upgraded to WP3.3 and all looks well. All except that the menus don’t work and when you try to edit a post, everything appears to be gone. You notice that your writing is there, but that it is white text on a white background (and there are not buttons and you cannot get out of Visual mode). For me at least this was the solution: (1) clear your cache (2) install the Hotfix 0.8 (currently labeled development version) plugin from here.

On my end, I scoured the forum, followed the official word, cleared my cache, tried Hotfix 0.7, re-upgraded, killed all my themes and plugins, re-upgraded manually, read post after post telling people to just read the FAQ and rejoice. There was no joy in any of that for me. Glory be for the good fellow over at the WordPress Genius Bar, for the divine led me to his post: WordPress 3.3 Upgrade Problem: Toolbar Disappears in Page/Post Editor.

What a long road. Overall, you should just stay where you are until 3.3.1 pops out. If you weren’t so lucky, I hope this helps.

iCloud & Contacts Disappear

Português: iCloud para iOS, Mac e Windows
Image via Wikipedia

I decided to do a mass cleanup of my contacts. Being prudent, I made a backup before, and after, using the “Address Book Archive” option as we’ve been told. Then, all of the contacts disappeared. Fine, no problem, I restored from the backup. Everything looked good but a few seconds later everything was gone again. Fine, I restored from a Time Machine backup. Things went just as badly. I frantically searched for a solution and was relieved to find a post from Richard L. on MacRumours. It was an horrific experience for us to have to share. I’m posting the steps I was forced into due to this obvious near fatal bug from our dearest Apple.

1. Completely sign out of iCloud.
2. If there are somehow any remnants of your contacts in Address Book, delete them.
3. Import your “Address Book Archive File” that didn’t work for long before.
4. Make any edits and clean things up. (some were obscenely mis-alphabetized – a likely corrupted cause of the problem in the first place)
5. Drag each address book entry out of AB individually to a folder somewhere.
6. Delete everything in AB.
7. Drag the mess of vCards back into AB.
8. Log back into iCloud. (You will notice you still have contacts – that don’t sync)
9. Turn off Contacts sync in the iCloud pref pane, keeping your local contacts.
10. Turn it back on. It will kindly “merge” your contacts with iCloud.

At this point you should have a complete Address Book on your mac as well as the nicely synced data on your mac/phone/pad/pod.

Oh, Apple! It “just works,” until it doesn’t. Hopefully those good folks will fix this quite traumatic situation soon.

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