BigDiver

The iCal application stores event information in the ~/Library/Calendars/<UUID>/Events

Where the “~” represents the user’s home directory and <UUID> the Calendar Identifier. All Calendar events and todo tasks are stored as individual .ics files. You can use the Priview in Finder to confirm the events you need to import.

The preview window will also allow you to see the calendar to which the backed up event belonged to.

Once you find the ones you need just double click the file and it will be imported into your Calendar directly from the backup.

If you don’t know how to mount the backup disk check this other post.

Time Machine backup images can be mounted as regular disks using the hdiutil command.

All you need to do is

sudo hdiutil attach <time_machine_file.sparsebundle>

If your Time Machine backup file is on a network share you need to connect to the server and mount the share before you can run the hdiutil command.

It may take some time especially on slow networks or big image files.

I did a fresh install of Snow Leopard on my first generation Mac Book Air and it is still toooooooo slow. Digging around I found a couple of solutions that really helped.

General slowness due to lack of memory (from Apple Forum)

sudo rm /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist

Then if the Terminal application takes for ever to show you a prompt, delete the logs like so:

sudo rm -f /private/var/log/asl/*

Thanks Webapper for the slow Terminal fix!

I started getting a lot of Skype database errors during login. I would type my password and during the login process I always got the “Unable to mount database” error on Skype for Mac version 2.8.0.722.

To solve it delete the Skype’s user directory doing

rm -fr ~/Library/Application\ Support/Skype/<username>

using the Terminal application, then login to Skype.

Please pay attention to the “~” at the beginning of the file path. This is not a mistake it actually represents your home directory.

The Wireless Keypad for the Sony PlayStation 3 turns your regular controller into a texting device with mouse input capabilities, while still maintaining full gameplay functionality. This Blue tooth device attaches to any DualShock 3 or SixAxis wireless controller and enables effortless Internet browsing, emailing and instant messaging on the PlayStation Network and PlayStation Home.

I love the mouse functionality where you can just move your finger over the keys to move the cursor on screen. a MUST have for Internet browsing and chat.

There are many situations that require you to restore backups to different computers, other than the one from where the data was originally backed up from. In the case of Apple’s Time Machine the restore procedure to different machines is not very intuitive. You have to use the “secret” option key…

There is a supported way to restore Time Machine backups of other computers using the “option-key” click on the Time Machine menu. If you want to use it just do the following:

1. Connect the Time Machine disk to the Mac you want to restore the files to
2. Set the “Show time machine status in the menu bar” In System Preferences -> Time Machine.
3. Click the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and keeping the mouse button pressed, press the “Option” key.
4. Select “Browse Other Time Machine Disks”
5. Select the disk you want
6. click Use Selected Disk

The Time Machine will open with the selected disk and you can use it to restore the files.

If, like me, you are using a non supported Time Machine configuration, where the backup disk is mounted using SMB or AFP (see this post on how to enable that) then the procedure above will not work directly. In my case I backup to my Buffalo TeraStation NAS, and the “Browse Other Time Machine Disks” window shows up empty, with no disk to select.

In order for this to work you need to first mount the Time Machine disk by hand in using the command line.

1. Mount the shared folder where your Time Machine backups are stored
2. Open a Terminal window and cd to the Time Machine volume. in my case I called it backups

   sudo cd /Volumes/backups

3. use hdiutil to mount the specific Time Machine .sparsebundle file

   sudo hdiutil attach <time_machine_file.sparsebundle>

Now you should be able to see the mounted volume in Finder, with all the backups listed as folders, and you can copy any files directly from it. Remember that mounting the disk may take some time due to the size of the disk and network connection speed, especially If you do this over a WiFi network.

Another option is to repeat the supported Time Machine procedure  outlined in the beginning of this post. You should now see the mounted disk as a Time Machine disk. Select the the disk and click “Use Selected Disk” and Time Machine will open on the selected disk just like with a Time Machine supported back up disk.

Personally I like to copy them directly from the Finder but your preference may vary so I document both ways of achieving this goal. Hope this helps.

I wrote about my experience with the PS3 YLOD on this post, after getting a fixed PS3 back from Sony I thought that would be the end of it, but apparently due to the DRM features Sony does not want you to share your downloaded content like games and videos.

So the PlayStation Store lets you buy, but not download content, especially videos, from the PS Network.

I rented a video last night and the transaction was processed. ie Sony got my money, but then it would not let me download the movie because there was another “Active” PS3 in my account.
According to Sony we need to deactivate the old PS3 before we can activate the new one. But my problem was that I no longer had the old PS3, it burned down and did not even boot up… So how can I deactivate it.

I called Sony, gave them all the information I had, service request number for the repair of the YLOD damaged box, serial number of the new one, and still it took me 40 minutes on the phone with them to clear out this mess.

After all was fixed on their end I now need to wait 2 days to see if the changes really happened and I can register my new PS3, and that my downloaded content is still going to be there…

Sony, if the PS3 is not active and cannot download content why do you let users buy the content in the first place?

So if you have a YLOD or other hardware problem and your PS3 needs to be repaired/replaced please keep all your receipts, serial numbers and service request numbers so you can prove that you are not trying to steal the couple of movies you bought or rent on the PlayStation Store.

This whole YLOD episode has been a nightmare.

If you need to manipulate .deb packages directly in your TeraStation you should download and install the dpkg Debian package.

I did this procedure on Mac OS but you should be able to replicate it on a Linux machine as well. If on Windows get a utility that can extract the files inside of a Debian (.deb) file and you should be ok.

1. Get the package dpkg for AMRel for Debian Lenny. The Mac in my case
2. Extract the files from dpkg_1.14.25_armel.deb

   dpkg-deb -x dpkg_1.14.25_armel.deb dpkg
   cd dpkg

3. Copy the extracted files to the TeraStation with scp. If you are on Windows use Putty.

   scp -r * root@:/

For this to work you should have SSH access to the TeraStation. Please read this post.

Now you can download (wget) and extract deb packages (dpkg-deb) directly in your TeraStation.
Good luck