Mountain Lion: Kernel Panic?

I think I got Kernel Panic since I updated my Mac OS to 10.8. It happened twice. When it happens, the screen suddenly changed into a grey screen with a message in 6 languages. Within seconds, the Mac reboots atomically.

I did not catch the message first time. The second time it was happened in the morning. I logged on to my Mac. Suddenly, the KP happened. I took my iPhone to take a phone.

The screen looks very different from the one I had before. I think this may be the Mountain Lion KP.

Reference

• My previous blog: Kernel Panic
• Apple Technical article: Kernel Core Dump

Update: Mountain Lion 10.8.1

Mountain Lion update 10.8.1 was released on Aug 23, 2012. I did not rush to update my ML. Two days ago I noticed my App Store had several updates, 10.8.1 was one of them. I did not click on update right away. I double clicked on the update item, then I saw a pop up option with "Hide". I clicked on Hide. Suddenly all the update were gone.

I could not find a way to bring hidden updates back. I tried to quit App Store, then reboot my Mac. Still I could not see updates. I thought it may be back later. Today, I still did not see it. I found a way to unhide items from my accounts in App Store. I only got the other two items back, not the 10.8.1. I checked my Mac. It was 10.8.

Then I decided to search for the web if some one else could have similar issue. Soon I found the update on Apple's web page. Here you go, I can get the update from Apple web page. I am so fortunate that this update is available from Apple. Not sure if other updates would be hosted on Apple download page. I doubt if there were.

Since I did not get the update directly from App Store, I don't know how it works. Should that be automatically in a silent mode? Should the download be deleted after update?

The download version is a normal package installation. The package was saved to my Download folder. I had to click on the package of OSXUpd10.8.1.dmg, with 24.2MB in size. The package in exploded to pkg. Click on the pkg, the installation wizard is displayed.

I thought ML's update feature would be done in evenings automatically. So far, all the updates I found from App Store require my interaction to complete. Not sure if there is any thing I miss in the system config. Anyway, I still have chance to compare the disk space difference between before and after.

The following is the comparison of spaces used before and after of the updates:

Command: df -lak	Used(Kilobytes in 1024-blocks)
Before	...298,440
After	...460,416
Difference (A-B)	161,976

References

• Mountain Lion Update 10.8.1 at Apple web site
• Apple Forum: My post for this issue

RSS Reader

Safari 6.0 removed support for RSS reader. This is a bad news for me, since I have been depending on Safari to read my RSS feeds. What I did was to a folder to my Safari bookmark as named as RSS. Depending on Safari's RSS detection, I saved all the interested RSS feeds to my RSS folder. In Safari 6.0, all those feeds become unreadable.

Based on web search, I found that the alternative way is to use RSS reader apps. RSS reader application is an specialized app handling RSS feeds. A RSS feed is an XML content, based on Web standard. It has been widely used to describe and to update web contents, such as blog entries, news,   data, or anything you want. Since RSS feeds are based on standard format, there have been many RSS based application available to parse and to present information from the standard format.

I found some, and tried them. From my experience, so far I like NetNewsWire the most. It is a free version (you can pay for it if you like). The app is not available at Apple App store. I had to download it from the application's web site.

The app must be signed with developer ID because my Mountain Loin's Gatekeeper only allows Apps from App Store and Identified Developers.

Google Reader as RSS Feed Source

NetNewsWire uses RSS Feeds from Google Reader when you run it first time. For people who don't have Google account, the app will display a list of default RSS feeds. I have Google account and I used Google Reader long time ago. Therefore, it is very convenient for me to get my previous RSS feeds back to alive. In addition to that, I can use NetNewsWire as UI to manage my Google Reader (I don't like Google Reader web site) contents.

UI Layout

The user interface of NetNewsWire is very much like email view: a layout of four panel views. On the left, it is the view of RSS feeds or folders. In the middle, the top panel is a list of entries for a RSS feed, and the bottom panel is a quick view of an entry's content. The right side is a panel with history thumbnails, which provides a quick way to go to previous views.

In the middle section, click on the title of an entry on the bottom panel, the middl section is changed to a browser view. The HTML format of the web content is displayed nicely, as same as I see it in Safari. This view is also added to the history view thumbnails.

RSS Feed Management

Another issue I am interested in is the management of RSS feeds. I need to update or add new RSS feeds. NetNewsWire does not provide a way to edit RSS feed's URL. However, I can do it by deleting one first, and then adding a new one. Deleting a RSS feed in NetNewsWire is called as "unsubscribe". By confirming unsubscribe, I can delete a RSS feed.

I like the way NetNewsWire to add a new RSS feed. I don't need to figure out what RSS feed's URL is. What I need is just to copy a web site URL to Subscribe's dialog. It will be smart enough to figure out if there is any supported RSS feed or not. Since the title information for a RSS feed is normally available from RSS feed, the title information is optional. You can use whatever title you want.

If you copy a URL for subscribe, the Subscribe dialog is smart enough to paste the URL there automatically, very handy!

I tried to delete and to add RSS feeds through NetNewsWire. The changes I made in the app are synced to my Google Reader. The counts for read RSS feeds are also synced as well. That's nice feature. It is almost like a kind of iCloud service.

Reference

• Wikipedia: RSS
• Application: NetNewsWire
• Google Reader

Mountain Lion Crashed First Time

Today my Mac suddenly crashed. This is the first time I saw a crash after I updated my Mac to ML. My Mac has been running for several days. This afternoon, I logged in to my Mac when I got home after work. Within seconds, My screen suddenly became a while screen, just like a new start. Soon there was a message in the center of the screen about the crash. I tried to read the message, but I was not able to read them. The restart cleared the screen.

After the restart, I got a message about the reboot.

I clicked on Report button, a detail information was displayed. I am not sure if there was commend available before Mountain Lion. I clicked on Comments and I could write something there to tell what was happened.

Before ML, I had several times of blue screen. The blue screen happened like a curtain rolling down from top, and the whole screen became disabled. I had no time to respond or control my UI, and no time to save anything. The blue screen displayed a message about unexpected system panic. I was forced to turn off power. Not sure my sudden crash is the same case of blue screen.

My experience with Mountain lion dictation feature

I'm going to write this blog by using Mountain lion dictation. I'm not going to modify all tied all make any corrections. I understand about my English is not perfect I have strong Chinese accent. So I cannot complain about Moncton live dictation. It would be very interesting to see how can I write this blog by using my penlight dictation.

Often I updated my Mac OS last weekend, I started to try dictation feature yesterday. In the beginning I couldn't table dictation feature. It was very frustrating. Before giving a try, I didn't google search about how to enable dictation. Actually I think Google search for bald dictation. Okay, I have difficulty to use dictation right now. What I was trying to say I did a Google search football dictation.

Anyway let me continue. I didn't follow instructions to Naple dictation long system preference. However, I couldn't stop dictation by pressing function key works. Yeah I mean stop dictation. Here I mean spa dictation. Maybe I cannot say stop correctly in English. Not stop, I mean stock. Okay let's continue!

Then, I did Google research to find a solution. Arthur spending some time, I found a solution for Apple forever. The solution is at two special DNS IP in my night walk. Here is the picture.

Author I did this change, my dictation walks. I tried dictation into text. I mean text at the app. He dictation lost me, all I lost dictation. Today I gave dictation to try again. As you can see, it is really ross.

Not that thing I noticed is that you stinky keys are in Nabel, the dictation will not walk. Sticky keys can be enabled from accessibility through system preference.  My speaking keys was Knable. When speaking keys on table, pressing function keys twice will not walk.

My first experience all Moncton Dictation feature is mixture. For me it is frustrating experience. But I cannot complain, because it may be my English problem.

For all the experience, I have to speak very slow and clear. When I get back, in the house unlocked. It doesn't make sense at all. Many repeat again. When I did that, it's how long.

I try not correct any mistakes, thought I had to correct saw. Otherwise Psalm just that doesn't make sense at all! For me, I may use dictation to improve my English.

Upate: Mac OX Mountain Lion

This weekend is a long weekend. I scheduled to update my Mac OX to Mountain Lion this weekend, today. Mountain Lion was released on July 25, 2012. Based on the information on web, I did my planning for this update: 1) keep my OX update, 2) clean my HD, and 3) run time-machine backup.

The first thing what I did this morning after getting up was to download Mountain Lion. I knew it would take some time to get the package, 4.3GB. That was smart decision. During the download, I cleaned up myself.  Soon I saw the first update screen.

According to information shared by other people on web, it is the time to make a copy of the installation package. Otherwise, the package would be removed automatically after the update. I don't want to download it again for another Mac. I found the installation from Finder, and I made a copy of the installation package.

Before proceeding the installation, I used Finder's AirDrop feature to copy the installation package to my another iMac 21". First, I went to my iMac 21 box, open Finder, and made sure the AirDrop is open. Then I could see my iMac 21" from my installation Mac. I drag and drop the installation package to iMac 21", and click on Send button.

At the other end of iMac 21", I click on Save button to accept the drop through air. Since the package is 4.3GB, it took a while to get the package copied over.

It was time ready to install Mountain Lion. The installation was very straightforward. During the update wizard process, I had to provide admin credentials.

The following is the screen photo after the restart. This the most lengthy part of the update, 34 minutes.

After reboot, I was back to normal login screen. Everything was so familiar after login. I saw the iCloud window prompt out. However, I had difficulty to sign in to my iCloud. The spinning rainbow wheel was running forever. I was not sure if the iCloud was down or something else was stuck. My iMac 21 was working fine without any issue when I did OS update. Finally I had to kill the window and restart my Mac. After that, the iCloud sign in was quick and OK.

The following is the comparison of spaces used before and after of the updates:

Command: df -lak	Used(Kilobytes in 1024-blocks)
Before	...2,521,728
After Downloaded	...6,860,896
After Installed	...2,340,932
Difference (AD-B)	4,339,165
Difference (AI-B)	-180,796