Had to reinstall OS X late last night because something left our trusty iMac in an unbootable state and a simple Repair from the install disc wouldn’t do the trick. This happened after running a system update, but I’m not sure I can blame Apple for this one. I also happened to interrupt a syncing iPod during that session. It’s possible that either of those things could have whacked the filesystem tree. Of course, I would expect the iPod sync to whack the iPod. Still, I’m not exactly an expert on these matters.
That’s not important, though. The file tree was only lightly whacked, and I was able to copy all of our important files to an external hard drive using the Terminal utility from the install disc. That process took a very long time. My guess is around 4 or 5 hours. The OS install was much quicker.
So now our iMac is nice and happy, and I can take the opportunity to review which apps I really want installed. I started with beta 2 of Firefox 3, which is significantly snappier than 2.0 was. It’s actually a useful browser again! Then it’s time for fresh Python and Perl installs. I went the lazy way and grabbed ActiveState versions. Hey, ActivePerl 5.10 final is already out! That was uncharacteristically fast. I wonder if the other kids in the playground were making fun of them for being slow or something.
I also grabbed the freshest copy I could find of REBOL/Core and REBOL/View. View is much more polished than the last time I looked at it under OS X. See, I don’t stay caught up on my OS X software much, since most of my time on the Mac is connecting over an ssh session. Little crises like this end up being a great chance for housecleaning.
Still some more stuff I want to do - fresh screen, vim, and Ruby for example. But we got the basics.
And all this was done with a nasty cold.
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Added to vault 2024-01-15. Updated on 2024-01-26