We had some trouble getting custom groups out of Outlook and into Address Book. Plug this regular expression into BBEdit’s Find/Replace to change Outlook’s tab-delimited text file export into a group VCard (and be sure to save it with a ‘.vcf’ file extension):

Find:
^([^\t]*)\t([^\t]*)\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t
[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t
[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t
[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t
[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t
[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t
[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t
[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t
[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t([^\t]+).*$

Replace: BEGIN:VCARDVERSION:3.0\rN:\2;\1;;;\rFN:\1 \2\rEMAIL:\3\rEND:VCARD

(mozilla-based browsers couldn’t figure out where to wrap the first part of the pattern and were stretching the page to accomodate the whole thing. Not good. Be sure to remove all line break characters and spaces from the pattern before using it.)

A helpful tip for users transitioning from OS 9 to OS X is to make an alias from the root level documents folder pointing to the home folder. This also makes it easier to get to the home folder from Classic Applications.

Mac OS X 10.2 (jaguar) seems amazing from what I can tell so far. “Feels snappier!”

My 10.2 don’t panic yet list:

• The http.conf file, where all custom domains are stored wasn’t deleted. It was backed up. The location of the previous file is: /etc/httpd/httpd.conf.applesaved
• Classic applications looking for the documents folder are now redirected to the documents folder for the current user. This is a good thing. Move any remaining application tidbits from the root level documents folder into your user documents folder and everything works fine again. (Classic seems much faster.)
• MySQL needs to be reinstalled, but the data is still there. If you want to back it up, copy the files from the /usr/local/mysql/data/ directory. Those are the database source files containing all the data. Marc Liyanage has already released an updated MySQL installer.
• Re-installing MySQL was fairly simple, mostly I followed Marc Liyanage’s update instructions. However step #8 of installing MySQL on 10.2 contains the little note “If you do not want to have to type “/usr/local/bin” in front of every command… you have to add the /usr/local/bin directory to your PATH environment variable in your
  login script.” That sounds scary but it’s not. As mentioned on this page, a ‘.tcshrc’ file is a simple text file which modifies the terminal’s preferences (actually it’s a configuration for the tc shell, which runs in the terminal, this won’t affect the color or window settings used by the Mac OS X terminal application). Using Pico or BBEdit, create a text file and insert the line:
  setenv PATH /usr/local/bin:$PATH
  
  Save the file with the name ‘.tcshrc’ at the top of your user directory “~/” and restart the terminal. Now MySQL should launch by simply typeing “mysql”.

• I’d gotten used to using “l” (lower case L) to list files in the terminal without having to type “ls -l” For some reason, this is gone in 10.2, but it’s easy to replace. Open the same tcshrc file mentioned above, and add the following line:
  

  "alias l 'ls -la'"

  That will re-enable the ‘l’ command and adds the feature of listing everything, including invisible files. To make this change globally, edit the files in the /usr/share/init/tcsh directory instead.

Corollary to Proposition 22 from Spinoza’s Ethics
, part four (1677):

The effort for self-preservation is the first and only foundation of virtue.

(Translated from Latin by R.H.M. Elwes in 1883)

I noticed something strange while looking through my referrer logs to see if Google had indexed my archives yet. On August 18th, someone at the IP#66.1.141.41 used Wget to download my entire site. All of it. I’m wondering if they found my Wget semi-tutorial and decided to try it on me, or if they wanted to read something on a plane and sucked down my site through an incoming link by mistake. Kind of creepy, but what’s the difference really. If the anonymous downloader is reading this, I’m curious to know why you wanted a copy of my site and what you ended up doing with it.

update: It was probably an accident, the entry point appears to be the Final Cut Pro Resource Directory.

Fascinating historical overview of a people I didn’t know anything about, even though I’ve probably got some of them in me: The Jews and the Khazars

Good news for digital content:

• DVD Region Control is failing (Slashdot discussion)
• ISP bans the RIAA. (Metafilter discussion)