Latest Internet trends from Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley, dated 7 June 2010. Notice how Apple users are leading the way in Internet Consumption. Is this because the more "connected" people (heave information consumers) prefer Apple devices or is it because Apple device owners turn into more "connected"  people because of the devices they own? Interesting material....

Darn...they deleted the presentation (Copyright infringement). Oh well - too bad.

Recently I have become somewhat of a minimalist convert. After my partner successfully made me do the "switch" (to Mac) a couple of years ago and after she taught me that "holding on to stuff" not only clutters the apartment but also literally clutters our mind and soul, I have started to appreciate a leaner and cleaner lifestyle.

Less clutter, less things that I keep, less things to keep clean. Less things to move or carry around. Less baggage for the soul. A clear and free mind.

I am trying to follow the same approach in my work and digital life now. A cleaner Mac OS (emptier dock, clean desktop - almost there). A organized mailbox (work, still working on my private mailboxes). These are all little steps that help me focus.

Our lives (and our software and the Internet) are way too cluttered.

These blogs might help you follow a minimalist approach as well:

• Minimal - Minimalism in things
• Minimal Mac - Your Mac, simplified
• Mac Minimalist - Tips & Tricks toward a simpler & more productive Mac

I wrote this post with Writeroom - a Mac application that is designed to help you focus on writing. Amazing. It kind of reminds me of Dougie Howser and the archaic computer he used for writing his journal.

In earlier posts I talked about my troubles with getting my Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) system fully equipped for work purposes:

• Installing MySQLdb on Mac OS X Leopard
• Installing MySQL, Python, MySQLdb on Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) for Django

In the latest (and hopefully last) part of that saga, I tried to tackle a misbehaving Python Imaging Library (PIL) today. Earlier, I had already spent some hours trying to fix this problem but today I finally managed to overcome this problem. There are plenty of articles/blog posts already covering this problem and going over the installation steps. However, no matter how I followed these steps, it would not work.

I discovered the problem when trying to upload a picture through the Django Admin pages and received a standard Django error template stating that "The _imaging C module is not installed". Digging into this problem a little deeper I found that import the imaging library lists an error. Try this in your terminal:

brambraakman$ python
Python 2.6.1 (r261:67515, Jul 7 2009, 23:51:51)
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5646)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import _imaging


This lead to an error that goes something like this:

>>> import _imaging

File "", line 1, in
ImportError: dlopen(/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/PIL/_imaging.so, 2): Symbol not found: _jpeg_resync_to_restart
Referenced from: /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/PIL/_imaging.so
Expected in: dynamic lookup

Obviously there was something wrong with the jpeg support (libjpeg) in the imaging library. This _jpeg_resync_to_restart error has been encountered by many others as well:

• Snow Leopard Python 2.6 problems getting PIL to work
• libjpeg and Python Imaging (PIL) on Snow Leopard, check the comments to see how many people mentioned having this problem.
• Install PIL in Snow Leopard

However, whatever way I tried installing libjpeg (download) and PIL, nothing was working. I also had a libjpeg version installed through Fink but the PIL installation never referenced that.

Running:

otool -L /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/PIL/_imaging.so

will give you an overview of the dependencies of _imaging.so. It should return a reference to the libjpeg library.

Solution

I will not repeat the installation instructions for libjpeg and PIL again (you can find them in the links above). In the end I ended up using the new jpeg-7 library and using these instructions for installation.

What was wrong with my installation?

It turned out that the changes I made to install MySQLdb succesfully on my system had caused this problem. I had added:

export CC="gcc-4.0"
export CXX="g++-4.0"

to my .bash_profile which forces the system (at least that is how I understand it) to use an older version of the gcc compiler. Somehow this caused libjpeg (or PIL) to install incorrectly. Removing those lines from my .bash_profile and reinstalling libjpeg and PIL (for the nth time) finally resolved the problem.

Disclaimer
I am relatively new to Mac OS X (and UNIX based programs and libraries) and might sometimes make mistakes that I am unaware of. The above fixed the problem for me and could very well be affecting your system as well. That does not mean that you should take my advice as expert advice or that what I think are related steps and solutions are always correct. You are welcome to correct (and educate) me by leaving a comment.

The Django Internationalization translation machinery uses the standard gettext module that comes with Python (supposedly). When I tried to update the message file for our translation with the following command:

python manage.py makemessages -l nl

I received the following error:

Error: errors happened while running xgettext on __init__.py
/bin/sh: xgettext: command not found

Uh oh...it seemed that my Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) was missing gettext, a set of tools that provides a framework to help other GNU packages produce multi-lingual messages. Even though I have Xcode installed on my system, I was still missing the gettext program.

How to solve this problem?

First, I did a Spotlight search for gettext and found that there was a gettext program in /sw/bin/ that seemed to be part of Fink (an open source software collection and package manager I played with for a little while when I tried fixing other installation problems). That gettext did not seem to be working correctly however, so I continued my search online.

There was not a lot of information to be found on this problem through Google but one hint was to install a program called Poedit and add a reference to it to the PATH variable (add this line to your .bash_profile or .profile - depending on which one you use - PATH=$PATH:/Applications/Poedit.app/Contents/MacOS/ ).

Now, however I got another error message when trying to update the message file:

Error: errors happened while running msguniq
/bin/sh: msguniq: command not found os x

I was unable to find any useful information on that error message online so I decided to try and start over again. Because I did not trust the Poedit.app solution to gettext completely, I decided to take a look at the /sw/bin/ version of gettext. That lead me to take another look into Fink - a distribution of Unix Open Source software for Mac OS X and Darwin and a package manager. It brings a wide range of free command-line and graphical software developed for Linux and similar operating systems to your Mac.

After having updated my Fink configuration (sudo fink configure) and repaired it (my Fink installation somehow got damaged), I searched through the package list (fink list) and installed gettext and gettext-tools (sudo fink install gettext-tools).

After adding the path to the gettext directory /sw/bin/ to my PATH variable (add PATH=$PATH:/sw/bin/ to your .bash_profile or .profile) and trying to update the message file again: it worked!

I am going to try out using Fink more often for installing certain open source software and libraries.

After spending an considerable amount of time installing MySQLdb on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, I had to repeat a similar exercise today. I am no expert at this kind of thing whatsoever. Still, I thought it might be useful to share my experiences with you.

I let Snow Leopard (NY Times review) in into my house last friday (August 28th, 2009) and the upgrade process (from Leopard) went really smoothly. Apart from a few programs not working anymore, most notably Cyberduck (which needed updating to a newer version), I did not notice any problems. The only worries I had about this update was my Django developer setup: Python, MySQL and some Python modules/libraries.

MySQL needs to be 64 bit

When I tested one of my Django projects, the first thing I noticed was that MySQL was not working properly anymore. I could not get MySQL to start from the PrefPane setting (under System Preferences). I turned out that Snow Leopard requires a 64 bit version of MySQL.
Solution: Download the 64 bit version of MySQL (there are Mac OS X packages (get the one for 10.5 - x86_64) on MySQL's website).

For more information see: Upgrading to Snow Leopard (Ruby on Rails) and Compiling MySQL on Snow Leopard - Hivelogic (if you like to go Pro).

MySQLdb installation

The next "bump" in the road was MySQLdb. This Python DB API is needed to let Python (and Django) interact with MySQL properly. Since I installed (compiled) MySQLdb for the 32 bit version of MySQL, I had a hunch this one was not going to work anymore either. The first thing I tried was simple reinstalling MySQLdb (see Installing MySQLdb for more information). The installer was not too happy however and kept throwing error messages at me.
Solution: First, make sure you have the GCC compiler installed. You can install Xcode (Apple's developer software) for this. You can download this from Apple, but I remember spotting it on the Snow Leopard DVD (Optional Installs). However, I turned out that GCC has been updated by Apple and somehow my MySQLdb installer did not seem appreciate that. Eventually I got this working, but I am not even sure how. One possible solution might have been adding to my .bash_profile:

export CC="gcc-4.0"
export CXX="g++-4.0"

Adding the Mac OS X 10.4 option from the Xcode installer (from the DVD) was also a necessary step.
Now I finally got the MySQLdb install to complete. Unfortunately that did not change anything for me. From the message that MySQLdb reported when imported in the Python shell, I understood that it was still running the 32 bit version (seeing the i386 in the site-packages name of MySQLdb during the install, also alerted me to this).

Python installation

I upgraded my Python installation on Leopard to Python 2.6.1 because I did not want to work with the older Python version that shipped with Leopard. Hopefully, I had assumed that Snow Leopard updated this Python installation (which was not the "System" installation) but it turned out that it did not. My Leopard installed Python was a 32 bit version and I suspected that this was the reason for me being still "stuck" with a broken setup.
Solution: I removed the $PATH settings from my .bash_profile so that the "Python" command would not point to the 32 bit Python anymore. After restarting the Terminal, Python referred to the "system" version of Python again (the one that shipped with Snow Leopard) and that was the 2.6.1 64 bit Python. With this Python I reinstalled MySQLdb, which now compiled to the 64 bit version. And it all worked!

I was not completely out of the woods yet because the Python installation I was now using did not have any of my other modules installed: Django, PIL, Django pagination, etc. Reinstalling those was not too hard though (download, unpack, "sudo python setup.py install").

Yes, there is a price to pay if you always want to run the newest and shiniest software. Especially if you do not always know exactly what you are doing (like me). Next year, with Mac OS X 10.7, we will see what happens again.

If you ever run into this problem with your SharePoint installation:

"Can not add the user because a user with that name already exists"

Then here is the solution. (this problem drove me crazy for a while)

This problem may occur when:

1. You create a user account in AD or as a Local User
2. You add the user to the Sharepoint site
3. You delete the user account from AD or Local Users
4. You then create a new user account using same logon name as the account you previously deleted
5. You try to add the new user account that you just created to the Sharepoint site

No matter how you try and delete this user, (even if you try and do it from the command line) SharePoint will keep on telling you that the user already exists.

Even though you may have deleted the account and removed the account from the users list on the Sharepoint site, Sharepoint still stores the username and SID in its configuration. The issue occurs because the SID stored of the old user account does not match the SID of the new user account.

Solution

Open to the "Manage Site Collection Users" page by typing one of the following into your address bar:

• http://ServerName/_layouts/1033/Siteusrs.aspx - in case of a Portal site.
• http://ServerName/SiteName/_layouts/1033/Siteusrs.aspx - in case of a WSS site.

Find the User in the list, mark the checkbox and click "Remove Selected Users" to definitely remove this User. You can then go back to the Add Users page and add the (new) user.

You would think that they had a link to this Management page somewhere in the Admin Interface. But no! It is secretly hidden from you and if it was not for the Internet, you might still be trying to uncover this mystery.

After many frustrating hours I finally managed to install MySQLdb for Python on my new Mac machine.

What went wrong? I made the mistake of installing a 64 bit version of MySQL 5.1 a couple of weeks ago. Python, however was build in 32 bit. There are many website dealing with this problem (see here and here) but it still did not seem to be solvable for me. After trying reinstalling the 32 bit MySQL and playing around with Fink (a package installer for Mac OS) I was about to try and start off from scratch. It turned out that even though I deleted the 64 bit MySQL and deleted the Fink MySQL package, some residual files where still left on the system. After removing all of the MySQL versions (both the Fink version in /sw/share/ and the MySQL package installed ones in /usr/local/mysql; /usr/local/mysql-version..) and reinstalling the right package one more time, I finally got MySQLdb too work. Here is moment of triumph:

The upside of my hours "wasted": I got to learn a little bit more about bash, building and compiling and setting colors on the terminal window.