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I had interesting things happen when I ran out of disk space today.

The most notable one was that I saw “Process completed” — or some variant of that — every time I tried to open a Terminal window with a new shell session. I briefly staved it off by specifying Bash as my shell, but then it came right back after opening another tab or two in Terminal. Consulting Google led me to this “Terminal application quits” thread at Apple Discussions. On a lark, I tried deleting /usr/bin/login as one poster suggested. It worked!

…But only for a little while. The problem returned. In the meantime, I had freed up some disk space because I’d realized I couldn’t save files anywhere (“But ~/Pictures is writable!”). Clearly something else had become an issue, because disk space was available.

Then I found another thread, “Terminal’s ’Process Completed’ message and /usr/bin/login,” on Apple Discussions. The more permanent solution from that thread appears to be the removal of corrupted Apple System Log databases. Once I did that and restarted the ASL service, all was well and has stayed that way so far.

Filling up my disk must have corrupted the logs as they were being written or rotated, and led to this cascade failure. Like I said, interesting!

One of the posters in the second Apple Discussions thread indicated that the underlying database corruption issue is addressed in Snow Leopard. However, it seems that you could still see this on Leopard — my experience was with a recently-patched Mac OS X 10.5.8 system.

The Address Book application in Mac OS X Snow Leopard has a new telephone number label for contacts: “iPhone.” (Credit to Jeff Carlson for bringing it to my attention.)

What I find just as interesting as its existence is its order in the list. The “iPhone” label comes before “mobile,” the label I used for all cellular numbers. Is that a subtle dig to put the iPhone above other mobile phones?

It is also the only label that rates a capital letter.

I have no idea how or if this label will survive through Entourage Sync Services and Exchange synchronization. Hm.

Update: I wouldn’t advise using this label right now if you use Sync Services or otherwise sync data elsewhere. I’ve already lost cell numbers in Entourage with Sync Services enabled when I flipped an existing “mobile” number to “iPhone” and back.

Update: I have tested it twice with dummy contacts and could not reproduce the problem that resulted in the number being removed from both Entourage and Address Book. (I believe this is odd because it happened to two of my existing contacts when I flipped them to “iPhone” and back to “mobile.”) However, the “iPhone” number does definitely get removed from Entourage through Sync Services, which means you would lose the number on anything connected to an Exchange account (if Entourage is synchronizing with Exchange). … Such as an iPhone with Exchange ActiveSync.

A wonderful passage about the best hamburger from How I Met Your Mother:

Marshall: Just a burger? Just a burger? Robin, it’s so much than just a burger. I … I mean, that first bite, oh what heaven that first bite is. The bun, like a sesame-freckled breast of an angel resting gently on the ketchup and mustard below. Flavors mingling in a seductive pas de deux. And then … a pickle … the most playful little pickle, and a slice of tomato, a leaf of lettuce, and a patty of ground beef so exquisite … swirling in your mouth, breaking apart and combining again in a fugue of sweets and savory, so delightful. This is no mere sandwich of grilled meat and toasted bread, Robin. This is God, speaking to us through food.

Lily: And you got our wedding vows off the Internet.

A while back, Microsoft announced their Silverlight software. I didn’t think much of it, but now that they have announced the Azure platform, I realized that they have developed a Forgotten Realms theme in their products.

Let’s look at this, while we’re in the beginning of the trend, to see how this relates to the the SSI “gold box” Forgotten Realms games:

Based on this flimsy evidence, I suspect the next major product platform from Microsoft to be related, somehow, to “radiance.” (As in Pool of Radiance, of course.)

We might also expect a future initiative centered around “darkness,” but I consider that less likely — or, it may already have happened, given the reverse chronology that seems to be at work. (See Pools of Darkness.)

I’ve long had a problem with the search fields that are omnipresent in the toolbars of so many Mac OS X applications. My problem? I wanted to quickly jump up to them so I could enter text directly, but I wanted to do so with a keyboard shortcut.

This is particularly true in Safari and Keychain Access, two applications where I frequently want to use the toolbar search field.

It turns out that I was too lazy to look for it, and the option is labeled in a misleading way. I’ll admit, I just plain missed the keyboard shortcut.

The command can be labeled as “Find” where I’ve seen it. It may vary and carry some additional text, as in Safari where it is “Google Search” and MarsEdit where the label is “Search Weblogs,” both of which make sense when the resulting action is to jump to the search field. In both of these applications, the command is in a submenu under Edit > Find.

In Keychain Access, it’s just “Find” — so it doesn’t even match the label on the “Search” field it sends cursor focus to.

The keyboard shortcut is Option-Command-F, and appears as ⌥⌘F.

It’s sad when you can’t find the “Find” command, isn’t it? Grin.

“Well, you know, I think when you go into a bar and you serve the country, you deserve to have your chicken wing not be alligator-clamped onto a booklight. That’s what separates us from the Russians.”

— Merlin Mann, You Look Nice Today: “Aunt Nancy”, approximately 15:52

Note: In case you wondered, StupidFilter rated that quote as “not likely to be stupid.”

If you can’t remember the specific name of an application, but you often think of it by another name, you can change how it is referred to in your LaunchBar configuration.

I used to do something like this with Microsoft Excel; I’d change its name in the LaunchBar configuration to “XL.” You could also refer “Lineform” as “Illustrator” without changing the application’s name in the Finder.

To make the change, open LaunchBar. If you can remember the application, perform a search for it. When it is selected in the LaunchBar bar, choose Configuration > Reveal in Configuration. Enter a new name for the selected app in the “Name” column in the window that appears.

I’m not aware, however, of a way to have an application to respond to two or more names in LaunchBar. There may be a way; I just don’t know it.

Does anyone else think that Apple has some ulterior motive for promoting Viva la Vida, the track on the new iTunes ad featuring Coldplay? That maybe its lyrics are indicative of something going on at Apple?

“When I ruled the world,” indeed.

No matter. I find it a fantastic visual treat and now the haunting music is stuck in my head. I would not be surprised if it were featured at WWDC 2008 in a few weeks.

I ran a quick test of the Python “title” string method (from Python 2.5.1 in Leopard); it fails the tests on the edge cases mentioned in the Title Case post at Daring Fireball. It really only uppercases the first letter of every word and lowercases everything else.

Not much better than looping through a string with ucfirst() in Perl, except you don't have to do the looping yourself.

Drat. I was expecting better.

I was reviewing the pre-release CIS guide for securing Leopard today, and was struck by the many ways people refer to the action of logging in to a computer. This is really a situation calling out for consistent usage based on a style sheet.

So, here are my personal observations on the matter:

• Login is the noun of the bunch. The New Oxford American Dictionary (handy to use, since it’s built into the Dictionary application on Mac OS X) agrees with me here, calling it “an act of logging in to a computer system.” They also list “logon” as an alternative, and I agree. “He used his login credentials to access the system,” would be a usage example.
• Log in is the verb form. The NOAD backs me up, listing it and “log on” as “phrasal verbs” whose meanings are, “go through the procedures to begin use of a computer system, which includes establishing the identity of the user.” For an example phrase, “Security procedures require that you log in to the computer.”
• Log into should not be used, as far as I’m concerned. “Log onto” would be its close brethren, also to be avoided. The NOAD has no listing for either. My proposed alternatives would simply be to add a space: “log in to” or “log on to.” Then, you’re using the phrasal verb.

As I was examining the document, I decide to see what Apple does. I was using the dictionary data they bundle with the operating system, and reviewing a document about their software. They are usually hip with consistency and thus a good example, I thought.

In this case, they aren't entirely consistent. I found one case — in Accounts System Preferences while editing the Guest account — where they use both "log into" and "log in to," all on the same screen.