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I see a lot of complaints about Belkin SOHO-series KVM (keyboard, video, and mouse) switches. I think many of these complaints are warranted; I’ve used two of these KVMs for a long time and have some familiarity with them.

However, one complaint that does have a workaround covers the mapping of the Mac’s Command and Option keys. For the hybrid PS/2-USB KVMs I have used, you must use a PS/2 keyboard and mouse.

That PS/2 terminal requirement assures that your keyboard is going to be labeled for PC/Windows use. If you connect any Macs, you’ll be frustrated by the key layout of Command and Option. Initially, the Alt key will act like Option, and the Windows key will behave as if it’s Command. This is the opposite of what you’d expect from an Apple keyboard — or another keyboard designed primarily for Mac use.

The good news is that this behavior can be changed, and it applies individually to each KVM port. If you have a Mac on Port 1 and a Windows computer on Port 2, they can each have the settings you’d expect. To do so, switch to the port connecting to a Mac and press Esc-A. This puts that port in the “Mac function” mode. In this mode, PS/2 Alt is Command and PS/2 Windows is Option.

Other keys also change, according to a table from an addendum to the Belkin manual. Given that it was a separate sheet in the box, I’m not surprised that many people have apparently missed it.

To reverse the setting back to the previous function mode, press Esc-Y to disable the remapping. Again, you have to do this on a port-by-port basis.

If you ever switch the computers connected to the ports, you will need to disable this change for each affected port; it by no means updates itself dynamically. That’s why there’s a problem in the first place.

I owe Greg Madore for this tip, as he's the one who originally found it for me.

Unfortunately, this does not fix another failing of the Belkin SOHO KVMs for my kind of work — namely, the inability to change startup behavior on Macs. (I have not yet seen a KVM with keyboard emulation that consistently allows the use of modifier keys — such as C, T, Option, H, etc. — to change the startup behavior of a Mac. That capability would be extremely handy for KVMs used in technical support scenarios.)

Apparently, I’ve been installing too many applications on my iPod touch. The other day, I got this warning from it while trying to use the App Store application to download a new app: “There is not enough space to download this application. Please delete some photos or videos.”

Trimming the applications list is a lot less satisfying than filling it up.

After the news hit about Time Warner Cable’s intent to charge different rates for tiers of monthly data transfer — and an enormous $1/GB fee for overages — it seems eminently sane to consider the competition.

In Rochester, that competition is Frontier DSL. For a long time, that basically meant there was no competition, I’m very sorry to say.

However, the changes to TWC’s fee structure may be so extreme that even that level of competition is good. While I don’t think our household monthly data transfer is excessive, I’m reasonably sure (based on what I’ve seen from the data I’ve collected from our broadband router) that we’ll blow right past the 5 GB/month tier and maybe the 10 GB/month one. We would have to — and by that I mean, I would have to, really — develop some more austere usage of the family Internet connection that we’re accustomed to. Thus, I’m examining the pro and con positions for Frontier’s high-speed Internet service.

Pro

With Frontier DSL, my family should:

• Not have to deal with the stress of the upcoming 5/10/40/100 GB-per-month tiers from TWC, which will reportedly take effect in Rochester in November 2009
• Get to send a clear message to TWC that metered Internet access is a terrible idea
• Get the peace of mind that unlimited, unmetered Internet access provides — but only if Frontier’s existing 5 GB-per-month transfer cap is eliminated
• Benefit from the refer-a-friend affiliate program — both parties get the $20 referral credit
• Be able to combine the billing with our Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS).

Con

However, there are some drawbacks to Frontier DSL. My family would be concerned about:

• A potential monthly DSL modem rental fee
• A two-year commitment with a $200-300 (I’ve see both figures!) early termination fee
• The 5 GB-per-month unenforced data transfer cap (but that cap may be dropped entirely in an effort to better compete with TWC)
• Blocking port 25 — while there are workarounds, this is just aggravating
• The unknown quantity of Frontier’s technical support, whereas TWC’s has been reasonably good over the years.

Anyway, while we’re mulling this over, the news is playing out on sites like StopTheCap and StopTWC! Meanwhile, I’m more than a little annoyed at the traditional news media avoiding some of the other angles surrounding this topic — the pricing change as a way to protect cable television revenues, the local monopoly (and how cable infrastructure compares to its telephone equivalent), the impact on increasingly Internet-dependent households during a recession, how this might change the habits of people (including employees working at home), and so on.

It was extremely satisfying to see the following dialog about the volume expansion when logging into my Infrant ReadyNAS:

The overall process of expansion took about four days, converting from four 320 GB drives to four 1 TB drives. (For reference, I selected the Hitachi 7K1000.B 0A38016 drive from ZipZoomFly, and did so almost entirely on price — despite my longstanding misgivings about IBM/Hitachi drives.)

The capacity expansion took longer than strictly necessary, because I wrote zeros across each of the drives before installing them, one at a time, in the ReadyNAS. (I ended up writing zeros to each drive twice, switching from the Disk Utility to the command line equivalent.)

Near the end of the process, I found out that the automatic X-RAID™ expansion doesn’t happen until you reboot the ReadyNAS after upgrading the last drive. I had also enabled a snapshot on the ReadyNAS, which also prevented the automatic volume capacity expansion, so I had to delete that.

I’m keenly interested in the CalDigit RAID card for the Mac Pro. It looks like a much better solution than the Apple RAID card to the storage problem — a First World problem if ever there was one — facing certain Mac Pro owners.

I’ve asked myself, “Now that you have this beast, how do you fill up its drive bays?”

The answer is somewhat difficult. You can put four drives in the bays, but in order to get a single volume, you’d minimally need software RAID. For example, you could configure a RAID 1+0 volume with Disk Utility. You could get the expensive Apple RAID card. You might populate a Drobo and connect it via FireWire. Or, you could get a CalDigit RAID card — which is the only bootable, fully-internal RAID controller I’m aware of that competes with Apple’s card.

One advantage of a solution that fits completely inside the Mac Pro case is that you have one less power cord to deal with. In this sense, the CalDigit RAID Card seems preferable to a Drobo. The CalDigit card interfaces directly with the Mac Pro’s own SATA ports, so you can use the existing internal drive bays and slide drives into the normal SATA/power connectors.

I just need to find one on sale …

These are some really interesting predictions for the digital camera market of 2009. Although it’s supposed to be Nikon predictions, it touches upon other vendors, especially those in the DSLR space.

“Life Balance 3.x customers with Macintosh licenses can upgrade to version 4 for just $59.95,” claims Llamagraphics, the purveyor of the fine time management application, Life Balance.

This sounds like a great deal! Until I remember that the only reason I want to upgrade from version 3 to 5 (not 4) is for compatibility with the new iPhone version of Life Balance! So to get them both, I’d be spending:

Compare that to my current cost for Life Balance — which I’m not currently using because my Treo repeatedly made me want to throw it forcefully into the ground (loved the Palm, hated the defective phone!) and the desktop software looks like crap — which I’ve summarized below:

That’s right, folks. After an investment to date of $89.95 in this software, I’d have to shell out another $79.94 to stay current and get the application on the mobile device I currently use. I’d be paying more for the Mac upgrade than I’ve ever paid for any single purchase or upgrade from Llamagraphics in the past!

I’m surprised I’m even thinking about this. However, Life Balance has always made the most sense of any task management application, and has always done the best job of helping me prioritize. (Of other current applications, OmniFocus doesn’t make sense to me, and Things was great for entry but felt horrid at showing me what I needed to do next.) At the cost of Life Balance, despite how it worked for me, maybe it’s simply time to try something else.

The least expensive overall, and perhaps most interesting because it supports task sharing, is to go with Remember The Milk. I’m not sure I want to use a Web or “cloud” service for this, and there’s no desktop application per se, but I’m at the point in my life where sharing to-do’s with others (and outside the work environment) is compelling. The new Remember The Milk iPhone application may tip me in that direction.

I've been thinking about the lack of FireWire — and the concomitant loss of target disk mode — on the new unibody MacBooks.

I've had many occasions where target disk mode has been a godsend and others when it has just been convenient. I was able to move files off our iBook G3 after its screen failed, and had recent case where I was able to perform data recovery on another system when I had nearly given up hope of getting anything back (thank you, GNU ddrescue). So, I was naturally concerned about not having FireWire around, simply because target disk mode is so useful.

I have come to the realization that the most important situations where I have used target disk mode were for backups or data recovery. For those situations, I just need the drive. The hard disk is more easily removable in the new MacBook (and in the MacBook Pro), so it can be taken out. Then, it can be attached to an external interface or installed in an enclosure, if needed.

While that may not be quite as convenient as target disk mode over FireWire, it's not bad. Consider me appeased, my initial disquiet calmed.

I suppose the other situations will have their workarounds, too. Some of those workarounds will likely be slower than transferring data over FireWire, but oh well.

Frankly, I'm really happy to have both FireWire and the removable hard drive in the MacBook Pro line.

There can be times when you need to troubleshoot Directory Services in Mac OS X during system starts up. Directory Services apparently sits above and below the kernel — depending on what each of those components needs to do — so having debugging capability early on in the boot process can help you hone in on problems.

To enable debug logging at startup, run the following at the command line:

$ sudo touch /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService/.DSLogDebugAtStart

… and then, on the next restart, debug logging will be enabled. This is equivalent to running:

$ sudo killall -USR1 DirectoryService

… but the advantage is is that debug logging begins at startup, rather than whenever you can log in and start it manually.

Remove the file from the path above when you want to disable the logging for the subsequent restart. As a file whose name starts with a dot, you won’t see it listed by default in the Finder. (The Finder hides dot files by default.)

$ sudo rm /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService/.DSLogDebugAtStart

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.