A Christmas Gift To All ... Wallpaper For Your Root Account Desktop

1887.Now, we who have Un*x-based systems (OS X and others) know that occaisionally need to get a root account enabled because sometimes you just have to do a superuser thing or two. I occaisionally need to grab files from another account but you can't always do that when just logged in with Administrator priviledges.

But you know how dangerous root access can be. You can delete all files from your system, and the system will go ahead and let you.

I like doing this ... this wallpaper lets you know exactly what kind of fire you're playin' with when you go root. I give this idea to the general public and urge everyone who has a root account on any sort of Un*x to put it up there. Enjoy:



Merry Christmas!

Technorati Tags: liff, silly, photoshoppery, unix mojo

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A Technical Investigation

1880. One of the things that really intimidates me is breaking into my computer for any reason.

I just don't like it for a variety of reasons. I hate little screws. I hate barking my knuckles on pointy metal things, edges, and trimmed and soldered leads. I hate the idea that I maybe didn't get one bit of static charge off me (I grip a big metal pipe in the basement that goes straight into the ground so I shouldn't worry – yes, my neurotic nature is awesome!) and the next touch to the circuit board I make will make my beautiful toy turn into a microscopially-fused lump of metal-and-silicon.

Apple made it easy a while back. Anyone who has or uses a Blue-and-White G3 or a Yikes!, Sawtooth, Graphite or MDD G4 tower knows this. When Apple moved off the case design with the G5s I was sad.

But the beauty of these cases ... known by some as the "drawbridge" cases (because of the way they open) are self-evident. No screws, no cover to put aside, no need to constantly reach into the case. pull a latch on the outside of the tower, and one side hinges down, like a drawbridge. There, in front of you, is the logic board. In the case and reachable are the power supply and all the disk drives.

Simply beautiful. And while you still have to use screws to affix the hard disk drives to the carrier that holds them, you only need to pull on a latch and push up to get the drive carrier out at all.

Still a little barking of the knuckles. Nothing's absolutely perfect, of course.

And now my old hard drive from the original machine is sitting it its drive carrier on top of that old machine ready to go into the new one. This has a great many apps on it (my font editors and my registered copy of QuickTime, amongst others) that I simply do not want to do without.

But I'm not pushing it. It's a late hour and the last thing I need to do is rush this.

Tomorrow, maybe ... if the gut check goes well.

 Tags: PowerMac G4, PowerMac Maintenance and Repair, Samuel John Klein, The ZehnKatzen Times

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