This weekend I kept getting a “Could not complete your request because of a program error.” whenever I tried to open a file or create a new document in Photoshop CS2. There are more than a 165,000 results for this issue on Google, but not one had a solution that could work for me. I did get a few clues. Photoshop functioned correctly if my Mac was booted in safe mode (hold the shift key down during startup). During safe boot, the Mac only loads essential kernel extensions, disables all but the System fonts, and bypasses all network functions, including printing. Given that my System uses more than 200 kernel extensions, narrowing down the extension that would seemingly cause Photoshop to misbehave would be near impossible. So I gave up the struggle to work on something simpler — my tax return. The most common suggestion to solve this Photoshop error was to reinstall Mac OS 10.4, and I just didn’t feel like tackling that this weekend. Read more »

I was remotely zipping up some font files on my Mac at home yesterday to scp to a Mac I was using. It’s easier to zip several files and scp that one file than to scp each file individually. Of course Unix zip ignored the font’s needed resources files, so the received, unzipped fonts were empty files. Type 1 fonts are still Mac resource dependent. I had hoped that Tiger had a Macified zip (it is pseudo-Macified) much like cp, which in 10.4.4 copies Mac resource files by default. No such luck. Read more »

It’s been about nine years since Cheryl and I attempted to ski. Cheryl has spina bifida and I have cerebral palsy. When we lived just south of the New Hampshire border, we’d drive an hour an a half on a Saturday to Mount Sunapee, where the nearest, quality adaptive ski program was. We’d spend most of the morning getting fitted with whatever leftover equipment was there and spend the rest of the day learning to stand and ski in a line in front of the adaptive ski hut. Cheryl did get some actual skiing in, but pretty much every Saturday we went, the drill was the same. We found that we’d have to go to Sunapee every weekend during ski season, Saturday and Sunday, to ensure we got our ski gear reserved for us. We stopped going and never thought about skiing again. Read more »

Just when you thought it was safe for Open Source in Europe, the European Union Internal Market and Services Commission is asking for input on another stab at a software patent system there. The EU Parliament voted down software patents on July 6, 2005 after a backlash surfaced from many EU citizens against the scheme. Yet, the Commission seems to think it knows better as it tries to make software patents “a reality” this time. (What’s the great mob know about software patents anyway.)

So, now that Ted Koppel is retired to the public speaking/special correspondent circuit, Son of Nightline has reared its head. A harbinger of things to come, Friday’s show followed a group of ghostbusters on a nightlong unhaunt. What’s next? An Oprah interview exclusive. The new Nightline isn’t sparing a nickel on its new magazine format either. I think I prefer the Letterman news format.