Thankfully, there is a pretty simple fix. To begin with, make sure MAMP is shut down. Next, open Terminal. To open Terminal either open Spotlight (Cmd+Space) and type “terminal” or you can find Terminal in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder.

Once you get Terminal opened, type the following:

ps aux | grep mysql 
lsof -i 
killall -9 mysqld

That’s it. Start up MAMP and MySQL will come back up just like normal. Another option would be to simply change the port number MySQL is using in MAMP. Restarting your computer may work too but I did’t try that.

I guess I never noticed it, but I have a lot of menu icons! In order from left to right is:

Adium
Waveboard
Tweetie
BetterTouchTool
Alfred
Dropbox
Google Notifier – Calendar
Google Notifier – GMail
Caffeine
MobileMe Sync
Time Machine
Bluetooth
Wireless
Audio/Volume
Time
Spotlight

Check out a screenshot of all of them on my desktop:

Now I get to go through and install all of the software and set up all of my preferences.

My home command center is almost complete!

The most common use of .htaccess files is removing file extensions, such as index.php, from a website URL. They are much ore powerful than that though. I’m not going to go into the details about what .htaccess files can do, shouldn’t be used for, best practices, or anything else like that. I’m going to show you how to get .htaccess files set up and working with MAMP.

The only requirements are that you have a Mac (that’s the first ‘M’ in MAMP) and the MAMP software already installed. I am using the latest version. MAMP will install everything else you need (Apache, MySQL, and PHP which is ‘AMP’ in MAMP) to get up and running so you can start making your own sites locally.

First and foremost, the location of your website files in MAMP need to go in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/ That may sound like common sense but that’s what took the longest for me to figure out. I had my files in /Applications/MAMP/bin/mamp/ which is where all of the files for the start page is located. I just made a folder inside there and was going to the site at http://localhost:8888/MAMP/myfolder No matter what I did, the .htaccess file would not work at all from within that directory. So make sure your websites files are in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/ or a folder within.

The next thing you need to know is ‘htaccess’ isn’t the file extension and there isn’t a file name on the file. The dot at the front typically means it is a hidden file on Unix based operating systems (which the Mac is). So you will need to show the hidden files on your machine. There are a few ways to do this. One of the easiest ways is to use a Dashboard widget. Hidden Files Widget is a great widget for this. If the hidden files are hidden, the button will say ‘Show’. If the hidden files are visible, the button will say ‘Hide’. It can’t get any more simple that that. Install the widget then click the ‘Show’ button. Sometimes the desktop icons won’t come back automatically. If they don’t come back after a minute, click on the Finder icon in the dock and they should come back. Now, go to wherever your website files are located. If there is a .htaccess file in the folder, skip the next paragraph. If it is not there, read the next paragraph.

Here is the catch. It’s tough to create a .htaccess file because the Mac thinks ‘htaccess’ is the file extension but you didn’t give the file a name. So it won’t just let you do it. Wordpress creates a .htaccess file for you when you set up a blog locally. I believe Drupal does the same thing but I’m not 100% positive on that. Other applications possibly do as well. If you aren’t installing a CMS like that, you can always create a custom one and download it. Below is a very basic example of a .htaccess file that I typically use. Once you have a .htaccess file, put it in the root of where your website will live.

The .htaccess file can be opened with TextEdit. You can open it with Dreamweaver or almost anything you want. Here is an example of a typical .htaccess file

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# BEGIN My_Website
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
	RewriteEngine On
	#RewriteBase /
	RewriteBase /mywebsite/
	RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
	RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
	RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
	#RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
# END My_Website

The hash marks (#) are comments. I’ll talk a little about the second and third commenta in a second.

If you are developing a site locally, your files may not be in the root of the /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/ folder since you may be working on more than one website. That is what the RewriteBase is for. It specifies where the root of your website is in accordance with the root of the domain or local root. In this example, my website and it’s files are in a folder called mywebsite which is inside my /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/ folder. Since /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/ is my root folder, I don’t have to put that in the path. I just have to put the path from the root folder. If you notice, on the line above that (line 4), I have commented out that line with a hash. When you upload the files to your website, uncomment this line (line 4) and comment out the line after it (line 5). That way the .htaccess file works when you get it on the actual site. If you are not uploading the files to the root of your website, set the path accordingly.

The third comment (line 9) is a variation of the line above it (line 8). Both work pretty much the same. You don’t have to have the first and last comment lines. You can delete them and it won’t effect anything.

That is literally all I had to do to get the site working. I saw sites that wanted me to edit httpd.conf files and php.ini files and all kinds of files under the sun. I didn’t have to though. If you do need to mess with those files, there are a couple pretty good walkthroughs to help you out here and here.

Thank God I had renters insurance. For $7 a month, it’s almost dumb not to have it. It’s the price of eating at a fast food restaurant. Skip the fast food for one day out of the month and you just paid your renters insurance.

When I finally got the check from insurance, I went to replace my Macbook Pro with another Macbook Pro. No one seems to have any. Well, people have the 17″ but I wanted the 15″. So I have to hold off on get the Macbook Pro. So I started looking at computers to replace a Sony Vaio that was also taken. The only reason I use a PC is to test things in IE, so I wasn’t looking for anything fancy. Then it hit me. Why get a computer that I really won’t use much? I can always get another Mac. Install Windows on a virtual machine or Bootcamp it. This allows me to get a computer I want but still be able to test things in IE. So I got a Mac Mini.

For now it is in my bedroom because it is the only computer I have. When I am able to get another Macbook Pro, I’ll put the Mini in the living room and hook it up to the television. The Mini will by my entertainment computer with light IE testing. The Macbook Pro will be my primary computer.

[Update @8:00PM Feb 21, 2010] And a picture of the Mini on my desk.

I have to say the Magic Mouse is almost the best mouse I have ever had. I say almost because with both the Logitech mouse and Mighty Mouse, I had a way to do application Exposé without touching the keyboard. For most people, this isn’t a big deal. But I spend a lot of time on the computer. Shortcuts like that really help.

I’m pretty sure Apple is working on updating the Magic Muse driver to do it now, but in the mean time, you can use BetterTouchTool. I have it set right now to three finger click opens up Exposé. I can easily change it to a two, three, four, or five finger click, or tap, or swipe. It’s a pretty nice little program. If you gave a Magic Mouse, I recommend you try it out.

Even if you don’t have a Magic Mouse, you can still use it on multitouch touchpads on the Macbook and Macbook Pro.

[Update Jan. 11th, 2009] There is also MagicPrefs which looks like it does the same thing. I haven’t tried it because BTT is working great for me.

I removed it from the dock and put it back in thinking that would do the trick. It didn’t.

So I tried the official Windows fix and restarted. The icon was still in the dock at this time. That still didn’t fix the problem. So I removed the icon from the dock again and then put it back in the dock and it started showing up again.

I assume restarting the computer then adding the icon back in the dock solved the issue but I can’t be sure because the icon is displaying now and I don’t know how to make the ico transparent again.

This time, in Snow Leopard, when you toggle the hidden files, it is much quicker and it doesn’t close out all of your open Finder windows. It relocates them to the last Space but at least it’s not closing them.

Many times, when I single left click, it decides to double click instead. The double click happens instantly like it sees my single click as a double click. This double click doesn’t happen all of the time. I checked all of the preferences and even deleted all Logitech preference files from the /Users/USERNAME/Library/Preference/ folder that started with “com.Logitech” and that didn’t help. So far the only thing that seemed to help was replacing the batteries. I’m still having the problem but not to the extent that I was before.

I did a quick Google search and it turns out I’m not the only one havinng this problem. There was something posted to the Logitech Forums which just says they are having a problem. No resolutions so far. There is also a lengthy discussion on MacRumors which has shown that Leopard is not having this issue, only Snow Leopard. It also ruled out users who upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard. It also ruled out, then ruled back in, a Logitech driver issue.

So far, like I said, changing the batteries seems to work. I don’t know what the batteries have to do with the single vs. double click though. Sounds like a driver issue though. If it is an Apple issue, hopefully the 10.6.2 build will fix this. If it is a Logitech issue, I have my Logitech Control Center set to automatically update so now it is just a waiting game.

[Update 10/19/2009 @7:24 PST] Changing the batteries didn’t help for very long. It worked for maybe a day then went back to double clicking everything. I’ve been using my Mighty Mouse and it’s been working like a champ. So it looks like it is a Logitech driver issue.