found drama

1. In OS X.3 “Panther” they (re?)introduced the sidebar. Neat. Easy way of getting around. What they didn’t mention is that these sidebar items are aliases with relative paths. Say you have two volumes, “Main” and “Remote”. Main is where you do most of your work, store most of your files. Remote is for archiving, back-ups, deep storage, etc. Example case here assumes that Remote has elements of its directory structure that are clones of what’s on Main (e.g., directories backed-up via rsync). Open two Finder windows, one with root of Main and one with root of Remote. Click the (example) “Work” alias/item in the sidebar of those Finder windows (where “Work” is a directory within your ~/Documents directory). It does not go to the same place. The one in the Main-based Finder window will go to /Main/Users/you/Documents/Work … and the one in the Remote-based Finder window will go to /Volumes/Remote/Users/you/Documents/Work. Annoying when you’re not expecting that.
2. Anyone else finding weird filesystem indexing issues under OS X.4? I use an AppleScript + rsync to keep certain directories in sync across my iBook (running X.3) and the iMac (running X.4). Sometimes files disappear from the Finder. They’re still in the filesystem. Running an ls in the Terminal will show it just fine. But it’s invisible to the Finder. The hack solution under X.3 was to reindex the folder. However, X.4 does not seem to have this option. The only thing that seems to save me here (besides the Terminal) is to find the item with Spotlight and then “Reveal in Finder”… But let’s face it, it’s very annoying to have book chapters just “disappear” from the Finder.

currently playing: Photek “Glamourama”

About Rob Friesel