Adam Franco February 20th, 2008
With the latest OS X Leopard update (10.5.2) Apple finally added an option to turn off menu bar translucency. I much prefer an opaque menu bar as I find it much more legible. There is only one problem with this fix: Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided to hide this option on computers that “don’t support transparency” due to having lower-end graphics hardware. After upgrading to 10.5.2 my MacBookPro laptop has the option to turn of menu bar transparency, but my newer and more powerful MacPro Desktop does not. After much searching and forum-reading I found that most of the people with this problem (menu bar is translucent, but the option to make it opaque is missing) had MacPro desktops with multiple monitors and video cards.
The problem it turns out, is that while one of my video cards (that drives my two primary monitors ) is a high-end ATI Radeon X1900XT that supports transparent menu bars, the second (that drives my two outer monitors used mostly for notes and email) is a cheaper NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. The presence of the lower-end card in the system was causing the “Translucent Menu Bar” option to be hidden, even though it was supported by my other card.
Steps to fix:
- Turn off computer
- Remove low-end video card
- Start computer
- Go to System Preferences –> Desktop & Screen Saver and un-check the “Translucent Menu Bar” option
- Turn off computer
- Replace low-end video card
- Start computer
It is a pain in the butt, but it works to get the damn translucency turned off.
Adam Franco February 10th, 2008
This version is a re-release of version 1.2 which had a corrupted archive missing some necessary files.
The RiverLevels widget provides an easy way to monitor the amount of water flowing in your favorite streams and rivers right from your Dashboard. The RiverLevels widget is of particular interest to whitewater kayakers and canoeists.
Once any United States Geological Survey (USGS) stream-gauge station is selected, it is automatically refreshed to always provide you with the latest graph of the water-level. As of version 1.2 you can choose between two graph styles: discharge in cubic feet per second (CFS) and water-height in feet.
This widget is Free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 or later.
Requirements:
- OS X - 10.4 “Tiger” or later
Change Log:
1.2.1 (2008-02-10)
- New zip archive includes the ‘library’ directory missing in the 1.2 release.
1.2 (2008-02-06)
- Fixed Leopard (10.5) compatability bug.
- Added the ability to choose Gauge Height (ft) in addition to discharge (CFS).
1.1 (2007-01-08)
- Fixed graphs extending off bottom of widget
- Fixed invisibility of front refresh icon
Adam Franco February 7th, 2008
Update: A new version is available that fixes a corrupted archive in version 1.2.
The RiverLevels widget provides an easy way to monitor the amount of water flowing in your favorite streams and rivers right from your Dashboard. The RiverLevels widget is of particular interest to whitewater kayakers and canoeists.
Once any United States Geological Survey (USGS) stream-gauge station is selected, it is automatically refreshed to always provide you with the latest graph of the water-level. As of version 1.2 you can choose between two graph styles: discharge in cubic feet per second (CFS) and water-height in feet.
This widget is Free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 or later.
Requirements:
- OS X - 10.4 “Tiger” or later
Change Log:
1.2 (2008-02-06)
- Fixed Leopard (10.5) compatability bug.
- Added the ability to choose Gauge Height (ft) in addition to discharge (CFS).
1.1 (2007-01-08)
- Fixed graphs extending off bottom of widget
- Fixed invisibility of front refresh icon
Update: A new version is available that fixes a corrupted archive in version 1.2.
Adam Franco January 31st, 2008
After upgrading my laptop to Apple’s latest operating system, OS X 10.5 ‘Leopard’, I ran into a few issues here and there but for the most part I thought everything worked. After about a month using Leopard though, I noticed that my meetings were not syncing properly to my in-phone calendar. Several hours of frustration later my events are finally getting into my phone. The problem: the ‘Birthdays’ calendar generated from the Address Book application breaks the sync process. I’m glad that once I found the issue the fix was easy (disabling the Birthdays calendar), but holy dog-poo that was hard to find.
If you think you may have this error, open the Console application while running iSync. If you will see an error appear that contains the text
ISyncInvalidRecordException you referenced the following records (in a relationship) but did not actually push them
and then another message mentioning ‘birthdays’, disable the Birthdays calendar (iCal –> Preferences –> ‘Show Birthdays Calendar’) and try syncing again.
