I’ve been trying to get this to work for a while, and I’ve finally succeeded in mounting a virtual image of IE8 on mac for testing.  I ended up using the first half of:

http://bavotasan.com/tutorials/creating-an-internet-explorer-testing-environment-on-a-mac/

and the second half of:

http://zytzagoo.net/blog/2009/03/20/howto-running-ie6-ie7-and-ie8-on-ubuntu-intrepid-810-using-virtualbox/

to get the job done.

The whole process went like this, I just renamed the IE8 file to IE6 from the article to keep things simple.

1. Download these programs, and install the first three:

• Virtualbox
• Q
• Zipeg
• IE8-XPSP3.EXE

2. Change the extensions on IE8-XPSP3.exe from .exe to .zip.

3. Create a sub-folder in your Applications directory called “IE”.

4. Launch Zipeg and drag the IE8-XPSP3.zip file into it for extraction.
Extract the .vhd files into the IE sub-folder you created.

5. Open up your IE sub-folder and you will see a folder called “IE6-XPSP3″.
Open that folder and you should have a file called “XP SP3 with IE6 2009-Apr.vhd. Rename it to ie6-xpsp3.vhd.

5. Now launch Terminal (Applications => Utilities => Terminal) and type:
/Applications/Q.app/Contents/MacOS/qemu-img convert -O raw -f vpc /Applications/IE/IE6-XPSP3/ie6-xpsp3.vhd /Applications/IE/IE6-XPSP3/ie6-xpsp3.raw

6. Next, type:
VBoxManage convertdd /Applications/IE/IE6-XPSP3/ie6-xpsp3.raw /Applications/IE/IE6-XPSP3/ie6-xpsp3.vdi

7. Open VitrualBox and choose Windows XP as the OS

8. When you get to Virtual Hard Disk page add ie6-xpsp3.vdi as the disk

9. Click Start to boot up the drive

10. Cancel all the pop-ups and on the bar at the top of your computer click on Devices> Install Guest Additions
Just say yes to anything it asks in Windows

11. Restart

12. Go to start>run and type
D:\VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe /extract /D=C:\Drivers

13. Now go to Start > Administrative Tools > Computer Management and select the Device Manager there.
Navigate to Network Adapters, Ethernet Controller. Right click it and choose “Update Driver…”. Select “Yes, now and every…” and click Next. Select “Install from a list or specific location”, click Next. In the Location box paste in “C:\Drivers\x86\Network\AMD” or navigate to it manually. Click Finish.

Then we’re all good! 😀

I recently discovered Rosetta@Home and Fold it.   They are both ways anyone can help with protein folding.  I’m no expert on proteins, but according to the site protein folding helps scientists to better understand proteins which can aide in curing diseases.  Which is pretty darn cool 🙂

Rosetta@Home works by using your computer’s idle resources to fold proteins in the background, it has various settings that let you tell when and how much of your CPU Rosetta@Home can use so it doesn’t interfere with other tasks.  Rosetta@Home can also be set as your screen saver so whenever your system idles you can watch it fold proteins.  It also logs your progress and you can collect “credits” which it displays on the site and if you get enough you could end up on their leader boards.

http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Fold it is a lot more hands on.  It’s like a 3D puzzle game, and I was very impressed with the renderings and how all the tools worked.  You can collect points and find your way to the leader boards in this application too.  It’s a free game that could help cure cancer – what’s not to like?

http://fold.it/

I did work is an application I found while trying to keep track of what I was spending my time doing at work.  It is very easy to use and does everything you would expect.  It allows you to put tasks in a todo list, add them to different categories, and specify how long they took to finish.  My favorite feature would have to be that after you’ve entered in some tasks it gives you a graphical chart so you can visualize exactly where your time is going.

After a while though, I stopped using it.  It’s not that it’s difficult to use, but it’s easy to forget to add in that you finished a task  – and how much time did you spend on that project?  I wish it had an API or any kind of a desktop widget/app – some kind of timer application could be very helpful.  I also wish it would handle the to-do list portion a bit better.  It would be nice if it wasn’t as squirreled away and would groups tasks by category.

In short it’s a very simple and easy to use application that does exactly what you’d expect, but it can be a pain to keep it updated.

http://www.ididwork.com/

Found this very handy app online, 100% free.  You upload an image and it will give you back all the copy from the image in plain text. Using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology.

Just the other day I needed to trans code an image from a mailer to create a “text-only” version and I tried putting it through this website.  It was only able to read about half the text on there, but it still saved me some time.  And for the low, low price of nothing – I can’t complain 🙂

http://www.free-ocr.com/

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to go through the arduous task of making a seamless pattern! Well, I actually like making them, but it can be time consuming.  I found this website online that will make seamless patterns online for free.

http://www.studioludens.com/repper/

It comes out a little odd if you were to put a picture of a person in there, but for making seamless patterns of textures this rocks!

There are also online sites for making diagonal stripe, and tartan backgrounds that I have used in the past:

http://www.stripegenerator.com/
http://www.tartanmaker.com/