Last night the folks at Boxee announced the release of a new Boxee alpha.  The top additions to this new alpha are the support for Pandora music streaming, PBS streams, RadioTime, a new API and the video playback is built on the XUL framework.  The XUL framework is the same that Firefox is built on.  Yes, HULU does work.  Good Luck blocking it now.  I just downloaded the alpha release from Boxee.tv and must say it delivers.  Go get it.

http://boxee.tv

Here is a short how to in order to use the new plugins:

Start Boxee and in the left navigation pane scroll down to “Apps Box”.  Along the top of your screen there are four selections, choose the repositories tab and add a new repository.  Type the following in the text field minus the quotes ” dir.boxeehq.com” and select done.  You will now be able to back out and select “New Applications”.  This is where you can add all sorts of new feeds to your Media Player.  Have Fun!

The remote application accesses your Boxee media center PC via Wifi and requires no server side application (other than Boxee obviously).  The iPhone/iPod  has two user interfaces for control.  The first is a gesture method that displays a Boxee logo in the middle of your device screen.  Place your finger on the icon and slide up down or side to side to simulate using the arrow keys on your keyboard.  Tap on the logo after you’ve highlighted your selection to accept, much like a mouse click.  The second user interface is called “Buttons” and its just what you think.  Select the buttons mode and a set of direction arrows, OK button and a back button appear on your device.  A volume slider bar across the bottom of the iPhone/iPod screen will adjust the audio of the computer being controlled.

The iPod/iPhone will also display thumbnails of the current video playing on Boxee and a Now Playing button will display Artist and Title of any music playing.

Boxee Remote Control will work with Boxee Media Center running on PC, MAC and Linux.  Go get it today!

Apple Itunes Store – Boxee Remote

Boxee Media Center

Boxee runs on Linux, OSX, and Windows. The Linux and OSX beta clients are open to download but the Windows beta is still an invite only deal.

I have been using boxee for a couple of weeks now and I can say I am in love. No more visting each individual web site to look for content. I just launch boxee and surf the content on most of the major media sites just like I am changing channels on my T.V.

Boxee comes with the ability to play content directly from Hulu, Comedy Central, CBS, Last.fm, Netflix, MySpaceTV and a number of other sources. Seeing it is open source and based on the XBOX Media Center project there are a number of additional plugins for other sites available with new ones showing up in their forums every day. I found this Adult Swim plugin on their forum. No more missed episodes of Robot Chicken. I couldn’t be happier.

I can’t explain it as well as the video below so check it out.

Lets address your operating system choices in order of market share, just to be objective.

First we have Windows XP. It’s about everything and nothing.

What about Windows Vista? Stay away from Vista. But isn’t Vista the latest and greatest from Microsoft? Latest, true. Greatest, no.

There are two major reason to stay away from Vista. One, corporate America has pretty much passed on this operating systems due to software incompatibilities, cost, and lack of benefit. Second, a major lack off legacy hardware support. What business wants to buy a new computer for everyone just for a fancier interface and find out that they have to replace everything else, printers, digital cameras, scanners, just to make it all work together again? For that matter, why would you? Unless you don’t have any legacy hardware or software, just stay away.

If you need proof of all these problems, all you have to do is look at Microsoft’s support policy for Windows XP. Windows XP was suppose to reach end of life in the middle of 2007. Since then, due to the backlash from vendors and consumer problems, that support has been extend to June of 2008. Now the rumor is that support will be extended, again, to 2010. Why 2010? That’s when Microsoft plans to release its next version of Windows.

So why use Windows XP? Well Windows XP is still the most widely supported operating system and dare I say it, the most stable product in the Windows family. You’ll never have a problem finding hardware, software, or support for a Windows XP system. Windows XP also still has the most support for running your custom business applications. The last reason to select XP over other alternatives is gaming. If gaming is a major consideration you are practically locked into choosing Windows XP.

So, at this point, you are probably saying to yourself that Windows XP is for you but, hold on, being the biggest has its dark side. For one, Windows is targeted for malware more than the other operating systems. Due to the architecture of Windows, when that malware gets into your system, it can do more damage and be harder to remove than other systems. Windows is general more unstable than its counterparts. I’d love to lay the blame for this entirely at Microsoft’s feet but, that would be unfair. The sheer magnitude of configurations options means that there really can’t be rigorous quality of assurance testing for every scenario that might come up and they can’t be blamed for that. What they can be blamed for is continuing an architecture that allows the failure of one system to affect the rest of the system.

An example of Windows inherent instability might be when you accidentally unplug your camera, mouse, printer, whatever, from you computer while it is in use. Instead of just the programs using that device locking up, your whole computer locks up and needs to be rebooted. We have all had this experience. We also all blame Microsoft solely for the problem. That isn’t exactly fair. The root cause of the lockup was the device driver, written by the manufacturer, being unable to handle this unexpected event. Where Microsoft shares the blame is not being able to keep this single, poorly written, device driver from affecting the whole system.

If I made this same mistake in Linux, and I have, I would probably just lose the ability for the application I was using to talk to the device I had disconnected. It is a very rare event that the whole system would lock up. In any case, to fix it, all I would have to do is reconnect the device and restart the application. Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t an example of better drivers being written for Linux. If, in this example, the driver was better than its Windows counterpart then my application wouldn’t need to be restarted. It is an example of the underlying architecture of Linux being able to handle this unexpected event better than Windows.

Pro’s

• More then 80% of the desktop computers in the world run some sort of Windows operating system.
• You won’t have any trouble finding hardware and drivers.
• You won’t have any problems finding support.
• Most widely supported operating system for games.
• Large shareware and freeware application library.

Con’s

• The most prone operating system for spyware and virus applications.
• You are going to need support.
• General instability due to the shear number of possible configurations.
• Poor security.
• Limited access to the library of free open source software.

Second, we have Apple and its OSX operating system. It’s about the content baby.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit, that I am a recent Apple convert. After using Microsoft Windows since Windows 286, just over 20 years, both personally and professionally, I’ve had enough. Maybe I should do one of those switch commercials?

For most of Apple’s history there were two major reasons to stick with Windows over Apple. Hardware and software choices. Since Apple moved to Intel based system a few years back both of those reasons have been negated.

From Wikipedia:

Since Mac OS X is based on UNIX, most software packages written for BSD or Linux can be recompiled to run on it. Projects such as Fink, MacPorts and pkgsrc provide pre-compiled or pre-formatted packages. Since version 10.3, Mac OS X has included X11.app, Apple’s version of the X Window System graphical interface for Unix applications, as an optional component during installation.^[13] Up to and including Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger), Apple’s implementation was based on the X11 Licensed XFree86 4.3 and X11R6.6. All bundled versions of X11 feature a window manager which is similar to the Mac OS X look-and-feel and has fairly good integration with Mac OS X, also using the native Quartz rendering system. Earlier versions of Mac OS X (in which X11 has not been bundled) can also run X11 applications using XDarwin.

So with OSX you have the entire open source catalog of software open to you plus the native OSX software library. Certainly, lack of software choice is no longer a problem.

The second reason, a lack of hardware support, has pretty much gone away with the introduction of common hardware interfaces such as USB and firewire. It use to be that hardware, such as scanners and digital cameras, all had different hardware interfaces, such as serial and SCSI connections, that required the manufacture to write a driver specifically for for each operating system. Since the introduction of common standards, like USB, the operating system vendor can now write a common driver for all these devices.

An example of this would be my first digital camera which had a serial interface and thus would only work in Windows. My second digital camera connected to my computer using USB. The camera presented itself to the computer as a USB hard drive, which every operating can use. Even though I have upgraded my camera several time since then, that old camera still works with my new Apple Macbook Pro laptop.

Of course you can still find Windows only hardware but, it is getting harder. If you bought your scanner, camera, camcorder, or printer in the last few years there is no technical reason not to consider Apple OSX.

So with the technical reason out of the way, why would you want to consider OSX over Microsoft Windows?

First, it’s just easier to use. Of course this is a subjective statement so I suggest you visit an Apple store and try it for yourself.

Two, it is more stable. Again that is a subjective statement as well but, it has been my experience and the experience of people who bought Apple systems based on my recommendations, that over all, they are having less support issues. I can personally state that these individuals don’t come to me with questions about how to fix their systems anymore. If they do ask me a question, it is more likely to be related to how to do something new like, how do I create a DVD of my kids using iMovie.

The reasons for this are probably two fold. One, Apple has a higher degree of control over the hardware design of its systems leading to a generally more stable product. Two, OSX’s UNIX base (which has been under development a lot longer than Windows) and UNIX security model lead to a much more stable operating system. You won’t have the virus and spyware problems you are probably use to by now on Windows.

Third, Apple’s core strength is content creation. Mostly people use a computer to create something else not just to play with the the computer itself. This is where Apple and OSX excel. In general, Apple systems come out of the box with more features and programs for creating content than any other system. There is a reason why most bands use Pro Tools on OSX to create their music, why every print application is created with Adobe Photoshop and Indesign on OSX, and why a lot of video is produced with Final Cut on OSX. Apple’s OSX just does a better job of helping to create and manage content.

Pro’s

• Easier to use for the non technical.
• Content creation is its strength.
• More secure than Windows due to its UNIX base
• More stable than Windows due to Apple’s tighter control over the configuration options and its UNIX base.
• Almost no spyware or virus applications.
• More powerful than Windows due to its UNIX base.
• You have almost complete access to the enormous library of free open source applications.

Con’s

• More expensive upfront than other choices. Some would say this is offset by less maintenance required over the life of the system.
• Less support. You have to goto Apple for all your hardware problems.
• Less hardware choices than Windows. For your average user this isn’t much of a problem. All the common hardware types will work.
• More complex than Windows due to its UNIX base. This really isn’t a major con because OSX does a great job of hiding this complexity from the end user.

Third we have Linux. It’s all about choice man.

I know what you are thinking. Isn’t Linux that command line operating system my 15 year old and the technical support people at work rave about? That’s way too much of a learning curve for me. Well, that is true but, Linux also is that user friendly cable box under your T.V., that kiosk in the mall that tells you where the GAP is, and the operating system that runs your TomTom GPS navigation system in your car. Odds are you are already using Linux and don’t even know it.

For a long time Linux has had a two faced image problem. At one end you have the appliance like consumer gadget market that is using Linux to make extremely easy to use consumer electronics like your Tivo or TomTom. On the other end you have the majority of the world’s top ten super computers that also run Linux. It is this end that has gotten most of the main stream media attention over the years.

Linux still has room in the middle of these two extremes for you. Even here there are two ends of spectrum. At the low end, you have systems like the Asus EeePC which, by default, runs a restricted version of Linux that even your grandmother can use. At the other end you have the web server that served you this page. You also have every option in between.

Typically you are going to want a Linux distribution (of which there are many) that approximates the ease of use of Windows and OSX. For the last couple of years the most popular choice has been Ubuntu. Ubuntu’s main focus, since its inception, has been to make Linux easier to use for the masses and I’d have to say, they have done a great job. If you have ever used a computer before then it won’t take you very long to get up to speed in Ubuntu. One of the great advantages of Linux over Windows or OSX has been its lower hardware requirements. If your current computer is less then five years old then I can pretty much guarantee that it will run Linux. Maybe not with all the fancy graphic options but, it will be usable.

Another great advantage of Linux is that you can try it on any hardware without actually installing it by using a live CD. With a live CD, you can run Linux on your current computer just by booting off the CD. The operating system is loaded into memory and run off the CD and it won’t affect anything else on your system. When you are done testing, you simply take the CD out of your drive and reboot. Go get the Ubuntu Live CD here and check it out. Of course, Ubuntu isn’t your only choice. Google Linux Live CD and check out the other options.

Pros

• Runs on just about any hardware. It is a misnomer that Linux lacks the driver support of Windows and OSX. Linux actually has the broadest driver support of any system. I don’t see Windows running on your TomTom. What is true, is that the latest and greatest hardware doesn’t come to Linux first if the manufacture choose not write Linux drivers. For most things this isn’t a problem for the same reason it isn’t a problem for OSX. Just be aware of the issue before running out to buy the latest add on.
• More options than any other system. This is a pro and a con. If you want to change anything in Linux you can. The only limiting factor is your desire to figure out how.
• Way more secure than Windows XP and even OSX.
• Everything is free. Although please donate a little something to your favorite projects.
• If you choose to, you can always be on the cutting edge of computer science. All the new ideas in development on college campuses across the world are tried on Linux first and then the best of those filter down to Apple and Windows but, what’s best is subjective so Linux leaves you with a choice, while Apple and Windows limit you.
• Full access to the free open source library of software. Great full featured, compatible, and free replacements for your proprietary software.
• Linux management, for example patch management, is much easier. Typical one command or wizard has to be invoked in order to update everything vs. Windows where you have to get OS patches from Microsoft and third party patches from each individual vendor.

Cons

• The latest and greatest hardware is typically slower to reach Linux.
• The shear number of options can be daunting to a non-technical user. Although, like OSX, the distribution you select will determine the level of complexity presented or hidden from the end user. For instance, my mom would have no problem using Ubuntu but, only the uber techies among us would opt for the Gentoo Linux distribution.
• Limited support for proprietary applications. Although you can use Microsoft Office for Windows on Linux by using an open source version of the Windows application programing interface called WINE, I wouldn’t recommend it for the non-technical user. Instead use Open Office, which comes with the Ubuntu distribution, for creating documents compatible with Microsoft Office.
• Limited vendor support. This is getting better. Dell now offers systems with Ubuntu pre-installed and those sub $300 Walmart PC’s that they couldn’t keep in the stores were from Everex. As for software support, even though this is under cons, I can’t really say this is a bad thing. In 20 years Microsoft has never answered a question when I have bothered to call them. I may spend hours searching their knowledge base to find an answer to my question. On the other hand, Linux has a massive community of people willing to help. A quick search of the Ubuntu forums will generally reveal an answer, and if not, then a quick post to the forum normally gets a response.

Basically, for all its pros and cons, Linux comes down to choice. If you can think it, you can probably do it.

So which OS is the best?

Like I said at the beginning of this article it depends on your usage. If you want to be compatible with the office and play games, it is Windows. If you do nothing but content creation all day long, want general compatibility with the office, or are a less technical user, than it is OSX. Finally, if you have a budget, need both a restricted system for one user and a powerful system for another but, it has to be the same computer, than it is Linux.

Each one has it best use. I’m a perfect example. I wrote and developed this web site on OSX. I have a Mac Mini in my bedroom that I used to watch movies. I also have my entire home automation system running on OSX.

Then there is Linux. I have a Linux based VOIP (Voice Over IP, think vonage) server running my home phone, a Linux based DVR recording my T.V. and a Linux based file server to back it all up.

Finally, there is Windows. Well, I use Windows at work. I have a XBox for video games.

Easy enough?

Read The Story

In order to invoke these options simply hold down the desired key while OSX is starting up.

shift – Safe Mode

Boots OSX with a minimum set of drivers and options.

option – Startup Manager

Allows you to select which partition to boot from.

c – Boot from CD/DVD

Hold the “C” key down to boot directly from a CD/DVD in the drive.

Mouse button – Eject Media

If you hold down the mouse button during startup what ever is in the CD/DVD drive will be ejected.

cmd v – Verbose Boot

Displays all the startup messages that are normally hidden from the user.

t – Target Mode

This basically turn your computer in an external FireWire drive that you can connect to another computer. Useful if you have to transfer a large amount of data when there is no network present.

There are a few more, less useful, options.

cmd s – Single User Mode
n – Boot up from NetBoot Server
r – PowerBook Display Reset
x – OS X Force boot

Have fun.

“Does work in OSX, with the Nokia N800, and, wait for it, Linux.” At least Ubuntu.

Well I just received my Logitech diNovo Mini from Amazon this afternoon and I’ve had just enough time to run a few test.

First I tried it with the Nokia N800. Once I got over the hurdle of the passcode (enter any passcode on the N800’s keyboard pair settings and then type it in on the diNovo) I was all set on the N800. Of course the Nokia N800 (being a touch screen device) doesn’t have a mouse cursor per say but, the menu mode of the diNovo Mini lets you navigate just fine. That coupled with the keyboard shortcuts proved to be quite useful. The keyboard shortcuts on the N800 do have to be tweaked a bit from their defaults given the key layout on the diNovo but, this is not all that hard.

Now for the big news. I paired the the diNovo mini to an Apple Mac Mini using the built in blue tooth receiver (I have yet to use the one that came with the diNovo for anything) and everything, including the track pad worked fine. The Mac Mini is currently using OSX 10.4 Tiger. I use this machine as a MythTV front end in my master bedroom. No problems what so ever. I was able to navigate with the mouse to launch the MythTV front end and then switch the diNovo’s track pad to menu mode to operate MythTV. It should go without saying that Front row worked as well.

This section was typed using the diNovo mini paired to my Mac book Pro running Leopard. I can even use the media keys to control iTunes. Sweet.

That only leaves Ubuntu to test which I’ll have to get to later. I have another Mac Mini in the basement running the open source Asterisk VOIP server that provides my land line. I’ll have to test that when the phone isn’t in use so check back later.

Update. It works in Linux too.

Well at least in Ubuntu 7.10 Gusty running on a Mac Mini. Obviously I can’t test every distribution and blue tooth receiver so your results may vary but, for me the diNovo Mini has worked with everything I have tested it against. Judging from the limited forum posts I have found concerning the diNovo Mini and Linux the trick appears to be not to use the included blue tooth dongle but, instead, use a blue tooth radio that is known to work in Linux. That is until the wonderful open source community writes a driver for the included adapter.

Good news, good news.

P.S. I’ll try to do a better job of proof reading next time. I was just in such a hurry to get this info out. C-Ya

I never thought I would actually pay for radio until a co-worker of mine signed up for Sirius satellite radio when Howard Stern made the switch to Sirius. Now, Howard Stern I could care less about but, this gave me my first extended exposer to the music channels. Every afternoon, for weeks, I would hear a great song off an album I had long forgotten, on the Alt Nation channel, wafting over the cube wall. I was just about sold.

The only problem remaining was reception. My co-worker sat next to a window and was having reception problems despite Sirius having a land based repeater in our market. I’m located closer to the center of the building so using a satellite radio probably wasn’t going to work. So I waited. Sirius offered online streaming but it was only a 32k stream. Not going to work for me.

Finally, Sirius started offering near CD quality streams but, only offered a Windows based player in a browser. I love my tunes but, not enough to switch back to Windows. So the hunt was on to find a way to stream Sirius online to Linux or OSX. If you want to try Sirus for three day for free sign up here.

Play Sirius radio streams on Linux

What I came up with was Sipie. From the Sipie documentation.

“Pronounced SY PIE, like ’sirius python’, sipie is a on line player
for Sirius online Internet streaming. It requires a login to
Sirius’s streaming, and both guest and subscriber logins are
supported. It provides the a back end, a cli and gui.”

Because of changes made to the Sirius stream at some point in the past simply doing an apt-get to install Sipie didn’t work so below I have compiled my own instructions. Even though these instructions are based on Ubuntu 7.10, seeing Sipie is a python script, they should work on other distributions.

First we have to download the dependencies. Open a terminal windows and enter:

sudo apt-get install mplayer python-setuptools python-wxgtk2.6 subversion

We need subversion to download the latest development snapshot because the version of Sipie in the repository doesn’t work.

Change to your home directory:

cd ~

Download the latest development version of Sipie to a directory called sipie under your home directory.

svn co https://sipie.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/sipie sipie

Change to the sipie directory.

cd sipie/

Install Sipie.

sudo easy_install .

Configure and run Sipie.

sipie.py

Once you have lauched Sipie the first time you will need to configure it with your username, password, subscriber status, and location. Just follow the prompts. If you mess up remove the config file in ~/.sipie as outlined below and then just relaunch sipie.py.

username and a crypted password will be stored in /home/mike/.sipie/config
no plain text passwords are stored
if you want to change your password remove /home/mike/.sipie/config
then run sipie and it’ll ask you for username and password again

Enter username: mike
Enter password:

Login Type, type guest or subscriber
Enter login type: subscriber
Are you using Sirius Cananda (http://siriuscanada.ca)
True or False: False

At this point a window should pop up and ask you to enter some characters. Once entered the channel GUI should come up. Simply select a channel and hit play.

Play Sirius radio streams on OSX

For OSX users life is much easier. Simply download install StarPlayr.

From the apple download site:

About StarPlayr
A new breed of Sirius Radio for the Mac. It has album art, an awesome user interface, the ability to record one station and play another. As a recording is finished, the stream is automatically converted from ASF to MP3 and can be played back in iTunes via the StarMP3 playlist. You can take your recordings with you on the road syncing to an iPod/iPhone any other PMP device that supports MP3.

What’s New in this Version
- Easy to use iCal Scripts to automate StarCasts.
- Faster tuning
- Up to date Artist and Song info
- Paws feature using Spacebar or Paws button
- Mute option
- Mega size cache options
- Improved iTunes syncing: Bookmarkable, Skip Shuffle
- Robust StarCasting (fixed time-out bug)
- StarMP3 Trooper, Manual MP3 conversion mode
- Free fully editable Bonus AppleScripts

Although there are other players avaiable for OSX, in my opinion, StarPlayr is the best. My only complaint is that there is no mini player and you can only resize the application to a certain degree. Other then that it works great.

ROCK ON!

Disclaimer:

A lot of the people asking me how to install Wordpress on OSX have new babies. I’d like to apologize up front to the rest of the internet for bringing more new baby sites to the internet and thus hindering the speed at which we all can download music. Sorry.

How to install Wordpress on OSX using MAMP

Since starting this web site I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how easy it is to use Wordpress. The answer is it couldn’t be easier but, I would recommend that you setup a development environment first so you can test everything. That led to a second set of questions from all my friends that use OSX. How do I setup a test environment on my Mac? I know that the Apache web server is included in OSX but I can’t figure out MySQL or PHP. It’s true that OSX comes with Apache, and you could use it, but there is a much simpler way. Use MAMP.

MAMP stands for Mac, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. You have probably heard of LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) which is the standard web development platform on the internet. There is also WAMP; Windows, Apache, so on and so forth. One more acronym, WIMP; Windows, IIS (Internet Information Server. The default Windows web server), MySQL, and PHP. I’m so clever. You also might be thinking that I’m not very clever because I felt the need to explain what IIS was. In either case, I don’t care and you are probably correct.

All these acronyms provide all the necessary components to run Wordpress locally on your given platform. In this case, the wonderful OSX.

Anyway, read on to learn how to install Wordpress on OSX using MAMP.

Installing MAMP

Installing MAMP is just like any other application.

To start we need to go download and run the MAMP installer.

After the installation is complete, go to your Applications folder and locate MAMP. You can launch the Apache and MySQL servers by clicking the MAMP application icon. You can also install the widget to perform the same task from the dashboard. To do that, in the MAMP folder, you should see a black icon for installing the widget. Click the widget installer and OS X will ask you if you want to keep it, click keep. Once you have installed the widget you access it on the dashboard by hitting F12.

Tip

One of the cool things about MAMP is that you can use PHP4 or PHP5 for testing. If you hit the information icon on the widget (the “i” little towards the bottom of the widget) the widget will flip over and give you a choice of PHP 4 or 5. Neat if you are testing other things besides Wordpress. You can also do this from the preferences if you launched MAMP from your applications folder.

Once you have installed and started MAMP, the default page displayed below should of come up in your browser. If it didn’t, you can click “Open Start Page” on the MAMP application or simply restart the servers using the widget. This page contains all the info we need to install Wordpress.

We will need the first four bold lines of this page to install Wordpress. The host should be “localhost,” the port should be “8889,” and the user name and password should be “root.” Click on the phpMyAdmin link. We need to add a new database for Wordpress. Because I’m not feeling creative, name it Wordpress. You can call it what ever you want. Then click create. That’s it. Now we need to get Wordpress.

Install Wordpress

Go get Wordpress. Once the download is complete, uncompress it and copy it to the “htdocs” folder under the MAMP folder on your applications menu.

Now we need to create a wp-config.php file.

Open TextEdit.

Tip

Make sure that TextEdit is in plain text mode instead of the default rich text mode. To do this, open TextEdit and goto TextEdit > Preferences and select Plain Text.

Open wp-config-sample.php in the Wordress directory you created in the htdocs folder and change the lines ‘DB_NAME’, DB_USER’, ‘DB_PASSWORD’, and ‘DB_HOST to match those below. Save the file as wp-config.php under the Wordpress directory.

// ** MySQL settings ** //
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘wordpress’); // The name of the database
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘root’); // Your MySQL username
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘root’); // …and password
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost:8889′); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this
define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);
define(‘DB_COLLATE’, ”);

Finally, you need to open http://localhost:8888/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php. You can cut and paste that link into your browser. Once the Wordpress install script is done you will be given a username and password. Write these down because you will need them to get in to the admin account. Now if you navigate to http://localhost:8888/wordpress/ you should see your default installation of Wordpress.

Now you can play with Wordpress off line without messing anything up.

1. Goto Arcana Research and download StartupSound.prefPane.
2. After you download it, install it.
3. Go to Preferences > Startup Sound and check the Mute check box.
4. Make sure “Turn on start up volume control” is checked as well.

That’s it. For me, it took a couple of reboots before it took effect.

As for the cat.. It’s doing much better. Thanks.