Sunday June 25, 2006 6:20 am Lethbridge Alberta

A. Morning Musings

6:20 am The temperature is + 9 C with a high forecast of + 28. There is not a cloud in the sky.

This is my first attempt to update this site using Dreamweaver on a MacBook. I was able to open the files that I had saved on an external hard drive without any difficulty. Excellent! However when I then tried to save a file (this page) to the hard drive, the save button was greyed out. For the moment I am using a work-around of copying the website to the MacBook hard drive and then saving to that. I am not sure what the problem is. It might have something to do with the external hard drive and the fact that it was originally used by a PC. But I am still able to read files from the external hard drive without difficulty. I was able to use the finder to get information about the external drive and was able to determine that this drive is a "read only" drive. I have no idea if it is possible to change this.

Now to see if I can open this page using the Windows environment on the MacBook. This was not so good. I was able to switch to Windows using Parallels but the Windows environment did not even recognize the external hard drive.

Now to see if I can save this page on a memory stick and read it on a PC.

I am now on my PC. I was able to read the file for this page from the memory stick, but all of the links and images were broken. Rather than go through the cumbersome task of redoing those, I simply saved the page from the previous day and then did a copy-and-paste of the text onto this page. Overall my first experience with trying to use the files from the MacBook and the PC was not a success. The difficulty may well be with me and my understanding of what is possible and why.

Enough of this for the moment. I am back on my PC and operational. My initial thoughts are that the MacBook is fine, but exchanging files from it to a PC is problematic. The main difficulty appears to be with the external hard drive which does not permit a seamless exchange of files. On the other hand the memory stick does. A second problem appears to be with Dreamweaver. Transferring files from one system to the other breaks all the links. This makes some sense to me as it cannot understand the path names between the two systems. Transferring an entire web site does work, but moving one web page from a site on one system to another system will not.

The implication appears to be to have separate external hard drives for each computer, and to make sure that a particular application is only used with a particular computer. Once again, this makes sense to me. The two systems (Windows and OS X) are distinctly different. Now to put this page back on the memory stick and move back to the MacBook. Done.

There are a few differences with Dreamweaver on the Mac. The window that displays the files for the website sorts them in a different order than the PC. I do not appear to have a way to override this (i.e. drag them to the order I want).

Now to see if I can upload this page to a server.

10:10 am This turned out to be a challenge. Eventually I realized that although I was using the files that I had copied to my Mac desktop, I had not created a new site on the Mac. I think I now have it working properly.

B. Plan

Immediate
Chores	Install patio bricks	5 hr
Health	Walk & exercise	1 hr
Technology	Familiarize myself with the MacBook	2 hr
Model Trains	Add blue backdrop to layout	2 hr
History	Continue reading "Citizens"	2 hr
Literature	Continue reading "The Eagles' Brood"	3 hr
Mathematics	Read "The Computational Beauty of Nature" Chap 2	1 hr
Later
Chores	Clean mortar from cement blocks in rear fence	2 hr
	Take cement blocks to landfill	2 hr
	Buy sealant for join between garage floor and wall
	Take 5th wheel in for maintenance	2 hr
	Investigate water softeners for home	2 hr
	Paint door frame white	1 hr
Technology	Read manual for cell phone	1 hr
Technology	digital photography
	try using extender lens and monopod	2 hr
Mathematics	Larson "Calculus"
	Gardner "The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles"
History	Watson "Ideas"
Model Trains	Review layout for under the table turnouts
	Visit Lethbridge Model Train club at 7 PM on Tues	2 hr
	Wire lower mainline track for a power block
	Fasten lower mainline track to layout
	Draw schematic diagram of track layout	2 hr

C. Actual/Notes

8:05 PM I spent much of the day relaxing and finished reading "The Eagles' Brood". But I did find time to complete one of the remaining chores around the yard. Every little bit helps. Tomorrow I plan to finish the patio bricks.

D. Reflection