Step 1: Finder crashes.
The first thing that happens is that the Finder freezes. No big deal, I’ll just Relaunch it, right? No. I click the Relaunch button, it quits, and nothing else happens. If I try to restart it by clicking the icon in the Dock, an error pops up that says “The Application Finder cannot be launched. -10180″. After that, it just goes downhill.

Step 2: Things quickly fall apart.
After the Finder has stopped working, the rest of the system falls apart around my ears. Apps that rely on the Finder for anything crash as soon as they try to access it. External drives are no longer accessible by any means, and trying to umount them from the command line freezes Terminal. The shutdown and reboot commands start throwing “Illegal Instruction” errors. And trying to shutdown or reboot from the Apple menu manages to close everything, but then freezes at the point where only the wallpaper is visible.

Step 3: Hard reboot.
After that, a hard reboot is the only remaining option. So, I hold the power button till it’s off, then turn it back on. Here’s the really interesting part: It freezes before the login screen appears. The login window does appear eventually, but I was waiting at a blue screen for the time it took me to write the intro and first paragraph of this article (About 3-4 minutes, I think). After that, everything works normally. After login, the Finder starts up just fine, and it’s like nothing ever happened.

It’s generally agreed that error -10180 is caused by a failure to access an external disk. The most recent occurrence happened while trying to run Time Machine. Even more odd, but probably just coincidental, was that Firefox had crashed and was refusing to start just minutes earlier, which was why I was trying to run Time Machine. Although now that I think about it, I was working in Firefox last time this happened too, although it didn’t crash.

This has only started happening since I installed Snow Leopard, and even more recently only since I started using Time Machine. It’s only happened twice, but it was identical both times. If anyone has an idea why this is happening, please, let me know. I’d prefer not to have to stop using Time Machine, but I may have no choice.

Billy

Update: Here’s a link to the official bug in the MacOSForge mailing list.
And here’s one for Chrome.

Intro

One of the new CSS 3 properties available in Webkit-based browsers is CSS Masks. There’s a complete article on masks here, but the basis of it is that you can cut out part of a box using a mask image. Since it works on any box and not just images, we can apply it to our embedded SVGs. You can probably see where I’m going with this.

Adding the CSS code

Basically all you have to do in CSS is add the following code:

Where “#logosvg” would be replaced by the id of your <embed> or <object> tag, and “images/mask.png” would be replaced by the url to your mask image, which we’ll create in a second. That really is it! Just make sure to fix the id and url, or nothing will happen.

Creating the mask

Now to create the mask image. For this, we can either use a PNG, or another SVG (which seems odd, since they get filled in, but it does work).

1. First, you need to open up your SVG in the editor of choice. Be careful not to save the SVG during the next few steps, because we’ll be changing the color of all of the elements. You may want to just save it as “mask.svg” or something similar, in case you accidentally push save.
2. Now that you have the logo open, the first thing you need to do is go through and remove the stroke of any object that have one.
   Disclaimer: I’ve only tested this on my logo, and I had to remove the stroke to get a clean edge. Your results may vary, and please let me know if they do. I’ll update this post with the latest info.
3. If you have a shadow on anything in your image, like in “Before Masking” below, you’ll have to remove that completely, or it’ll show up as a white glow instead. You’ll want to remove them from the original too, since they’ll just be masked out anyway, but save that for later, because I have a tip for that at the end.
4. This is the easiest step. Select every object in the SVG and change their fill to black, and opacity/alpha to 255/100%, whichever your editor uses.
5. If you’re using a PNG as the mask, this is the time to export it. Make sure to export it as the whole page, so it lines up with the SVG, or strange things will happen. If you’re using an SVG mask, just save this as mask.svg if you haven’t already.

Before Masking

After Masking

Wrap-up and notes

And that should be about it! A couple more pieces of info that I’d like to pass along:

• If your SVG is animated during it’s time on the page, and you move objects inside of it, they will be cut off at the edges of the mask. I’m going to look into a way to dynamically generate a mask for every frame of animation, and I’ll update this post if that gets anywhere.
• If you plan on changing the opacity of any elements in the SVG while it’s on the page, it will change the opacity fine, but it will appear as though they are in front of a white background, because they are. The only fix I’ve found for this is to copy the object that changes opacity, place it behind the original, and set the copy to the color it’ll be in front of during the animation. Obviously this won’t work well for complex or animated backgrounds, so if anyone finds a better solution, please let me know!
• If you removed any shadows during the masking phase, and want them back, you can go back to the original image, remove everything except for the shadows, and export them as a PNG. Then, add them into your HTML document, and position them underneath the <embed> or <object> using CSS. You may need to play with your z-indexes.

And now you’ve reached the end! Thanks for reading, and I hope I’ve helped somebody out with their project. Here’s the final result of all of this with my logo:

Look ma, no white box!

If you want to see the final result live, check out http://alpha.spherecat1.com/!
Billy

So, I hope somebody out there will find this useful, because I know I will!
Billy

R.I.P. CrunchPad

Hi guys. I know, no exclamation point. It’s bad. The CrunchPad really is dead! How did this happen? Well, I won’t go into great detail, you can read Mike Arrington’s full post if you want the whole story. Basically, the manufacturing company that they had partnered with, Fusion Garage, contacted them three days before the official launch and told them that they were no longer involved with the project, and that they would be selling it without TechCrunch’s involvement. That is wrong on so many levels.

The CrunchPad, as many of you know, was born one and a half years ago, in a blog post by Mike Arrington. Since then, it has gained huge support, gone through 3 working prototypes, and was ready to be manufactured when this disaster took place. It was going to be a device born from the internet, and built for the people who created it. It was what we all wish for, a $300-ish dollar web tablet. And it died because of greed. All because the shareholders of Fusion Garage decided that they wanted more of the cut. Or maybe they should just go for all of it. And now they have nothing.

So Rest in Peace, CrunchPad, and hopefully we’ll meet again some day.
Billy

All of the new posts will appear on the front page, as usual, but if you want to access the posts from my old blogs, just click on the “Archived” category over there in the sidebar. Enjoy!

Billy

Once it’s finished, plus the skipped features, it’ll have MySQL databases for storing cat info, among other things.

I’ll keep you posted!
Billy

Obviously this resets the version number to 0, and I’m not sure if I’ll count them the same way or not. But, it’s coming along nicely so far, the CatServer is almost ready to be put online for testing for the first time. This new version also has much greater security, with SHA-1 hash password storage and several methods for making sure it’s the real CatClient on the other end.

This rewrite also gives me a chance to completely integrate 3D, something that was going to need an almost complete rewrite of the client before.

So, this is a big project, but so was the original code! I’ll keep you posted!
Billy

Until next time!
Billy

Listen to it now!
Billy

I’m hoping to win the LEGO package. That way I can build it with everybody when we’re all here for Christmas!

If you want to enter, visit here: http://chris.pirillo.com/2008/12/15/receiving-the-gift-of-giving/

Bye for now!
Billy