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Syslogd Overwhelming Your Computer?

If your Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) system is unexpectedly sluggish, logging might be the culprit. Run Activity Monitor (Applications/Utilities/ folder), and click the CPU column twice to get it to show most to least activity. If syslogd is at the top of the list, there's a fix. Syslogd tracks informational messages produced by software and writes them to the asl.db, a file in your Unix /var/log/ directory. It's a known problem that syslogd can run amok. There's a fix: deleting the asl.db file.

Launch Terminal (from the same Utilities folder), and enter these commands exactly as written, entering your administrative password when prompted:

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.syslogd

sudo rm /var/log/asl.db

sudo launchctl start com.apple.syslogd

Your system should settle down to normal. For more information, follow the link.

Visit Discussion of syslogd problem at Smarticus

 

 

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DealBITS Drawing: Win a Copy of iStopMotion Home 2

At 42, retirement is a long way off for me, and there's no telling where we'll be with technology at that point. But there are all sorts of things I'd love to play with, if only I had the time, and Boinx Software's iStopMotion is one of them. In essence, iStopMotion is stop motion animation software that enables you to make movies by combining together many still images, frame by frame. I'm a huge fan of the Wallace & Gromit claymation movies, and I could easily see spending tons of time moving little bits of clay around and using iStopMotion to take pictures of them and turn them into a finished movie. It's the sort of thing a child could get sucked into for days. If you want even more of a sense of what iStopMotion can do, be sure to check out the examples of what people have done with iStopMotion on Boinx's Web site.

For professionals, Boinx offers iStopMotion Express ($99) and iStopMotion Pro ($499), which add features for animation aficionados and professionals, including continuous recording, rotoscoping (tracing over live-action video), adding soundtracks, custom project presets, integration with Final Cut Pro, and the capability of creating your own foreground and background masks. But for the rest of us, the $49 iStopMotion Home has plenty of features to noodle around with and have some fun.

So if you want to win one of two copies of iStopMotion Home 2.0, each worth $49, enter at the DealBITS page. All information gathered is covered by our comprehensive privacy policy. Remember too, that if someone you refer to this drawing wins, you'll receive the same prize as a reward for spreading the word.

 

Pear Note 2: More complete, understandable notes on your Mac.
Typed notes are blended with recorded audio, video, and slides
to create notes that make more sense when you need them most.
Learn more at <http://www.usefulfruit.com/tb>!