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<div class="center_top">Thoughtful, detailed coverage of the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, plus the best-selling <a href="http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/?pt=TB-TAGLINE" style="color:yellow">Take Control</a> ebooks.</div>
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<h5>Author Biography</h5>
<p class="tearoffbox_text">Contributing Editor <a href="http://www.tidbits.com/matt/">Matt Neuburg</a> has been writing for TidBITS since 1991, concentrating on issues surrounding word processing, databases and text organization programs, scripting and innovative programming systems, and a variety of utilities. He has written some popular freeware programs, such as <a href="http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13636">MemoryStick</a> and <a href="http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/29015">NotLight</a>. He has created the online documentation for a number of applications, such as <a href="http://latenightsw.com/sd4/index.html">Script Debugger</a> and <a href="http://a-sharp.com/opal/">Opal</a>. He has written books about programming <a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/frontier/">Frontier</a>, <a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/realbasic2/">REALbasic</a>, and <a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/applescpttdg2/">AppleScript</a>, and is the author of various <a href="http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/">Take Control</a> ebooks.</p><p class="tearoffbox_text_email"><span class="shift_down"><img src="/images/gettb_button_email.gif" height="12" width="12" border="0" alt="Send Email to Author"></span> <a href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="document.check_human_7.submit_type.value='email'; document.check_human_7.author_id.value='7'; ShowTipBox('hc_7', 'hc_recaptcha_7', 'cb_item_add')">Email the author</a></p>
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<h6>Syslogd Overwhelming Your Computer?</h6>
<p><p>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.</p>
<p>Launch Terminal (from the same Utilities folder), and enter these commands exactly as written, entering your administrative password when prompted:</p>
<p>sudo launchctl stop com.apple.syslogd</p>
<p>sudo rm /var/log/asl.db</p>
<p>sudo launchctl start com.apple.syslogd</p>
<p>Your system should settle down to normal. For more information, follow the link.</p></p>
<p>Visit <a href="http://smartic.us/2007/11/8/leopard-100-cpu-usage-caused-by-syslogd-and-possibly-time-machine">Discussion of syslogd problem at Smarticus</a></p>
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<div style="padding-bottom:35px"><div class="tip_display" style="float:left"><p><br><a href="/tipbits/71">Link to this tip</a></p></div><div class="tip_display" style="float:right; width:150px">
<a href="/article/11609"onMouseOver="blurb_slide('11609', 'show')">Fake Scriptable Web Browser Is the Real Deal</a></h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11609" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11609">A Web browser that can be automated through scripts that you create without writing any code - how cool is that? It's plenty cool (and plenty easy), and you may have lots of uses for it; you just don't realize it because the idea is so revolutionary.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11491" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11491">How Matt Neuburg's reluctance to switch to iCal was overcome with the help of some really cool free software.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<div class="featured_meta"><a href="/index.cgi?tbcat=18" class="category">Blog Post</a> | by <a href="/author/Matt%20Neuburg">Matt Neuburg</a> | 04 Aug 2010 | <a href="/article/11491#comments">27 comments</a></div></div>
<a href="/article/11469"onMouseOver="blurb_slide('11469', 'show')">A Weird and Wasteful Ad Campaign From Extensis</a></h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11469" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11469">So you think you want to be a software reviewer? If you knew the stuff we had to put up with sometimes, you might change your mind.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<a href="/article/11430"onMouseOver="blurb_slide('11430', 'show')">Apps and Docs in iOS</a></h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11430" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11430">A brief meditation on the mysteries of why it's so hard to know what will happen when you try to open a document on an iOS device.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<a href="/article/11378"onMouseOver="blurb_slide('11378', 'show')">What is Fast App Switching?</a></h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11378" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11378">In which we learn how multitasking on an iPhone 4 is just like how a scientist takes a trip to Jupiter. Or something.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<div class="featured_meta"><a href="/index.cgi?tbcat=17" class="category">iPhone iPad iPod</a> | by <a href="/author/Matt%20Neuburg">Matt Neuburg</a> | 23 Jun 2010 | <a href="/article/11378#comments">82 comments</a></div></div>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11352" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11352">If you have a bazillion windows open on your Mac's screen, a simple utility, Witch from Many Tricks, may be the window-switcher you've been missing.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<div class="featured_meta"><a href="/index.cgi?tbcat=3" class="category">Home Macs</a> | by <a href="/author/Matt%20Neuburg">Matt Neuburg</a> | 14 Jun 2010 | <a href="/article/11352#comments">3 comments</a></div></div>
<a href="/article/11296"onMouseOver="blurb_slide('11296', 'show')">Transcribe Recordings With MacSpeech Scribe</a></h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11296" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11296">Remember those movies where the boss records into a dictaphone for the secretary to transcribe later? Using MacSpeech Scribe is like that, except the dictaphone is a digital recorder and the secretary is your computer (and you're probably not sporting a three-piece suit and a pencil mustache).</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<div class="featured_meta"><a href="/index.cgi?tbcat=3" class="category">Home Macs</a> | by <a href="/author/Matt%20Neuburg">Matt Neuburg</a> | 19 May 2010 | <a href="/article/11296#comments">10 comments</a></div></div>
<div class="link_hover" id="link_box_full_11165" onMouseOver="blurb_slide('11165', 'show'); link_hover_swap('11165', 'in')" onMouseOut="link_hover_swap('11165', 'out')"><div class="link_hover_title"><a href="http://www.macjury.com/macjury-1005-judgement-on-the-first-weekend-with-the-ipad-part-2" id="link_hover_title_11165">First Day Impressions of the iPad on MacJury, Part Two</a></div><div class="link_box_right" id="link_box_right_11165" style="visibility:hidden"><img src="/images/external_link_arrow.gif" height="15" width="15" border="0" alt="arrow"> <img src="/images/link_globe.gif" height="15" width="15" border="0" alt="Generic Globe"></div></div><div class="spacer"></div>
</h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11165" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11165">The madness continues as Matt Neuburg and other sleep-deprived zombies rattle on with Chuck Joiner about the first-day iPad experience.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<a href="/article/11151"onMouseOver="blurb_slide('11151', 'show')">The iPad: A Developer's Anti-Contrarian View</a></h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11151" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11151">The iPad is here, but what will be its future? The world may or may not rush to buy it, but I think developers will rush to program for it.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<div class="link_hover" id="link_box_full_11154" onMouseOver="blurb_slide('11154', 'show'); link_hover_swap('11154', 'in')" onMouseOut="link_hover_swap('11154', 'out')"><div class="link_hover_title"><a href="http://www.macjury.com/macjury-1004-judgement-on-the-first-weekend-with-%20the-ipad-part-1-2" id="link_hover_title_11154">First Day Impressions of the iPad on MacJury</a></div><div class="link_box_right" id="link_box_right_11154" style="visibility:hidden"><img src="/images/external_link_arrow.gif" height="15" width="15" border="0" alt="arrow"> <img src="/images/link_globe.gif" height="15" width="15" border="0" alt="Generic Globe"></div></div><div class="spacer"></div>
</h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11154" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11154">Matt Neuburg joins Chuck Joiner and a roundtable of other new iPad owners for a wide range of initial perspectives on the first-day iPad experience.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<a href="/article/11160"onMouseOver="blurb_slide('11160', 'show')">Google Groups on the Fritz</a></h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11160" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11160">When you're as pervasive as Google, even a slight glitch can be a nightmare for users and for your public image. That's the case with a Google Groups problem that has surfaced recently.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<a href="/article/11051"onMouseOver="blurb_slide('11051', 'show')">Things, a Nimble, Flexible To-Do List Application</a></h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11051" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11051">Things, from Cultured Code, is a to-do list manager. It's simple and easy, but can implement a sophisticated Getting Things Done regimen if you want it to.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<div class="featured_meta"><a href="/index.cgi?tbcat=3" class="category">Home Macs</a> | by <a href="/author/Matt%20Neuburg">Matt Neuburg</a> | 22 Mar 2010 | <a href="/article/11051#comments">15 comments</a></div></div>
<a href="/article/11072"onMouseOver="blurb_slide('11072', 'show')">Transferring Vinyl LPs to Digital: One Approach</a></h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11072" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11072">So you have a collection of LPs and you wish you could listen to them in iTunes or on your iPod? Or you'd just like to preserve the music in digital format so you can listen without a needle touching the vinyl? Here's one user's inexpensive, speedy approach.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<div class="featured_meta"><a href="/index.cgi?tbcat=4" class="category">Media Creation</a> | by <a href="/author/Matt%20Neuburg">Matt Neuburg</a> | 10 Mar 2010 | <a href="/article/11072#comments">16 comments</a></div></div>
<a href="/article/11040"onMouseOver="blurb_slide('11040', 'show')">EagleFiler Turns a Finder Folder Into a Snippet Keeper</a></h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11040" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11040">Got miscellaneous data to search for? You've organized your files into folders and you still can't find the right one? Let EagleFiler add searching, tagging, and annotation. Problem solved.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<div class="featured_meta"><a href="/index.cgi?tbcat=3" class="category">Home Macs</a> | by <a href="/author/Matt%20Neuburg">Matt Neuburg</a> | 24 Feb 2010 | <a href="/article/11040#comments">9 comments</a></div></div>
<a href="/article/11034"onMouseOver="blurb_slide('11034', 'show')">Clipperz Does the Impossible: A Safe Online Password Manager</a></h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11034" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11034">When do you need access to your online passwords? When you're online, of course! But can a browser-based password manager be secure? It can if it's Clipperz.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<div class="featured_meta"><a href="/index.cgi?tbcat=5" class="category">Networking</a> | by <a href="/author/Matt%20Neuburg">Matt Neuburg</a> | 23 Feb 2010 | <a href="/article/11034#comments">19 comments</a></div></div>
<div class="link_hover" id="link_box_full_11036" onMouseOver="blurb_slide('11036', 'show'); link_hover_swap('11036', 'in')" onMouseOut="link_hover_swap('11036', 'out')"><div class="link_hover_title"><a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2010/02/18/macworld-expo-jim-rea-talks-about-the-early-days-of-mac-develop/" id="link_hover_title_11036">Macintosh Past and Future With Jim Rea</a></div><div class="link_box_right" id="link_box_right_11036" style="visibility:hidden"><img src="/images/external_link_arrow.gif" height="15" width="15" border="0" alt="arrow"> <img src="/images/favicons/tuaw1.png" border="0" alt="favicon"> </div></div><div class="spacer"></div>
</h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_11036" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_11036">Jim Rea's ProVUE Panorama was one of the first ready-to-market applications when the Macintosh premiered in 1984, and it's still going strong. Hear and see Jim reminiscing at Macworld Expo about those early days, with some hints about the upcoming Panorama 6, in this short pair of YouTube videos from TUAW. It's just like having lunch with Jim, but without the food!</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<div class="featured_meta"><a href="/index.cgi?tbcat=21" class="category">External Links</a> | 23 Feb 2010</div></div></div>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_10876" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_10876">For all our readers who use an iPhone or iPod touch, check out our new TidBITS News app! It provides access to the full text of all recent TidBITS articles, complete with graphics, embedded movies, and, when available, audio versions.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<div class="featured_meta"><a href="/index.cgi?tbcat=14" class="category">Inside TidBITS</a> | by <a href="/author/Adam%20C.%20Engst">Adam C. Engst</a> and <a href="/author/Matt%20Neuburg">Matt Neuburg</a> | 04 Jan 2010 | <a href="/article/10876#comments">34 comments</a></div></div>
<a href="/article/10780"onMouseOver="blurb_slide('10780', 'show')">Snow Leopard's Creator-Code Snubbing Now Official</a></h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_10780" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_10780">Apple's documentation at last officially admits that, in Snow Leopard, creator codes are ignored when deciding what application owns a document.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<div class="featured_meta"><a href="/index.cgi?tbcat=8" class="category">Macs & Mac OS X</a> | by <a href="/author/Matt%20Neuburg">Matt Neuburg</a> | 22 Nov 2009 | <a href="/article/10780#comments">27 comments</a></div></div>
<a href="/article/10772"onMouseOver="blurb_slide('10772', 'show')">How to Fix Snow Leopard's Finder-Copying Bug</a></h4>
<div class="article_preview" id="blurb_10772" style="display:none"><div id="popup_inner_10772">Certain files can't be copied from one computer to another via File Sharing in Snow Leopard. The cause of the bug has to do with permissions on symlinks. Here's how to detect troublesome symlinks and fix them.</div><!-- blurb inner --></div><!-- blurb outer -->
<div class="featured_meta"><a href="/index.cgi?tbcat=12" class="category">Problem Solving</a> | by <a href="/author/Matt%20Neuburg">Matt Neuburg</a> | 19 Nov 2009 | <a href="/article/10772#comments">7 comments</a></div></div>
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