Rob’s blog

I am easily the biggest geek on Tumblr’s “bootcamp” tag page at the moment.

UPDATE 06/10/2012: Please ignore this post and look at my most recent post about the script.

I’ve used a Mac — and Windows on a Mac — since 2007 but I’ve just, only just, figured out a way to quickly restart from OSX into Windows.

And it’s really easy to use it on your computer too, even if the words code or script make you freak out a bit. (If they don’t, skim the post for the meat but make sure to read the last few paragraphs.)

The setup

I use LaunchBar to run a script that mounts my Bootcamp partition, sets it as the startup disk for the next time only and then reboots into it. It means I don’t have hold down Option (⌥) while the computer boots up, which I’ve found very unreliable now that I use a bluetooth keyboard. (It might actually just be the SSD booting quicker than the keyboard can switch on. That’s a nice problem to have.)

As it’s just a bit of AppleScript you can also run it from FastScripts or the system-wide script menu.

The script

Click here to open the script in your script editor.

set deviceID to (do shell script "diskutil info [Your Bootcamp ¬
partition's name] | grep Identifier | awk '{print $3}'")
do shell script "bless -device /dev/" & deviceID & " -legacy -setBoot ¬
-nextonly" password "XXXXXXX" with administrator privileges
tell application "Finder" to restart

Update 07/09/2012: I’ve changed the script to get the device ID in a more sophisticated way, so it’s far less likely to break even if you have more than 10 disks.

Update 21/07/2012: OSX doesn’t guarantee that your Windows partition will get the same device ID every time the computer boots, which means my previous method (which was dependent on the device ID not changing) can and will break if you have more than one HDD.

I’ve changed the script to use the partition’s name and then pull the correct device ID from the result of diskutil info [Partition Name]. If you have more than 10 disks you may run into problems.

First of all, open up AppleScript Editor (called Script Editor before Lion) from the Utilities subfolder of your Applications folder and copy the code above into a new window.

Then open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder, select your Bootcamp partition, click the Info button and change [Partition Name] in the script to its exact name. It should look something like this:

set terminalRAW to do shell script "diskutil info BOOTCAMP"

If the partition’s name is more than a single word, put it in quotes with backslashes in front, like this: \"Windows HDD\".

Now change myPassword to your user account’s password and save the script, making sure to check the box next to Run Only at the bottom of the save sheet.

(Saving a run-only script makes sure no-one will be able to open it and grab your password. If you’d rather not put it in there to begin with just delete password "myPassword" and the system will prompt you for it every time you run the script.)

What should I do with it?

Generally the best place to put your finished script is in ~/Library/Scripts. This means it’ll appear in the system-wide script menu, which you can enable from AppleScript Editor’s preferences, as well as FastScripts. (By default the user library is hidden in Lion so just copy that path, switch to the Finder, click Go in the menu bar and choose Go to Folder and paste it in).

To use it in LaunchBar you’ll want to go into its indexing preferences (⌘⌥I), select Actions, then Options, and check the box next to ~/Library/Scripts. I use “Restart in Windows” to keep things simple.

Why not save it as an application?

I tried this and it didn’t work out well. Even though it should quit immediately after the final command (restart) is passed, Lion’s resume-after-restart feature (where it reopens running applications) can put the computer into a loop where booting back into OSX from Windows causes the computer to boot into Windows.

(If you accidentally get into this position perform a safe boot by holding shift from the Mac chime until you see the Apple logo. Then log in, delete the application and empty the trash.)

Thankfully the only advantage to having it as an application, that I can see, is that you can put it in the dock. (And you don’t want to be one of those people.)

Louis Theroux’s first and so far only book, published in 2005, is the funniest thing I’ve read in a long, long time. We’re talking out-loud laughs. The kind of laughs that make you not want to read it on the Tube because other people will think you’re crazy and stare at you but you can’t put it down and end up looking mental anyway.

It’s great. Really great.

Theroux goes back to the US to catch up with people that he’d interviewed in his Weird Weekends series and stand-alone documentaries, calling it a “reunion tour”.

Each fairly short, breezy chapter covers one person or group — UFO nuts, American Nazis, Ike Turner, gangsta rappers, prostitutes, and more. Each is brilliant and “just one more page” quickly becomes “just one more story”.

Half of that is the writing — done in a very similar way to Theroux’s voice-over bits in his films. It feels very human, very honest — reinforced by him being upfront about parts of his “reunion tour” that aren’t going as he’d hoped.

That’s one of the best things about the book, that he’s very open, and has changed my view of Theroux in a subtle but substantial way. He always came across as smart but also that he was putting on a persona for interviews, and behind it was sort of a cold calculation of how to get the most out of people.

But The Call of the Weird makes it clear that what you see in the documentaries is him, that he’s being genuine with his interviewees. Rather than naive-sounding questions being asked in an attempt to squeeze people for shocking or funny responses, he asks the simple questions because often they’re the best ones you can ask.

‘Jerry, Jerry, Jerry,’ I interrupted. ‘Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.’

Even though there are ten chapters, I blazed through the book in about a week and couldn’t bear finishing it — I just wanted more stories. Highly recommended.

Netflix launched in Britain a week ago and I was really excited to sign up and check it out, after years of hearing how great the US service is.

Put simply, it’s a disappointment. On a technical level it’s great but that’s ruined by the gaps in its content library.

A few probing searches to see how bare its cupboard is turned into what I call Netflix Roulette — you keep searching until you get a match.

That sounds harsh, but I think the list below — my searches, but re-ordered alphabetically — shows the problem quite clearly. (There’s no particular logic behind what I searched for.)

1. 28 Days Later? No.
2. Ali? No
3. Alien? No.
4. Apocalypse Now? No.
5. Batman Begins? No.
6. Blade Runner? No.
7. Boogie Nights? No.
8. The Bourne Identity? No.
9. Brick? No.
10. Burn Notice? No.
11. Casablanca? No.
12. Citizen Kane? No.
13. Collateral? No.
14. Cry-Baby? No.
15. CSI? No.
16. The Dark Knight? No.
17. Dawn of the Dead? No.
18. Deadwood? No.
19. The Deer Hunter? No.
20. Die Hard? No.
21. Dirty Harry? No.
22. Double Indemnity? No.
23. Dr Strangelove? No.
24. ER? No.
25. The Exorcist? No.
26. Friends? No.
27. The Godfather? No.
28. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Swedish one)? No.
29. Good Will Hunting? No.
30. Hairspray? No.
31. Heat? No.
32. Hill Street Blues? No.
33. Hitch? No.
34. Hot Fuzz? No.
35. Independence Day? No.
36. Juno? No.
37. Jurassic Park? No.
38. Kingdom of Heaven? No.
39. LA Confidential? No.
40. Law & Order? No.
41. Layer Cake? No.
42. Magnolia? No.
43. Miller’s Crossing? No.
44. Mission Impossible? No.
45. NYPD Blue? No.
46. Ocean’s Eleven? No.
47. The Passion of the Christ? No.
48. The Prestige? No.
49. Psycho? No.
50. Pulp Fiction? No.
51. Raising Arizona? No.
52. Rambo? No.
53. Rocky? No.
54. Shaun of the Dead? No.
55. The Shawshank Redemption? No.
56. The Shield? No.
57. The Shining? No.
58. The Silence of the Lambs? No.
59. Six Feet Under? No.
60. Sliding Doors? No.
61. The Sopranos? No.
62. Southland? No.
63. State of Play (TV series or film)? No.
64. Third Watch? No.
65. Toy Story? No.
66. True Blood? No.
67. Vanilla Sky? No.
68. The Wire? No.

The one that finally ended it was Along Came Polly, which, er, was on Five last night.

The lack of titles is so bad that if you search for anything with “the” in the name then the odds are pretty good that The Office (US) or The Inbetweeners will be in the top results. Searching for The Shawshank Redemption returns — in this order — The Office (US), Saw: The Final Chapter, and The Inbetweeners. Not good for such a popular and well-regarded film.

Nor is the lack of classics such as Casablanca, which came out 70 years ago. Or how about Citizen Kane — 71 years old and still often called the “greatest film of all time”.

As much as I want to like Netflix, I can’t justify subscribing when it’s missing so much. I’m not sure many people could, even at just £6 a month.

A handful of decent films, plenty of crap ones, some ITV dramas and lots of kids’ programmes aren’t a great sales pitch.