I’ve always liked tinkering around with some basic development and creating some small apps for myself that help me do what I want to do. Usually no use to anyone else, but they help me The one thing that put me off trying to develop anything for Mac OS X though was that by the time I came to actually be interested in tinkering with Mac development, Apple had started charging for their Xcode aplication. It was only a small price, but considering how often I’d use it, I wasn’t prepared to purchase it unless I was serious about development. I did notice though, that since upgrading to Lion, Xcode is now free in the Apple App Store, so I jumped on the opportunity before they start charging for it again.

When you download Xcode from the App Store, it downloads an installer to run when you like, rather than installing itself straight away, and it uses the operating system’s Installer program. I did however, come across an interesting problem trying to install it, and it appears I’m not alone in this one…

Before upgrading to Lion, I did a clean install of Snow Leopard to make sure taht nothing would break, so this is a completely fresh system. I’ve never used iTunes since I did the clean install, however while doing the installer, I came across an error that said the following:

In order to continue the installation, please close the following applications:

iTunes

I checked the dock bar, and iTunes wasn’t running at all. I also have an app called QuitsAppsMBI which is a handy tool for quitting applications, nothing on there to say iTunes was running. Lastly, I checked Force Quit to see if there was anything, and there was nothing in there at all.

Not wanting to potentially ruin the installation, I wasn’t sure I wanted to just kill the Installer, so I seeked the help of Google to see if there were any suggestions on what to do. I came across the following post on James Greenhalgh’s blog: http://james.greenhalgh.eu/2011/in-order-to-continue-the-installation-please-close-the-following-application-itunes

This post detals exactly the problem I was having, and a really simple fix! Open up Terminal (found in Applications\Utilities) and type in the following command:

ps x | grep iTunes

This will list all the processes running on your computer with iTunes in the path. This returned the following for me:

174   ??  S     0:00.04 /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper -psn_0_57358
2613 s001  S+     0:00.00 grep iTunes

So this shows that the iTunes Helper is still running in the background. To kill this off, you then enter the following command:

kill 174

The first number from the first command is a process ID, so you’re telling it to kill the process with ID 174. Change the 174 to whatever the ID shows as from the first command, and it’ll end the iTunes Helper. After a few seconds, the Xcode installer will clock onto this and continue the installation!

Thanks again to James Greenhalgh for that tip!

So what happened? Basically, here’s where it happened… The Google StreetView of the junction ain’t great so this is the best I could do:

I am where the blue BMW is… Van driver is where the black Punto is. I’ve stopped for the box junction as my exit straight across wasn’t clear, plus the fact that there was someone trying to turn right into Old Hill… so I let that person across, and by the time they’d finished going across, my exit was clear. One person from where the Punto is had pulled out, so I accelerated forwards. As I started to pull away, a van driver pulled out from the left where the Punto is, with only the narrowest gap to pull out. He then immediately broke. Now when I saw him start to pull down, firstly I had a bit of horn usage, and I didn’t brake, but I let off the accelerator as I could see he would JUST and I mean, JUST make it if I stopped accelerating, but I wasn’t expecting him to suddenly brake. The front left corner of my car then hits the metal foot plate on the back right corner of his van, making a big crack in my bumper and pushing the lower grille clean out.

After a bit of arguing, we pulled into the next side road and exchanged details… The van driver behind me also stopped and gave his details as a witness… but his claim was that I carried on accelerating while the guy pulled out on me, which I definitely did not do, plus with the brake lights being so low down, I don’t think he saw him braking. I barely saw it they were that low down.

So from what I could see, there wasn’t even a scratch on his, but I didn’t think to take any photos at the time as I was still so pissed off… but he’s gonna get it checked out. It was basically a solid bit of metal as a step up into the fan. It jutted out about 2ft from the rear of the van. I swear stuff like that should be illegal when the vehicle is moving….

Damage to mine:

So I guess it’s an excuse to get a VXR bumper finally, but I don’t have that sort of money at the moment…. so what do you guys reckon? Firstly, is it repairable, and secondly, how much do you reckon I’d be looking at if I paid it out of my own pocket?

If I have to go insurance, I’ll go insurance, but as it stands, going through the insurance will more than likely sting me for a lot more money than if I just paid for the repairs…

I’m still going to call the insurance company and inform them it happened so it doesn’t come back to bite me, but I’m going to inform them that under no circumstances am I making a claim until further notice…

First up, a new sticker on the boot lid

There’s a reason for choosing that one too  My car is a standard 1.9 CDTi 150… and on the rollers, it produced 155BHP… So that extra 5 has to come from somewhere

The next one, and the bigger one… I blame Kev for this one. Had I not seen his in under that tent, I probably wouldn’t have bothered looking or thinking about it

But here’s a before shot:

Some magic being worked:

And the finished result

Big thanks to the guys from Coastline Graphics with their “Wrap What Ya Brung” tent

Here are my pics though

So this was the state of the car at 11am this morning:

Hoovered the interior and cleaned all the dash and plastics with some Autoglym Vinyl & Rubber Care:

I then stopped taking photos and got to work. I also did my Mum’s car at the same time…

First up, rinsed it all down with a pressure washer.
Then cleaned the wheels with some Wonder Wheels (It’s all I had, and couldn’t justify buying some new wheel cleaner when I already had some )
Washed the car with some Autoglym Bodywork Shampoo Conditioner, two bucket method.
Dried using a waffle weave towel and some Demon Shine as a drying agent.
Cleaned the glass using some generic supermarket glass cleaner.
Polished the glass with some Autoglym Car Glass Polish.
Sealed the wheels using some Autoglym Alloy Wheel Seal.
Dressed the tyres with some Meguiars Gold Class Endurance Tyre Gel.
Dressed the plastics and vinyl B-pillars with Autoglym Vinyl & Rubber Care.
Polished using a machine buffer and Autoglym Ultra Deep Shine.

That got me to this stage, where I got the wax out

Once I waxed everything, I re-dressed the plastics and vinyl B-pillars as I got some polish/wax on them which wouldn’t come off… But here’s the file results

So 7 and a half hours work, and the results speak for themselves  My first time using that Autoglym HD wax… and first time using a non-liquid based wax as well… and I’ve got to say I was impressed. Smelt quite nice, spread really nicely once I got used to it. And the pot looks barely touched after I’d done the whole car, and I think I used it too thickly… so it’ll definitely last a long time  I was getting put off by the £45 price tag, but I would say that’s well worth it now I’ve actually used it

It just fell apart on it’s own. Honest :couch:

Not the neatest job I’ve done, but I’m happy with it. A nice home-made aux-in port for my Eonon head unit. Rather than having a cable trailing into the glovebox, I thought I’d have a port like the higher spec facelift models by the handbrake, so I made this

Seeing as it was a nice day yesterday and I didn’t have much today, I went out on my bike (Well, I say my bike… more my Dad’s. I’m too lazy to buy my own and he never uses it ) and cycled down to Teston, then back into Maidstone following the river…

I thought I’d share some photos I took while I was out

Cheers,
Mike :salute:

I bought myself a D5108E in the group buy from Eonon on Friday and it got delivered today  I was so excited that I tried to fit it on my lunch break, so rushed to Halfords and bought some radio removal keys, then went about slicing my finger open on the packaging for the removal keys, getting blood everywhere, breaking what used to be the antenna socket on my CD30 (plug is still OK which is the main thing) and forgetting to take a screwdriver with me to take off the delivery plates…  So that lunch break was very productive… took the CD30 out, broke it, and put it back in

At the end of the day, I remembered to pick up the screwdriver off my desk and went straight out to the car to fit it. A colleague timed me as taking onto 28 minutes to fit it completely  I just need to drill in my new aux-in port

Had a play with it on the way home, and the sat nav isn’t bad, but it could do with a lot of improvement… so I’ve been spending the evening trying to change the sat nav software… TomTom was in Brazilian, so I didn’t know what I was pressing and it closed itself… and iGo gives me a memory error  So I’m about to put Sygic back on it for now and I’ll have another play tomorrow…

So, here are some pics  I’d heard the colour match on the piano black wasn’t perfect… and I’ll be honest, you can really tell in these pictures… but I only noticed it when I took these pictures, I couldn’t really tell when I fitted it or when I was playing with it. It looks fine to my eyes, and I’ve got pretty good eyes

I’m quite happy with it so far  I might make a little video of it in action at the weekend

Cheers,
Mike :salute:

It’ll be held on Sunday 24th April 2011 (starting about 9am, probably) and it’s being hosted by the great guys at AmD in Essex The price for the day will be £35 for two runs and a print out, with access to free tea, coffee and biscuits. If we have 20+ attendees, then there will be a free BBQ as well!

If you’re interested, or would like more information, please take a look at our thread on the Astra Owners Network forum: http://www.astraownersnetwork.co.uk/showthread.php?t=113898