chuyeow.wtf

Reveal currently open files in Mac OS X

2008-06-28T14:10:05+00:00
Something I noticed completely by accident today when I clicked on the titlebar of QuickTime Player today with the Cmd key held down. The "titlebar" is this thing here - I'm not sure that's the right name for it:</p>
</a></div>
</p>
Anyway, if you hold down the Cmd key (aka the Apple key), a menu pops up that shows the folder hierarchy of where the currently opened QuickTime movie is in your filesystem:</p>
</a></div>
</p>
This works in all Mac apps that display the filename of the currently open/focused file in the titlebar.</p>
It's useful for me since my NADD</acronym> means I try to close as many unused windows as possible to adhere to my Cmd-Tab diet - now I can close Finder windows after opening files and be sure that I can get back to them quickly. What about QuickSilver</a>? Yup, I do use (and love) QuickSilver but I don't let it catalog every single file!</p>
Another nice thing about this is that I can easily reveal files in Finder in my favorite text editor (TextMate) without needing to use the project drawer:</p>
</a></div>
</p>
Try the new Mac OS X UI for Firefox 3

2007-11-20T18:13:36+00:00
The Firefox 3 developers have been working on a visual refresh</a> that integrates more tightly into the OS, and the Mac OS X version is looking pretty sweet. Well, public opinion varies greatly - from people who feel that it's a rip off of Safari</a> to those who really like the Brushed Metal look (myself included).</p>
</div>
</p>
Well, if you wanna check out the proposed Mac OS X Firefox 3 UI for yourself, grab yourself a copy of Firefox 3 Beta 1</a> and go get the Proto theme</a>.</p>
What's your SSID?

2007-09-07T20:10:44+00:00
After seeing this amusingly-named SSID</a>, I thought it'd be fun to post the SSID of my wireless network at home:</p>
</div>
</p>
The name is completely not my idea so I claim no credit - I stole it from my girlfriend's brother, who conceived the SSID of "AssAssID".</p>
What's your SSID and have you seen any amusing ones? Or is yours one of the bajillion 'linksys' or 'DLINK' SSIDs in existence?</p>
Adium themes use plain old XHTML, CSS and JS

2007-07-28T14:07:18+00:00
Just a quick note of something I found out while reading Transcending CSS</a>: all the themes</a> (message styles, contact list styles, etc.) in Adium</a> are crafted with our old friends XHTML, CSS and JS. I opened up a few AdiumXtras</a> to see for myself and true enough, <div></code>s and CSS rules make up the style. Very smart decision by the Adium developers.</p>

Prototype 1.5.1 is baaaaad for Safari 1 and 2 users
2007-06-21T19:15:00+00:00
Read the bug fix announcement</a>. Upgrade! This was causing extremely puzzling crashes in Safari on Macs (pre-Safari 3 beta) on one of our applications</a> and I'm glad (in some ways) that the problem lay with the Prototype library.</p>


So what exactly are you looking forward to in Leopard?
2007-06-13T01:02:35+00:00
So there's this big Leopard</a> thing that's the talk of Mac town (well, that and Safari) with all the new features being revealed (officially, at least, to the general public) at WWDC 2007</a>.</p>
</div>

</p>
Some of the features are pretty cool, most of them are mundane. For me, I am really looking forward to:</p>

the new Finder</a> - Finder sucks so bad as a file system interface. I use Path Finder</a>, which incidentally had an upgrade</a> recently to 4.7. The new Finder looks pretty (Cover Flow for files, sexy!) but what I'm really hoping for is a Finder with which you can actually be productive.</li>
Ruby and Rails baked right into Mac OS X</a> - while installing Rails and upgrading Ruby is a breeze on Mac OS X as it is right now, having these installed by default is pretty sweet. Even Capistrano</a> will be included. Now, how one upgrades Ruby is another thing though...</li>
Time Machine</a> - Even though I already own a licensed copy of SuperDuper!</a>, I'm still eager to use Time Machine. I mean, who isn't hooked on the time travel metaphor yet? It's like System Restore</a> done right (with the advantage of hindsight, of course).</li>
</ul>
What are you</strong> looking forward in Leopard?</p>


That "Safari" thing...
2007-06-13T00:34:34+00:00
So what exactly is new in Safari 3</a> (other than the big OMGWTFBBQ over Safari for Windows)? TUAW has the best writeup (with screenshots of course) of the new features in Safari 3</a> I've seen so far. Check it out if you're lazy to try it out - I did install the beta and took it for a test drive, but was never much of a Safari user to recognize what exactly did change in Safari 3 beta, so this helped. I must say the new Find interface is really slick and the draggable tabs has been a long time coming (one of my biggest annoyances with Safari and Camino).</p>


Toilets and Linux evangelism
2007-06-05T14:44:54+00:00
Pardon the self-promoting cross-linking: Toilets and Linux evangelism (or what we use to build Bezurk)</a> is an entry I just posted on the brand new Bezurk Blog</a> about how the toilet is a good place to spread the word. </p>
If you've found other neat ways to use the free Ubuntu stickers (or even the Apple stickers that comes with iPods), do post it!</p>


ImageMagick port "broken" temporarily
2007-05-29T19:15:50+00:00
Just in case anyone runs into this problem (which, I might add, would probably go away when either the portfile is updated or the source mirror fixes the problem) while installing ImageMagick</a> via MacPorts</a>...</p>
While trying to install Rmagick</a> on my spanking, new, glossy, kakkoii MacBook</a>, MacPorts reported a checksum error with the ImageMagick source tarball:</p>
Target com.apple.checksum returned: Unable to verify file checksums</p></blockquote>
At first, I thought it was an outdated portfile but even after a sudo port selfupdate</code> and sudo port -d sync</code>, the checksum error was still occurring (checksum of the file: 4bcb4264c2170fe562b10a732f43e7af, expected checksum in the portfile: 9469ce1b1b645f8c728158cc434b0ff8).</p>
Turns out, the first listed master site (where MacPorts gets its source files from), http://imagemagick.linux-mirror.org/download/ is hosting a source tarball with a bad checksum. Digging around the man page for port</code> a bit, and switching the order of the master source sites solved it, so it was just a case of a bad file on one of the mirror sites.</p>
sudo port edit imagemagick</code> to edit the portfile and change the source mirror to a legit one. You should see something like this:</p>
master_sites \
  http://imagemagick.linux-mirror.org/download/ \
  http://ftp.surfnet.nl/pub/ImageMagick/ \
  sourceforge:imagemagick \
  ftp://ftp.imagemagick.net/pub/${name}/ \
  ftp://ftp.fifi.org/pub/ImageMagick/ \
  ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/${name}/</code></pre>
Just move an alternative master_site to the top of the list (I used the SourceForge one). There probably is a way to specify the master_site on the command line with port install</code> but I've had just about enough of reading man pages and the now nearly unfindable MacPorts documentation (whatever happened to the old Darwin Ports site</a> that had great documentation?)</p>
Anyway, I've written to the webmaster of the mirror site linux-mirror.org, so this would probably be fixed for all two of you who are gonna be installing ImageMagick via MacPorts within these few days or so. Still, it was a good exercise in debugging bad port installations.</p>


Growl integration in Firefox 3
2007-05-05T18:39:28+00:00
Some of the latest Firefox 3 aka Minefield</a> trunk builds include Growl</a> integration! This is probably a non-event for anyone other than Mac users, but hey Growl notifications without needing to install an extension</a>? Pretty nice.</p>
</div>

</p>
Get a nightly here: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/</a></p>
To test Firefox 3 nightlies without possibly messing up your existing profile (preferences, extensions, what have you), use the Profile Manager</a> to create a new profile just for testing. Way less stupid then trying to load up 48 tabs from your current profile in Firefox 3 and then seeing most of the extensions fail to work (which was what I tried to do, once).</p>
Source: Bug 362685 â€“ Growl Integration for Mac OS X (nsIAlertsService)</a></p>


Get your Rails tests results via Growl notifications
2007-04-01T14:25:05+00:00
I've been using Autotest (part of the ZenTest</a> package) while testing my Rails applications and never thought of asking for more. After all, getting my tests (well, specs</a> actually) run automatically whenever I make a relevant change and</em> having diff</code>-level granularity on which tests Autotest re-runs is pretty damn useful enough. That is, until I came across this RSpec and Autotest with Growl notifications blog entry</a> (on JavaBlogs</a>, no less!)</p>
How're these for red</span>/green</span> test results?</p>
Tests (specs) passing!</strong></p>
</div>

</p>
Tests (specs) failing :(</strong></p>
</div>

</p>
Much better! Now I don't have to glance at my terminal window (I recently realized how painful it is while coding with a single monitor) and get unobtrusive notifications.</p>
Unfortunately, this is Mac-only (or wherever Growl</a> is supported). I had to follow links to several blog entries to get it setup nicely (see Growl + Autotest Rails with Zentest 3.4.0</a> and Green goodness with autotest + growl</a> - those are my references).</p>
Basically you need Growl</a> installed, and the growlnotify</code></a> tool in your path. growlnotify</code> can be found in the Extras/growlnotify</code> directory in the Growl dmg (for example, after you've mounted the Growl-0.x.x.dmg, you can find it here: /Volumes/Growl/Extras/growlnotify</code>). Just copy the growlnotify</code> executable into your path (I copied it into /opt/local/bin</code> since I'm using Darwin Ports and don't have a /usr/local/bin</code> directory). Verify it's running by entering:</p>
growlnotify -m "Testing growlnotify" Boo Ya!</code></pre>
into a terminal window. You should see a Growl notification.</p>
Now, you need to create an Autotest hook by creating an autotest init file in your home directory named .autotest</code>, and copy this chunk of text in:</p>

module Autotest::Growl
  def self.growl title, msg, img, pri=0, sticky="" 
    system "growlnotify -n autotest --image #{img} -p #{pri} -m #{msg.inspect} #{title} #{sticky}" 
  end
Autotest.add_hook :ran_command do |at|
output = at.results.last.slice(/(\d+)\s.*specifications?,\s(\d+)\s.*failures?/)
if output =~ /[1-9]\sfailures?/
growl "Test Results", "#{output}", "/Data/Pictures/Icons/rails_fail.png", 2, "-s"
else
growl "Test Results", "#{output}", "/Data/Pictures/Icons/rails_ok.png"
end
end
end</code></pre></p>
Replace the paths to the pass/fail icons (as you can see, mine are in /Data/Pictures/Icons/</code>) with the correct paths to any images you want to display (grab them from Green goodness with autotest + growl</a> or roll your own). You can change the parameters passed to growlnotify</code> however you want (use growlnotify -h</code> to see what parameters it acccepts). The pri</code> parameter sets the priority level of the message (test failures come up with a priority of 2, hence the red background of the Growl notification). Passing -s</code> to sticky</code> tells Growl to keep the notification sticky. If you're running your (auto)tests on a remote server (e.g. in a Continuous Integration system), you can even use growlnotify</code> to send remote notifications (see the -H</code> switch) to your development workstations!</p>
Lovely! I love you, MacBook Pro serial no. W86280NAVWW (despite your broken DVD drive and you randomly freezing up on me when you get too hot).</p>


IMAP-IDLE plugin for Apple Mail
2007-02-25T02:08:40+00:00
Yup I switched to Apple Mail from Thunderbird a few months back, primary reason being back then I was barely able to run my developer applications on 512MB of RAM (Apple Mail runs lighter than Thunderbird, unfortunately). It's comforting to find that there is an IMAP-IDLE plugin for Apple Mail</a> (Thunderbird got its IDLE support way back in 2004</a>.)</p>
What's IDLE? Well, quoting myself:</p>
Simply put, IDLE is a command that allows IMAP email servers to transmit updates to the client in real time. This saves the client from having to continuously poll the server to achieve the effect of new mail appearing immediately. All in all, an exceptionally useful command that saves Thunderbird the work of polling IMAP servers continuously.</p></blockquote>
So anyway, it's really simple to install and use (just simple checkboxes for enabling IDLE for your IMAP accounts).</p>
</div>

</p>
Remember to configure Mail to stop polling these mail accounts every X minutes or so now. Enjoy the geeky feeling of knowing you've just saved several CPU cycles and a few kilobytes of bandwidth.</p>


Sharing a USB printer from Mac OS X to Windows
2007-02-05T20:47:08+00:00
Not too long ago I was asked to use hook up the Mac Mini that was collecting dust in our office to our HP Deskjet printer (HP Deskjet 1280 to be exact) and have it function as a "print server" of sorts (we have since replaced it with a NAS</acronym> with print server functionality, which subsequently broke - that's how long this post has been sitting in my drafts folder). While setting it up to be shared with Mac machines was a cinch (we have a grand total of 3 Mac machines in the office, including the Mac Mini and my treasured MacBook Pro), sharing the printer from the Mac (Mini) to Windows machines was significantly more difficult. After some trial and error, first with what made the most sense, and then with stuff I could glean off the Internet, I finally arrived at something that works. Maybe this would be useful for the next unfortunate bloke that needs to do this sharing of printers from Mac to Windows machines without a print server.</p>
First point of reference: Print from Windows XP to a shared Mac printer tip on Mac OS X Hints</a>. The tip suggests you select a PostScript driver in Windows after finding it on the network (which requires you to do several things first, but we will come to that later). This worked, but it was sub-optimal</strong> because you couldn't use the printer driver software to do stuff like 2-up printing (i.e. print 2 pages per side per sheet). This post will show you how to share a USB printer from Mac OS X to Windows PCs with full driver capability</strong>.</p>

On the Mac (the one that the USB printer that you want to share is connected to), go to the Sharing preferences pane and ensure Printer Sharing</strong> and Windows Sharing</strong> are both turned on.</li>
Fire up your browser and go to http://127.0.0.1:631</a> - this is the web interface to CUPS</acronym></a>. When asked to enter a password, login with your Mac OS X user account (it has to be an administrator account).</li>
Go to the Printers tab and add a new printer</strong> (yes, in addition</em> to any existing printer configuration that already exist for the same printer). Choose a name that's short and descriptive (no spaces). For the purposes of this guide, let's call it 'uberprinter'. Best to keep it under 12 characters since Windows is finicky.</li>
When asked to select a device, select USB printer</strong>.</li>
You'll be asked for a Device URI. To find out, open up a terminal and type lpinfo -v</code>. You should see your USB printer coming up. Mine came up as 'direct usb://HP/Deskjet%201280?serial=CN516851RPUN'. Copy and paste this (without the 'direct' part</strong> - i.e., I'd have copied 'usb://HP/Deskjet%201280?serial=CN516851RPUN') into the 'Device URI' field.</li>
Select a 'Make' of 'Raw</strong>'. Keep going until the printer is added.</li>
You're done configuring from the Mac</strong>. But before you go, determine your Mac's IP address (do a 'ifconfig' in a shell or fire up System Profiler and check out the 'Network' item) - note it down somewhere. Now it's time to hook up your Windows machine to use the shared printer.</li>
OK now go to your Windows machine and add a new printer (Control Panel -> Printers and Faxes). Select 'A network printer... blah blah'. Don't browse for the printer, you will enter its IP address directly in the 'URL' field. Enter 'http://your.macs.ip.address:631/printers/uberprinter' (replacing 'your.macs.ip.address' with your Mac's IP address and 'uberprinter' with the short name you gave your printer). If you can't remember your printer's name, just scurry back to the Mac and browse to http://127.0.0.1:631/printers/</a>. You should be able to see the printer you added listed there - its name is linked there.</li>
Now, all that's left is to install the correct Windows printer driver on the Windows machine. If you're lucky Windows already has your driver, if not do whatever you need to get the proper driver - after all, the purpose of jumping through all these hoops is to get full printer driver functionality off the shared Mac printer.</li>
</ol>
That's it. That'll teach you for not getting a print server or one of those new printers with network functionality.</p>
Problems?</h3>
Some readers wrote in with their own difficulties and have kindly allowed me to share their solutions. First off, Patrick McKrell who had a solution for cases where you still are just not able to print from the Windows machine (it involves killing a daemon so it's pretty sweet).</p>
Thank you for making available your instructions for sharing a USB printer connected to a Mac using OS X with a Windows PC.  All of your points worked flawlessly on the Mac.  My Mac is a B&W G3 running OS X 10.2.8.  The printer is an HP PSC 1510.</p>
...</p>
Back to Windows Add Printer.  Is my driver there? No.  I browsed the Windows file system to Program Files/HP/.  No luck.  Couldn't find or add my driver.  Next I unplugged the printer's USB cable from the Mac and into the PC.  Windows detected the new hardware, created whatever files it needed, and automatically created the USB-connected PSC 1500 series printer in Printers and Faxes.  Well, that's pretty darn close. I opened the printer's properties, changed the port from USB to Internet Port (as per your configuration guidance), sent a print job....and nothing.  Hmmm.</p>
Finally, I recalled seeing someone's web post --thanks to your point of reference.  I followed the poster's instructions, and, yeah, it prints, and in color.  Thanks again, Chu, for your post.  It was easy to follow, and importantly, it worked with my setup (despite the color issue).</p>
Patrick McKrell</p></blockquote>
The solution? Change your CUPS configuration to allow raw printing:</p>
Basically, I saw that every job on the windows side had "error".</p>
After looking at the error logs for cups on the mac box (/var/log/cups/), I noticed this line repeatedly:</p>
print_job: Unsupported format 'application/octet-stream'!</p>
Did some googling, and found a post with the answer:</p>
 >

 > You probably need to uncomment the following lines in

 > /etc/cups/mime.types and /etc/cups/mime.convs:

 >

 >

 > /etc/cups/mime.types</strong>:

 > #application/octet-stream

 >

 >

 > /etc/cups/mime.convs</strong>:

 > #application/octet-stream application/vnd.cups-raw 0

 > -

 >

 >

 > That will allow raw printing.</p>
Then, kill -HUP the cups daemon, and you're good to go.</p></blockquote>


VLC 0.8.6 - full screen controller panel
2006-12-26T16:46:10+00:00
VLC media player</a> 0.8.6 (changelog</a>) was released a few weeks ago so this may be old news, but I am clearing my backlog of drafts.</p>
Mac OS X users, if you watch videos in full screen mode (like I do most of the time), you'd be delighted to know that they added a full screen controller Ã  la</em> the video player in iTunes:</p>
</div>

</p>
That was one of my pet peeves with VLC when I was still using Windows as my main desktop OS, and I'd stayed true to Media Player Classic</a> right to the point where I switched to OS X. Media Player Classic is Windows-only, so I had to switch to VLC as well (QuickTime player never impressed me and I wasn't willing to pay for the Pro version). The lack of a full controller in full screen mode and the inability to move to specific spots in the video timeline with sufficient granularity seems to have been fixed with this new full screen controller panel.</p>
And while they still haven't made it possible to pause a video by clicking on the video output (which was the case in Media Player Classic), I've mostly compensated for it by hitting the space bar. Now that they've added a right-click context menu to the video output screen, the same can be done but in 2 clicks with just the mouse - not optimal but it does feel better to see a context menu pop up when right-clicking. I guess that's the Windows user in me talking - I still feel that almost everything I see should have a context menu or it just feels wrong.</p>
Oh and they added support for the Apple Remote Control. Works great, I just have to remember to take out my remote control and use it next time I'm sitting back watching a movie or anime.</p>


HP laptop with an Apple sticker
2006-12-14T11:25:30+00:00
Saw this in a MacDonald's at a local shopping mall:</p>
</div>

</p>
If you can look past the fuzziness of the photo, it's actually someone using a HP laptop with an Apple sticker. Now, if only I can get a HP sticker for my MacBook Pro...</p>


How to setup your Thrash/Sent/Drafts folders for IMAP on Mail.app
2006-12-04T13:07:46+00:00
How to setup your Trash/Sent/Drafts folders for IMAP on Mail.app</a>. "Select mailbox, Mailbox -> Use this mailbox for..., Sent". (OK I misspelled 'trash' in the post title - see trackback below.)</p>


MacHeist Mission One 101
2006-11-14T21:11:01+00:00
Update: seems like several people are coming into this thread after searching for "MacHeist combination</a>" - this post is for last year's MacHeist. For spoilers and solutions, I suggest you go to the MacHeist Backroom forum</a>.</ins></p>
If you are a Mac user you'd probably have heard of the much-hyped MacHeist</a>. (I bet non-Mac users were probably annoyed with the coverage of MacHeist at some point on sites like Digg</a>.) Even I was late to join up with MacHeist because of its "I'm not gonna tell you what it's about but it's gonna rock your world" press and the oh-so-exclusive invite system (which is surprisingly rather effective despite being probably the most used viral "marketing technique") - I got into the whole MacHeist thing courtesy of the registration link posted over at TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog)</a>. (Oh and yes, I do know that by blogging about it I've fallen prey to the MacHeist hype, but I can't help myself</em>. Or maybe I just need to blog something that's easy to write about.)</p>
</div>

</p>
And so I signed up, and after being completely muddled about what this MacHeist thing is all about, came upon a mission briefing with a very well-done voiceover (love that voice, sounds just right). Turns out MacHeist is a detective (or insert snooping, heist-related adjective here) game where you (try to) accomplish missions and get "loot" in return.</p>
</div>

</p>
Not what I'd expected, and I almost didn't play along until I checked out the MacHeist forums</a> (requires a MacHeist account) and saw that the sheer volume of activity. A few thousand posts in a couple of hundred topics may not look like a lot, but it's pretty amazing for what I assume is a small user base (invite-only system) and you always have to remember MacHeist is really only a week old or so.</p>
</div>

</p>
Now that got my attention again. Lurking around the forums a bit, I found general praise of the "loot" from completing Mission One. And turns out the "loot" is a bunch of free Mac software, which I really</em> should have guessed. "Free", "legitimate", "Mac software" - ze Mac lover in me cannot resist! I went back, re-read Mission One, and sent out an email to what I hoped was an automated email bot (it would be disturbing if someone was actually replying to all the MacHeist emails) in an attempt to dig out what I was told were much-coveted iPhone specs. It was fun for a while trying to convince the email bot to send me what I needed, but it got old when I had to, you know, get the damn answer without running in circles (with circular email).</p>
Lurking around the forums more when I got stuck, I came across this stickied Official Mission #1 Thread</a> and it was all easy mode from there. So yes, the answers are all there</a> if you're lazy or impatient (I am both).</p>
</div>

</p>
After completing the mission, you get the combination code to your safe, where you can find the fruits of your labor, loot! Well, about the reward, I have to say I was disappointed - perhaps I was expecting something like free licenses of TextMate or Parallels, or even Disco (though I have actually purchased licenses for all 3 - this Mac thing is turning me into someone who actually buys software - the horror!). Anyway, the rewards were full copies of Chat Transcript Manager</a>, Assignment Planner</a>, and Soulver</a>. Two out of three applications for students... I got Soulver to play with its gimmicky maths functionality, didn't bother with the rest (not to put them down, but personally don't have any use for Chat Transcript Manager being a full-time Adium user nor for Assignment Planner).</p>
Despite the anti-climax, I really think the MacHeist guys have done an awesome job (they got me for sure - I'm already anticipating the next heist and more loot!). It's an excellent way to promote Mac software (some of the lesser known products as well), and to get people talking. I can imagine they aren't doing too shabby with ad placements and sponsorship. And really, that's a damn polished setup they have there with the missions. Oh and before I end this post, if you need an invite, let me know (just leave a comment), still have 4 to give out. Well, if the registration link posted over at TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog)</a> no longer works that is.</p>


Muting the Mac startup sound
2006-11-01T19:40:19+00:00
One of the mildly annoying things of owning a Mac laptop is how it can draw unwanted attention with its startup chime when it boots up. There was once it went off rather loudly while I was on the train and I'd imagine I must have looked rather sheepishly embarrassed. From then on I kept trying to remember to lower or mute my Mac before shutting down, but it still slips my mind most of the time. To be honest, I think that even the Windows startup chime sounds better than the one on my MacBook Pro.</p>
So I was rather pleased when I saw someone had created a simple application (preference pane, rather) called StartupSound.prefPane</a> that allows you to control the startup volume or mute it completely.</p>
</div>

</p>
Intel Mac owners take note</strong>: I grabbed version 1.1b1 of StartupSound.prefPane off the MacUpdate page for StartupSound.prefPane</a> though, as I noticed it said "StartupSound.prefPane now works on an Intel-based Mac" for that version. Wouldn't want to try the stable release version (1.0.4) since it's for PowerPC-based Macs.</p>


Native magnification in Mac OS X
2006-09-30T20:44:06+00:00
Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) had an minor update (version 10.4.8) not long ago and while the changelog</a> seemed pretty uninteresting on the most part, there was one unannounced feature that's pretty cool - Zoom Using Scroll Wheel</a>. If you've already updated to 10.4.8, you can try it out for yourself now by holding the Ctrl key and scrolling up the mousewheel. Cool, yeah? You can still do whatever you want in the magnified view (I took a screenshot) so it's not simply a cheap static magnification (just as Expose windows aren't static screen captures of your open windows).</p>
</div>

</p>


Duplicating CDs/DVDs in Mac OS X
2006-09-30T20:42:52+00:00
When my dad asked me to duplicate a video CD, I decided I'd try to get it done on my new Mac (to, you know, get wow-ed by how easy it is on a Mac compared to the old way I used to do things on Windows). As it turns out, I was rather disappointed by the default Mac OS X burning functionality provided via Finder and Disk Utility, though I'd say it's still way ahead of the default disc burning in Windows XP. Burn folders? Dig them. Creating and customizing .dmg files (disk images) and then burning them? Love the UNIX toolbox-y goodness of how all this is done in Disk Utility.app. Duplicating CDs or DVDs? Not that great.</p>
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I couldn't get the "create image from CD, then burn the image" method to work with Disk Utility - it created a .dmg file without my files in it and I didn't burn it because I didn't want to risk getting a coaster.</p>
I asked a couple of Mac users and they didn't know how to duplicate CDs easily as well (one of them copied the files to disc and then burn them onto the blank disc). Some Googling turned up this thread</a> which, while rather old, seems to show that there's no easy way to duplicate a disc with Mac OS X.</p>
Hmm, this just feels wrong to me, or more likely, Apple decided to intentionally leave disc duplication out (probably for digital rights issues or the like). I'm really missing the functionaliy that Nero provides with an easy "Duplicate disc" function. Does anyone know how to easily duplicate a disc in Mac OS X or can recommend a good application that does so?</p>


Vibrant Ink TextMate theme for Eclipse
2006-09-28T20:40:02+00:00
Spent some time tinkering with Eclipse's preferences today as I was really missing the Vibrant Ink theme for TextMate</a> and Eclipse is looking pretty now...</p>


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The only thing that I still couldn't figure out was how to change the color of the folding/breakpoint bar next to the gutter. And I'm really starting to like the Monaco font that seems to be the default programmer's font on Macs (I found a Windows version of Monaco</a> but haven't tried it).</p>
I guess TextMate envy still exists even when you are on a Mac with a registered version of TextMate heh.</p>
Here's my Eclipse preferences</a> (I just did a File -> Export -> Preferences). It seems Eclipse only allows a full export/import so you may want to be careful to backup your existing preferences</strong> before importing mine.</ins></p>


So what's been happening?
2006-09-22T20:38:59+00:00
No I didn't "die" again... Here's what's been happening lately:</p>

I got a MacBook Pro. I've been rather blown away by the whole Mac OS X experience. Yes, I do have some gripes, but it's one hell of a nice OS. I hope to write up on my whole "Switch" experience sometime soon.</li>
I threw up a quick redesign of the blog... As you can tell (unless you're reading the RSS feed) it's been "in progress" for over a week - this coincides with the purchase of my MacBook Pro (*wink*</em>). In any case, I wanted to get Windows running on the MacBook so I could test the site in Internet Explorer - to that end, I've setup Parallels (see Lifehacker article on Parallels</a>) but it's way too slow on 512MB of RAM. Hopefully the 2GB RAM upgrade that's been out of stock happens soon.</li>
I've also been working on a Rails project</a> with Jon Tirsen</a> and Michael Lee (who happen to work at ThoughtWorks). Jon has been busy lately (doing some really exciting stuff!), so I've only had the pleasure of working closely with Mike.</li>
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