Posted by sh1mmer on Apr 27, 2007 in
Mac I love finding stuff like this. Jurgen Scheible has put together an awesome set of PyS60 tutorial examples. There are loads of snippets covering a heap of topics which are really easy to read. It’s been a while since I did anything with PyS60 but with my N95 on the way I thought I would brush up again and build a few things.
I really want to get to grips with PyS60 and Cocoa so I can build bluetooth based apps which talk. Let’s see if I get there!
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Mac, Productivity, pys60, python, s60, nokia, bluetooth
Posted by sh1mmer on Apr 25, 2007 in
Mac Mac OS X has had locations for a long time. These are sets of preferences based on a ‘location’. However there has never been an official way to automatically switch between locations.
Applications like Location X have gone some of the way to solving this problem by allowing you to switch location based on the wifi access point you are connected to. You can run scripts or actions based on where you are switching to from where. This would allow you to stop your Torrent client in the office but then restart it automatically when you get home, for example.
However access point name is not the most indicative thing. We use Be Internet at home and their hardware refuses to be renamed from ‘BeBox’. If any of my friends also had a ‘BeBox’ access point my laptop would run my home settings at their house as well.
MarcoPolo attempts to address these issues by using ‘hints’ to guess your location. For example if you have a USB mouse you keep on your desk at work, then having it plugged in means you are at your desk, at work (duh!). By building up sets of hints instead of hard rules MarcoPolo attempts to switch your location (and run scripts) in a smarter way. I have to say I love the idea. Not least because it’s free and the developer David Symonds has said he is going to release it under the GPL.
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Productivity, mac, locationx, marcopolo, locationswitching
Posted by sh1mmer on Apr 24, 2007 in
Mac As much as I hate to admit it Macs and Mac apps sometimes crash. However there is a great way to automatically restart applications without touching that mouse (bleh!). An article on Macworld looks at automatically restarting crashed programs. It uses standard OS X UNIX stuff like Launchd via the FOSS Lingon.
I just banished my Quicksilver dock icon (and yes I used to restart Quicksilver without a mouse anyway). You might want to do the same.
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osx, mac, lingon, quicksilver, crash, launchd
Posted by sh1mmer on Apr 21, 2007 in
Mac To do what it says on the tin (or at least in the title) run:
sudo dscl -p / -append /Groups/GROUPNAMEHERE users USERNAMESHERE
It was a pain to find how to do this, so I thought I would post it up to make it easier for others. I discovered that www (the Mac apache user) is not in the wheel group so I added it. It conveniently allows me to chgrp stuff for apache to be able to write too as well as my own user.
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Mac, Productivity, commandline
Posted by sh1mmer on Apr 8, 2007 in
Mac I’ve been looking for this for ages, and finally I found it ymail.app. However, the developer Eli is no longer actively maintaining it and it doesn’t work with Y! Mail Beta.
Since we have a new API for Y! Mail hopefully someone can patch this project up from what is on Sourceforge. If you want to do this please contact me at tom_croucher@yahoo.com and I’ll see if I can put you in touch with someone from the Yahoo! mail team.
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Mac, Productivity, ymail, yahoomail, ymail.app
Posted by sh1mmer on Apr 7, 2007 in
Mac Finally, a new version of Sticky Windows is available. It’s a universal binary. It costs $20, however. I love the concept, however it was previously a bit arsey on Tiger on my MacBook Pro.
The general idea is that you drag a window to the side of the screen, where it sticks as a tab. Effectively this is just a different way of minimising your applications, but one that keeps them discretely in sight. Simple, yet effective.
This post was brought to you via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.
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Mac, Productivity, tuaw, stickwindows
Posted by sh1mmer on Apr 6, 2007 in
Mac My mac needs:
- A way to sync files with my bluetooth phone
- A way to download all my photos from my bluetooth phone and import them into iPhoto
- A way to lock the screen and run some Applescript without worrying that my script is going to crash, or take too long to actually lock the screen
- A way to run scheduled tasks when I wake from sleep if they missed their time slot
- A GTD ticker that integrates with a GTD program to show me the current task (or three) for the current context
- A way to use the spelling context menus with the keyboard
- A way to control modem dialing from Quicksilver
- A way to control VPN connections from Quicksilver
- A way to pipe the output of commands on remote terminals to the local clipboard without using a mouse or the clunky arrow-key highlighting thing
… among other things
Update: Added point about copying to clipboard from remote machines
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Quicksilver, AppleScript, Mac, Productivity, gtd, gettingthingsdone, bluetooth, wishlist, isync
Posted by sh1mmer on Mar 27, 2007 in
Mac The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) posted about AppFresh today. It helps automate the process of updating apps that don’t have auto-update installed (or updating ones you haven’t run recently).
I have around 300 apps in my apps folder plus 30 something pref panes. While I don’t claim to use all these things constantly I have been trying to play the field. Keep up to date with all those apps is a bit of a pain. MacUpdate or VersionTracker and I Use This help, but it’s too much effort.
Right now it just seems to extract them to your desktop, but I would like to see if progress to be like CaminoKnight. That would rock.
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Mac, Productivity, appfresh, caminoknight
Posted by sh1mmer on Mar 14, 2007 in
Mac The software I use to edit my blog, Marsedit has been under new management for a while. Ranchero who makeNewsgator who own the excellent NetNewsWire sold it off to Red Sweater. However, it seems to be going really well!
Since the ‘takeover’ there have been a promising number of minor updates and the new developer Daniel Jalkut is really responsive. There is also now an IRC channel ##marsedit on irc.Freenode.net.
Daniel also posted about the ability to edit text in almost any editor by pressing Cmd+J. I now have mine set to TextMate for when the posts get a little hairy.
Keep up the great work Dan!
Update: Dan put me right on the business deal, I felt like Valleywag for a second.
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Mac, Productivity, blogs, marsedit
Posted by sh1mmer on Mar 6, 2007 in
Mac I was a bit sceptical about TextMate at first. However, the more I use it the more I’m persuaded that it really is a true challenger to BB Edit.
The main thing that makes me say this is bundles. It the crazy extensibility of them that blows me away. I still admit I’m not totally savvy with the lingo. However seeing the amazing integration of tools people have made with bundles is great.
One of the things I especially like right now are the ability to create new grammars which include other grammars. This is amazing because it allows you to simply reference another grammar for inclusion. So anything that is updated in the grammar proper falls through to the included grammar. This means that if you have a language like HTML it’s possible to easily deal with complexity like embedded Javascript, for example.
The Javascript bundles that deals with minification and delinting rocks, that kind of stuff should be just part of your IDE and the way text mate does it, that becomes something that the community can provide.
Finally, Macromates have a great resource with training screencast videos. It’s available as a podcast from that page if you want to stay updated. Well worth a look to quickly buff up on how to use aspects of the interface.
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Mac, Productivity, Web Development, textmate, bbedit, javascript, jslint