Right now I’m blogging from my palm treo 680. I always get my good blogging ideas when I’m away from my computer, I always have my phone on me. So now I can blog whenever the heck I want.
mo:Blog is the tool I’m using on my phone. I know there are others, but this is the first I’ve tried. It doesn’t have all of the features of a desktop blogging tool, such as Ecto (my app of choice for the mac), but it is sufficient for my needs when I’m away from my Mac.
Anyhow, I’ll give a full review when I’m on a full size keyboard, my hands are starting to cramp, hehe
So I had about 20 GBs in a folder on one server and I wanted to move that folder to another server. So I decided the best way to do this (and maybe the only way) would be to do it through the shell. Both of my servers are linux, and both allow login via ssh. I logged in to the server that I’m going to copy the files to and then I used rsync and here is the command I used:
rsync -av -e ssh username@oldserverhost:/home/old_folder/ /home/new_folder/
This was done on Dreamhost servers so the folders might be different on other servers. This was very helpful for me and I hope it will be for you too. One last thing. the v in the command stands for verbose. If you don’t want to view what is taking place in the transfer, leave the v out.
Technorati Tags: coding, help, tutorials
I’m not sure if anyone else knew this, but I couldn’t find anywhere on how to do this. I use xampp as my local web server and to start apache and mysql you have to go into terminal, login as the super user an then type the command to start it. Well this started to get tedious and I wanted to run 1 command to start xampp. This is how I did it.
I used automator to accomplish my task. Open automator, on the left click automator under applications an then in the list that shows up to the right, drag Run Applescript in the pane to the right. Once you have your applescript box up, type this in there:
do shell script “/Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/mampp start” password “password” with administrator privileges
Make sure you tupe it all on one line, if it word wraps for you, that is ok, just don’t manually hit return. Once you have this in the input box, change “password” to whatever your super user password is. After you do this click compile. Now you can click the run button above and this should start up apache and mysql. I then went ahead and saved this as an application in my Applications folder and whenever I need to start it up, I just do it using Quicksilver.
This is a simple process but now I just have to do 1 step instead of 3 or 4. A simple time saver. You could also have this application run at boot so you don’t even have to do anything.
Technorati Tags: applications, coding, mac, tips, tutorials
Todays tutorial covers how to move a selection you have in the finder to any folder of your choosing with a simple hotkey. I show you how to do this by setting up a trigger and using the proxy object “Current Selection.” I ramble on, but you get the idea of what I was going for.
Click Here to view the tutorial - 2 min. 15 sec.
Technorati Tags: applications, mac, Quicksilver, tutorials
Many people just go out and buy a computer, hook it up and get to working or playing on it. I’m sure the average Joe never really understands what goes into getting this computer to function correctly. Is this important, certainly not if you have money to have the geek squad drive their little bug down to your place to get you back up and running. But what about those that don’t have money and they need to troubleshoot what is wrong with their computer. Well, this, believe it or not, is actually not that difficult. You just need to know a few things and you could be on your way to actually knowing a little bit about the machine you trust with your life’s work.
There are just a few components that I’m going to cover, and I’m gonna try not to drag on about things, just tell you enough to understand why your computer needs these components. Lets start with the obvious shall we.
The monitor (or the screen you look at with those eye balls of yours)
This component is amongst the three you use the most. All the visuals of the computer are viewed on the monitor. This is an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) if you have a newer computer, or a CRT (don’t know what that stands for) if you have an older computer. The CRT is a big clunky thing, where the LCD is a thin, sleek piece of hardware. The computer supplies the monitor with images that are transmitted from the video card (we’ll cover this in a second). If your computer is on and you aren’t getting a picture to your monitor than it is either not plugged in, there is a problem with the monitor, or a problem with the video card.
The Mouse and Keyboard
These two components are the tools you use to navigate around on your computer. The keyboard is obviously for typing, hotkeys, or other types of simple or complex input. The mouse is a simple tool used to drag, drop, click, double-click, and just navigate your computer in a simple manner. if your mouse cursor is not moving when you move your mouse, it may not be plugged in or if you have a wireless one the batteries may be dead, or not exist. Same goes for the keyboard. Now onto the more interesting stuff.
Just thought I should point out that over at the Adobe Labs you can now download a public preview of Premiere Pro CS3, After Effects CS3, and Soundbooth CS3. I don’t know about all of you, but I have been waiting for a Universal version of Premiere and After Effects for a long time now. I believe these products will be released in Q3 of 2007, but at least we can try these babies out for now.
SAN JOSE, Calif. — April 16, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced free public previews of Adobe Premiere® Pro CS3, Adobe After Effects® CS3 Professional and Adobe Soundbooth™ CS3 software, components of the recently announced Adobe Creative Suite® 3 Production Premium. Video and creative professionals now have the opportunity to test these new public previews on Adobe Labs at http://labs.adobe.com/ . The final shipping releases will be available worldwide in the third quarter of 2007.
Check these products out here or look below for specific products:
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3
Adobe After Effects CS3
Adobe Soundbooth CS3
Technorati Tags: applications, mac
I had a buddy of mine call me up today and his question was, “Why, when I click on my Firefox icon in the dock, does it ask me if I want to mount the image?” Well my first though was, he didn’t know how to install applications on a mac. I had this problem when I first got my mac as well, and since he is a new Mac user who came from Windows, it is an honest mistake and I was happy to help him out.
When installing applications on a Mac, most of the time there is no installer. Usually you get a .dmg file which is an image file. If you double click the .dmg file it will be mounted and usually open the mounted disk for you. Now you should see a file that has a .app extension. For Firefox I’m assuming it is Firefox.app. What you do with this file is not double click it as if it were an installer, but you want to drag this file into your Applications directory. This will install Firefox for you or whatever application you are trying to install. Simple enough for the experienced, but confusing for the Windows user just switching over.
What my friend did was dragged the icon from the .dmg file into his dock and then unmounted the image. Every time he clicked the icon in the dock, sure enough, the .dmg file was mounted.
So, there you have it, my quick run down of how to install applications on a Mac.
So I got a call today. My friend was asking how I went about getting rid of something and replacing it with something else. For example, remove the sky from a photograph and replace it with a different, better, sky. Well, I walked him through it, he thanked me, and then I thought… Many people may not know how easy this actually is (but it can be complicated depending on how well you want to do it). So, I decided I would do a screencast to show you all how to go about accomplishing this feat with masks. A link to the video is below.
I apologize for the the audio is not being so great, I was using Parallels with Windows installed on my mac, so I don’t think it really works that great for recording audio with the Internal Mic on my Macbook. Anyhow, Enjoy!
I just put together a list of software that I find useful for my mac. You may find them useful as well, so here you go:
Quicksilver
A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.
The Unarchiver
Best uncompressing tool I’ve found.
Parallels
Virtualization Software
Aperture
Excellent replacement for iPhoto, a little more technical, and you have to pay for it, but it is well worth it if you are a photographer.
Google Earth
If you don’t know what this is, I’m really, really sorry…
Google Notifier
A must have if you use Gmail and/or Google Calendar
iGetter
download multiple files with the capability to resume downloads
GarageSale
A program to help you with ebay. It has built in templates and a lot of other cool features.
iTerm
A much better solution to replace the built in mac terminal.
iWork 06
Steve Jobs uses the program Keynote from the iWork package for his presentations. Much better than powerpoint.
OnyX
Use this to tweak Mac OSX beyond what the default capabilities are.
VLC
A must have media player. Plays every kind of media file (that I have found) and has tons of built in codecs.
SuperDuper
Excellent backup software
Toast 8
Awesome burning software
Xslimmer
Xslimmer determines which code your machine needs and removes the rest. This is achieved by removing the code inside the Universal Binaries that does not fit with your machine’s architecture, a code that never gets executed and just wastes your disk space. In addition, Xslimmer eliminates unwanted application localizations. Normally you only use 1 or 2 of the languages in any app. Keep those and let Xslimmer eliminate the rest, recovering your precious disk space.
VirtueDesktops
Multiple desktops (wont need this once leopard is released)
MacTheRipper
DVD Ripping software
FFmpegX
Best compression software for video and audio.
MediaFork
I think it is called handbrake now, it is for dvd ripping too I think.
Adium
Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.
Firefox
Pretty much the best browser ever
Transmit
A very well done ftp program
Textmate
TextMate brings Apple’s approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.
Snapz Pro
Screen Capture and Screen Cast
Azureus
Torrent downloader
UPDATE:
Growl
Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X: it allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications.
Well there you have it, a list of programs I find useful for mac. I’m sure I have more, but I just couldn’t think of them at the time. If you have any great suggestions, be sure to leave them in the comments.
Technorati Tags: applications, mac
If you have never heard of this guy before, he is amazing. I’ve included a video below and after you watch it, lift your jaw from the floor, and wipe away the drool from your mouth, go check him out on you tube. He does a pretty popular song “Africa” by Todo I believe. You all should recognize that one. Anyhow, just wanted to point out this to all those out there who haven’t had the chance to gaze upon an excellent talent. Ladies and gentlemen, Andy McKee…
This also will start a new category, unbelievable. Keep checkin back to find out what other unbelievable things I’ve found.
Technorati Tags: music
