2011
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Upgrading to Lion: tips and tricks
Oct 2011
I've finally decided to upgrade my Mac operating system from Snow Leopard (10.6.8) to Lion (10.7.2). Not really for the new features such as Mission Control and LaunchPad (which, although pretty cool, are not going to change my life), but mostly because the new OS is well integrated with iCloud. Sharing my iCal calendars, Address Book contacts, and other useful stuff across my Apple computers and mobile devices is going to be a digital-life-changer, hopefully for the better.
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Opening a Finder window from Impromptu (or how to use the AppleScript bridge)
Jan 2011
Imagine you have a bunch of audio samples you want to load up while live coding with Impromptu, but you can't remember exactly their names. It would be handy to open the corresponding Finder window directly from Scheme, without too much clicking around. Doable or not?
2010
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Installing Mercurial on OSx 10.6.5
Dec 2010
Mercurial is a free, distributed source control management tool. It efficiently handles projects of any size and offers an easy and intuitive. That's what you read on its website, at least. I decided to give it a go mainly because I was looking forward to use a decentralized version control system for a couple of side projects I'm working on; moreover, because a friend pointed out that BitBucket (an online free code-hosting service based on Mercurial) has a free plan that doesn't force you to make your projects public by default - like most other competitor services do. Free + private = time to test it!
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Editing PDF metadata on OSx (ie: having the Kindle display the right title/author with pdfs)
Oct 2010
One of the cool things you get to do with a Kindle is being able to access your pdf library on the go; however soon enough I ran into the problem of getting all the pdf files to show up with the right metadata, e.g. name, author, creator etc..
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Back to iMovie HD ...
Jun 2010
Have you ever edited a movie using the new iMovie 7 or 8? Well I tried a couple of times, and it's a dreadful experience.
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Apple's iPad has been announced..
Jan 2010
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MacBook: getting the backlight to behave the way you want
Jan 2010
Ever wanted to switch the keyboard's backlight on even if there's daylight? Or to have it dance at the rhythm of your itunes playlist?
2009
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Pong screensaver
Oct 2009
Among various other useful freebies, Rogue Amoeba software is giving away for free Pong Saver, a nice little screensaver that emulates this classic arcade game... cool!
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MySQL-Python and Apple OSX 10.5 (Leopard)
Aug 2009
UPDATE 30/12/09 : Snow Leopard and most recent versions of MySQL-python have broken the recipe below: you'd better check this blog post for an updated version (it worked for me). In a nutshell, the new method involves using the Macports installation if you're on Leopard, or specifying your 64-bit architecture during the compile process if you're on Snow Leopard... but if you're still getting errors, there's nothing else to do than invoking the almighty google for help . .
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Freeze any webapp with Fluid
Aug 2009
Just found out about FLuid through the THisWeekInDjango podcast. It's a Site Specific Browser (SSBs) that lets you run each of your favorite WebApps as a separate desktop application. Fluid is an alternative to Mozilla's Prism, another SSB that is much less integrated with the apple operating system.
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Bug: OSx 10.5.7 - Macbook sleeps once, freezes second time
Jun 2009
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Opening UIF files on Mac
Apr 2009
The UIF file extension stands for Universal Image Format. An UIF file contains a compressed disk image – basically it is an exact copy of a CD or a DVD. Just like the more common ISO filetype, the UIF format is typically used to create CD/DVD backups.
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NetNewsWire - Great RSS reader for mac/iphone!
Mar 2009
For my online and offline RSS needs I've been using Shrook for a while - but since recently I got an iPhone the issue of syncing it with my mac gracefully has become quite important.
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MacPython/Leopard - PythonInfo Wiki
Feb 2009
Some people have legitimate reasons for wanting to install IDLE on Leopard. E.g., even though Leopard's Xcode 3.0 (and later) supports Python development, it does so in a heavyweight, support-all-of-Cocoa fashion. And educators teaching Python who wish to do so in a platform-agnostic way may also be best served by IDLE.
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Using the OS X Terminal Application
Feb 2009
This tips page provides a detailed introduction to using the unix command line that the Terminal application provides.
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How to make a (Mac) screen saver that shows your uptime
Jan 2009
Found an interesting blog post that shows how to use QuartzComposer and a few patches to create a screensaver for your mac... all the instructions can be found here
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Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
Jan 2009
Are we gonna say goodbye to the keyboard too?
2007
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Subversion on OSX
Oct 2007
Day one - part time job - semantic web services. Need to install SVN on me mac… I've bothered at least two people in kmi till I found this really useful tutorial here.....
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AquaMacs 1.0
Jun 2007
I read from Bill Clementson's blog that AquaMacs Emacs 1.0 (is an Aqua-native build of the powerful Emacs text editor) has made its appearance during the last days - let's see how many new users it will conquer!!!
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Lyx on the mac
Mar 2007
I'm probably one of the last ones getting there, but I decided to do my best not to use Microsoft Word for editing my phd thesis. Oh yes - since I managed to arrive till this painful state, shall I give myself ever more troubles by using word? Not at all...
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Ecto : multiple blog manager and WYSIWYG editor
Mar 2007
Read an article about the "must-have" applications for the mac on slashdot - incredible how they haven't inserted QUICKSILVER, which is a revolutionary launchbar program in my opinion.. actually more:
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Dear old paper, how could we do without you?
Mar 2007
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MacFUse - Gmail-gigs on the desktop
Jan 2007
Got this news from here :
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IChat to MSN - only one IM client please!
Jan 2007
2006
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Fink fhink think
Dec 2006
There's a class of applications that conquered a big slice of new mac users, after the appearance of OSX: the applications coming from UNIX. I'm not one of them unfortunately (or maybe luckily), but with the time I'm more and more appreciating all that free stuff, apparently difficult to understand. Cause it makes you feel you're getting the best out of the wonderful machine you're spending most of the time on....
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Smultron text editor
Dec 2006
A nice alternative to BBedit (which beyond being not free, takes a long time to load on my machine - too many plugins installed maybe) is Smultron. Just found out about it - many features, programmed in Cocoa, and FREE
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Pathway: Wiki Semantic Navigator
Nov 2006
Just found a very cool app that lets you organize and store the navigation on any mediawiki site, Pathway. It basically represents visually the link's structure of a wiki-page, all the departing nodes centered around the page of interest. The whole navigation can thus be stored in the form of a net with nodes and links! Developed in Cocoa, works easily and fast on any mac (intel based as well) running Tiger! I quote the author's reasons behind the development: