The Author – Bart Busschots
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Jan
18
Google Earth Mac – About Bloody Time
Filed Under Computers & Tech on January 18, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Well, it’s taken them long enough but Google Earth for the Mac is now available all be it in Beta form. Had a bit of a play with it and so far I’m impressed, seems stable and looks bloody shinny with all that Mac graphics goodness at it’s disposal!
Jan
12
Musings on Macworld 2006
Filed Under Computers & Tech on January 12, 2006 | Leave a Comment
So yet another Macworld has come and gone so it’s inevitable that Mac-heads reflect on such things. Personally, my predictions were about 50% right and 50% wrong on the big stuff. The Intel iMacs were a complete shock to me, the Intel Notebooks, totally expected.
Well, we may as well start with the BIG stuff, and lets face it, the move to Intel CPUs is the biggest thing to happen to the Mac since OS X. I fully expected that there would be Intel based Macs unveiled this January. I really didn’t expect Apple to let a whole year pass between their announcement of Intel Macs and those macs being unleashed. Why was I so sure? Simple, sales would have started to plummet as we got nearer and nearer to the summer as more and more people started putting off getting a new Mac until the new ones were out.
Personally, I had expexted the iMac to be the last Mac to get the Intel treatment. Why? Because they were the most recently re-vamped and were not particularly unders-peced or anything like that. Since Intel PowerMacs have been available to developers since last summer I was quite sure that an Intel PowerMac would be the first Intel Mac to be released, WRONG! After that I had expected Intel Notebooks to be the next because lets face it, the G4 iBooks and PowerBooks were just not good enough to compete anymore. Another machine that I expected to get the Intel treatment very early on was the MacMini, again it’s a G4 and again it is rather under-powered compared to what’s out there in the PC market. I also expected to see it released with Front Row and a to be a full TiVo complete with TV Tuner. This could still come to pass in the next few months but nothing at Macworld about it. Basically, I’m shocked to see a G5 machine replaced with an Intel chip before all the remaining G4s are all replaced. What makes it worse is that I accepted delivery of a 20" G5 iMac yesterday!
There was nothing really major with regards to the iPod in Steve’s key note. We got the usual sales figures with the standard blurb about how great iTunes is doing but nothing really new or revolutionary on that front was revealed to us.
The other major part of the Keynote was apple software. Aperture looked very impressive as did the new and improved iPhoto with its PhotoCasts. I was also impressed by the themes in iMovie and the PodCast Studio in Garrage Band also looked good. However, what really intrigued me was the release of iWeb. There can be no doubt that the pages it produces look very flashy on the surface and that the interface seemed very good, however, I am reserving judgment on it till I see the source code that it generates. Perhaps Apple will have achieved a miracle and invented WYSIWYG web software that doesn’t suck but I’m not convinced yet!
Finally, going back to the Intel thing for a moment, I have to say I like their new adds about Apple "liberating" the Intel chip form the dull little boxes they used to be confined to. The slogan on their web page is also great IMO; "What’s an Intel chip doing in a Mac? …. A whole lot more than it’s ever done in a PC".
Jan
11
Himmel Bar – Another Great Little Utility for OS X
Filed Under Computers & Tech on January 11, 2006 | 2 Comments
In general I really like the Dock and prefer it to the Windows Start Menu. It’s great for the apps you use a lot but not so great for getting at apps you don’t use often. Well, with Himmel Bar that problem goes away!
[tags]OS X, Himmel Bar[/tags]
Dec
15
JellyfiSSH for OS X – SSH Heaven
Filed Under Computers & Tech on December 15, 2005 | Leave a Comment
OS X comes with SSH built in but it is command line only and gives you no easy way to store all your bookmarks or customise your SSH windows. For your average user this is probably not a problem but when you have to SSH to as many servers as I do it becomes a real shortcoming. However, after much googling I found the answer – JellyfiSSH for OS X.
First things first, you can get JellyfiSSH from here: www.arenasoftware.com/grepsoft
Needless to say it does the basics like allow you to save hostnames, usernames and tunnels but it also allows you to group your bookmarks and, best of all, to have different window settings for each bookmark. The OS X terminal is very powerful and very configurable so rather than re-inventing the wheel what JellyfiSSH does is to spawn a terminal windows with your settings for you and then send the SSH command for your bookmark to that terminal.
Because the OS X terminal lets you set a background image this means you can set your backgrounds to different things for each server. I did up a template with the GIMP so my SSH shells now all have the name of the server in huge writing on the background and in the case of the servers here at work I’ve colour-coded them to have a red background if they are production servers and a blue background if they are fail-over/test/development servers. Basically, if I see red I take extra care because one slip-up could bring the entire campus network crashing down around us all! The other nice thing about this is that our servers in work are not called after their function because stuff gets moved from server to server all the time but by their hostnames which are all trees/fruits. Since I only started work here a few weeks ago I still get very confused as to what is what so I’ve added the function to the background image too so at a glance I can see that Larch is the production mail server etc.
Once you get everything set up just the way you like it you’ll never understand how you lived without it! Anyhow, below are some screen-shots from my system to show JellyFiSSH in action.
The Basic JellyfiSSH GUI
The Extended JellyfiSSH GUI
JellyfiSSH in Action
Dec
8
Breezy Badger release of KUbuntu continues to dissapoint
Filed Under Computers & Tech, System Administration on December 8, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Following on from my last article about Breezy I’m afraid things have not gotten any better. KUbuntu is just broke! At first I thought the mac style control panel was really cool until I discovered that I can’t get into administrator mode on any of the dialogs. I click the button, enter the password, the border goes red, the panel goes blank, stays blank for some timeout period and then brings me back to the non-admin display. I can click that button all I want but I can never edit any settings that you need to be root for. Yet again not acceptable from a Linux that is supposed to be for "human beings".
Dec
7
SSH via a Socks proxy on OS X with connect.c
Filed Under System Administration, Computers & Tech on December 7, 2005 | 15 Comments
NOTE: tested on OS X 10.7 Lion, works fine!
These instructions are for setting up a mac to use connect.c to get SSH through a SOCKS proxy. If you are not using OS X this may still be of some use to you because connect.c will compile on Windows and *nix as well. If you’re in the NUIM oncampus accommodation and are having problems SSHing this could be the answer to your problems!
The first step is to get a copy of connect.c and compile it. The website contains instructions for doing this on other platforms but for the mac use:
gcc connect.c -o connect -lresolv
This will spool out a ream of warnings but don’t worry about that.
Then you have to copy this to a folder in the path and set up the correct permissions:
sudo cp connect /usr/bin sudo chmod 555 /usr/bin/connect sudo chown root:wheel /usr/bin/connect
At this stage connect.c is installed, you now need to tell SSH to use this proxy for any servers you want to connect to that is outside the campus.
To do this you need to add lines of this form to ~/.ssh/config:
Host xxx.yyy.com ProxyCommand connect -a none -S socks.yyy.com %h %p
The example above is for connection to xxx.yyy.com, you’ll need pairs like this for each host you want to connect to. You should separate the pairs with a bank line.
That’s it, you can now ssh as normal and ssh will use the SOCKS proxy.
ssh [email protected]
Nov
30
Mighty Mouse – Mighty Disappointment
Filed Under Computers & Tech on November 30, 2005 | Leave a Comment
So, I got my very shinny new PowerMac (dual 2.0Ghz G5 with 2GB RAM) today and I’m just blown away by just about everything about it (it’s FAST, the Apple Cinema Display ROCKS) but one thing has proved a real disappointment, the Mighty Mouse that came free with it.
I have been playing with the settings for ages and all I can’t get the right "button" to do ctrl+click (right click to non-mac users) like any PC mouse will do when plugged into a mac. I can get it to do "Button 2" which is ctrl+click sometimes but only sometimes! The side buttons are useless and the only thing I can see them doing is giving people RSI! "Just squeeze" is what Apple say, gimme a bloody vice and I might have a chance! I don’t have particularly big hands and I can tell you now I’d do myself an injury if I had to use that "button" a lot.
Thank heavens there is a Logitech Comfort Cordless Desktop winging it’s way towards me as I type!
Nov
30
Breezy Badger release of KUbuntu very disappointing
Filed Under Computers & Tech on | Leave a Comment
I’d read some good things about the Breezy Badger release of Ubuntu on Planet MiNDS> so I figured I’d give it a go. Simply put, I’m not impressed. Things started off bad when the installer messed up because it made retarded assumptions and now that it’s up and running it is still causing me trouble.
Why the Breezy Badger Install sucks
Firstly, the installer made two assumptions that resulted in me having to intervene and switch to a terminal to sort it out. That’s all well and good for seasoned Linux Users but is totally un-acceptable for a distro that makes a big deal out of being "Linux for Human beings".
Firstly, I find it retarded that the installer even tries to go online, but it does. Fair enough. Where things get really retarded is when it tries to go online WITHOUT ASKING IF YOU NEED TO USE A PROXY! It just sat there. I figured it would time out ….. 5 minutes pass ….. another 5 minutes pass …. I give up and switch to a terminal and kill the process. The installer recovers but skips some setup steps. It was all recoverable later but only with some vi editing and farting round on the command line. Again, no problem at all for a seasoned Linux user but a really big deal for Human Being like my mother!
Secondly Breezy decided that after it had detected my graphics card it should set the resolution, not to a safe number like Windows or OS X would do nor did it ask me what I wanted like Fedora does, nope, it just decided to set the resolution as high as the graphics card can go. Thing is my monitor can’t go as high as my graphics card so as soon as my machine re-booted after the install I got a blank screen when X started and a message from my monitor telling me it couldn’t handle what it was being fed. I fixed it by firing up a terminal and editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf but again, no average user is going to be able, or willing, to do that!
In summation, the installer could have saved me a lot of bother and made the whole experience more pleasant by asking me two simple questions:
- Do you use a proxy and if so where is it?
- What resolution would you like from this list your graphics card can handle?
These are simple things that would have made a huge difference and that the Fedora installer lets you do in a nice GUI. When it comes to installers, KUbuntu is FAR behind Fedora as far as the average user is concerned.
After the Installation
There are also two things that are really annoying me now that the system is installed. Firstly, I installed both FireFox and Thunderbird with apt yet when I try to open a link from within Thunderbird NOTHING happens. It’s not that it uses the wrong browser, it just doesn’t use ANY browser! I’ve been copying and pasting links all day and quite frankly it’s a real PITA!
Secondly, I can’t get the MS fonts from apt like I could on the previous release of KUbuntu. I’ve enabled all the repositories and I’ve tried every apt-cache search permutation I can think of and still no joy. It says there is a package that other packages refer to that does what I need but it can’t find the blooming thing!
On a less important note, Niall gave me exceptionally high hopes on the shinneyness of the GUI describing it as "OSX shinny" in his recent post about Breezy, but I was disappointed. It’s nice, very nice even and certainly nicer than the previous KUbuntu or the latest Fedora but it’s still far from OS X shinny I’m afraid.
Conclusion
If you are a Human Being and you want to use Linux, use Fedora!
Links
- Ubuntu – www.ubuntulinux.org
- Fedora – www.fedora.redhat.com
Nov
19
Synergy on OS X – the easy way
Filed Under Computers & Tech, System Administration on November 19, 2005 | 6 Comments
If you have multiple machines on your desk and you are fed up of having a mess of keyboards and mice all over the place then Synergy is just the thing you need. What makes Synergy even better is that it works cross-platform so you can share a single keyboard and mouse between Linux, OS X, any Unix and even crappy old Windows!
To find out more about installing synergy on non-OS X platforms or
about the practicalities of setting up a Synergy server checkout
Synergy’s home page: http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
The synergy home page allows you to download binaries for OS X but that package literally gives you just the executable file for the server and client and nothing more. If you want Synergy to be easier to use and install on OS X don’t get it from the Synergy website, get Synergy KM instead.
SynergyKM gives you a nice Synergy icon on the Menu Bar to allow you to easily see and change Synergy’s state (see screen first shot below). SynergyKM also adds an extra panel to your System Preferences to allow you to configure Synergy both as a client and a server (see second screen shot).
You can get SynergyKM here: http://software.landryhetu.com/synergy/
Addendum – 24-11-05
For some reason when you are using Synergy to connect your Mac to another keyboard and mouse and you have a hot-corner set up to lock the screen it doesn’t work while Synergy is on. If you turn-off synergy it works fine. for the last week I’ve been turning off Synergy each time I wanted to lock my computer and that’s just not ideal at all so I did some Googling on the matter and found a good solution.
You can get a padlock icon to appear in your Menu Bar and when you click on that one of the options in the menu is "Lock Screen" (see first figure below). This will allow you to lock your screen even while using Synergy. Getting this padlock is a little counter intuative but here goes:
- Open the "Keychain Access" program in your Applications/Utilities folder
- Open the prefferences for this app (Keychain Access -> Preferences)
- I nthe "General" pane check the checkbox labled "Show Status in Menu Bar"
Simple as that!
Aug
16
It’s the little things that continue to impress me!
Filed Under Computers & Tech on August 16, 2005 | Leave a Comment
I’ve had my Mac Mini for a few months now and it is still surprising me from time to time. It comes with built in speakers which, for the size of the thing, are very impressive, but of course nothing on proper speakers. I had the volume up full with no speakers plugged in, then while something was playing I plugged in the speakers not realizing that they were on, did I get my eardrums blasted off? No! OS X turned the volume down for me when it detected the speakers being plugged in!
It really is the little things that make a lasting impression …..