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  • Dave 8:00 pm on November 5, 2009 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: apps, , , , november,   

    November desktop 

    desktop-nov-09

    (Click to enlarge)

    The low-down

    Top left: that’s DateLine, a handy visual indicator of the month and any events that are coming up. Underneath is the Adium contact list showing who’s online to chat.

    Bottom left: I wrote a script which pulls the most popular 15 torrents from ThePirateBay.org. GeekTool puts the info right on my desktop and updates it every 15 minutes.

    Menu bar (left to right): Adium (multi-IM client), Skype, smcFanControl (to control the fans on my laptop when it gets a little hot), DropBox (for sharing files and remote backup), LittleSnitch (stops apps calling home), Growl (displays app notifications in a unified way) using the “iPhone popup/Noir” style, the usual gubbins…

    Dock: the theme is Dark Glass (sorry, don’t remember where I found it). In order: Finder, Dash, Settings, Firefox, Skype, Adium, Transmission (torrent client), Interarchy (FTP client), iPhoto, Aperture, Spotify, iTunes, MixMeister Fusion (for creating mixes), Quicktime Player, VLC, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Color Picker Pro, VMWare Fusion, Microsoft Entourage, Microsoft Word, Things (to-do list), TeamViewer, Tweetie (twitter client), TextMate (text editor), Terminal, Activity Monitor.

    On the right of the separator I like to have Applications (Grid view), Downloads (Fan view, order by Date Created) and Home (Grid view).

    Wallpaper: download it here.

     

  • Dave 10:01 am on July 19, 2009 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: alex, announce, applescript, , entourage, , macosx, , notify, speak, speech   

    Announce new emails using the built-in Mac OS X speech engine 

    When I’m at home in the evenings, I’m rarely sat looking at my MacBook Pro. Usually it’s idle on the dining room table – playing music through iTunes, or streaming a movie to the TV in the lounge. I thought it would be handy if when a new email arrives, it could read out the sender’s name and the subject of the email, so I could decide whether to go and look at it – instead of just hearing the new email notification sound.

    Luckily, I found an AppleScript that did much of the hard work for me, I just customized it slightly. This is my first foray into the world of AppleScript – so coders go easy on me! There’s a couple of interesting features -

    1. if iTunes or QuickTime Player are playing, the script will pause them temporarily while it announces the email
    2. if the volume is turned down low, it’ll temporarily set it to 50% to announce the email
    3. if the screensaver is active, and the volume is low, it’ll temporarily set the volume to 60% (assumes you’re not far from your computer)
    4. if the email arrives during office hours (Mon-Fri 8am-6pm), it won’t announce (because I use my Mac at work)
    5. if Entourage is the foremost window when the email arrives, it won’t announce

    Being a script, you can change the settings as you please, and modifying it to use Apple Mail instead of Microsoft Entourage should be a doddle.

    Speak new email.zip (16KB)

    Once downloaded, all you need to do is create a rule to run the script when a new email arrives in Entourage…

    New Rule - Entourage

     

  • Dave 5:26 pm on April 5, 2009 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: exclamation, , , , mark, missing, point, , workaround   

    Dear iTunes, that track with an exclamation mark is NOT missing 

    itunes-exclamation-mark

    As I’ve mentioned before, I keep my music on a server – not my MacBook Pro. Occasionally iTunes has a hissy fit and declares some of my music missing. But it’s not – it’s just I’m not connected to my home network. One day Apple will fix this issue (which has been around for years), but until that happens there’s an easy way to cure this… just hold down Ctrl (aka “Option”) while starting iTunes (tested on a Mac).

    If you’ve landed here looking for a solution to remove real missing tracks, you can’t go wrong with Doug’s “Super Remove Dead Tracks” script.

     

    • juli84 7:16 am on January 25, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Thanks a lot. I was looking for this all day. And all i could find were solutions for removing “really missing” tracks.

  • Dave 8:22 am on March 16, 2009 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: geektool, scrape, , thepiratebay, top, tpb   

    Keeping an eye on The Pirate Bay top items 

    Disclaimer: I don’t download copyrighted material, unless I already own the movie/album/application.

    desktop

    Frequently, the things I download most from The Pirate Bay appear on the Total Top 100 page. There’s no RSS feed, but with a handy shell script and GeekTool for the Mac, I can slap the latest updates straight onto my desktop – where I can keep an eye on it…

    desktop2

    Here’s how…

    First up, download and install GeekTool.

    Next, download and unzip this script to your /Users/YOURNAME/Library/Scripts folder.

    TPB Top Items.sh.zip (1KB)

    Open GeekTool in the System Preferences and create a Shell entry. The command should look like…

    sh "/Users/YOURNAME/Library/Scripts/TPB Top Items.sh" -12

    If you want to show more items from the list, just change the “-12″ part to the number of items you want. And if you want to scrape a different page on TPB site, open up the script and change the URL. For example, to grab a list of the latest Mac applications submitted, you would use this URL: https://thepiratebay.org/browse/302/0/3

    IMPORTANT! You should change the GeekTool refresh value to over 600 (I’d recommend 1200 – 20 minutes), otherwise TPB may ban you for constantly hitting the website, and you’ll probably get me into hot water too.

     

  • Dave 9:30 pm on January 23, 2009 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: change, cron, cronnix, crontab, , folder, , location, mount, network, share, symlink, , ,   

    (Updated) How to store your music on a NAS or network share and access it with iTunes on a Mac 

    Album art

    I store all my music on an external hard disk which is connected to Windows Server 2003 in a cupboard hidden away. This means my music doesn’t clutter up the hard disk on my MBP and it can be shared to other devices like my Xbox, without having my laptop on. Accessing the server from Windows XP or Vista was fairly straightforward – I’d just map a drive and iTunes was happy. Unfortunately, persistent mapped drives on Mac OS X 10.5.6 (or earlier) isn’t really a feature, so I’d just plug the external hard disk into my Mac via USB.

    I needed a way to get my Windows iTunes database onto my Mac, and a way of mounting a persistent network share for iTunes, and a convenient way to add new music to the networked folder and iTunes. (Oh, and I kinda like things being in the right place – you know, documents in the Documents folder, music in the Music folder – so we’ll be creating a symbolic link to make our music appear as though it’s in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music. Clever, eh?) So, without further ado, here’s what we’ll be doing -

    1. Setting up a shared folder for your music
    2. Create a symbolic link (& mounted drive) to the network share
    3. Creating a crontab entry to keep the network share mounted (alive)
    4. Modifying the location of your music files in the iTunes database

    (More …)

     

    • davesawesomeblog 10:02 pm on August 30, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      When I execute the above, I had the problem of the iTunes Music folder already existing. I moved that folder out so it no longer exists but now I get this error:
      mount: realpath /Users/dave/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music: No such file or directory
      I can’t win. Am I really the only one with this problem?

      • pbutterworth 3:04 pm on September 29, 2009 Permalink

        This is great, and makes life a lot easier.

        is it possible to create a script that runs when I open iTunes?

        Thanks
        Paul

      • miles267 2:34 am on December 12, 2009 Permalink

        When I attempt to execute, I too receive this error. What causes this and how to correct? Happens no matter what I try

        mount: realpath /Users/Jason/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music: No such file or directory

      • Dave 10:24 am on December 12, 2009 Permalink

        The latest version of iTunes has changed the folder structure. I’ll have a look at a fix over the weekend…

      • miles267 3:11 pm on December 12, 2009 Permalink

        Dave, I’ve attempted a few variations of the command without success. Seems like it may be more a function of the command itself being incorrect than any change in the iTunes directory structure. Just a hunch.

      • Dave 6:08 pm on December 12, 2009 Permalink

        Hi. I’ve recreated the error you’ve got and it seems to be that you don’t have an “iTunes Music” folder in /Users/Jason/Music/iTunes/

        You just need to create an empty folder called “iTunes Music” there, and it should work. I remember thinking that was weird when I first did this, but that’s just the way mount and symlinks work.

        I’ve updated the post above, please let me know if you have any more problems.

        Thanks,
        Dave.

      • miles267 7:58 pm on December 12, 2009 Permalink

        Dave, I appreciate the prompt response. However seems that even with the presence of this path:

        /users/jason/music/itunes/itunes music

        I now get this:

        mount_smbfs: mount error /users/jason/music/itunes/itunes music: file exists

        Surely getting closer, but still a bit odd. Any help you can provide would be appreciated.

      • Dave 9:56 pm on December 12, 2009 Permalink

        No probs, only too happy to help. Could you post your full mount command, and tell me what the folder and file structure is on both your Mac and server/NAS please?

        The start of your error “mount_smbfs: mount error” seems to indicate a problem at the server/NAS side as it’s mounted locally, but having problems remotely (smbfs). Could you also check you can access your remote share via Finder and smb://yourserverip/share ?

        D.

    • grimfandango 8:27 am on October 3, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I’ve just had a look around for a script to do that, but drawn a blank.

      The easiest and quickest solution I can think of is to add a line at the end of the script to launch iTunes. You could replace the icon of the script with the iTunes icon, rename it “iTunes Plus” or something, and put that in your dock. :-/

    • davesawesomeblog 8:20 pm on December 12, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Ditto. I had this problem originally, wouldn’t work regardless if I have an iTunes Music folder or not. I figured it was just me. I haven’t tried this in awhile, I’m running Windows 7 on the “media server” machine that I’m trying to share to my Mac now, not sure if that matters.

      • Dave 9:59 pm on December 12, 2009 Permalink

        Unless you follow the instructions to the letter, the symlink part won’t work because it’s quite finicky. Trying to connect to Windows 7 may add a second complication because its file sharing is considerably different to previous versions. However, if you can access a Windows 7 share from your Mac via Finder there shouldn’t be any reason why this technique wouldn’t work.

    • davesawesomeblog 2:39 am on December 14, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Yup, can still connect fine through Windows 7. I’ve never been able to get the command to work. If I don’t have an “iTunes Music” folder, I get:
      mount: realpath /Users/dave/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music: No such file or directory

      If I do have the “iTunes Music” folder, I get:
      mount_smbfs: mount error: /Users/dave/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music: File exists

      • Dave 7:20 am on December 14, 2009 Permalink

        Could you help me pin down what’s happening here. I know at least 4 friends who are using this technique without a hitch so I’m keen to track down the problem.

        What is the folder and file structure is on both your Mac and server/NAS?

        What edition of Windows 7 is it?

        Can you access the Windows share from Finder on your Mac? (Go menu, Connect to Server…, smb://yourserver/share)

        What version of OS X are you using?

        If you’re happy to let a complete stranger (albeit a trustworthy one) remote control your Mac, I might be able to diagnose and fix the problem a lot quicker. Up-to you…

      • mattjray 5:31 am on January 12, 2010 Permalink

        Make sure you don’t already have a share with the same name already mounted. I kept getting the file exists error – it was because the Music folder was already mounted on the desktop. If you already have a Music icon just right-click and choose Eject. Then try the command again…

    • miles267 1:37 pm on December 14, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Guys, unfortunately I haven’t had much time to troubleshoot this issue lately, however I think this might be an easier, solution. Editing your .XML file to include the file:// path convention. Seems to have worked great when I tested it in a virtual machine.

      http://www.mactimes.info/2009/06/migrating-your-itunes-library-from.html

    • davesawesomeblog 3:53 am on December 23, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Here’s my info:

      - iTunes sees the folder as /Volumes/music, the SMB path is smb://DAVESPC/music

      - I’m using Windows 7 Professional

      - I can access the share via the Finder

      - I’m using OS 10.6.2

  • Dave 12:06 am on December 4, 2008 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: 10.5.5, airport, , , , , wifi, wireless   

    Fixed: slow wifi on Mac OS X 10.5.5 

    For a few weeks now, my home wireless has been unbearably slow on my Mac, while my Vista PC [ironically] has been fine. I remembered updating to Mac OS X 10.5.5 about the time the problem started, and a look around the net revealed quite a few other people with similar symptoms. Earlier this evening I tried pinging my wireless router and was getting between 100ms-1000ms response times on the Mac – it should be around 2-8ms, so something was definitely wrong. Fortunately I found a simple solution…

    Reboot holding down the SHIFT key to boot in Safe Mode. It may take a while to boot (this is normal), log in as yourself, and then restart your Mac. Once you’ve restarted and logged back in, you should hopefully find your wifi connection working properly again. I guess the safe mode boot clears out some old caches or kick starts something back to life. Who knows, but it worked!

     

    • stevebirney 9:15 pm on December 5, 2008 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Thank you!

      This worked perfectly. My mini is 10 feet from my time capsule and it not working well was driving me crazy.

    • jfredley 4:15 pm on October 8, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      More recent SSLLOOWW response with a latest and greatest BELKIN N wifi router(up to 300MBPS – 150 is the best I’ve experienced- better than wired though @100 MBPS) and a MAC with OS X 10.5.8. Wired or WIlreless the BELKIN took up to minutes to respond with pages. Switched out to an old CISCOLinksys POC WGT54GS and great turnaround… Any ideas??? jfredley@hotmail

    • jfredley 4:17 pm on October 8, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      P.S I tried the “SAFE boot” to no avail….

    • Eavesdropper 5:41 am on February 1, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Thank you so much for posting this info. My girlfriend has been complaining since I put her on the wireless router about her connection. I tried changing the channel the wireless was on and a few other things, but couldn’t figure this out. I tried this and it worked like a charm.

      • Dave 10:03 pm on February 1, 2010 Permalink

        Hi, glad it helped :)

        Just out of interest, what version of OS X are you on? This post gets a lot of views despite originally being for 10.5.5 – so if it worked for later versions, I’d like everyone to know.

        Thanks

  • Dave 7:27 pm on September 14, 2008 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: app, application, , , tip, tool, trick, website   

    Updated: Tips, tricks and tools for the Windows / Mac switcher 

    Windows to Mac application alternatives

    Useful Mac applications

    (More …)

     

  • Dave 1:30 pm on July 28, 2008 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: download, , keyboard, layout, macbook, , map, mapping, parallels, solution, uk, vmfusion,   

    Windows keyboard layout for MacBook Pro (UK layout) 

    If like me you’re using a MacBook Pro with a UK keyboard, and you’re running a Windows virtual machine in VM Fusion or Parallels, you’re probably getting a bit hacked off finding the # (hash) key, and the backwardness of the ” and @ keys.

    Here’s the solution (based on the information from here) – download my custom layout, install, choose it in Control Panel » Regional and Language Options » Languages Tab » Details button » Default Input Language selector and you’re all set. Unlike other apps, you don’t have to run a program the whole time, and it’s free! Oh, the # is mapped to § (to the left of 1).

    MacBook Pro (UK) keyboard layout (256KB)

    (Need help with the MacBook Pro keyboard shortcuts? See this post: Tips, tricks and tools for the Windows / Mac switcher)

    Update: VMWare Fusion Beta 2 RC fixes quite a few keyboard issues. You can get it here.

     

  • Dave 9:52 am on July 1, 2008 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    MacBook Pro in da house 

    Death to PCs! Long live Macs!

    Yes, I finally switched to a MacBook Pro and flipped Vista the finger. And it feels good. My laptop actually does what I want it to, my productivity has increased, and I now understand the warm, fuzzy feeling Mac zealots rave about.

    As someone who was brought up on Microsoft technology (DOS, Windows, Visual Studio, SQL Server), it’s maybe hard to understand why I switched. I could list several reasons, but the bottom line is I just want my laptop to work. I use my laptop every day, at some point, for a variety of tasks – anything from creating a web application, to playing some music. No faffing with spyware, bad drivers, freezes, blue screens, etc. Capiche?

    Over the next few weeks/months, I’ll be blogging my experience and hopefully offering some tips to other people in similar circumstances making the switch.

     

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