Category: Tricks
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OSX Finder – Missing Features
I’ll admit it. I was kinda curious when Apple announced its latest overhaul of OSX called Lion today. Upon further analysis, however, it seems that most of the “improvements” are going to be cosmetic in nature and functionality will take a back seat. This makes me sad because I feel that the Finder in OSX…
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Wait a sec, Mr batch file!
Today I sifted through the first 4 pages of Google search results on ‘pause batch file’ only to find that none of the suggestions work on Windows 2008 server. Why are all of these pages suggesting sleep.exe and choice.com and ping -n when the obvious solution is the timeout command? More importantly why is it…
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Quickly find previously executed commands in bash
Type a command, hit enter, type another command, hit enter…that’s still how it goes in terminal computing. That’s not to say that there haven’t been innovations in command line. Bash history recall using the up/down keys is just one of those examples. To quickly search for and find specific previously executed commands in bash and/or…
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Skype blocks local Apache server
Apparently Skype thinks that occupying ports 80 and/or 443 would be a great idea on Windows. I guess that’s fine for the most part, I mean you don’t really want to be debugging your local web app while chatting with grannie. So what about when you’re not using Skype? What possible reason could there be…
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Macbook pro palm rest discoloration
A few months ago I noticed that my brand new Macbook Pro had developed some permanent stains on the palm rest. A trip to the Apple store “genius bar” ended in a 45 minute wait session followed by an interrogation about my palm moisture levels. Finally I felt I needed to make the following concession:…
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Serial commuications on a MacBook Pro
Connecting to a device using via a rs232 using a MacBook is not straight forward, but possible if you have one of the more popular USB-to-Serial adapters. The PL2303 adapter is sold by a number of manufacturers under different model names. Luckily, however, most of them run on the same basic chip for which an…
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Extend your desktop to a notebook
Want to add your notebook to an existing display environment? Then Synergy is for you. It’s a cross platform open source application that lets you control a systems mouse and keyboard through the network. Its server/client architecture let you extend the reach of your mouse and keyboard to other computers. Here’s how I configured Synergy…
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SATA to USB adapter issues on the Mac
I had an extra Western Digital SATA notebook hard drive lying around and figured I could use it as a time capsule for my MacBook. So I hopped on eBay and bought a $5 USB enclosure for it. I had no sooner plugged the thing in than my problems began. First I had issues copying…
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Fun with CURL and DOM
When the California mega millions jackpot was more than 200 million dollars a in May, I bought a couple of tickets and crossed my fingers. I didn’t win…stupid quick picks, but I got to thinking: Maybe there could be a better way of choosing the numbers. Like choosing them based on previous winning numbers somehow.…
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Rip songs from a DVR recording
Last week Glee featured the song Dream On as a duet between Matthew Morrison and Neil Patrick Harris and my DVR recorded it in HD with 5.1 surround sound. My girlfriend liked the song, but iTunes wanted $1.29 for it. So I tried importing the MPEG 2 file my DVR generated for the show into…