March 11, 2006
Our Man Flint
I’m old enough to remember the name of that old TV show, but not much else.
In this case Flint is a $20 option to Tinderbox that is supposed to facilitate blogging.
At the moment I’m blogging in Ecto. But after having Ecto delete a bunch of my posts and be unable to handle a change in my blog host, it’s time to move on. My concept of blogging is that whatever I write is mine, and I want to keep it forever. And from time to time, I’m going to change hosts, and will need to re-upload all my items to the new host.
However neither Ecto nor Marsedit subscribe to that viewpoint. Their job is to help you get your post uploaded, and they assume that you are always going to be on the same blog host.
December 31, 2005
iCal to Email
I was recently asked to send out a reminder email for a bi-weekly conference call, and I thought iCal should be able to do this.
It is able to send out an email when you first set up a calendar event. You simply fill in the Attendees field with as many people as you want. These addresses need to be in your Address Book.
However, I don’t see how this is going to help me with recurring events.
So some research through Versiontracker turned up iCalMail by Chris Shull.
This is an Applescript which puts the event name into the Subject line, the attendee’s email address in the To line, and the event note into the body of the email. It is sent out via Apple Mail, and picks the top most account if you have multiple Mail accounts. It would be nice to have which email address to mail from be an option when setting up the program.
I also stumbled upon Crm4Mac, which is a customer relationship manager, using Apple Mail, iCal and Address Book. Your data stays in these Apple core applications, and Crm4Mac gives you an integrated view of your data.
I’m not sure I need a customer relationship manager, but I am willing to admit that using my email reader as my main organization and archival tool is haphazard at best. Especially as I have two main email addresses, and use Mailsmith for one address and Eudora for another. Not to mention a few other email addresses that I use Apple Mail for.
So I will be giving some thought to using Crm4mac in the future.
December 30, 2005
Change BBEdit Line Endings
I’ve been using BBEdit for at least the past 10 years, and I have a couple thousand files that have the classic Macintosh line endings of CR.
Now that I’m on OS X, and especially since I frequently copy files to my Linux servers, using the default Unix line endings of LF makes more sense.
Now, how do I convert these files ?
BBEdit has a toolbar menu that lets me toggle between DOS, Macintosh and Unix. That works fine for one file, but not for 2,000.
I’m aware of an open source program called flip, which converts files the same way. It can work folder by folder, and is smart enough to ignore binary files.
Using Automator with BBEdit is perhaps another possibility.
Let me first check the BBEdit archives and see what other people have done to solve this problem.
By George, I search the FAQ for endings, and up pops this answer
If you have a large number of files which you need to convert from one line ending type to another, your best option is probably to use the third party utility named TextToMac (freeware). You’ll find this on your BBEdit CD and it can also be downloaded from our ftp site:
ftp://ftp.barebones.com/pub/helper-apps/
December 28, 2005
Granite Digital Firewire Case
I’ve been having troubles with a new drive on the Granite Digital Fireware 400 Hot Swap case. Recently the drive appeared to be failing, and Disk Warrior would fail trying to rebuild the directory.
So I got a couple of WiebeTech Firewire 400 enclosures, and moved the drives over there, and the drives worked fine.
Now I’m thinking of how to prove the Granite products are failing, and I surf over to their web site.
http://www.granitedigital.com/support/index.htm
Lo and behold, they have a software patch for Mac OS X Tiger for drives greater than 120 gigs. My new drive is 160 gigs, while all my previous drives were 80 gigs. Now I also had problems with one of the 80 gig drives – I think. So I’m not out of the woods yet.
May 28, 2005
Learning Text Factory – BBEdit
BBEdit 8 came out with a new feature called Text Factory. It allows you to save a string of text transformations as a single step, that can then be repeated later on.
I probably could use this most everyday, but I’ve been procrastinating learning how to use it. However, today is the day I least get my feet wet.
Todays situation involves scraping a web page of keywords, from Overture/Yahoo. After I copy and paste into BBEdit, I need to remove some of the non ascii characters, as well as the number of expected searches.
First step, choose New Text Factory from the BBEdit File menu. Second step, choose the document to operate on. I’ll just choose the open file that contains the screen scrapings from running the above web page.
I want to run a couple of regular expressions to clean up the web page, leaving me with just the keywords. However, it does not look so simple to do. I have easy choices of a bunch of simple BBEdit menu comands, like changing case, or removing line numbers. But no walkthrough of a regular expression transformation. Looks like maybe I’ve got to set up an Applescript command first, and then invoke that from Text Factory.
More time than I want to spend today, so let me see if I can clean up my file using just the builtin BBEdit Text commands. I string together the Zap Gremlins command to get rid of the bullets, a remove line number command, and a sort lines command to do a decent job of cleaning up the file. I simply need to delete all the blank lines, and I could have gotten all but one deleted by choosing the Text command to process duplicate lines. Oh well, next time. It’s back to some productive work for me.
May 16, 2005
Keyboard Maestro
I’ve used Keyboard Maestro sparingly so far, despite owning it for at least 6 months. Certainly there are concerns about how stable such a low level tool is, and how well it survives operating system upgrades. But since I am not aware of any problems, I’m going to start assigning repetitive tasks to keystrokes, and see if I can save some time.
One task that I do in all three of my email readers is to delete the mail in the spam/junk folder and empty the trash. A couple of menu selections that could be combined into one keystroke. Since the steps are different in each program, I should be able to assign the same keystroke to three different programs.
Let’s start with Eudora, where I open the Junk Mailbox, select all the messages, and move them to the trash. Then I empty the trash.
I start a new macro in KM, name it appropriately, and choose the Interface Control choice in New Action. I select “Select Menu Item”, which pops open a form. I then switch over to Eudora, and execute the menu selection I want – Mailbox : Junk. That then gets filled into the appropriate slots in KM. I continue with the other 3 menu selections, and then assign it a Trigger of Hot Key F7. So now when I press F7 in Eudora, my junk mail gets deleted and the trash emptied.
So far, so good. Let’s do the same for MailSmith.
Well, a couple of issues come up. The first is that Mailsmith menus are variable, in that the Menu Item says – Discard Spam (11 messages). Not sure what happens when I press the trigger and there aren’t exactly 11 pieces of spam in the folder.
The second problem is that it won’t let me assign F7 as the trigger. Most likely because I assigned that keystroke to the Eudora version. So I want each keystroke to be unique to just the application I’m in. Let’s see if I can fix the second problem first.
Well, I read the manual, and the second problem is easy enough to fix. I simply need to create a new Macro Group, one for each application that I want to restrict macros to. I made my macros in the Global group.
So I create a new Macro Group, label it Eudora, restrict it to only the Eudora application, and then drag my macro from the Global group to the Eudora group. Pretty darn simple.
I also delete some of the pre-defined macros that came with KM. I certainly don’t want any keystroke to run the Update System Software, and I’m sure I can come up with a better use of F1 than to play a random song in iTunes.
I do see a very useful macro, that quits all running applications. I was just asking for such a gadget the other week.
I’m not sure about the Program Switcher, since I mainly use Launchbar to invoke all my applications. And with the Clipboard Switcher, I see the use but can’t think of a real need at this time.
May 15, 2005
Fink and Unison
Ok, I need to be doing a better job of syncing my desktop Mac and my Powerbook. That means doing it remotely and frequently. These days I do it every week or two, by setting my powerbook next to my desktop, hooking a long firewire cable between them, and running Chronosync. Mostly works, but too much of a hassle to do it frequently.
If I had a Dot Mac account, I could sync up the Address Book, Ical and Bookmarks, which would be a small start. But I need to keep all my data and applications in sync too.
I familiar with Rsync on Linux, and know about RsyncX on the Mac OS X. RsyncX handles the resource fork of Mac files, which other operating systems do not have. The problem with Rsync is that it is a one way copy program, and I need to be aware of when I have modified files on both machines prior to any syncing.
Unison is a program that addresses this problem, and it’s a free program made available by the University of Penn. Nothing to do with the Usenet program from Panic of the same name. So first step is to subscribe to the Unison Users Mailing List.
In order to install this program I can either compile from source code or use binaries from the Fink project. It looks like Unison is still releasing beta versions to address Mac OS X oddities, the latest version handling file type and creators. So I probably want to go with the latest beta, and if I go with Fink, I probably need to use the testing or unstable version of Fink.
Not that I’ve had much success with Fink, even though I use Debian on my servers. So that’s going to be a tough decision, and I probably ought to read some of the mailing lists posts before making a decision.
Looks like there is an experimental Mac OS X gui, but for the time being I will want the text interface. unison-2.10.2.osx-textui
Resources
Drive Mirroring – http://web.brandeis.edu/pages/view/Bio/DriveMirroring
Mike Bombich – Remote Admin of Mac OS X using rsync – http://www.bombich.com/mactips/rsync.html
Palm iSync iCal
I’ve got a Palm PDA now, and I’m learning how to use it. Since I’m using iCal and Address Book on the Mac OS X, seems natural enough to get that data over to the Palm.
However, the iCal sync only shows me 3 calendars when I have about 7. Shows them in a pick list, but does not scroll down.
Another problem is that iCal calendars are not matched up with the Palm. Everything goes into unfiled on the Palm.
Datebk5 is a suggested replacement for the Palm calendar.
iSync is currently at Version 1.5 and that’s what I have. Not sure if Tiger has an updated version or not.
May 14, 2005
Omniweb – Web Browser
With Safari and Firefox on the Mac OS X platform, why would anybody pay good money for another web browser. For me, the answer is – if it improves my productivity, it can easily be worth the $30 cost.
Omniweb is a commercial web that just came out with version 5.1. Version 5 came out last fall, and I played around with it, but not much more than that. This upgrade is important in that it now uses the same web rendering engine as Safari does.
I use Safari 99% of the time, only switching over to Firefox when I run into an incompatible web page or otherwise have a problem. The main reason is speed, Safari opens faster and gets to my web site quicker. They both have tabbed browsing, pop-up blockers and ad blockers (using Pith Helmet in Safari). And the Safari interface is more Mac like.
I am aware of special versions of Firefox compiled for the G4 or G5 processor. And I have seen some tweaks that can be applied to the Firefox configuration that can speed things up. Now that Firefox has stabilized somewhat, I may look into those tweaks.
In the meantime, I’ll give Omniweb a try, utilizing their 30 day free demo. And the first thing I should do, is make Omniweb my preferred browser. So when I click on links in other applications like email or NetNewsWire, they will open in Omniweb. And in an unusual user interface move, Apple makes you go into Safari to declare your preference for another web browser. In the Safari:Preferences menu, choose the first tab – General. There the top pick list will allow you to modify the default web browser.
I’ve been using Omniweb for a few days now, and it does not feel as quick as Safari in opening web sites. And it’s blocking me from going to SSL sites (https on port 443). I’ve looked thru the preferences and do not see anything that I can tweak to enable this. Error message is
Temporarily unable to connect to
Connection refused.
I can connect fine with Safari. Might have something to do with an identd server ?
May 1, 2005
Installing RSnapShot
rsnapshot is utility that creates a backup that can contain different versions of your files as they change over time, while taking a minimum amount of disk space.
I probably need this more than the mirroring done by RAID, as I’m frequently looking for previous versions of files that I’ve changed. While BBEdit has a feature that creates incremental backups of files changed by BBEdit, it doesn’t help when I’m using other packages. Like this Ecto package for instance, where I’m missing some blogs entries. I deleted one of my WordPress blogs, and then next time I synced up with Ecto, it decided to delete them from Ecto too. Now I’m not sure if I have/had something misconfigured or that’s the way it’s supposed to work.
So I’m getting rsnapshot set up now for the next time I shoot myself in the foot.
rsnapshot is written in Perl, and takes advantage of the Unix filesystem structure to allow the same file to be pointed to from many angles. Rsync is the utility that does the work of copying files. Where I get confused is what’s the difference between the Rsync that Apple ships and RsyncX ? I understand that Rsync needs modified to handle the resource forks that are unique to Macintosh files.
So I think I’ll install the DarwinPorts version which should know and understand what needs to be done. So let me detour to Darwinports first.
