mac geekery

I’m trying to automate Mac icon creation for folders and files headlessly via the commandline or AppleScript.

I’m dynamically creating alpha masked PNG’s and wish to transfer those to Folder/File icons with no user intervention, all in the background.

Also for the sake of when Leopard comes out, it would be great to have 512×512 icon support. Though ANY support would be welcomed.

While I’d like to be using some Apple standard system for correctly applying icons, Folder icons are open to some hackery as they store the icon inside the folder itself as an ‘Icon’ file in the format of .icns, however I know of no way to automatically generate an icns file, and even if I could, you cant just rename your file to ‘Icon’ as the name is in fact ‘Icon^M’ or rather ‘Icon’ folowed by a carriage return, which is impossible to do as far as I know.

Any help in this endevour would be greatly appreciated.

Hi, is there any way for my laptop to start up different sets of applications on login based on whether it’s on power adapter or battery? Short of having two different accounts I mean.

Thanks.

How do you setup/configure SFTP on Tiger Server 10.4.8 so that users are restricted to the folder you specify and are not able to wander freely everywhere. I am able to do this for regular FTP using Pure FTPd but have found nothing help for doing the same using SSH.

Thanks a lot for your help.

I have a subscription in iTunes 7 to a Stanford U podcast that isn't a podcast, but a series of actual music. Crazy, I know. The problem is iTunes is gosh-darned determined that these are not songs but podcasts.

Regardless of what metadata I change in iTunes it refuses to re-categorize them properly. It even remembers the podcast setting if I delete them from the library and then re-import them!

How do I convince iTunes it's wrong?

OK.

Here is a question that im not even sure has an answer…

I have an .app that I did not create, it is very simple, it is a firmware updater. It came with no icon image, so finder uses the stock application image(pencil, ruler, and paper). I have created an .icns file containing my desired icon and mask with apples icon composer. Now how do I make the .icns file part of the .app? Is there a way to do this when I dont have applications origional .xcode? I am very HTML savy but when it comes to Xcode im lost. I know there has got to be a way to do it. Help me if you can.

As a way to more easily play movies from ripped DVDs, I have started setting the “Movie” folder (the folder which contains the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders which generally is the name of the movie) as a “Bundle Bit” via the Path Finder Get Info pane (I would imagine that it works the same in the Finder as well), giving the folder an extension of “.dvdmovie” (the extension could be just about anything so long as there are no conflicts with existing extensions), and informing the system that I would like all files with said extension to open via VLC so that all I need to do is double click the new bundle bit and watch the movie. This works extremely well (I really prefer not to use DVD Player as it doesn’t always play ripped movies correctly), but I have one problem. All of my new “.dvdmovie” bundles have the generic “Document” icon which is unsightly.

How do I make the system (via GUI, Applescript, command line, or hacking) apply a specific icon to all of my new “.dvdmovie” bundles, and to future ones as they are made? I would think that there is a way short of manually assigning them individually.

Is there any way to specify that a Mac’s zeroconf (aka rondezvous/deja vu/bon jour) name is to be the same as its hostname as provided by DNS? I have a rack of Mac OS X servers that I would like to be identically configured. It’s easy to configure them to set their hostname from DNS, but I’m not sure about the zeroconf name.

Not long ago I read a tip on using the F14 and F15 keys for adjusting the brightness of the display on this site which answered my question on what blasted button I had pushed to do that. Now my next question is, how do I disable them?

I do photography post production work and having a properly calibrated display is critical. Each time I bump one of those keys my calibration goes out the window and I have to go through the process all over again. A real pain during the middle of a project.

Any insight you can give on how to turn off this “feature” would be greatly appreciated.