mac geekery

This is kind of crazy, but it works like a charm. I was trying to find a way to just encrypt and password-protect my mail without going and putting my account in FileVault (evil). I noticed that Mac OS X would mount a disk image to open a program it knew was once on that disk image and, well, I put two and two together: what if my mail was on an encrypted disk image that also held the only working copy of the Mail application? Well, it would prompt for the image password, open Mail, and if I’d done things right then my mail would show up.

So that’s what I did.There's more »

Just finished reading a very nice article by Rob Braun on daemonnews.org about Apple’s involvement in Open Source Software. The following is a snap of the teaser, followed by a link to the article.

Apple and Open Source (Braun, Rob) 200602
My experience with Apple’s Open Source efforts began in 2000 when Darwin 1.0 was released, and I’ve been involved in Apple’s Open Source efforts in various roles ever since then. Apple had several Open Source efforts going at the time, with Darwin being the flagship product, accompanied by Darwin Streaming Server, OpenPlay & NetSprocket, and HeaderDoc. Six years later, all of these projects are still available. I will focus on the Darwin project, starting in 2000, since that is where my experience lies

http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200602/apple.htThere's more »

As a result of a previous question I was informed that Tiger finally has dummynet support in the kernel. What this means to you is that now you can do traffic shaping with no additional software.

Here’s how the idea works: you create several pipes that have a set bandwidth and other properties for all packets that get filed into them; you then add queues to those pipes that determine what priority certain requests will get in that pipe; then you add actual firewall rules to identify packets and file them into queues.

So let’s say you create a pipe with 1Mbit/s of allowed traffic. Within this you would setup three queues: one for high-priority services like incoming mail, DNS requests, and such; one for medium priority services like web and FTP; then one for low-priority services like file sharing and other network “noise”. With this setup you would, on a saturated pipe have a large amount of traffic coming in and going out for web and FTP, giving it priority over the noise, and when someone wanted to talk about mail or DNS those would have a higher chance of getting handled quickly. It’s a good boost in chance, but keep in mind that traffic shaping is not Quality of Service (QoS). Traffic shaping introduces delays in lower-priority packets so that higher-priority packets get in faster, but it offers no advanced logic or guarantees on delivery. If you want QoS, use either a userspace filter that does this or another kernel (like Linux) that has this built-in. For home and moderate server use, shaping is more than acceptable.There's more »

I run iTunes on my Mac Mini, which is embedded in my entertainment system, and I use Adium, which can display your currently running track as your status message…. if iTunes is running on the same machine as Adium. I want it to show what’s playing on the Mini, through my entertainment system, though, since I never really run iTunes on PowerBook (the speakers suck, you know).

It’s actually pretty easy to make it see the iTunes on the other machine, though, as AppleEvents are network-aware. I started with this Adium script and got to work. Look inside the package for the Now Playing script, where all the magic happens.There's more »

Recently I acquired a 17” iMac G4. Wanting to be able to control both it and my 15” Titanium PowerBook G4 I discovered “Synergy.” (http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/)

Synergy allows one keyboard and mouse to control multiple machines through software. (Even machines running different OSes.) A simple configuration file defines the involved systems and there spatial relationship to each other. Starting a synergy client on each machine to be controlled, and the synergy server on the host machine (the one with the keyboard and mouse) is all there is to it.

Since both the iMac and PowerBook have dedicated LCD displays, with no ability to accept input from an outside source this software solution was the best (only?) solution I could find.

Galleon is a relatively new project that allows any system with Java to host a wide range of services for your TiVo, ranging from getting news and weather, to archiving your TiVo video and serving your own video to your TiVo. The best part is that this requires no hacking of your TiVo. All of this can be accomplished via the public HME APIs that TiVo has made available to developers.

Having recently installed this software and seeing how useful it is, I wanted to talk a bit about it with some articles on MG. In this first one, I’ll go over installation and basic setup of Galleon. Later, I’ll talk about some more advanced arrangements you can make with Galleon.

At its core, HME is a very simple idea: a program runs on your computer that provides services on the TiVo in the form of pictures and sound, and takes input from the TiVo to trigger changes on the computer. Galleon is a host program, written in Java, that uses a modular architecture to provide a wide range of services ranging from news (RSS) and weather (with forecasts, radar, and local alerts) all the way to podcasting and videocasting (audio-only) support. In fact, with TiVo’s ToGo and GoBack features, Galleon can also take video from your TiVo and send it back, turning your computer into an additional TiVo in the home, essentially.There's more »