Mac Geekery

If you move the Leopard dock to the side of the screen you get a dock with a gray background rather than the glassy surface. If you want that dock on the bottom of the screen as well, simply run the following:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock

This sets a hidden default on the Dock and then forces it to restart.

I went to the GUI feedback session at WWDC last year and in the midst of all the yelling and screaming over the new dock and menu bar there was one guy with a wholly different mission: be able to turn off tooltips. His complaint (a valid one, I feel) is that every time he wants to sit and think about what’s on-screen, a little yellow box comes up where the mouse is, and there’s no real “safe spot” for the mouse that doesn’t do this in most applications.

So, I present a little tip I discovered shortly afterwards and appear to have not written up. I dedicate this to Tooltip Guy, wherever he is.

defaults write -g NSInitialToolTipDelay 99999

You now have 99.999 seconds to think at a given time. Replace -g with the ID of any application to change it in that application.

So I'm paranoid, but not THAT paranoid.

Sometimes I feel like using "Secure Empty Trash", but that uses '/usr/bin/srm' with the '-m' option (7 passes), which can take a while to complete. Most of the time, I only care about what might turn up with simple file recovery tools in case my drive gets stolen (as opposed to covering my tracks from say law enforcement or a foreign government) so really, a single pass should be plenty for my needs. I could always use 'srm' directly, but the convenience the built-in tool offers in handling the Trashes on various volumes, and having a built-in menu item is nice.

It turns out the 'srm' option used by "Secure Empty Trash" in Tiger is specified in the file:There's more »

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DesktopServicesPriv.framework/Resources/Locum

There is a video on Launchd on Google Video as part of the Google Tech Talks series. The creator of launchd gives a talk on how to use it and how its going to change as of Leopard 10.5. its pretty informative and useful if you are a sysadmin and supposedly if your a programmer also.

One of the great dillemas of Mac admins is how to give users the ability to actually USE their machines, without the monkeys gumming up the works constantly. One of the easiest ways to do this is by using Open Directory. But what if you don’t have an Open Directory server?

Create a Power Users group. It gives users the ability to install the applications they want, without letting them modify things like network settings.

Working off of this tip from Mac OS X Hints, I created this method:There's more »

1. Download the server tools, and put Workgroup Manager either local on your machine or on an external drive (I use my Shuffle)
2. Open Workgroup Manager and edit the local directory

I have waaaay too many chat buddies to leave offline contacts visible in my Adium buddylist, but I tend to IM a few of my Jabber buddies frequently even when they’re offline. In Adium, you can create new chat, select the service, and start typing in the UID of the contact, but that’s a small chore.

The dictionary for Adium’s AppleScript support is sparse and confusing, though I’m sure it makes perfect sense for seasoned AppleScript vets. I had to trowel around on Adium’s Trac site to figure it out. Documented here, for you pleasure, is how to create a new chat via AppleScript.There's more »

Mac OS X stores the current marketing OS version (i.e. not the kernel revision number) in a property list in CoreServices. You don’t need to parse the plist to get it out.There's more »