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.

There are a plethora of hacks to change the translucent menu bar in 10.5. While I doubt the sanity of the UI designers at Apple with this release of the operating system, it is relatively easy to change this behavior without installing third party hacks. There's more »

These are 3 apps that I recently discovered,

Nocturne is made by the QuickSilver people, BlackTree. The app simply turns your screen “white on black” as the normal Accessability option goes but it can also turn it monocrome, remove backdrop and other things.

ThisServce turns any script you write in any installed language into a service.

those were found on “DaringFireball.net”

finally MacFuse and MacFusion. MacFuse is a mac implimentation of FUSE, File System in User Space. It allows SSHFS a much needed edition to geeks everywhere, and finaly, spotlight fs. Just watch his video of mac fuse

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 »