e v i l _ b l e n d e r

The Omni Mouth Brand New Secret Product no longer a secret
Finally, finally, finally... it looks like someone is stepping up to the plate to offer project management that will run on the Mac OS. I'm a big fan of most things made by 'omni' and am looking forward to trying out/using their newly announced OmniPlan on some of the many un-ending projects at work.

I have looked at others, and not really loved them - Merlin, DotProject, and SchuduleAll... all of them haven't really given me what I've wanted... I am looking for an app that will help me schedule our 4 Avid editing stations between the 6 editors and (usually more than) 6 jobs going on at one time. I don't want to be a corporate 'planner' who never 'does' anything... just talks about it!

Right now I'm just doing it all in my head... but I worry that most of the time we are just 'getting lucky' about the scheduling - not really working as efficiently as we can.

I don't know that OmniPlan will do what I need, but I am anxious to test it out anyways.

Posted by vashremix at 01:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ah! a useful bit of terminal knowledge to carry around with me... I'll take it.

$ defaults read loginwindow | grep Path > ~/Desktop/startup_list.txt

This won't generate any onscreen output, but will dump the output directly into a text file (named startup_list.txt in this example) on your Desktop.

from: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20051128060843412&lsrc=osxh

Posted by vashremix at 04:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's one that has changed my life! (ok well, at least my music listening life!) I'm going to post this up at OSXHints and spread the love. It would be nice to be recognized for finding it. Of course, _someone_ else must know about it... at least the programmers who wrote iTunes, right?

But anyways... let's say you're listening to iTunes and you want to move a little bit forward or backwards - no need to mouse on over to the playhead, just hold down Command-Option-Control all at the same time - and then press the left or right arrows! It jumps a few seconds for you. (like holding down the arrow keys on a CD player)

It's GREAT!

No need for an applescript solution!

Of course, if you want to jump to the next song on your playlist - just press the right arrow key... left gets you back to the start (think just pressing the arrow keys on a CD player)

I'll admit - I am a bit of a fan for keyboard shortcuts - I like not having to move my fingers off the keyboard - so between command-tab, quicksilver, and now control-option-command (key mash!) left and right arrows... I'm pretty set.

Posted by vashremix at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK
So you're running mac osX right? If not, stop reading right here.

OK for the rest of you, open your Terminal (if you're in the finder hold down the apple button (the command button) and the shift key, and the 'U' key at the same time. This opens your Utilities folder in your Applications folder. Then type 'ter' and you should have the Terminal program hilighted. Hold down the command button again and press the 'down arrow' button on your keyboard. This will launch the application for you) -- or you could use the wonderful and free program Quicksilver to launch Terminal, by typing not much more than 'T' and hitting return.
Either way you do it, now the terminal is open.

Copy and paste this line into it:

defaults write "Apple Global Domain" AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleBoth

Then hit return.
That's it.

You can quit out of the terminal now.

When you log back into your account, you'll now have arrows at both sides of your scrollbar. You no longer have to choose between having the 2 arrows at the top or bottom... you can have them both!

Doesn't that just make you feel better?!

What if you want to go back to the way it was the old way?

Well, you don't even need to go to the Terminal and copy and paste any text if you don't want to - instead you can open your system preferences, and just choose to have the arrows on the top or the bottom.
No harm, no foul.

I can't remember how long I've been using this, so I figured I'd pass it along to anyone else who wanted to know about it. It's not _too_ geeky!

Posted by vashremix at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well - I was gone for a week - and pretty much enjoyed being in Boston. I hadn't realized that it wasn't as big as I thought it was. I'm not saying it's small - I didn't realize I could walk as far as I did.
I stayed out by the Hynes convention center - which seemed to be also next to Fenway park! So, on my first day there I was walking around a bit to see what was in the neighborhood, and walked to the Boston Commons - which was quite a nice area. Then on another night I figured I'd take a subway in to see Quincy market. I didn't realize that the subway stop for the market was only 1 stop farther than the one for the commons! So I could have walked to Quincy market had I realized.

Anyways, I'm off topic. Overall Macworld was good but, the exhibition was too small. I missed the size that it has been in the past when it was at the Javits center. However, the classes were really informative and well presented. I think that the IT courseline was the best of the bunch (having attended a few outside of this line) and learned way more than I expected to about OSX server as well as other network services.

I also attended a photoshop "hands on" session by a fellow named Michael Ninness. It was a fantastic session. I know Photoshop already, but sitting and following along in a fairly quick paced session taught me things that I didn't know that photoshop could do. So, advice to you all, if you have the opportunity of attending a hands on presentation of photoshop with Michael Ninness I say go for it! He's got a CD-Rom for sale on Lynda.com. He was way more animated in real life, and I think that's what made the course so enjoyable.

That's about it - I never cared for writing (as you can tell) and I don't want to just post an ego-only blog! Rather give you some good info.

If you've got the patience for listening to a CD-ROM tutorial - I would imagine this would be a good one - he knows his stuff. If, however, you get an opportunity to see Michael Ninness in a real life training session - for sure do that!

Posted by vashremix at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well... guess it's not the end of the world, but I had to go from the new 10.4 - Tiger, back down to 10.3 Jaguar. There were some applications that I need to use at work (remote desktop, now up to date) that just didn't seem to be working in Tiger.
I found out the hard way that you really can't do an 'archive and install' to keep network and user settings when you're going backwards from Tiger to Jaguar. That was a bit of a bummer. So I've done the re-format, and now I'm re-installing from my backups.
(I've learned my lesson - I have backups now.)
So... it's taking a bit long to go back from firewire - but at least I'm at work and have a different machine to work on! :)
Better go and get some of that work done.

Posted by vashremix at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK here's some new things I learned about tiger that I didn't know.

Safari now opens PDF files right inside of itself. I used to have a plugin that would do that... now it just does it on it's own. (Personally I don't care for that... often I want to download the manual and print it out to read at my leisure.)

no longer can you get just a simple search of the folder you're parked in... it goes through the spotlight engine. Which to me seems slower than my old Command-F!

stay tuned!

Posted by vashremix at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'll admit - I haven't yet really put Tiger through it's paces yet. I installed it about 12 hours ago - and spotlight is still 'indexing' my harddrive! That's not a good sign is it?! (maybe I just have too much stuff!)

I worry a little bit though about being on the bleeding edge. The list of incompitable software over at macintouch at least lets me know that my new backup system won't be working anytime soon. (Thanks Dantz!)
<sarcasm> Glad I bought the Maxtor harddrive and not the cheaper Lacie model. </sarcasm>

That and since the office uses Now up to Date... well... that's going to be an issue too isn't it? Guess I'll not be upgrading many of the machines at work until Now Software pulls their act together.

Having quicksilver's launch sequence hijacked by spotlight is a little bit disconcerting. I'm just ingrained to use command-space to launch quicksilver. I don't mean to pimp it quite so hard - but really, if your running OSX you owe it to yourself to go and check it out for yourself. So I had to change the spotlight's default to launch with a F11 ... F12 is the dashboard... close enough for me.

However, beyond that - I'm not sure there's really much of difference that I've noticed yet. I had to upgrade a few applications - quicksilver, candy bar (yes, that _is_ important to run :) ) and stickybrain - but so far (knock wood) things have been running pretty smooth.

In fact, as I write - spotlight is now done indexing.
It's sort of fast - not macworld showoff fast though... guess I need a G5 after all!
Here's a look for ya

hmm... interesting - .png instead of .pdf for screen grabs. Looks like we're PCing ourselves a little bit there steve aren't we? ;)

Now I just need to search my harddrive for something I actually NEED! you'd think that after 12 hours I could think of something to search for! :)

iChat appears to be new-ish. No more rendevouz chatting - it's now called 'bonjour' chatting. Very french. Very chi chi as they say.

I've heard that mail's new - maybe I'll use it at work instead of Entourage. Not sure I trust it yet though - not after it started eating my older email. I had thought - 'I'll keep my serial numbers here in mail for all my shareware' that way I won't lose the numbers in some kind of database that goes corrupt. Then mail started eating mail older than about 7 months. DOH! bye bye serial number collection. Didn't know I had over 20,000 email messages in my mail program. Maybe that's the trouble - I keep too much stuff. Wonder if that's what took spotlight so long to deal with.
-after the import-
well... it certainly LOOKS different!
They finally made it so I can have different signatures for my different email accounts. That's nice.
'Add invitation to iCal'? What's this? iCal doesn't seem that different - maybe there's something under the hood that will be impressive.

Dashboard - not impressed. Still like Konfabulator better. Not sure why this needed to get implemented into the OS. I used Konfabulator for a while - and then the usefulness of it wore off. I haven't used it in about 6 months. So I'm not sure why it's important to be tied to the OS. Maybe some of the widgets besides calendar and clock and calculator will change my mind. But I haven't figured out where to download some new ones yet.

Haven't even opened up automator yet. And truth told, it's one of the things I'm most looking forward to using at work (to make my life easier). All right... so I went and peeked. Yikes it looks deeper than I thought - and mostly only support for apple's programs... nothing in there for photoshop... hopefully that changes soon.

What else was big Tiger news? They didn't mention the little sound effects that happen when you copy files around... not sure I approve of that yet. I'm used to my computer being silent. It strikes me as the kind of thing that will eventually get really 'old' - like the ichat 'whoop' sound that it did by default - that everyone I know turned off within 10 minutes of using the thing.

OK ecto... what am I listening to right now? No More from the album “Return To V” by Roni Size Thanks ecto!

Technorati Tags: mac osx, quicksilver, konfabulator, tiger

Posted by vashremix at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dan Schellenberg � Blog Archive � Use Quicksilver Triggers to Control iTunes on a Remote Computer

Is a fantastic explanation about using applescripts, the curl command, and quicksilver to remotely control itunes on another computer.
I could use this at work I think.

Posted by vashremix at 01:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I cannot live without quicksilver on my machine. I've installed it on any machine that I have to work on - at work and, of course, at home. Any time I end up on a windows machine, or when I'm trying to fix someone's who doesn't have it installed - I'm always at a loss. I hate having to cmd-shift-a to go to applications, type u to highlight utilities, hit command-down arrow to open the folder, type disk to highlight disk utilities, and hit command-down arrow to launch it, just to repair permissions. It's so much better to type command-space disk enter - done.
Learn more for yourself at:
Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog: QuickSilver - A Better OS X In Just 10 Minutes He's got a good intermediate piece as well.

Posted by vashremix at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's one I didn't know.

Make sure that on BOTH the system that you are trying to control, as well as the system that you are controlling from - that the firewall on your router is set to port forward UDF port 3283 to the appropriate computer!

What does that mean?
Go into your router and look for the 'forwarding' or 'ports' option on it (my netgear calls it port, and the lynksys at work calls it forwarding but both put them under 'advanced') and add the IP address of the machine that you want to control, or are controlling from and make sure that you point the ports to them.

As you can see from my setup below:

I've got two different machines that I'm serving different services off of. One of them is at .2 and the other is at .6
So, depending on what it is you are requesting (jabber, or web browsing, or Apple Remote Desktop) you're going to end up on a different machine.

Make sense?

Posted by vashremix at 07:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know... sometimes it's just the little things that manage to cause so much confusion. Obviously this applies to relationships between people - as I know from first hand experience - but it also applies to technology! (Who would have thought that those two could be related!)
Picked up this Maxtor Drive the other day... I like it alot for backing up.

The fact that I just recently lost 2 years worth of digital pictures to a harddrive fluke has made me more likely to back up than ever before. I tell you what... THAT is a hard lesson to learn. I'm still sad about it.

I like it's simplicity, I've set it up so that when I hit the button on the drive, it just does the backup of the folders I've selected. Simple. I do it right before I go to sleep (if I've used the computer at all that day).
Well, I decided that Julia needed to have something as nice - so I installed the Maxtor's software onto her computer and set it up to use a different external firewire drive that we had. There's no button, so I made a different software button for her to click and launch the backup. It worked once, but then didn't seem to work again.
Rather than bore you with all of the trouble shooting I was trying to do to get it to work, I'll tell you the solution. Repair Permissions that's what needed to be done. Sometimes it's those tiny little permissions that get freaked that can cause so many weird problems.
So I have to remind myself - no matter what I'm trying to trouble shoot on OSX, I have to make sure the first thing I do is run the repair permissions command.

Posted by vashremix at 01:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I won't lie to you... I've missed BBEdit Lite. It happened suddenly - just a:

Thank you for your interest in BBEdit Lite. BBEdit Lite has been discontinued and is no longer being developed or supported. Anyone currently using the software is welcome to continue doing so, in accordance with the existing license agreement.

Now I can toss it away! BareBones has made TextWrangler free!

This makes me very happy.

I haven't even tried it out yet - but it looks exactly like BBEdit Lite used to! Yay!

Well, the download is done - and it's off to the races - let's put TextWrangler through it's paces.

Posted by vashremix at 12:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wouldn't often refer to myself as a true geek. I tend to think of myself more as a geek-in-training, or a fellow with geek inclinations. That aside, every now and then I find a fun toy that I know my brothers/sisters, possibly co-workers won't think is that cool at all. I've got to tell someone about it though!
Check out GeekTool!
It is a control panel for Mac OSX (I guess it's a "preference pane" but I'll never get used to calling it that!) that lets you show various information directly on your desktop. No window necessary. It can show images from the web, as well as output from your terminal.
What good is that? Well, right now, I've got my current IP address displayed right on the top left of my desktop, and with a little more terminal fiddling, I'm hoping to soon have a list of the 5 applications using the most CPU at any given moment.
(It's SOMETHING like 'top -o cpu -l 6 -n 5 -R -s 5' - I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to take the bottom 5 lines from this output yet... I tried using '>tail -n5' at the end, but that didn't quite work like I thought it would.)

Perhaps I _am_ a geek.

I just think that the terminal is just about the best part of the Mac's OS. Guess I'm just letting my DOS roots show. Except that I can actually DO STUFF with the terminal. I couldn't do much with DOS other than changing directories and copying files!

Posted by vashremix at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apple's Garage Band application is a pretty nifty thing. I read a post over at Stevef's about it, but now I've installed it and tried it out myself.
I like that it's very MIDI based. I managed to quickly put together a pretty reasonable sounding guitar and drum loop on my own. I do have one minor quibble with it though... I don't recall anyone saying that it would only work in 44k instead of 48k!
Why does that matter?
I've got the fantastically simple to use iMic that I use to hook my mac up to speakers for all my applications.
NO OTHER PROGRAM on my mac has ever complained that the iMic was working at 48k and _it_ could only work at 44k.

I suppose that's what you get for a very cheap (money-wise I mean!) program that's geared towards folk not using anything other than their computer's built in hardware... but... come on. It can't be _that_ hard, can it?

Posted by vashremix at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's one of those things that I don't fully understand about myself yet. I'm constantly struggling between having a totally empty desktop - and one fully customized to my every whim and desire. Sometimes I cut pictures out and paste a bunch of them into a collage and save the collage as a pictrue I can put on my desktop. Other times I can't stand the visual noise and have to go back to an all grey background.
However - every time I look at http://www.konfabulator.com/ I'm drawn back into customizing my desktop ENDLESSLY. So once again, today I'm downloading about 30 new widgets and dusting off konfabulator again. We'll see how long it lasts!

Posted by vashremix at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)