I Make Things - Mac OS X

Run Script at Mac OS X Login

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Wed, 06 May 2009 03:28:12 -0400

I know alot of people want to know how to do this. The solution is usually creating a shell script and naming it with the '.command' extension so it'll launch the Terminal.

The cleaner way is through a simple launchd plist placed in your ~/Library/LaunchAgents folder.

Here's my example:

$ cat ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.latcarf.loginscript.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.latcarf.loginscript</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/bin/bash</string>
<string>/Users/latcarf/Documents/script/loginscript.bash</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

# Start it up
$ launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.latcarf.loginscript.plist
# Or just reboot or logout and back in to kick it off.
# Only runs once at login.

It's not MAC!

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 01:43:51 -0400

Just a little pet peeve I need to get off my chest.

I know all you PC folks are coming over to the Mac in droves and that's a great thing. It's great for you and for me. You'll have a much better computing experience (and life in general) on Mac and I'll still have a job making software for you. So win-win all around!

One little behavior we need to correct though, is how you write about your new computer. In the Windows world it's normal to write PC, or DELL, or IBM in all capital letters. Heck, in DOS (all caps there too) it's even proper to write FOLDER NAMES in capital letters as well, isn't it?

In the Mac world however, it's wrong to write Mac in all caps (and generally wrong to write folder names in all caps - it just looks like you're yelling). Yeah, I know it's a hard habit to break; writing Mac vs. MAC. I mean, you're gonna have to hold down the shift key a little less, and that's tough, but you should be getting used to doing things with less effort now that you have a Mac, right? Besides, you don't need to yell about your Mac. We all know how much better they are (we've been using them for years) and Mac users generally appreciate a little more subtly (you'll understand that as you get used to using your new Mac).

Anyway, Mac is the first three letters in the word Macintosh, which is a kind of an apple. Apple makes computers (and other hardware) and a Mac is a kind of Apple computer. See the correlation here, kind of witty huh? Anyway, you never see the word Macintosh with all caps for the first three letters: MACintosh. That just looks weird right? Well, using MAC to talk about Mac computers looks weird too. So, if you could just please not do that, it would be great.

Oh, before you go there is one instance where you'll want to use the all capitals version of the word MAC. That's when you need to talk about the "quasi-unique" identifier that's assigned to your network adapter. It's known as a Media Access Control address. All computers that can connect to a network have these and they're certainly not limited to Mac. Hey, I guess you also might want to use the all capitals version MAC when you're talking about MAC cosmetics as well, but that has nothing to do with computers.

Ok, so just to make sure we're on the same page... Use Mac and not MAC and we'll all get along great. Thanks!

Fink on Leopard With Blocked CVS Port

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:05:47 -0400

Recently I wanted to use Fink on my Leopard machine at work. This sounds simple but there are a few complicating factors. First, there are no Fink binaries for Leopard as of this writing. Ok, so that's not a big deal, I can compile it easy enough, Fink made an easy to use bootstrap script for that purpose. Secondly, as far as I know, as of this writing, we can't use rsync mode during Fink's self update on Leopard. So, the solution is to use fink selfupdate-cvs. This leads to the third problem which comes from the fact that my company is strict about blocking ports. Unfortunately the cvs port 2401 is blocked. Fortunately however, SSH (port 22) is not. So my solution is to temporarily port-forward cvs through ssh to my home server so I can run fink selfupdate-cvs to pull down all the great package descriptions I need for my fink install.

Here's are my notes on what I did:

# I needed to find where the cvs urls were set so I grepped in /sw
cd /sw
grep -R fink.cvs.sourceforge.net *

# That eventually turned up the following potential places to make changes:
lib/fink/URL/anonymous-cvs:fink.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fink
lib/fink/URL/cvs-repository:fink.cvs.sourceforge.net
lib/fink/URL/developer-cvs:fink.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fink
lib/perl5/Fink/SelfUpdate/CVS.pm: my $cvsrepository = "fink.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fink";

# Since I only needed to get package descriptions I figured /sw/lib/fink/URL/anonymous-cvs
# was the file I wanted change to handle my port-forward solution.
cd /sw/lib/fink/URL/
sudo cp anonymous-cvs anonymous-cvs.orig
nano -wz anonymous-cvs

# Here I changed: fink.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fink to: localhost:/cvsroot/fink

# Then it was a simple matter to create an ssh tunnel to an external server where I have
# the ability to login and its port 2401 is not blocked.
ssh login@domian.example -L 2401:fink.cvs.sourceforge.net:2401

# Finally, I ran the fink update command:
fink selfupdate-cvs

# Hooray. Now everything works as expected and I probaly don't need to use it again unless I need
# to update package descriptions sometime in the future. So, I changed things back:
cd /sw/lib/fink/URL/
sudo mv anonymous-cvs anonymous-cvs.custom
sudo mv anonymous-cvs.orig anonymous-cvs

# Probably I should create a shell alias like: finkselfupdatecvs to handle it all when I
# I find I want to update package descriptions again. But I'm too lazy and besides, that's
# why I've put it in my blog.

Software I Use

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 15:58:01 -0400

I often get people asking me what Mac software I use alot and if there's anything I can recommend to them. I recently put together a list of stuff I use at work (this doesn't include the *NIX stuff) for a colleague and figured others might benefit from it.

Adium - AIM, MSN, Yahoo, .Mac, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, ICQ, etc... IM client. (open source)
Cyberduck - FTP client (open source)
ClamXav - Virus Checker (not like you'll need it) (open source)
Firefox - Web browser (open source)
iTerm - Terminal Emulator (open source)
Microsoft Remote Desktop Client - RDC to connect to Windows on Mac (free)
VLC - Media Player (open source)
Yojimbo - Password/etc DB (commercial)

Vana'diel Time

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 19:50:31 -0400

I recently started working on a Vana'diel (Final Fantasy XI) clock written in Cocoa. My reasoning for doing this (when there really isn't any need for another Vana'diel clock) is two-fold:
1. I want to learn Cocoa and a good way to learn something is to associate it with something you already enjoy (ie. Final Fantasy).
2. The only Mac OS X Vana'diel clock out there is old, lacks some info I'd like it to have, and doesn't really have the nicest interface (text only - no eye candy).

The biggest hump for me so far was figuring out how to calculate the time. I looked at some javascript clocks people had written but I didn't like the fact that they all seem based on some arbitrary date. I wanted something that could go all the way back to the beginning of Vana'diel time. The Vana'diel epoch (the Vana'diel big bang, if you will). I decided, I wanted to write the algorithim myself, differently from all the ways I've seen it done. Fortunately, I found a great resource explaining some of the critical information needed to understand how Vana'diel time works. Thanks Miwarre!

I wanted to rapidly prototype a simple clock to test my algorithm and I figured I could do it easily and quickly enough using Applescript. I've posted the script here for anyone else trying to work with Vana'diel time.

When I re-wrote this for Cocoa, I didn't use the "seconds since epoch" constant I used here because I found a cleaner way with NSCalendarDate. The jist of it is that I can create an NSCalendarDate object using the "earth" date that corresponds to the Vana'diel epoch date and the effect is the same.

I have to give a big special thanks to my girlfriend who checked my work (by hand!) and found that I'd originally used the wrong value in the unix_seconds_since_epoch_at_vana_epoch (it was missing the extra 86400 seconds for the 1968 leap year). This has since been corrected in this script.

The Applescript simply returns the current Vana'diel date.

set unix_seconds_since_epoch to do shell script "date \"+%s\""
set vana_rate_mod to 25 -- Vana time runs 25 times faster than earth time.
set vana_seconds_per_day to 86400
set vana_days_per_week to 8
set vana_days_per_month to 30
--This value is derived from the amount of seconds that elapsed between the
--Vana'diel epoch (0001/01/01 00:00) which is 1967/02/09 15:00 and the
--UNIX epoch which is 1970/01/01 00:00. This includes a leap year (1968/02/29)
--which adds an extra 86400 seconds. Since all calculations are based off seconds
--since the UNIX epoch, we need to add this value to any UNIX seconds we use.
set unix_seconds_since_epoch_at_vana_epoch to 91270800

-- Find out the Vana'diel minutes since the Vana'diel epoch.
set vana_seconds_since_epoch to (unix_seconds_since_epoch + ¬
unix_seconds_since_epoch_at_vana_epoch) * vana_rate_mod

set vana_days_since_epoch to ¬
(vana_seconds_since_epoch / vana_seconds_per_day)
set vana_weeks_since_epoch to ¬
(vana_days_since_epoch / vana_days_per_week)
set vana_months_since_epoch to ¬
(vana_days_since_epoch / vana_days_per_month)

set v_year to round (vana_days_since_epoch / 360) rounding up
set v_month to round ((vana_months_since_epoch) mod 12) rounding up
set v_day to round (vana_days_since_epoch) mod 30 rounding up

set v_hour to round ((vana_seconds_since_epoch mod ¬
vana_seconds_per_day) / 3600) rounding down
set v_minute to round (((vana_seconds_since_epoch mod ¬
vana_seconds_per_day) mod 3600) / 60) rounding down
if v_minute is less than 10 then
set v_minute to "0" & v_minute
end if
set v_second to round (((vana_seconds_since_epoch mod ¬
vana_seconds_per_day) mod 3600) mod 60) rounding down
if v_second is less than 10 then
set v_second to "0" & v_second
end if

set v_wday to round (vana_days_since_epoch mod vana_days_per_week) rounding up

set week_days to {"Firesday", "Earthsday", "Watersday", "Windsday", ¬
"Iceday", "Lightningsday", "Lightsday", "Darksday"}

return (v_year & "/" & v_month & "/" & v_day & " " & ¬
v_hour & ":" & v_minute & ":" & v_second & " " & ¬
item (v_wday) of week_days) as string

OvoLab Phlink

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 21:49:25 -0400

I purchased and finally received an OvoLab Phlink. I've connected it to my Mac Mini (my home automation server) and haven't gotten much further than running the software and calling it a few times. Eventually, I plan on setting up full control of my home X-10 system but of course, like anything fun, it takes some time to do it.

So far I've noticed some issues with hanging up and not leaving a message. Phlink seems to leave the telephone connected and never really hangs it up. I'm hoping it will be a transient problem - the kind that only happens when you're playing around with something that isn't set up properly yet. I noticed a few reports of the same behavior on the Phlink forum but never really saw a definitive solution. Further experimentation will certainly be called for.

Hopefully I'll get everything set up to the point that I have total control over my house from a few button presses on my cell phone! Isn't technology great?

Clamcorder Released!

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 23:33:48 -0400

There's a mini-game in Final Fantasy XI called "clamming." You dig up items in the sand and drop them into a bucket. Each item has a specific weight and the bucket can only hold so much before it breaks. If you can fill the bucket within five ponzes (the weight unit of Vana'diel - the world in Final Fantasy XI), you can transfer your items in to a larger bucket and continue digging stuff up. If your bucket breaks, you lose anything you've dug up so far. At anytime you can stop clamming and save the items.

The mini-game is appealing because it's got a mixture or skill and chance some items you might find can be worth alot of gil (the monetary unit in Vana'diel). I started clamming for fun and then I got hooked on it and decided I could start making some profit. In the course of clamming, I created a tool that helps me track the weight in my bucket. As things go, it ended up being able to do much more than that.

Today, I finally released it to the public as a free download! It's called Clamcorder (a play on "clamming" and "recorder").
Continue reading "Clamcorder Released!"

Keeping iChat Awake

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 19:24:00 -0400

iChat has a mind of its own... Well, as far as setting your "Away" status it does! Recently, I created a system at work that allows the developers to kick off builds on our build machine using iChat. It's a pretty trick little system and I found some interesting things while engineering it.

One of those things is that iChat knows when you're away - or at least it thinks it does. If you do not interact with your computer after a specific amount of time (I don't know what amount of time - nor do I care), iChat will go to "idle". If you have specified (in the iChat Preferences), not to show others you are idle, then no one will see the idle status but you. After long enough in the "idle" state, iChat will set itself to "away". The only thing that can bring it out of this state is for you to interact with your computer.

When I say "interact" I mean via a human interface device. You cannot ssh into the box and move some files around. You cannot Applescript some moving windows or emulate key-presses. The interaction must be made via a mouse or a keyboard. Otherwise, iChat will continue to be "away".

It took me a while but I figured out how this interaction was happening and I figured out a way around it. Read on if you want to see my solution.
Continue reading "Keeping iChat Awake"

MacWorld 2006

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 00:30:40 -0400

Well, it seems it's January again and that means it's time for Macworld San Francisco.

Don't get me wrong, Macworld is great! Super-cool to walk around and see what everyone's doing, really fun to get a chance to meet the developers, and interesting to meet people of like minds. That is, as long as you're attending it as a consumer.

Working at MacWorld as a representative of your company is a whole different story though. It's much like working a retail Christmas. People are everywhere. You are constantly talking (and your throat always ends up sore near the end) People are always telling you their problems (whether it's with your software or not) and you listen to people tell the same stupid jokes over and over again. The noise and activity all around you tires you out so quickly. It's loud, so people get up close to talk to you and inevitably spit in your mouth, right during flu season! Hooray.

It is a wonderful exercise to meet the people you've been designing software for. It teaches you many things and it is definitely an experience more developers should embrace. But, with all the good it does, it is a very taxing thing to do.

I'll see you there if you are a Mac person and use my company's software and I guarantee that I'll do my best to look enthusiastic.

feed face

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 20:15:42 -0400

$ hexdump /mach_kernel | head -1 | awk '{print $2,$3}'¬
feed face

Keychain Macros X

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 23:09:00 -0400

A friend of mine released a new shareware app recently that would benefit any Mac OS X user.

Keychain Macros X

It's a keyboard macros program that allows you to link different passwords and usernames to a single "hot-key" stroke. That is, you just have to hit control-S in any web page (or other windows) and your password and username will be automatically entered.

Sounds simple, huh. It is but not as you might think. Keychain Macros X remembers the name of the page you are on and can pull up the right password and username instantly - regardless of which page you are on!

Many of my banks' websites clear the password and login fields so Safari's auto-fill won't work, but Keychain Macros X does. It's really an elegant piece of work and since it's shareware, you can easily check it out! Don't take my word for it, download it today!

Moving from CVS to SVN - Swimming Around

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 21:59:19 -0400

It's become time again for me to revisit my organization's desire to move from CVS to Subversion. I've gotten out a few releases of our products recently and with that work out of the way, I'm getting back to swimming around in Subversion.

This is the third installment in my ongoing detail of the move to Subversion. In the first installment of this series, I spoke about my organization's interest in using Subversion instead of CVS. In the second installment, I detailed how I installed Subversion on Mac OS X (Panther) and how I initiated the process of converting some of our CVS repositories. In this installment, I will go into further detail about interacting with the "mock" Subversion server and the pilot project repositories.

Continue reading "Moving from CVS to SVN - Swimming Around"

HFS+ File Creation and Modification Dates

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:33:16 -0400

Be aware of timezones when working with file creation and modification dates. On HFS+ file systems, file creation dates are fairly sturdy. That is, they remain the same through file copies, moves, updates, etc... This behavior is nice because you can safely rely on file creation dates to be "correct".

There is one caveat (that bit fairly recently) when dealing with file creation dates on HFS+ file system. The date is subject to interpretation by the system the file is on. Let me clarify this statement with an example.

If you create a file at 9:30pm on January 1st of 2005, in the Pacific timezone, the file creation date will be: Jan 1, 2005 9:30pm. That's easy enough. You would think you can rest assured that the file creation date of Jan 1, 2005 will be maintained across different systems as long as they are all on HFS+. This is not the case though - here is where the "interpretation" comes into play.
Continue reading "HFS+ File Creation and Modification Dates"

Delicious Library

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 13:30:00 -0400

I just finished cataloging the 173 DVDs I own; and it took me just over a half hour to do it!

I used Delicious Library - one of the coolest apps to come along for Mac OS X in a year or so. I'm not going to go into detail on it because it's been talked about alot already.

It is sooo sweet! A great piece of software. It has replaced my DVD Database X (though I'm still looking for a Palm counterpart! )

MacWorld

nospam@example.com (Latcarf) — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 00:08:00 -0400

I just spent the last two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) working at MacWorld 2005 - Moscone Center - San Francisco. It is a lot of work, but it is time well spent. Getting a chance to see the customers I've worked so hard for is a simple joy. I won't say what company I work for but it is a large company that produces a couple of well Mac OS X Apps. As such, there were many, many users to talk to. I was so busy both days that I didn't have any time to check out the expo during regular hours.
Continue reading "MacWorld"