I have a Zyxel router here, that just didn’t want to work with WPA, after searching with the right terms I found this!
Update the firmware as given in the link above, be sure to have a matching version of the hardware!
Good luck.
When I have some time I might look into an alternative way to having a screen saver again, that shows me the uptime. The old version of showoff just crashed my system preferences, so I kicked it. It’s not that important that I spend a minute more. But some search brought up the above page and it’s a bit of work, but learning is always cool.
I just changed the config of my application and tested it if it still works, since I only switched DB names. Everything is cool. It works, all the pages show the same stuff it seems to work. Great thing!
A couple minutes later, I go to the shell window where I did that change and am wondering what server I am on. Geeeeeeee, the online version. I changed the DB to use on the live version. God damn it.
It was no big deal, since I hadn’t restarted the server yet, since my local dev server (django) automatically restarts when I change any python file. So I just undid the change online.
Something has to change that this won’t happen again, searching the web a bit and with the help of Daniel I found this article “Colorful Terminal”, where he had solved the same problem. Great solution.
Just one little thing, when I accidently forget to start the script which logs me into the server and changes the background color of my terminal … what then? Can the script not trigger on “ssh me@server.com”? Any ideas?
The article How to mount a remote ssh filesystem using sshfs very well describes what I have to do to have my disk mount on my Mac disk on my Ubuntu system.
After I got that working I only need to add the following two commands to “System > Properties > Sessions > Start programs”:
# Run synergy-client on ubuntu, so I can use only mouse # and keyboard of the Powerbook after startup. synergyc -n ubuntubox 192.168.0.100 # Mount my user's Powerbook directory to the directory # /media/macbox on the ubuntu maschine. sshfs macbox:/Users/cain /media/macbox
(”ubuntubox” is the name for the ubuntu maschine and “macbox” is the name for my Powerbook, and 192.168.0.100 is the fixed address of my Powerbook).
Now I can just turn on my Ubuntu maschine and it comes up, starts everything and is just ready to go, of course I also turned on the auto-login, since there is nothing intersting on there anyway and it’s just the most convinient … cool
Thanks to this blog article I found Katapult, which is basically the same as QuickSilver for Mac OS X, without which I couldn’t live anymore. And since I have my Ubuntu screen placed right beside my Mac’s screen and am using only one mouse and keyboard for both thanks to synergy, I was moving over to the Ubuntu screen and wanted to start an app by hitting APPLE+Space … doh … no way. So finding Katapult just really makes working with Ubuntu easier. Though it is a KDE app Ubunbtu let’s you run it and you don’t even realize that.
Ubuntu is just great.
Finally I got around to setup a proper system at home, after a while of thinking that a laptop is the overall best solution I am happy to have two 19" BenQ FP93G X, one connected to my main machine, the still in use G4 15" PowerBook and the other one hooked to some older AMD about 2GHz running Ubuntu.
And today I connected the awesome sound system SoundSticks II from harman/kardon. After a little of searching I also found out how to turn up the volume. And they even had thought of allowing to adjust the direction the satellite speakers point, this sound is just awesome. And now listen to Pet Shop Boys Sodom (Trentemoller Remix) (link to iTunes) and this system was worth every cent!
As I was looking for which external displays I get to optimize my working environment, since virtual desktops are nice but still not the end of the road, I came across this discussion that was aiming towards the same. And by reading this it seems that it is not possible to run two external displays on my Powerbook.
Actually I didn’t just want to close the lid and run only the two external display, no I wanted to put one on the right and the other one left side, so that I get a total of three displays. That would really give me the ability to open the editor, browser and log-file viewer at once. That would be all I need in my working environment.
So I will finally only get the one extra display. What a pitty …
[Update] Well, obviously it’s not all impossible, you just need the money. They support even up to four displays. Once when the business is really going great I might get that :-).
Of course I had seen the newest features of Leopard that Apple had shown yesterday at WWDC 2006. And for one night I was sure that they had built the same thing that I had wanted since I have a Mac. But Apple’s Spaces are only virtual desktops - bummer. My Spaces2.0 is not only a virtual desktop switcher. No, Spaces2.0 let’s you really switch between working environments. One Space in Space2.0 is like another Mac on your Mac. What? Let me explain as I would use it in real life.
My Work-Space - is my Mac with my opened Mail.app, Safari, IRC, Console etc. and all the applications that only relate to work. So
This does not allow any private E-Mail, Chat, News or what-not to interfer with my working life. I completely switch as if I had one computer only for my work, which has nothing to do with my private computer. buying two Macs just for that reason would be quite stupid, expensive and twice as much to carry :-).
My Private-Space - is my Mac with my opened Mail.app, Safari, IRC etc. and all the applications that only relate to my private activities. So
There is no work related application opened, I don’t get distracted by any co-worker’s E-Mail or chat-query, while uploading my private photos and planning our next weekend trip. No, Spaces2.0 let’s you separate your lifes as it should be.
Why?
I am using my Powerbook as my exclusive computer, I am doing my work on it and my private stuff. Currently I have things separated by using either separate projects (in my editors, for programming) or by using Mail.app for my private mails and Thunderbird for my work mails. And I am also trying to open certain browser windows only for work related stuff and others only for private interests. But this kind of separation is very hard and work intensive to do. And I only got one chat client and one Skype installed, so when the icon starts jumping in the Dock I still don’t know if someone wants something from me related to work or privately.
That I want to separate. My Skype for work would only have my Skype contacts that are work related, all my family and whatever would not see me, since I am not online for them. I wouldn’t receive private E-Mails since I am not checking my private accounts but only my work accounts.
This separation is just what leads to less distraction and being able to better concentrate one the one current thing. There are many articles describing this syndrom of news-addiction. Spaces2.0 would be the cure.
And virtual desktops have to be a feature of each of my Spaces, of course.
May be I should tell Apple about my dream 
Compared to other browsers the WebKit crew has released a JavaScript debugger quite soon after releasing their browser. And here it is Drosera named after the largest bug eating plant. Nice idea for a debugger name :-). And the screenshot is very promising.
After the element inspector this is the next really useful tool, Safari is becoming more and more useful for development. Even though JavaScript development using browsers is still a pain … but I am looking forward. The technology is just too promising to give up too soon.
Besides Firebug this will be another one of my tools that I stuff into my toolkit box.
In general my PowerBook is a very reliable computer, unfortunately also when it comes to crashing. Not what you guys think that it crashes three times a day. No, not at all.
Yesterday I was again close to reaching my uptime record of 14 days and some hours. I know that because my I use the screensaver ShowOff that always displays my uptime. Now I had that been close to the record again, yes again, I opened my laptop in order to get into a meeting that had just started. And booom “Please restart your computer”. What the heck … why does it always have to happen when the computer is reaching a long uptime?
I am already very careful not to plugin anything (esp. USB devices) while my PowerBook is waking up. I always login first even before plugging in the power plug … but it doesn’t always help 
In case you every forget how to create a virtual host on a Mac OS X (like I did), this article just reminded me how.
Finally Safari gets some developer usable tools. The Web inspector introduced a little while ago is still in development but available via the nightly builds. Now I only want a JavaScript console and even better a debugger. I haven’t developed much JavaScript for Safari yet, but if it has no JS console it is a drag. Hopefully the day I have to take on Safari it will :-).
Not everything is great about having a Mac. But the one thing that really drives me crazy is when I hit the wrong key combination, especially when it is Apple+Q instead of Apple+W.
Apple+W is for closing a window, such as in my editor, Firefox, Safari or whatever application.
Apple+Q, which laying right beside it (!!!) is for quitting the entire application.
It is just very sad when I close the entire application though I only wanted to close a window of it.
I am using ShowOff as a screensaver and every time I put the Mac to sleep I jump higher the closer the uptime comes to 10 days. But somehow it happens that I don’t reach the 10 days. I use my computer every day and I wake it up multiple times every day, so it’s not bored for sure. But the maximum I manage to reach is 10 days. But not because I am restarting my Mac on purpose, just because it crashes always around 9 days or the latest when it reaches 10 days, last crash yesterday. It always crashes when I wake it up from sleep mode and even before the login screen appears it asks me to restart, it does that nicely but that doesn’t help :-(. May be I should file a bug report to Apple and tell them to increase this timer a bit, 30 days would be cool i think :-).
I am using Desktop Manager since the beginning, and it is just great. It handles everything: X11, Exposé, the Dock and everything just as I would expect it. It doesn’t show any unexpected bahviour as many of the other virtual desktop managers do.
Now I start having wishes of what I would like to have additionally. Since my PowerBook is my tool for everything I am also mixing work and private very much on it. I want my desktop manager to know when I am in a business environment (by detecting the network location(s)) and turning on/off applications or even switching between entire sets of virtual desktops. That would be cool. When I go home and I open my laptop, it connects to my home network it should automatically detect that and turn off all the business stuff, e.g. the TimeLog tool, etc. and it should turn on my NewsFeed reader, the IRC client and so on.
A first step might be adding rows of screens to the Desktop Manager, that would already help a lot. I would simply have a row of virtual screens that contains all the private apps and another with all the business stuff.
Well I downloaded the source, may be I get do dive into the code some day …
When I do web developing again, I might need to consider Xyle Scope. It seems to be the best CSS editor I have seen until today. It has Safari (or better a WebKit view) embedded and offers quite some more stuff than simple on the fly editing.
And what is really cool about the evaluation period (well this tool costs money, yes) is that you have 10 days, but only those days that you really work with the tool decrease your testing period, very nice!
Update:
I have tried it now and I am impressed, especially about the way you can select and edit the tags/style you want. But one thing really cost me time, to find out how to apply the changes I was making to the CSS. I thought (Mac OS X like) that changing the value would do it, so I changed a value and pressed TAB. Nothing happened :-(. May be there is some setting or alike. Long story short, simply press ENTER. grrr….
But great anyway, I will buy it when I develop web stuff again, for sure! And it’s from Germany
NeoOffice is a really cool alternative to using OpenOffice on your Mac, it’s simply without all those ugly X11 quirks you have to accept when running OpenOffice.
NeoOffice the main development project for making OpenOffice.org to run natively on MacOS X. It is a free software port of OpenOffice.org to the MacOS X platform.
We are already using it extensively at home and it just feels much better than the old OpenOffice. I can only suggest to switch, and don’t worry you got everything that OpenOffice has! Great thing …
I used to like to compile PHP myself, that just felt geeky. It made me feel special, just as if I was almost a real geek, nerd or whatever. I liked to torture myself and install other packages and dependencies before. But only the right version please! I liked to find out that the order of the –with config-switches made a difference. I liked to watch the configure process running for quite a while to finally see that another error occured again! I liked to watch the make and see it fail with some missing dependency or some library it could not link because the exported symbols didn’t match.
NO, I didn’t!
It was always an aweful waste of time. But somehow it made me understand better, what happens underneath. And sometimes it also made you look into the source code, which definitely was not bad. But at the current level of specialization that people have, it might need to be avoidable.
What am I saying here? I needed to have PHP and MySQL running on my Mac - quickly. The Apache fortunately is already running by default (just switch it on in the System Preferences/Sharing). So I started to compile PHP, which was taking too long in my eyes. After two or three errors because of missing deps I knew that was going to take longer. Back to the web and search for a .dmg! But a certain version of PHP, as the customer requires it! That was really easy. Thanks to Marc Liyanage you can find a lot of different binary versions of PHP at entropy.ch. And installing MySQL is not a problem either. There are enough different binary versions of MySQL. Now I only had to modify the /etc/httpd.conf and/or /private/etc/httpd/users/<username>.conf and set the proper DocumentRoot and Options I needed and I was done. Cool! That’s what I call usability, very nice.
Less pain - more spare time
Yeah, that sounds strange, but it’s easy. I have no problems using the command line, but I am also happy that I don’t have to, on my PowerBook (with Mac OS X of course). I am using the Mac now for about a year and I have to say I can’t complain. In doing things that are supposed to be easier, and did cost me a lot of time to do on my Linux machine I used before, it really fullfilled my expectations. But still there are some things that need some work, or that I don’t understand yet.
Ok, but I wanted to write about burning a CD from the command line.
hdiutil burn myIsoFile.iso
That’s it
On Macworld’s “Unix Tip of the Month” I found this article.
I downloaded the latest knoppix, just to let a friend “look” at a computer, without the need to install an OS. And I downloaded it of course on my Mac. The iso file was on my HD, now it should be easy to simply burn a CD using the iso image … I thought it was. But this seems one of the things where I was not 100% compatible to my Mac. I was looking for it but didn’t find the right tool, which burns the CD using the given iso image. Until I came across the above command - lucky me :-). I also had the impression that it was much faster than using the finder to do it, but that might also be because the iso image didn’t have to be built.