GTD Marc

IPad 2 and DLNA

2011-04-21T22:21:00.000+02:00

Finally managed to get an iPad 2. Was waiting for a long time and did not go for the first generation iPad. But immediately fell in love with this toy, err, I mean device. Still looking for a good DLNA client for the iPad that also works fine with MKV and AVI files. Wanted to try AirPlay, but read in some reviews that it works fine for MOV and H.264, but has trouble with other video formats. So always open for any hints.

Mustard Sauce

2009-12-01T20:04:00.001+01:00

Today I wanted to enjoy some of the leftover ham (Swiss "Nussschinkli"). Since there was some sauce missing when we tried the ham the first time, I decided to prepare/create a mustard sauce that would work nicely with the ham. It actually turned out pretty well and tasty for my first try. Here is the recipe:

Marc's Mustard Sauce (Marc's Senfsauce)

Ingredients:

1 Tbls butter
1 Tbls flour
2 dl vegetable stock
2 dl low fat milk (1.5% fat)
1 Tbls mild mustard
1 Tbls fresh citrus juice
1 tsp sugar
0.5 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp dill

Preparation:

slowly melt the butter in a small pan using medium heat
add the flour to the melted butter and stir it with a whisk
let it cook on medium heat until the mixture starts to build "foam"
add the vegetable stock in small portions to the pan, always stirring the contents with the whisk (this helps to avoid having clumps in the sauce)
add the milk in small portions while stirring with the whisk
add the citrus juice and mustard, whisk the mixture well
increase the heat to 3/4 of maximum and wait until it starts to cook slightly
add the pepper, salt, sugar and dill, gently whisk the mixture
keep it cooking for another 5-10 minutes at medium heat while whisking it gently from time to time
let the pan cool down aside for a while (10-15 minutes) before serving the sauce (this makes the sauce become a bit thicker)

Problems starting or charging the iPhone

2009-11-22T12:21:00.000+01:00

I now already had two times the problem that the completely drained battery of my iPhone did not want to charge anymore. The only thing I see, is the empty battery symbol. But, this does not change, even after having it plugged in for many hours. Also there is no way to start the iPhone.

Fortunately, I found a solution somewhere in the Internet and thought I might also share the trick to revive iPhone charging again:

Plug the iPhone to a power source (PC via USB or charger), let it there for 15 minutes and do not worry if there is no indication that the battery is charging.
Put the side switch of the iPhone to silent mode (the red dot should show).
Unplug the iPhone form the power source and make sure it is turned off.
Toggle the side switch of the iPhone four times (normal - silent - normal - silent).
Press the home and power button (the one on top of the iPhone) simultaneously until the Apple logo appears (should take about 10 seconds).
Plug the iPhone to a power source and let it fully charge, you can now use again your iPhone.

Fix wrong / different emails showing in Apple's Mail list and detail view

2009-10-08T14:09:00.000+02:00

I already had a few times the problem that emails in Apple's Mail application got messed up. This means that when you select an email in the "list" view, the email that is then shown in the detail view does not correspond to the selected list entry. Also double-clicking the email in the list view opens the wrong email, which has nothing to do with the information shown in the list view about that email (sender, subject, etc).

To fix this, you only need to rebuild Apple Mail's database. Select the mail account / folder in the mailbox list on the left. Then go to the menu "Mailbox" and select "Rebuild". This rebuild might take a while, but then the email list to email detail links will work again correctly.

I guess Mail gets mainly messed up with its indexes because of Mail.app crashes.

Lock your Mac with a hot key

2009-07-11T13:48:00.002+02:00

LockTight is a little handy tool that helps you quickly lock the screen of your Mac with a touch of a hotkey combination.

Via tuaw

Count words in a PDF file on Mac OS X

2009-06-18T16:57:00.002+02:00

To count the amount of words in a PDF file on Mac OS X, just open the Terminal.app and type: ps2ascii myfile.pdf | wc -w, where myfile.pdf is the name of the PDF, of which you want to count the words. Of course you can also use all the other options of the wc command (such as counting characters, etc.).

Via macosxhints (second comment by kalderon).

See processes accessing your HD using iotop

2009-06-16T20:46:00.002+02:00

When your HD seems to be busy and you don't know why, have a look at the command iotop, which can be used in the terminal. This works fine on Linux and also Mac OS X. You might need to start it as root (sudo iotop), and also it might not be installed by default on your Linux, so you can e.g. install it using sudo apt-get install iotop (for Ubuntu / Eeebuntu / Debian).

Via Lifehacker.

Ubuntu Notify for Thunderbird

2009-06-15T12:31:00.000+02:00

Also Thunderbird can use the new notification system of Ubuntu 9.04 (which is also available in Eeebuntu 3.0), just install the Thunderbird add-on "Ubuntu Notify" and you will see notifications when new emails arrive.

If you want to have download complete notifications for Firefox, have a look at my previous post regarding the FirefoxNotify add-on .

OSX86 10.5.7 Update Guide by Max

2009-06-09T13:15:00.000+02:00

Max posted a very nice guide to update from OSX86 10.5.6 to 10.5.7. I will try the update within the next few days and then write down how it went. Thanks again to Max for the great guide.

Eeebuntu 3.0 Standard and NBR editions availaible for download

2009-06-02T12:06:00.000+02:00

http://forum.eeebuntu.org/ The Standard and NBR editions of Eeebuntu 3.0 are now available on the official download page.

I have installed the Base version already 2 weeks ago and I am very happy with it.

Check also their forums if you have any problems installing or running Eebuntu 3.0.

Download complete notifications with FirefoxNotify for Eeebuntu 3

2009-05-30T11:20:00.001+02:00

FirefoxNotify works fine with Eeebuntu 3 and also Ubuntu 9.04. Just install the plugin and you will get "Download Complete" notifications in the same style as you get the notifications for device enabling/disabling, volume up/down/mute, etc.

Improving performance for Eeebuntu 3.0

2009-05-25T14:47:00.000+02:00

There are several ways to improve the performance for EEEPCs with Eeebuntu 3.0:

You can give the sound card a dedicated interrupt by editing /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf and adding the following line: options snd_hda_intel enable_msi=1 (source from Eeebuntu forums).

You can also accelerate the boot time by letting the kernel do some optimizations for the boot process as described in the corresponding Fastboot entry in the Eeebuntuwiki.

If you have any other suggestion on ho to improve the performance n Eeebuntu for EEEPCs, please post a comment.

Fix error message stating that Xorg is not configured correctly on Eeebuntu 3.0

2009-05-25T14:39:00.001+02:00

Whenever I started my EEEPC 1000H with Eeebuntu 3.0, I got an error on the top right corner saying something about a touchpad problem related to my xorg.conf.

The answer to fix this problem can be fount at the corresponding Xorg entry in the Eeebuntuwiki.

Just copy & paste the provided text to your xorg.conf and all should be fine. It work at least for me without any problems.

How to mount fat32 partition in Linux as read & write for everyone

2009-05-24T17:53:00.002+02:00

On my EEEPC 1000H I wanted to have a shared partition being able to use it from Windows 7 and Eeebuntu.

Edit your /etc/fstab as follows (change /dev/sdaX to your shared partition location):
/dev/sdaX /mnt/shared vfat defaults,user,auto,umask=0 0 0

Now it should automatically mount the partition and it should be readable and writable by all users. If you want to disable auto-mount of the partition, replace auto with noauto.

Hibernate fix in Eeebuntu after swap resize

2009-05-14T10:04:00.001+02:00

I just got myself a nice ASUS EEEPC 1000H and directly installed Eeebuntu on it.

Hibernate was never working for me out of the box after installation, so I resized the swap space, because I thought it might be too small (which actually broke even more).

Here are the steps I used to finally enable Hibernation:

launch gnome config sudo gconf-editor and navigate to "apps -> gnome-power-manager -> general" and make a mark at "can_hibernate"
in the terminal enter blkid and copy the UUID of the swap partition
edit the filesystem table using "sudo gedit /etc/fstab" and add previously copied UUID of the swap space to the line to mount the swap partition: UUID=xxxx none swap sw 0 0 (where xxxx is the copied UUID)
edit the initramfs settings for resuming using "sudo gedit /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume" and add the previously copied UUID: RESUME=UUID=xxxx (where xxxx is the copied UUID)
enable the new initramfs settings by typing sudo update-initramfs -u

This might also work for other netbooks and also other linux distributions.

Can't wait to try out the new eeebuntu 3, which should be available tomorrow.

How to update OSX86 from 10.5.5 to 10.5.6

2009-02-19T13:53:00.006+01:00

This guide assumes that you have an OSX86 version 10.5.5 running without any problems (sound, net, etc.) on your system (I had a Kalyway 10.5.2 installation and updated it step by step to 10.5.5 before I applied the 10.5.6 update). Since in this guide we are going to change the kernel anyway, it does not matter which kernel you use at the moment. I have an ASUS P5K-VM motherboard, but I guess it might also work with some other motherboards having a more or less identical components configuration (feedback about that is very welcome). It is always advisable to backup your complete system first (e.g. using Time Machine), so you can restore the previously working configuration in case something goes wrong.

1) Pre-Install requirements

Install Bootloader including PC-EFI9 with Chameleon 1.0.12 integrated (download here)
Install newest XNU 9.5.0 kernel (download here)
Install Universal Installer "UInstaller" (download here)
Install OSX86Tools (download here)
Backup all your 10.5.5 extensions using OSXTools86 by clicking "Backup extensions" (e.g. back them up to ~/old-10.5.5-kexts)

2) Updating to 10.5.6 (info from here)

Open Terminal.app and type

”sudo –s”

*type password*

”while sleep 1;”

”do rm –rf /System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext;done”

Open 10.5.6 Update Installer (download 10.5.6 Update here)
Run update BUT DO NOT RESTART!
Go back to your terminal and press Control-C to end the script
In Terminal.app type:

”nano /System/InstallAtStartup/scripts/1” and replace the line Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext with dsmos.kext if any exists (exit using "CTRL-X" and save by pressing the "Y" key)

Open OSX86Tools and check "Repair permissions" & "Set Extensions permissions" & "Clear Extensions Cache"
Restart

3) Apply various fixes

Fix Time-Machine with UInstaller (select "Apply Ethernet EFI String (Time Machine Fix)")
Fix startup resolution with UInstaller ("Set Native Boot Resolution to: " with your appropriate values)
Install some fixing kexts using UInstaller ("Apply kext package")
Fix unknown or wrong processor string in "About this Mac": edit the file /System/Library/CoreServices/Resources/English.lproj/AppleSystemInfo.string and replace '"UnknownCPUKind" = "Unknown";' with your choice (e.g. "UnknownCPUKind" = "Intel Core2Quad Q6700 2.66 GHz";), make sure not to use any special characters!
Remove (if exists) ALCinject.kext from /System/Libarary/Extension
Create a temporary kext install folder (e.g. a subdirectory in your home folder called install-extensions)
Copy from the backup 10.5.5 extensions folder (e.g. ~/old-10.5.5-kexts/Extensions) the file seatbelt.kext to the temporary kext install folder (e.g. ~/install-extensions):
Download and unpack patched AppleHDA.kext (download here) for ALC883 (might also work with others), then copy it to the temporary kext install folder (e.g. ~/install-extensions), more patched ALC88X drivers from Taruga are available here
Download and unpack HDAEnabler.kext (download here), then copy it to the temporary kext install folder (e.g. ~/install-extensions)
Download and unpack the AHCI fix for 10.5.6 (download here), then copy the two kext files (AppleAHCIPort.kext and IOAHCIFamily.kext) to the temporary kext install folder (e.g. ~/install-extensions)
Download and unpack sleep fix for 10.5.6 (download here), then copy only the file EHCISleepEnabler.kext to the temporary kext install folder (e.g. ~/install-extensions)
Download and unpack fixes for USB (download here), then copy both files (IOUSBFamily.kext and IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext) to the temporary kext install folder (e.g. ~/install-extensions)
Install all the kernel extensions from the temporary kext install folder (e.g. ~/install-extensions) using OSX86Tools (button "Install Kexts")
Restart
Open OSX86Tools and check "Repair permissions" & "Set Extensions permissions" & "Clear Extensions Cache"
Restart

Various sources I used to compile this guide, apologies if I left someone out, if so, please tell me and I will add the missing ones:

UPDATES:

2009-02-20: changed link to point to new AppleHDA.kext and added link to forum post about Taruga's ALC88X kexts with corresponding link to the kexts
2009-02-24: changed link to point to new AHCIFix.zip

WD Desktop Elements Mac Icons

2009-02-17T23:50:00.001+01:00

Since I just bought two 1 TB WD Desktop Elements hard drives for my Mac, I also searched for some nice icons that would go nicely with the Leopard theme. Unfortunately I only found icons for the WD MyBook series. With some inspiration, Adobe Photoshop CS3 and img2icns I managed to produce a set of black shadowless WD Desktop Elements icons for the Mac. Enjoy! If someone requires the same thing for the "white" version of the hard drive, please let me know in the comments.

Download the black shadowless WD Desktop Elements icons.

1000px: Basel main station

2009-01-28T21:51:00.005+01:00

Main station in Basel at evening time, taken with my new Panasonic DMC-TZ5

From 1000px

Downloadable Manual for the Panasonic DMC TZ5

2009-01-28T17:05:00.002+01:00

The manual for the Panasonic DMC TZ5 can be downloaded here (it's a joint manual for the TZ4 and TZ5, the name of the PDF only has the TZ4 in the name though).

Jasper's DRIMaker

2009-01-28T17:03:00.007+01:00

If you like HDR (high dynamic range) photos, you might want to take a closer look at Jasper's DRI maker. It's donationware, so you can do try before "buy". Since my new compact cam (Panasonic DMC TZ5) also support exposure bracketing, this might be a nice tool to tryout.

Tags for Mac OS X

2009-01-27T14:46:00.030+01:00

People nowadays are very fond of tags. These tags are e.g. used for Flickr, social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us and many more. Now there is an application that brings tagging to your desktop in Mac OS X, it is simply called Tags. It seems that tags work with all the major applications for Mac OS X, such as Office, iPhoto, iWork, and many more (see full list of supported apps here). You can then search for the previously applied tags using Mac OS X integrated Spotlight search. Even Apple's Mail application is supported (where I would use it most), but unfortunately the tags for Mail are only stored locally at the moment without the support for IMAP. So, syncing the tags for Mail between different machines does not work yet. They promise though that they work on adding the IMAP support for Tags via Mail. When this would be added as well, I might consider giving it a try, but for now this missing feature is a show stopper for me (at least for the moment).

iPhoto to JAlbum Exporter

2009-01-27T14:24:00.009+01:00

In case you want to extract automatically and easily all photo albums from iPhoto, you can do this using the iPhoto to JAlbum export tool, which allows exporting each album to a seperate folder. Not tested yet.

Hashtags in Twitter

2009-01-26T13:18:00.002+01:00

I just noticed, that lots of people use hashtags (e.g. #photography) in their twitter posts.

A good introduction to hashtags can be found at Twitter Fan WiKi. More background info on hashtags can also be found at FactoryCity .

Basically you need to follow the twitter user "hashtags" (they will then follow you back to get your hashtags in your tweets indexed). Then your tweets with hashtags should appear at hashtags.org.

Skimming trough the above mentioned web pages, I found some basic rules that one should follow when using hashtags:

focus on your update first and add hashtags only if they add value to the tweet
find out if the subject you're tweeting already has an established hashtag
append no more than one to three hashtags
rather append or prepend the hashtags to a tweet than using the hashtagged words in sentences

Geforce 9600GT on OSX86

2009-01-26T12:06:00.002+01:00

A few weeks ago, I installed Geforce 9600GT (ASUS silent version) in a friend's OSX86 machine.

For this issue, the following three forum posts at InsanelyMac were very helpful:

I downloaded the driver (NVIDIA 9 Series Driver Installer v2) from the first mentioned forum post. Then I modified the info.plist of in the NVDANV50Hal.kext (after I installed the driver from the first forum post!) as described in the second mentioned forum post, but I'm not sure this would be really necessary. I also had to use the OSX86Studio to modify the GFX string as shown in the third mentioned forum post (see also the picture with the settings here).

Reimport and reuse AVCHD video clips for existing iMovie projects

2009-01-25T16:36:00.000+01:00

When you delete the source video files (of a previously imported AVCHD video) in "iMovie Events", existing iMovie projects referring to those source files become unusable for further re-encoding / processing. But don't worry, keep the project files (even delete the media browser shared files for it). You can reactivate the project later again if you still have the original AVCHD source files (with the full folder structure as on the memory card). You can later import again the original AVCHD files (that get converted again newly to AIC). Make sure that the event name is the same as before. then it should work out of the box. If you do not remember the name of the event folder used in the project, you can see all the clips used in the project by opening the package contents of the project and opening the file called "Project" with the "Property List Editor" (need to install the Developer Tools to have that), it is a binary plist, which contains all the full path names to the clips (including the name of the event sub-folder).

To make it easier in the future, use the same name for your archive (e.g. on DVD or as DMG) as for the event name in iMovie.

This whole thing is especially handy because the AVCH source files are taking around ten times less space than after they are imported and converted to AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec). No need to buy all the time new hard drives when you want to keep all the projects in iMovie editable, but the events keep up using up the hard drive space so quickly for imported AVCHD footage.

Also remember that in order to be able to import the video again to iMovie, you need to have the full folder structure as on the memory card or hard drive, therefore back the hard drive or memory card to a DMG or DVD / Blue Ray drive with the complete folder structure.

This tip might even work with DV files, imported from DV Camcorders, but I haven't tested it yet.

Fedora 10 on a Lenovo T400

2009-01-21T17:47:00.000+01:00

My work Laptop had a problem with Fedora 10, I was not able to start the X graphical environment. After a quick Google search I found the solution at Adobro Online.

Basically, the X-server gets confused because of the two graphic cards in the Laptop. Just disable the "Switchable Graphics" option in the BIOS ("Display" section) and select e.g. the "discrete" graphics as default and you are good to go. It though seems that the ATI graphics driver does not yet support graphic acceleration features, so you might want to switch to the "integrated" graphics card if you need the extra acceleration.

Re-encoding unplayable (in Quicktime) ASF files

2009-01-14T20:54:00.001+01:00

I recently got some ASF files that were not able to be played (only audio, no video) in Quicktime using the Flip4Mac WMV plugin. The files though played fine in VLC, but I prefer to watch them using Frontrow.

The ASF files can be re-encoded using VLC:

Use the "Streaming/Exporting Wizard..." from the "File" in VLC
Select "Transcode/Save to file" and click "Next"
Select the file you want to re-encode using "Choose..." or an existing playlist item
Enable "Transcode video" with "WMV 2" as "Codec" and e.g. "1024" as "Bitrate (kb/s)", also
enable "Transcode audio" with "MP3" as "Codec" and e.g. "128" as "Bitrate (kb/s)", then click "Next"
Select "ASF" as "Encapsulation format" and click "Next"
Click "Choose", enter you preferred destination file name and directory, then click "Next"
In the "Summary" click "Finish" and wait until the progress bar in the controller window moved to the right side
Enjoy the re-encoded ASF in Quicktime

EPS QuickLook Plugin for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5

2009-01-13T11:01:00.000+01:00

Since I often use Encapsulated Postcript files, I find the EPSQuickLookPlugIn quite handy.

Core Image benchmark comparison (Geforce 7600GT, Geforce 9600GT and Radeon 3850)

2009-01-12T15:22:00.002+01:00

I use my Macs and OSX86 machines also for photo editing with Aperture. The Apple Pro-Apps (Aperture, Finalcut, etc.) rely on Core Image and therefore profit heavily from a fast graphics card in the system.

To compare different models of systems and graphics cards, I made some comparison benchmarking tests using iMaginator 4 (trial version).

The test consists of exporting a morphing movie of 1000 frames, which contains all transition effects in the order they are listed in the selection pane (see below) using the two default images (leopard and rose) as source and destination for the morphing.

These were the "Transisions" used (top to down):

And I changed the following preferences (only changed # Frames to 1000):

Then I saved the movie using "Save to Movie" from the "File" menu, started the stop watch when I clicked the "Save" button, moved the mouse, so the cursor went to the "Beachball". Then I waited until the cursor turned back to the normal pointer and stopped the stop watch.

These were the results on Mac OS 10.5.5 (faster = better):

iMac G5 2.0 GHz ATI X800: 6m50s
iMac C2D 2.33 GHz Geforce 7600 GT: 2m14s
OSX86 C2Q 2.66 GHz ATI Radeon 3850: 1m22s
OSX86 C2Q 2.83 GHz Geforce 9600GT: 1m21s

I was surpised to see the Geforce 9600GT perform that fast, although that configuration is slightly faster and has more cache for the CPU than the one with the Radeon 3850. But I guess it is safe to say that the Geforce 9600GT is not such a bad choice for Core Image intensive apps. I think a Radeon 3870 would probably out-perform the Geforce 9600GT. Maybe a Geforce 9800GT could be faster than a Radeon 3870, but unfortunately I can't test that since I do not have these graphics cards at hand.

In a later post I might add more details about the system configurations and maybe will also put some tests done regarding OpenGL performance of the same systems (where the Geforce 9600GT also scored better than the ATI Radeon 3850).

Make extended print dialog in Mac OS X show by default

2009-01-12T15:13:00.000+01:00

In Terminal.app enter the following line:

defaults write -g PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint -bool TRUE

to undo, replace TRUE with FALSE

via tuaw.com

Possible Sigma lenses for my Nikon D80

2009-01-11T18:37:00.010+01:00

I have been looking at some possible Sigma lenses, which would nicely fit to my Nikon D80. So far I only use super zooms from Nikon (18-200mm VR and 70-300mm VR), which unfortunately have not very low starting aperture. I also use a fix 50mm f/1.8 lens from Nikon.

The following Sigma lenses caught my eye:

Sigma 24-70mm, f/2.8 EX DG Asp. Makro, Nikon
at Digitec for CHF 550.--

or the newer "updated" Sigma 24-70mm, f/2.8 EX DG HSM, Nikon
at fotovideoplus.ch for CHF 659.-- (not yet avail.)

Sigma 70-200mm, f/2.8 APO EX DG HSM II, Nikon
at Digitec for CHF 947.--

What I like about the Sigma lenses is that they are about one-third to half of the price of a corresponding Nikon lens, but according to some reviews still seem pretty valuable alternatives to the original Nikon ones. Personally, I can do fine without the Macro functionality, I rather would want to have a fast auto focus, therefore the HSM on the new updated 24-70mm is a plus. Although it might be slightly more expensive and my favorite so far, it is not yet available. The 70-200mm is kind of a no-brainer. So I guess I will have to start saving for those lenses or should try to get rid of my old Nikon super zooms. Although my Nikon 18-200mm is a very handy and useful lens, I'm not too happy about the quality of the photos (regarding sharpness and resolution). I now made some shots in Egypt with low ISO values and the VR (vibration reduction) turned off, but I still need to evaluate those regarding improved quality compared to using the lens with VR turned on.

Here are some reviews of the mentioned Sigma lenses:
70-200mm: dpreview, FM Reviews
old 24-70mm with Macro: the-digital-picture, FM Reviews

For the new 24-70mm HSM I found no review yet, but a news post on dpreview and some discussions.

Problems with Speed Download 4 and Safari when downloading RAR files

2009-01-10T10:52:00.001+01:00

For a few weeks I now had the problem with Speed Download 4 and Safari when I wanted to download RAR files. I tried everything, uninstalling and reinstalling, disabling all other plugins (SafariStand, Glims, SafariAdBlock) but nothing helped, Safari always used its own download manager instead of handing the download to Speed Download 4.

Then I started to take a closer look at MIME types. Per default, the MIME type(s) setting for RAR archive in Speed Download 4 on my machine was application/x-rar-compressed, application/octet-stream. But I found a list with some more possible MIME types for RAR files. It finally worked again fine after completing the MIME type(s) setting for RAR archive in Speed Download to

application/x-rar-compressed, application/octet-stream, application/rar, application/x-compressed, application/x-rar, compressed/rar

. Now RAR file downloads are again intercepted by Speed Download 4.

Behringer Digital Monitor Speakers MS40

2008-12-30T10:29:00.004+01:00

I was not too happy with my previous sound system, the Logitech Z-4i. Although it looked nice with my white 24" iMac 2.33 GHz, I never was too happy with all the cabling it required and the resulting sensitivity to interferences caused by the iPhone in its dock next to the iMac.

I was looking at some alternatives, which would increase the sound quality, reduce the cable clutter and hopefully would be less susceptible to interferences. The selection was narrowed down to two candidates, which also were still in a not too painful price range, serving a small budget. The Behringer Digital Monitor Speakers MS40 and the M-Audio Studiophile AV 40 Desktop Speaker System were my final two choices, both available at the House of Sound. After some considerations, I went for the Behringer ones. I really liked the fact, that you have the power button as well as the main sound controls (volume, bass, treble) in the front side, wheres the M-Audio has only a volume button in the front. Furthermore, the MS40 features a digital input, which would again make one cable connection immune to interference.

So now I have the two MS40 speakers sitting next to my iMac, and I have to say, that I am very happy. They sound pretty neat for the price of CHF 190.00 (the M-Audio Studiophiles would have been CHF 219.00 ). And yes, I know, there are far better studio monitor speakers out there, but when you are on a tight budget for these gadgets, they are just fine. The bass feels of course different compared to my Logitech 2.1 system with a dedicated subwoofer, but the good quality of the middle and high tones compensate for a less heavier bass pretty easily in my opinion. I even found a place for my iPhone dock (on top of the left speaker) where there are no interferences. They are now only occurring when I place the iPhone in certain places and are caused by the cable connecting the left speaker to the amplifier in the right speaker. I might still be able to improve this setup. I actually plan to get some order in the whole cable mess and reduce the cables as much as possible by putting a cable connection board under the table plate just below the iMac.

My final conclusion is, if you are looking for some cheap but good monitor speakers with a low susceptibility to interferences (digital input, shielded speaker casings) and if you can life without a subwoofer pumping your guts all the time, the Behringer MS40 are a good choice.

Fix TimeMachine on OSX86

2008-11-28T15:11:00.000+01:00

If your TimeMachine stops working on an OSX86 machine, this is most probably due to IONetworkingFamily.kext, located in /System/Library/Extensions/.

Just replace your current one with an older backup (from TimeMachine backup folder) using OSX86Tools. Using the same application you also can make occasionally (especially before making major updates to 10.5.x) a backup of your Kernel-Extensions.

Fix ALC889A sound for OSX86 after 10.5.5 update

2008-11-14T10:45:00.001+01:00

Use OSX86Tools or Kext Helper to install only AppleHDA.kext from 889a.Audio.ICH10.zip, which can be downloaded from this forum post.

ATI Radeon HD 3850 on OSX86 10.5.5 (with sleep)

2008-11-07T15:36:00.000+01:00

I finally managed to get my Asus ATI Radeon HD 3850 (EAH3850 Smart OC 1024 MB) to work with OSX86 10.5.5 using the following driver from lastExcile / Netkas (see also forum entry on InsanelyMac). Even sleep and wake-up works perfectly, which didn't work at all with my previous Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics card. The card is very silent and Aperture finally rocks (compared to Geforce 7300 GT 256 MB). Trying now another Asus ATI Radeon HD 3650 on another machine if sleep might work with a different motherboard.

Path to com.apple.Boot.plist

2008-11-06T13:17:00.003+01:00

The file responsible for startup configuration
com.apple.Boot.plist
can be found at
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/.

It is always good to make a backup of that file if "something" goes wrong.

Screenium for screencasts on Mac OS X

2008-10-09T15:46:00.001+02:00

I wanted to record what I show to people regarding how they can do certain tasks on a Mac. Therefore I checked what Screencast applications are available for the Mac.

I stumbled on the following site comparing several applications, as well as this site giving some tips on how to do Screencasts and which are nice tools to help you doing them, such as Backdrop .

I finally decided to buy Screenium, because it seemed to have the most features for a reasonable price of only $20. It allows to fade in some text via hot-keys and also can embed the feed form a webcam aside the screen that is being recorded. Finally the recorded Screencasts can be easily exported to more compressed formats. It works fine with 1920x1200 resolution and does not use much resources when you record with 100%, not scaling down while you record. You always can afterwards reduce the resolution and optimize the overall file size of such recorded movies. So far I'm happy with it. It's easy to use, not overwhelmed with useless features and works very reliable.

Shutdown / reboot problems on OSX86

2008-09-29T13:30:00.002+02:00

When your OSX86 based machine does not want to shutdown properly (fans still running although all LEDs are off), try to install the OpenHaltRestart kext extension. You might want to use the Kext Helper to easily install the kext module.

via InsanelyMac

Soundcard (ALC883) broken after 10.5.5 Update on OSX86

2008-09-29T13:18:00.001+02:00

It can happen that after the 10.5.5 Update on OSX86, ALC883 based soundcards do not work anymore (not detected by OS X). To fix this, download the ALC883.dump.txt file and the AppleHDAPatcherv1.20. Unpack the latter, start the patcher and drag the dump file on it to patch the faulty kernel extension. Should also work with other ALC88X soundcards by using the appropriate dump file (Google is your friend for finding those).

OSX86 10.5.5 Update

2008-09-29T12:28:00.006+02:00

To successfully perform a 10.5.5 update on OSX86 machines, you need to download the 10.5.5 update manually from the Apple webpage, open a Terminal and enter the following lines before running the update (and leave it running during the update):

sudo -s
while sleep 1; do rm -rf \ /System/Library/Extensions/\ AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext; done

via InsanelyMac

Avoid apple setup agent

2008-09-23T13:36:00.001+02:00

Avoid apple setup agent in Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 (on OSX86)

start OS X in the single user mode (e.g. using -s flag at boot)
mount file system as mentioned in boot messages
change root password passwd root
create the .AppleSetupDone file with touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

via InsanelyMac

ProjectPlus for TextMate

2008-08-13T13:52:00.000+02:00

I installed ProjectPlus for TextMate a few days ago and I already can't live without that handy plugin. I mainly fell in love with the SCM status features it has to offer (e.g. shows the status of files being handled by Subversion).

Shell Scripting Primer

2008-08-08T15:06:00.000+02:00

I guess I should have a look at the Shell Scripting Primer by Apple. Maybe they write about some tricks or hints I don't know yet about. Will be a good time waster during waiting periods reading it on my iPhone. Added it to my @Read/Review bookmarks.

888

2008-08-08T15:01:00.000+02:00

yes, you guessed right: 2008-08-08 :-)

Inspired by powerbook_blog

Location of iTunes backups of the iPhone

2008-08-08T14:02:00.005+02:00

Since the backups of the iPhone always take a long time, I started to wonder how big they actually were, when they finally got stored on my computer. So first a needed to find out where the backups are stored, which was answered by a forum post on everythingiCafe.

The backups are stored in:
~/Library/Application Support/Mobilesync/Backup/

Since this folder was only about 126 MB large, I stopped worrying about how much gets actually backup'd but started to wonder why it takes such a long time to backup such a small amount of data via USB. Hopefully Apple will accelerate the iPhone Backup in a future update of the iPhone or iTunes software.

Run Log in XCode 3

2008-08-08T13:57:00.001+02:00

I haven't been using XCode for a while, but when I had time to play again with it, I was missing the window where you could see your @NSLog outputs. Before XCode 3, I remember that it was visible in a dedicated "Run Log" window. Luckily Mikey-San on macosxhints.com came to the rescue:

The "run log" is no more in Xcode 3. What you want is the debugging console.
Xcode > Preferences > Debugging > On Start: Show Console
You can also show the console with:
Run > Console

Open bundle menu (⌃⎋) in TextMate not working

2008-08-08T13:52:00.002+02:00

I recently had the problem that the "open bundle menu" shortcut (⌃⎋) did not work in TextMate. After a bit of research in the web I found a post on the TextMate WiKi about the problem. It is caused by Apple’s Remote Desktop application. To fix it, just disable ARD in "System Preferences" → "Sharing" ("Remote Management" in Leopard).

Mac OS X shortcuts

2008-08-08T13:43:00.000+02:00

A good and nicely presented collection of Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts can be found at Dan Rodney's blog.

By quickly looking at it again, I found something I didn't know before. You can right-click (or ctrl-click) the title of a some windows and in return you will get a path-selection of the current file (e.g. in Finder or TextMate) or the current and basic URL of a webpage (in Safari).

Speed up navigation in Finder column view

2008-08-08T13:31:00.001+02:00

I found a post at The MacTipper regarding fast navigation with the Finder. Mainly it talks about the different behavior wether a folder is selected (indicated by a white arrow) or wether you are active in the whole column (indicated by a outlined arrow). Selection of a folder (without selecting the first item inside the folder) can be done by clicking on a folder or hitting the Tab key (⇥) when navigation around the columns. When a folder is selected, jumping to a folder using the alphanumeric keys occurs inside the selected folder, while when a folder us "unselected" jumping occurs in the active column.

Evening before "to prepare" list

2008-08-08T11:53:00.002+02:00

Inspired by the 10'O Clock rule I made myself an "evening before to prepare" checklist:

Check upcoming events for the next day in iCal
Transfer files from and to USB stick
Pack bag for work (USB stick, read/review stuff, wallet, ...)
Write a note about what still needs to be done in the morning
(trash, dishwasher, ...)
Prepare and if necessary iron clothes for the next day
Prepare the table for breakfast
Plug the iPhone into the charger
Set the alarm

I don't do it exactly at a specific time in the evening, but try to always take some time during the evening to prepare for the next day.

MacFuse and MacFusion SSH mount problems with TextMate

2008-08-06T12:18:00.000+02:00

In order to mount remote file-systems I started to use MacFuse. Before using MacFuse, I have been only mounting remote file-systems via AFP or Samba, but it was always slow and didn't work very well when using different user names for the same server.

With MacFuse and the nice GUI wrapper for SSH mounts called MacFusion it is more convenient and very flexible. But I had some problems when mounting a file-system from an old Solaris server. When I edited some HTML files and saved them frequently with TextMate, I started to have some strange behavior with misplaced characters in the displayed webpage in Safari.

I added the following lines to the "Extra Options (Advanced)" field for the different favorites stored in MacFusion:

-o sshfs_sync -o workaround=truncate

So far I didn't encounter anymore problems and I hope this fixed the issue.

More about the possible Extra Options can be found at Jannis Hermanns' place.

Elgato Turbo.264

2008-08-05T09:54:00.000+02:00

I just posted a comment aver at Macsimum News about the Elgato Turbo.264:

I bought myself a Turbo.264 recently. It is about 25-30% faster than my iMac 24” C2D 2.33 GHz using Quicktime (roughly a 400 MB XVID of 45 minutes playtime takes about 15 minutes instead of 20 minutes to encode). On the other hand the CPU usage is only about 10-15 % when I use the Turbo.264.
Encoding with subtitles is though a completely different story. The moment a srt subtitle file is present, the encoding slows down significantly, the CPU usage goes up to 50% or even more. It seems that with subtitles the Turbo.264 does not really improve the encoding time anymore and also the CPU usage is not that much different when using Quicktime with or without the Turbo.264 plugged in.
I mainly bought the Turbo.264 to re-encode videos with subtitles to be watched on the iPhone. I was a bit disappointed about the performance with subtitles at first, but then just switched to watch the movies without subtitles (it’s a good training to improve my English). I’m very happy with the easy handling of the Turbo.264, just drag the movies you want to re-encode to the Turbo application, select in which format you want them to be (iPhone, iPod, AppleTV) and hit start. One notice though, the files seem to be about 20-30% bigger than compared to ffmpegX, but also the bit-rate of the produced videos is higher with the Turbo.264, which results in an excellent quality for a 1-pass encoding.
Overall, despite the fact that the Turbo.264 does not really improve anything when you want to have subtitles, I am really happy that I bought it. I can now re-encode videos in the background while working without any noticeable performance-decrease using other applications aside.

GTD "morning arrival at work" checklist (Update)

2008-08-05T09:20:00.001+02:00

I'm assembling some GTD related worklists for my daily and long term work-flows and perspectives.

This is my "morning arrival at work" checklist:

Make yourself tea and get something to drink (water)
Start all programs (use Script to start all applications)
Check calendar for upcoming events (today & tomorrow)
Check OmniFocus for due tasks
Check and collect/process/organize "Inboxes"

Check and collect/process/organize emails
Check and collect/process/organize physical in-basket
Check and collect/process/organize @Inbox folder on Mac
Check and collect/process/organize @Inbox/@Office folder on USB-Stick
Check and collect/process/organize @Inbox folder on Safari Bookmarks

Start "doing"(highest priority in context depending on time/energy available)

At the end of the day check upcoming events in calendar

UPDATE 29.07.08: added handling of Safari Bookmarks in the @Inbox folder, related to my post about Safari Bookmark taming with GTD

UPDATE 05.08.08: added handling of @Inbox/@Office folder on USB Stick

Google Translate

2008-07-31T10:03:00.000+02:00

Google Translate can become very handy for translating short sentences or even web pages from one language to another to get just an idea what the text is about. I haven't been using it much so far, but if I end up finally learning Finnish, I might need it more often to help if I have a hard time understanding an article or some words.

How GTD helps me to tame my bookmarks

2008-07-28T10:01:00.010+02:00

Bookmarks have the habit of growing ruthlessly over time. Using GTD to tame my bookmarks results in having different folders reflecting the different states of a "task" or project (which would correspond to a link or a collection of links). Bookmarks are either collected in the "@Inbox" folder if I'm short on time or then are directly processed and put to the appropriate folder as described below:

@Inbox: When I'm short on time, then new bookmarks land in the "@Inbox" folder, which does not contain any sub-folders. Like with the physical Inbox basket or the email Inbox, I every now and then (best at least once daily) go through the "@Inbox" folder and process the bookmarks in it. If the content can dealt with within 2 minutes I do the appropriate action, then discard or archive the link (see below for folder "Archive"). If it takes more than 2 minutes to deal with the "task, the links will be renamed to reflect the action or topic, then it will be processed GTD like (action, defer, read/review, etc.) and is put inside the appropriate folder as described further below.
@Action: Links belonging to a project are put inside the @Action folder in a sub-folder with the project's name (1-level hierarchy only). When the project is over, the sub-folder is moved to the @Archive folder (see below) or just deleted if it is not worth keeping. The @Action folder has two fix sub-folders:

@Blog: Things I read and want to blog about land in this folder.
@Download: Links to files or other things I want to download at a later time are stored here.

@Defer: When I collect information about things I might plan to do in the future (for product evaluations for something I like to buy, travel info about a possible holiday place to visit, etc.) it will be put here inside a sub-folder with the project's name (1-level hierarchy only). In the GTD way, these projects in the future either, become active (moved to @Action), or are archived (moved to Archive), or are just discarded.
@Read/Review: One-time reading material that I want to read when I have time (e.g. using my iPhone during train travel or in-line waiting) is put into the @Read/Review folder. Material belonging to the same topic is put in an appropriate sub-folder (1-level hierarchy only). After I read the related pages I wither archive them (move to Archive) or discard them.
Archive: Bookmarks that I want to keep for future reference are saved in the "Archive" folder. If multiple links belong to a project or topic, a sub-folder with the project or topic name is created to host the collection of links. As before, the folder hierarchy is flat (only one sub-folder level allowed), I do not put folders in sub-folders inside the Archive.

To find specific bookmarks later on, I use the search feature of Safari's Bookmarks window, which allows me quickly to find the link I'm looking for. This though makes it mandatory to give the sub-folders (project names) as well as the bookmarks some intelligent names, which makes it easy to find the link or project folder for a certain topic in the future.

Fixing constantly growing OmniFocus database files

2008-07-25T22:11:00.003+02:00

I had the problem that my OnmiFocus database file kept on growing and synching with the iPhone got really slow. When my file was around 2.3 MB I started to google around a bit and found a thread about the problem at the Omnigroup forum. The last entry at the time I was reading the whole 8 pages of the thread actually was the one helping me to reduce my file to manageable 540 KB.

What I did:

Rebuilt my Database selecting File->Rebuild Database
Selected File->Export (selected "OmniFocus Backup Document" from the drop-down) and saved it to the Desktop
Selected File->Revert to Database Backup (and used the previously saved backup on the Desktop)
When OmniFocus asked about using either the local copy or the server copy, I told it to use the local copy)

EOM (End of Message)

2008-07-25T21:52:00.000+02:00

Just read at Lifehacker a post about EOM. I guess I will try to use that as well, though when I send such a EOM message the first time to someone, I will put in the body of the message the link to the related WikiPedia article as well as the link to the blog entry at Lifehacker.

How to get rid of menu bar items

2008-07-25T13:43:00.000+02:00

If you have some items in the menu bar that you want to get quickly rid of or which can't be disabled anymore in the system or program preferences (e.g. remove bluetooth status when no more bluetooth device is plugged in to the Mac), just cmd-click and hold it, then drag it out of the menu bar.

GTD Workflow Tips

2008-07-22T15:06:00.000+02:00

When looking for some GTD related workflow lists I found the GTD Workflow Assessment/Tips Checklist by Matthew Cornell.

Basically he gives a more details to the basic GTD tasks for Collecting, Processing, Organizing, Reviewing and Doing in form of self-proclamations (check the list to see what I mean by that).

It help me at least to look at my GTD based workflow from a new angle, looking at some details that I was not aware before.

Remove all metadata from JPEGs

2008-07-21T12:25:00.002+02:00

I was looking for a tool to remove all meta data (including EXIF data) from JPEG files, before I would upload them to Picasa. Unfortunately CocoviewX does only remove some EXIF data, but not all other meta data such as comments, copyright notice, etc. Fortunately jhead, a command line tool for all major operating systems, allows to tune the degree of info removal and has also a nice "remove all" feature.

You can strip all meta info from JPEGs in a folder by using the shell and typing:

jhead -purejpg *.jpg

PS: After downloading jhead from the official website you might need to make it executable (chmod 755 jhead) and move it to a proper location (sudo mv jhead /usr/local/bin).

Take screenshots on the iPhone

2008-07-20T11:53:00.000+02:00

Hold down the "home" button and press the "Lock" button. This will make a screenshot of your current iPhone screen and put it to the "Camera Roll" in the "Photos" application. This is especially handy to make snippets of e.g. Google Maps directions to access this information also "offline".

via Lifehacker

Type URLs and email addresses quicker in MobileSafari and Mail on the iPhone using shortcuts

2008-07-15T09:42:00.000+02:00

To quicker type domain names with the iPhone keyboard in MobileSafari, press and hold down the ".com" button to have alternatives (".edu", ".org", ".net"). This even works country specific, so when you have the German keyboard enabled it will also offer ".de" (but will omit ":net") when pressing and holding down the ".com" button.

This also works in Mail, if you press and hold down the "." button you will get the same choices as mentioned before with the ".com" button.

via Lifehacker

Videos with subtitles on the iPhone - Part 1 - Quicktime Pro

2008-07-12T13:45:00.000+02:00

Since I got lucky yesterday getting an iPhone, one of the first things I tried to do is to convert some series that I want to watch to the iPhone. I always watch them with subtitles (srt files) and that does not cause any problem with Quitcktime and some additional Plugins (Perian, Flip4Mac) when I watch them on the Mac.

To get them played back on the iPhone is though not that easy. I tired a few solutions and here comes what I found out about using Quicktime Pro to do so.

make sure that you have Quicktime Pro and Perian installed
rename the subtitle file (only works with srt format subtitles) to have the same name as the video (except for the ending of course)
Open the movie in Quicktime and select "Export" from the "File" menu, then select "Movie to iPhone" in the the "Export" dropdown that appears in the dialog
hit save and wait (can take some time)
copy your newly created file to the iPhone and enjoy

If you have the subtitles not in the srt format at hand you can use Jubler to convert it from all formats (sub files are pretty common) to the required srt files.

In the next post of this series I will show how you can convert the video using FFMPEGX.

More infos about the availability of the iPhone 3G in Switzerland

2008-07-09T16:40:00.000+02:00

Swisscom posted today some more info about the availability of the iPhone 3G in Switzerland. Looks like I will have to get up early on Friday and find a nearby Swisscom shop to get in line at 6h30. I already have a reservation for an iPhone 3G in another store, but it is not sure that they will get enough in stock on Friday to satisfy all reservations made. I'm somewhere in the queue at number 80 for my model of choice and around 250 overall in queue. And by the way, I'm going for the 16GB white model with the largest price plan option.

Skitch

2008-07-05T12:29:00.008+02:00

Just signed up for a Skitch account. Looks like a handy application for taking screenshots, specially for blogging. Your screenshots (which you can also edit) will be hosted on the Skitch website and can be easily made available to others or used for your blog.

You can access my public Skitch page here.

Technorati claim

2008-07-03T14:30:00.001+02:00

Technorati Profile

ZIPCleaner helps to get rid of those .DS_Store and other Mac-specific hidden files from Archives

2008-07-03T14:11:00.007+02:00

When you create an Archive of a folder under Mac OS X using the built in "right-click" (cmd-click) context menu functionality "Compress ... ", you end up having the .DS_Store folders in the resulting ZIP-file. That's no problem for you, but if you send that to a Windows user, they end up having a bunch of (at least for them) "strange" folders and files when they unpack the Archive.

Using ZIPCleaner, you can remove those .DS_Store, Icon^M and __MACOS files from the Archive by just dropping it in the application's window or dock icon.

Swisscom announced price plans for the iPhone

2008-07-01T13:31:00.008+02:00

Swisscom finally announced the prices for the iPhone related mobile contracts. I'm still hesitating between the mezzo and grande option. Although Orange will also offer the iPhone and probably will have better contracts, the network coverage is not as good as with Swisscom concerning UMTS. I hope that Orange will soon announce their prices, so I still can decide before July 11th, where and with which contract to to get the iPhone.

	Retail price 8GB	Retail Price 16 GB	Monthly basic charge	Hourly call rate**	Included volume in megabytes***
NATEL® liberty piccolo*	CHF 249	CHF 349	CHF 25	CHF 0.70	100
NATEL® liberty mezzo*	CHF 199	CHF 299	CHF 35	CHF 0.50	250
NATEL® liberty grande*	CHF 99	CHF 199	CHF 55	CHF 0.50	1'000
NATEL® easy liberty uno	CHF 519	CHF 619	-	CHF 0.80	- (CHF 1 / MB)
* Contract duration 24 months Price per hour for calls from the Swisscom network to Swisscom mobile and fixed-line numbers in Switzerland * No roaming traffic included

Clear all .svn files from a subversion working copy (UPDATE)

2008-07-01T12:15:00.001+02:00

To detach a checked-out subversion working copy and therefore clean all subversion related files (e.g. those nested .svn directories) you can type:

rm -rf `find . -type d -name .svn`

You can also make yourself a little bash script (called e.g. svnclear):

#!/bin/sh

echo "recursively removing .svn folders from"
pwd

rm -rf `find . -type d -name .svn`

via AnyExample

Update 04.05.2009:

As Isimonis pointed out in the comments, it is better to use a different approach if you have many files:

find $DIR -type d -name ".svn" -print0|xargs -0 rm -rf

Or you can use the new options of newer "find" versions:

find $DIR -type d -name ".svn" -delete

Best practices for research in the Internet

2008-07-01T10:35:00.000+02:00

Whenever you do research in the Internet try to make a summary of your findings and conclusions. You might not make a decision about the outcome of the research just now and therefore it will be much easier to go again through your thinking process and conclusion when you finally want to take action about the issue later on.

These are the important things to consider when making a summary of your online research:

make a dedicated note (txt, Word, WiKi) for the current research issue (e.g. memory upgrade for the 2nd generation MacBook)
put the question that this summary answers at the beginning (e.g. where to find good quality memory for the 2nd generation MacBook at a reasonable price)
write down any useful link together with a few sentences describing what the page is about (e.g. best price for MacBook memory but no-name brand)
at the end write down a conclusion (e.g. go not for the cheapest memory but buy brand x from store y)

Example:

Question:

Where to find a good quality memory upgrade for my 2nd generation MacBook?

Webpages checked for that issue:

Corsair seems to be good quality and works with 2x2GB kit, though my MacBook will only support a bit more than 3GB; also the speed for the 2x2GB kit seems to be very good (better than the 2x1GB kit)
Kingston officially only offer a 2x1GB kit, but probably their 2x2GB kit might also work with my MacBook
The prices for the Kingston are generally cheap
The Corsair memory kits cost a bit more

Conclusion:

The Corsair kit is about 20-25% more expensive (at trustworthy dealers) but seems to be the better choice because they officially say that the 2x2GB kit will be compatible with my 2nd generation MacBook; also the speed info is missing for the Kingston kit. I probably would by the kit from Digitec.

Inbox Zero by Merlin Man

2008-06-30T11:15:00.002+02:00

I watched the "Inbox Zero" Google Tech Talk from Merlin Mann. Yes, he's the guy from the famous 43folders blog, which also has its own Inbox Zero series. In order to watch the video off-line, you can use SafariStand (cmd-click on the video to save it locally) download the FLV video in Safari and WimpyPlayer to play it.These are the main things I got out of the video (besides refreshing the basic 5 steps for handling email: "Delete / Delegate / Respond/ Defer / Do"):

always carry a stack of index cards or a small notebook with me to catch tasks (e.g. buy toilet paper) whenever they come into your mind
whenever you start to fiddle with taxonomy go and do three tasks
use MailTemplate to improve answering similar emails
process things (Inbox, Email, etc.) by latest first
try to become a ninja at processing (learn to make quick decisions on what to do with stuff in your Inboxes)
only archive emails/things that you might need in the future, else delete/trash it

Of course there is much more mentioned in the video (watch it yourself, it's really worth the time), but these are just the few things that stuck in my head after having watched it.

GTD best practices

2008-06-22T17:46:00.002+02:00

These are some of my GTD best practices I found important for myself so far:

Get priority thinking off your mind!
Get some Someday/Maybe projects (including dreams, goals) to give you a better feeling that your lists have it all
The calendar is only for rock solid tasks that will occur at that time (not plans / tasks that you would like to do = not prioritizing)
Make some / more checklists and mind maps when evaluating possible projects or tasks, these will then go into the Inbox and be processed accordingly (incubate, trash, new projects / tasks?)
Put a date on all notes, lists, checklists, mind maps, memos, etc.
Have projects that have really good and well defined next actions
Try not to have too many single actions on Miscellaneous lists but instead ask yourself: "are these really single and independent actions, or would they actually be better off in a small projects, even only having 2-3 actions overall?"
Put all manuals that are too big to fit into the filing system (e.g. software manuals) to one place in a bookshelf or drawer, order them also from A-Z
Put non-file-able stuff that lays around into boxes, label them and store them in your cellar or pavement
Always add phone number to "phone call" related tasks
Every email that is a delegation, request or where you wait for an answer should be CC'd to yourself and then processed accordingly (add to projects / lists) and then put in the @Waiting folder in your email
Read the GTD best practices as often as necessary, until they are incorporated into your daily GTD mindset

Statistics and new features

2008-06-22T11:33:00.003+02:00

Blogger (where my blog is hosted) does not offer any statistic evaluation of page visits yet. They have a page where they tell about external tools you can use. After searching a bit in the net I found a howoto for tracking page visits with Google Analytics. I also stumbeld on an entry at the GoodLe blog mentioning a private beta of Google Analytics for Blogger. So I setup the account and added the required code, now lets see what the analytics tool will tell me in the near future.

The same GoodLe blog entry also mentioned Blogger in Draft, which seems to offer additional and new features for blogs hoster at Blogger. I guess I need to have a closer look at that as well.

"Folder Information Dialog" in TextMate projects

2008-06-20T09:26:00.000+02:00

To exclude certain files in a referenced folder in a TextMate project open the "Folder Information" for that folder by pressing the "info" button in the lower right of the project drawer or by pressing ⌘i. Then you can exclude files or folders using regular expressions. You could e.g. exclude all .o files and .class files by adding the following to the "File Pattern" input field: !\.(o|class)

Caret movement in TextMate

2008-06-20T09:25:00.001+02:00

One nice feature is the different behavior of ⌥→ and ⌃→:

To jump from word to word use ⌥→
To jump within CamelCase words use ⌃→

This works also in the opposite direction.

GTD workflow diagrams

2008-06-20T09:21:00.002+02:00

I found some good GTD workflow diagrams for:

via zenhabits

SnapNDrag for easy screenshots

2008-06-19T17:40:00.003+02:00

Since I can't memorize the shortcuts for taking screen-shots on the Mac I tried SnapNDrag. The easy interface makes taking screen-shots painless and it even has some additional features to the default Mac OS X capabilities.

OmniFocus: completed projects and the weekly review

2008-06-19T17:15:00.010+02:00

To hide the completed projects in OmniFocus' weekly review you can put manually the review date in the project's inspector to the far future (e.g. 01.01.2999):

I personally want to go through my completed projects from time to time in order to trigger ideas for new projects, so I put the review cycle for my completed projects to 1 year:

Quick access to "Restart, Sleep, Shutdown"

2008-06-19T15:29:00.004+02:00

To quickly access the "Restart, Sleep, Shutdown" dialog (like hitting the Power button on old Mac keyboards) hit ⌃⏏ (Ctrl-Eject).

via danrodney.com

Trouble with Spaces on Mac OS X Leopard

2008-06-19T15:23:00.005+02:00

If Spaces has strange behavior such as not changing to the right "Space" when switching applications, you can try to fix it by restarting the Dock:

Launch Terminal, in Applications » Utilities and type "killall Dock".

via macosxhints.com

The TextMate "Go to File" dialog

2008-06-19T14:57:00.001+02:00

When working with project, you can hit ⌘T to open the "Go to File" dialog. In this dialog, intelligent matching will be used. If you have a file called no_name.txt in your project, all the following letters put in the input field of the dialog box will match the file: "no", "na", "me" and even "nn" (which matches the beginning letters between separators).

Some useful TextMate shortcuts

2008-06-19T11:58:00.011+02:00

General:
⌘+	make font bigger
⌘-	make font smaller
⌥⌘T	insert special characters
⌃⌘T	open "Select Bundle Item" dialog
⌃⇧T	show TODOs, FIXMEs, CHANGEDs
⌃⇧A	open subversion dialog
⌃⌘R	select currently open file in project drawer
Editing:
⌘L	go to line number (opens dialog)
⌥→	jump to next right word
⌘⇧T	go to symbol (opens dialog)
⌘F2	Add/remove bookmark
F2	go to next bookmark
⇧F2	go to previous bookmark
⌃W	select current word
⌘⇧L	select current line
⌘/	comment / uncomment selection
⌃⌘↑	move selection up (also works down/left/right)
⌥⇥	indent selection (add ⇧ for opposite direction)
⌘⇧V	paste previous entry from clipboard history
⌃⌥⌘V	paste from history (opens dialog)
⌃⌥⇧V	paste selection online (opens dialog)
⌘↩	add empty line below current (and go to it)
⌘⇧↩	add empty line below current (with line terminator)
⌘⇧&	open HTML entity and escape tool dialog
⌃⇧L	wrap selection as link (URL from clipboard)
⌃⇧N	show count (lines,words,bytes) of selection
lorem⇥	add some (lorem ipsum) text
Projects:
⌃⌘N	new project
⌃⌘S	save project
⌃⌥⌘D	show / hide project drawer
⌃⇥	toggle focus (drawer, buttons, editing)
⌘T	open "Go to File" dialog
⌘1-⌘9	open tab number 1-9
⌥⌘→	go to next tab on the right
⌥⌘←	go to next tab on the left
⌥⌘↑	switch between same name files (x.c & x.h)
Project Drawer:
↩	open selected file
SPACE	rename selected file
→	expand selected folder
←	collapse selected folder

TextMate and the "mate" command in the shell

2008-06-19T11:56:00.001+02:00

"mate ." opens current directory as new project
"mate x.c x.h" opens both files as new project
"mate *.c" opens all *.c files as new project

Make TextMate the default editor for the shell

2008-06-19T11:54:00.002+02:00

Edit ~.profile with e.g. "mate ~.profile" and add the following lines:


export EDITOR="mate -w"
export VISUAL="mate -w"
export SVN_EDITOR="mate -w"

Now your shell will always invoke TextMate whenever a file needs to be edited (e.g. Subversion commit text).

TextMate input manager

2008-06-19T11:48:00.007+02:00

Don't forget to install the "Edit in TextMate" input manager. It allows you to hit ⌃⌘E in many applications (e.g. Mail or Safari) to edit the text in TextMate. Save (⌘S) and close (⌘W) the TextMate document to give the contents back to the application.

TextMate

2008-05-30T11:48:00.005+02:00

At the moment I am reading the "TextMate Power Editing for the Mac" book from the "Pragmatic Programmers".

To keep the hints and things I learn better in my head I decided to put the most useful tricks, solutions and shortcuts to my blog.

So in the future watch for the "textmate" tag in the posts of this blog and you might find some tips useful for you as well.

Switching from Bloglines to Google Reader

2008-05-18T11:16:00.001+02:00

I have been using Bloglines for about 2 years now and was quite happy about it. Specially with the new Beta my feeds were pretty neatly displayed. However I was missing a good notifier on the Mac. After searching a while I found BloglinesMenu, but it misses the support for Proxy servers, which would limit its usage at my work place.

I remember having evaluated also the Google Reader at the time I was looking for an online feed aggregator. At that time Bloglines convinced me more, I think it just looked better to me then. But wanting now a notifier to display the amount of unread feed posts in the menu bar of Mac OS X, I gave Google Reader another chance. Because the Reader Notifier for Google Reader also works behind a Proxy server, I installed Google Reader and so far am very happy with it.