Developing with Mono and MonoDevelop on OS X

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

Having just downloaded and installed MonoDevelop for OS X I can say that the process of getting up and running is an absolute breeze - only involving the normal mac 'download, unpack and drop into Applications' routine. MonoDevelop (and indeed Mono itself) allows you to build several types of application - ...

Quickly Backup to Time Machine in OS X

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

It's possible to force a backup to the OS X Time Machine facility if you have its icon visible in your toolbar, but I find that I really have enough stuff up there so try and keep it down to things I regularly use. It's also possible to force ...

Endlessly Disconnecting Bluetooth - and how to actually disconnect

Monday, June 16th, 2008

Like many other people, I've had problems with an endlessly scrolling 'Disconnecting' message when my bluetooth modem connection goes down, or fails to dial up correctly. I accidentally discovered a method for dropping the bluetooth connection properly, and removing the cycling message from the OS X menu bar: Get iStat Pro's free ...

Get a Forward Delete key on your Mac Book with Double Command

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

Since I switched to a Macbook Pro, I've felt the absence of the "Delete" key. It's not the same as the Backspace key even in text-based applications, let alone in other things such as a web browser. To the rescue comes Double Command, a Preference Pane add-in that will give ...

Listing files with the path in Bash

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

This little script will print a list of the current files in a directory, prefixed with the full path: #!/bin/sh curdir=`pwd` if [ $# -eq 1 ] then usrdir="$1" ls | xargs -I % echo `pwd`/% | sed -e s!$usrdir!! else ls | xargs -I % echo `pwd`/% fi You can optionally provide an initial part of the path to ...

Split and Rename text files from the Bash command line

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

I occasionally read text files (usually downloaded from the Gutenberg Project) on my mobile phone. This is not the best user experience, but bearable and very useful at times. The most annoying issue is the incredibly slow management of very large text files (sometimes greater than 1Mb) that my ...

Djay from algoriddim - How to become an OS X iTunes Djay in your bedroom

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

Djay from algoriddim.com is an awesome piece of software. It plugs into your itunes library and lets you spin and mix on two virtual record decks. The application is intuitive and easy, and the best facsimile I've ever seen of actually spinning the wheels of steel on a computer. ...

And end to Safari InputManager Plugins in Leopard. Thank god for Firefox.

Friday, April 13th, 2007

Hicksdesign reports that OS X Leopard will disable InputManagers, the technology behind plugins like Saft. Must admit I'm even less tempted away from my beloved Firefox now.

A PC User, A Mac User and a Linux User walk into a bar …

Friday, April 13th, 2007

I laughed. I know, I'm a geek.

Adding Accent Marks to Characters in OS X

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007

Thanks apple for this great reference on adding accents to characters on your os x 10.4 mac (the instrutions are similar for other versions of OS X) which really helps if you are writing French, Italian, Spanish, etc on a US, UK or International keyboard. The article explains how ...