botWerks

follow the advice here: http://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html

seriously. just do it.

if you need a GUI, SuperDuper, works wonderfully.  this will save your ass. no joke.

some comments re: X11

somehow, apple managed to really screw up the X11 implementation that they shipped with leopard.  fortunately, they had really sharp guys tracking this and the xquartz project stepped in quickly to plug the gaps.  if you’re running leopard, this is the release to get.  personally, i keep a copy of the latest version on my machine in the odd chance than an OS upgrade happens to trigger nastiness on the X11 front.

why use this versus terminal?

if you need to run a UNIX X app, you’re going to need an X server running.  however, for the most part, if you’re just doing CLI stuff you’re not going to care.  i happen to have an apparent inability to use the option key as meta.  terminal doesn’t allow you to remap the command key to meta so  .. i use rxvt (built from ports) and xterm is  obviously readily available.  X11 will honor the use of the command key as meta so my thumb will do the right thing.

make sure you’re using something later than r2.3.2.1

x11 preferences

release 2.3.2.1 and later provides the ability to update the system pasteboard w/copy on select from X11. this means that copy and paste work pretty much the way you would intuit between OS X apps and xterms, etc. without having to manually invoke the copy operation from the menu w/i X11. this of course assumes that you have sanely disabled “Enable key equivalents under X11″.

note to make this work you need to enable the “update pasteboard immediately when new text is selected” option in the preferences. this has persisted across a number of releases and pretty much just works the way you want it too.  this was a major nit for me for a number of years.  if you’re  a recent convert, enjoy.

in no particular order – here are some notes on the use of OSX for my UNIX dweeb friends who are making the jump.

essential tools / things to get:

go and get the developer toolkit (aka Xcode) – this will get you a working compiler and a kick ass development environment.  unfortunately, i haven’t had a lot of time to monkey with Xcode for its primary purpose of developing mac apps.  you should be able to install this off of the optional software installation on the OS distribution disk.  alternatively you can get this from the apple developers web site. (http://developer.apple.com/mac/ – note you might have to create an account on this site to get the latest tools and they are a big download.  get it when you’re someplace where you have a solid and fast connection.)

macports – run, don’t walk, to get this one.  i’ve messed with fink, i find this to be more complete and  more often than not, it just works.  to make life easier, you should periodically update your ports collection.  this is trivially accomplished via a periodic sudo port selfupdate.  note, you’ll need to have a working Xcode installation to get this appropriately installed since, like the FreeBSD version of ports, it will build this stuff from source and resolve dependencies in the process.  it’s not a binary build system like fink, et al.

editors

emacs / vim – without taking a religious perspective on this topic it’s good to know that there are first rate implementations of both on this platform.  i install both and toggle between the two of them as it makes sense.  personally, i’ve toyed with some very useful 3rd party editors as well. i’ll include some additional notes on these as well.

• emacs – i use this one, there are folks that swear by aquaemacs, but i can’t make the keybindings happy enough for my taste.

• vim – macvim – need i say more?  i used this version for a long time prior to finding an emacs that made me happy on the mac.  the new version of macvim is sexy as hell and has tabs and shit.
• TextMate – this one seems to have all of the web 2.0 folks in a twist.  i find it to be a remarkably good editor with emacs-like keybindings that work for most things. (meta-b/f don’t work as expected so that’s a frustration for me, personally.)
• SubEthaEdit / Coda – i mention these in the same breath.  SubEthaEdit is a collaborative text editor which allows folks to simultaneously edit a document, this editor is embedded within the coda web development package.

OSX oddities

su / root account – if you’re used to just su’ing to root, then you’re going to be surprised by the fact that root isn’t enabled by default.  instead you use sudo for pretty much everything.  if you’re used to running things as root and you feel like doing this all over the place you’re welcome to enable root (done by following these directions), over the past couple of machines i’ve had, i haven’t enabled root.

cron – OSX doesn’t run the crond like you’ve seen on other platforms instead there’s launchd.  which assumes the responsibilities of a whole host of classic UNIX processes (notably, init and crond).  if you use crontab -e a la the classic UNIX interface to crond, then all of the launchd stuff is handled in the background for you. if you expect to just copy over your crontab files from /var/spool/cron then you’re in for something of an awakening.  to make all of this just work, use crontab, it will make sure that launchd is updated appropriately.

turning a page in eucalyptus

i recently ran across a number of references to hiram bingham’s, Inca Land, which is available for free from project gutenberg.  this of course prompted the search for an appropriate ebook reader with hooks to project gutenberg.  behold eucalyptus, which will download books from project gutenberg on the fly and give you a killer interface for viewing the contents of the book.  insane attention to detail is visible everywhere.

the text is rendered in very high quality fonts, the animation is tight and the search function is spot on.  my only nit, is the lack of graphics for books which do have photos.

http://eucalyptusapp.com/ – definitely worth the $9.99 that they’re asking for it.

i should point out that i’ve also purchased classics (http://www.classicsapp.com/) which is equally stunning visually. however, the library that’s embedded inside classics is anemic.  while they’ve taken great care to display the content beautifully i find myself aching for more content.  i’d give up some of the visual appeal for the content and the portability.  eucalyptus seems to have struck a very nice balance here.

while all these two apps are capable reading platforms, i do find them lacking a few features which i really irritate me.  specifically these:

• the ability to annotate or make notes. now, i know that there are all sorts of additional considerations associated with this and there’s a corresponding need to provide a means to extract those notes into a different application, provide sexy input overlay, etc.  but i’m a margin writer or a highlighter.  if i like a book i like to make it mine.  while this is a general nit with ebooks, i would love to find a reasonably decent digital proxy.  failing this, i would like …
• the ability to copy a selected region of text and use the paste function to bring that content into another application for sharing or notes.  seems like a pretty duh item for me, particularly given that the content is all without copyright encumbrance.

these are hardly damning criticisms of these apps, in fact they’re more reflective of my desire to have a host of reading functionality in my pocket which to date i haven’t been able to find.  these apps represent the greatest non-kindle based means of portable reading that i’ve personally poked at and i find my curiosity piqued and a couple of things lacking.

before i dropped vonage a month or so ago for the comcast triple play. i used to use this schell script bound to a quicksilver action to dial my phone. eliminating the need to deal with a pesky phone dial pad.

note, this grabs the phone number to dial from your system clipboard. (note the use of the pbpaste command. users of non-OS X platforms should adjust to something appropriate. i seem to recall the gnome had something similar.

in the interests of posterity.

vonage dial