Ever since Apple announced Swift at the WWDC 2014, I’ve been really excited about jumping back into programming. Especially since I can actually understand the syntax, unlike the mind fuck that was Objective C. Also, bare in mind I haven’t coded anything since 2001.
I have all these ideas which are interesting to me, and not any other iOS developer who has offered to join forces with me. Usually the conversation goes like this:
Jared Sinclair gives iOS developers a quick course in Photoshop.
Beware the following caveat: this is an article about tools, not design. If this were an article about ice sculpture, it would teach you how to turn on the chainsaw. It’s up to you to sculpt an angel without losing a limb.
I like the way he hammers this statement. Made me chuckle.
Eight Terminal Utilities Every OS X Command Line User Should Know
The OS X Terminal opens up a world of powerful UNIX utilities and scripts. If you’re migrating from Linux, you’ll find many familiar commands work the way you expect. But power users often aren’t aware that OS X comes with a number of its own text-based utilities not found on any other operating system. Learning about these Mac-only programs can make you more productive on the command line and help you bridge the gap between UNIX and your Mac.
I consider considered myself a power user, and I only knew 4 of them…
I’ve been looking around for a while to an alternative to Wordpress. Something faster and less high maintanance1. I even looked at moving to Tumblr.
I came across Matt Gemmells blog which is clean and very fast. One of his posts was about moving away from Wordpress. I decided this weekend I’d try moving my blog from Wordpress to Octopress, which is the same engine Matt uses.
Open Terminal App, and paste this:
defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -bool TRUE; killall Finder
to revert back, paste this:
defaults delete com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection; killall Finder
Job Done!
And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‟1984”
Open Terminal App, and paste this:
defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none
to revert back, paste this:
defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType crashreport
I recently upgraded my XBMCUbuntu box to Frodo (v12) but a few things went missing. One of them was auto service/file completion after the “sudo” command. Quite frustrating.
But I found this little snippet of code to fix it.
complete -cf sudo
or you could put this in your “.bachrc”
if [ "$PS1" ]; then
complete -cf sudo
fi
If you want to find out all the hidden partitions, you need to enable this. Also a good way of finding out if you have a Recovery HD partition or not.
Quit Disk Utility and open Terminal, then paste/type:
defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1
That’s it.
If you use “corporate” Macs, you’ll often get frustrated with their “in-house builds” of OS X. The solution is to wipe the Mac, and install a clean OS.
But some have started to lock the HDs. So here are two ways to get around this.
Route one is to copy ZERO data blocks to the sectors of the Macs HD. You have to boot from Recover Disk/USB, and launch Terminal
dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/disks1 bs=512
Route two is a little different, but I’ve only tested Route 1. So if 1 doesn’t work, try 2.
sudo chflags 0 /Volumes/*
sudo chmod a+rx /Volumes/*
After that, you’re free to format the drive and install a clean OS… Ahhh.. Clean OS.
Take a screenshot from Terminal and automatially open it in mail ready to be sent.
screencapture -W -M mailme.jpg
You can click a window, and it’ll just grab that window
Also, do:
screencapture -h
Ton of options.
Open Terminal) and type (paste)
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true
You’ll need to log out and log back in for it to take effect.
Job done.
To create a password protected file in OS X, open Terminal, go to your folder, then :
The syntax is zip -e [archive] [file]
Example
zip -e foobar.zip *.txt
Enter password:_
Verify password:_
Done ;)
Launch terminal and paste
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
Once the process is finished (sometimes it takes a while), you need to restart Finder via this code:
killall Finder
Job done.
On a cool, clear night (typical to Southern California) Warren G travels through his neighborhood, searching for women with whom he might initiate sexual intercourse. He has chosen to engage in this pursuit alone.
Nate Dogg, having just arrived in Long Beach, seeks Warren. Ironically, Nate passes a car full of women who are excited to see him. He insists to the women that there is no cause for excitement.
This worked great, but make sure you have “lame” and “flac”
sudo apt-get install flac
sudo apt-get install lame
Then in the folder with all the .flac files:
for f in *.flac; do flac -cd "$f" | lame -b 320 - "${f%.*}".mp3; done
Save your shell script with a .command suffix – this makes it double-clickable and you should also be able to run it directly from Spotlight too.
Annoying things that often happen
The Finder crashed:
killall -KILL Finder
The Dock crashed:
killall -KILL Dock
Spaces crashed:
killall -KILL Dock
The Menubar crashed/refuses to be clickable:
killall -KILL SystemUIServer
Edit your
/etc/apache2/httpd.conf
and make sure the line:
LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
exists. By default in the standard OS X config, you just need to uncomment it, then re-start Apache:
sudo apachectl restart
And you should be good to go.