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Paul's Time Sink

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PandoraMan

Paul Westbrook | 31 October, 2006 23:45

I just saw a PandoraMan mentioned on VersionTracker.  This has the same main functionality as PandoraBoy, that I mentioned earlier.  Unfortunately, it is missing some of the nice features that PandoraBoy has, like Growl notifications and global hotkeys.

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fetchmail and Google Mail

Paul Westbrook | 31 October, 2006 14:45

In this post, I mentioned that I wished that the lack of IMAP support was preventing me from switching to Google Apps for Your Domain.  Last night, I was thinking about this, and I relalized that I already have an IMAP server.  I just need to get the mail to the server.

Fetchmail can be used to deliver mail from pop servers to other servers.  This page has a script that can be used to start fetchmail when the computer starts.  This page describes the how to setup fetchmail to check Gmail through fetchmail.

 (More)

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Daylight Saving Time

Paul Westbrook | 29 October, 2006 21:55

Last night I went around the house setting the time on the clocks, that don't automatically adjust, back an hour.  I remember that every clock had to be adjusted manually.  Then in college, I bought an VCR that automatically adjusted itself.  At that time, Mac OS didn't automatically adjust for Daylight Saving Time.  So, I wrote the Set Daylight appe to adjust the time.  This was pretty easy to do, since the rules for the dates that the time adjustment occurred, were static. This was added to Mac OS 8, so it wasn't necessary anymore.

But now most electronics include support to automatically adjust for Daylight Saving Time.  For example, TiVos, Mac OS X, Windows and Linux PCs, and PDAs will automatically adjust.  Now that the days that Daylight Saving Time is changing, all of these devices have to be update in order for the time to be correct.

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Firefox 2 config tweaks

Paul Westbrook | 26 October, 2006 17:44

This page describes some tweaks that you can make to Firefox 2.

[via something or another...]

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Firefox 2.0

Paul Westbrook | 25 October, 2006 15:09

I installed Firefox 2.0 today, and it works very well.  Here is a list of the extensions, that I have installed, that don't work:

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The Unarchiver and Stuffit archives

Paul Westbrook | 23 October, 2006 22:36

I have had several Stuffit archives that The Unarchiver has unpacked to empty directories.  On my last post about The Unarchiver, Nathaniel Nutter commented that there are problems with resource forks, and suggested BOMArchiver.  I couldn't find a place to download it, so I just re-downloaded Stuffit Expander 11.

There are fewer and fewer things that use Stuffit (especially since Mac OS X has built-in support for disk images and zip archives.)  Mac OS X developers should really stop using Stuffit for their distributions.

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Google Reader Notifier

Paul Westbrook | 23 October, 2006 21:28

Google Reader Notifier is a small application that lists the unread posts in the Mac OS X menu bar.  This works pretty well, but there are some things that I would change:

  1. Have a preference screen that lets you enter your Google username and password. (Currently it uses the cookie stored in Safari, when you log in with that browser.)
  2. Display the unread posts in submenus for each feed.

[via Hawk Wings]

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Tangerine thoughts

Paul Westbrook | 21 October, 2006 22:51

I have been using Tangerine for a couple of days, and I like it. I really like the interface for displaying playlists. Playlists are displayed as a horizontal list of album artwork.  When you select a track, a popup appears with the track information. Tangerine also has the ability to upgrade itself (which all applications should do)

The main benefit of Tangerine is to generate playlists of similar music.  I wanted to create a playlist that I could listen to walking to and from the train.

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Dashboard KickStart

Paul Westbrook | 21 October, 2006 20:44

I use Dashboard widgets several times a day.  The only annoyance is that the first time activating the Dashboard after logging in takes a long time to load all of the widgets.  Until the widgets load, the computer is pretty much unusable.

Dashboard KickStart is an application that solves this problem.  When you login or wake from sleep, the application quickly opens and closes the dashboard.  This means that all of the widgets will have been initializes when you want to use them

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iAlertU

Paul Westbrook | 20 October, 2006 23:57

iAlertU is a neat little application that may help to secure your MacBook or MacBook Pro.  When enabled, it uses the sudden motion sensor to detect movement.  When movement is detected, the an alarm is sounded, and a picture of the person moving the computer is taken.  (Assuming that the are in front of the computer.)

There are some things that I would love to see fixed in iAlertU

  1. Have the alarm played through the speakers, even when headphones are plugged in.
  2. Have iAlertU startup, even before users login.  This will allow the alarm to continue even after a hard reboot.
  3. Have an iAlertU screen saver, that automatically arms when the screen saver enables.
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Tangerine

Paul Westbrook | 20 October, 2006 00:54

I have previously mentioned smart playlists that can be used to get a better selection of music. (1, 2)  The one problem is that these are mainly based off the user ratings for tracks.  It is pretty hard to just listen to just one type/mood from your favorite music.

Tangerine looks like it solves this problem.  When you first launch it starts scanning through your iTunes library to calculate the beats per minute and the Beat Intensity for each track.  (There is an option to save this information back to iTunes.

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Ease of iChat AV?

Paul Westbrook | 19 October, 2006 02:09

I had to work late tonight, and I was IM'ing with my wife. I wanted to initiate a Video chat, and iChat failed to establish the connection.  The error message stated "Chat ended with error -8", which probably means that there is a NAT problem.

This is a real problem for iChat.  When attempting an audio or video session, or a file transfer session iChat attempts a direct connection between the computers.  This is a problem when both computer are behind firewalls that use NAT.  By default, firewalls will reject any incoming connections, so when either computer attempts a connection with the other computer, the connection will fail.

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Structured networking

Paul Westbrook | 19 October, 2006 01:22

Now that I am trying to use our NAS for backups and to keep our content.  I tried both 802.11g wireless and powerline networking to connect the Mac mini and the NAS.  Unforunately, I never got more than 5Mbs for sustained transfer rate.  I decided that running ethernet around the house is the best way to get a high sustained transfer rate.

The builder of our house did some strange things with the structured wiring.  They installed 3 RG6 cables to every room (so you can have both satellite and cable), but they only installed one Cat5e to every phone jack.  I know that it is not ideal, but I decide to run ethernet on two of the pairs of the Cat5 cable, while the phone line uses one.

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Pairing Apple Remote with your computer

Paul Westbrook | 18 October, 2006 20:27

This page describes how to pair an Apple Remote to your computer.  Without doing this, watching something on the Mac mini, through FrontRow caused FrontRow to open on my MacBook Pro.  I actually disabled the IR receiver, until I saw this page.

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smcFanControl

Paul Westbrook | 14 October, 2006 13:52

smcFanControl is a little application that lets you set the minimum speed of the internal fans, when the temperature sensor indicates that the fans should come on.  This should allow the computer to run cooler.  smcFanControl works on MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and Intel Mac minis.

I am not running this on my laptop, as I would rather have the fan spin slower, to keep it quiet, but I am running this on out Mac mini, to keep it cooler in the entertainment center.

[via Slashdot: Apple]

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