Visor
There are times that I need to quickly do something in a shell. Often I will just switch to Terminal and then open an new window.
Visor is a plugin for SIMBL, made by the same people who make Quicksilver, that displays a shell with a key combination. This window appears over all other windows, and can easily be dismissed when not needed.
[via The Apple Blog]
Technorati Tags: Quicksilver, Visor
High-Speed Network access on Caltrain
Caltrain has finished a proof of concept of wireless internet access along a stretch of tracks in the San Francisco Bay area. Soon riders will be able to access the Internet at broadband speeds while on the train. It looks like this network is using WiMAX (802.16). I am not sure if this system will require WiMAX cards in laptops or if 802.11 access points will be installed in the train cars.
Now it will not be as easy for me to get away from work.
NetNewsWire sharing ports
I just set my wife up with a copy of NetNewsWire. When I was looking at the preferences, I noticed that NetNewsWire has a feature where the list of the feeds that are subscribed can be shared over Bonjour. This is a pretty neat feature, especially if you are in a location like a conference where there would be a lot of people with a similar interest.
In order to get this to work, the port use for the incoming connections needs to be opened up in the firewall. Port number 30874 needs to be opened to allow this traffic.
Note to Apple: There should be a way for an application developer to add a rule to the built-in firewall. When an application is configured, it should call an API for it to request a port be opened. This would cause the system to present an authentication dialog, where the user could allow or deny the port to be opened.
Technorati Tags: firewall, Mac OS X, NetNewsWire, networking
Google Maps smarts
My wife noticed something pretty cool in Google Maps. This morning when she was about to head out to the BlogHer conference, she wanted to get directions to the Hyatt. She entered the address in Google Maps, and then clicked on the Directions link, and it gave reasonable directions.
The interesting thing about this, was that she wasn’t logged into Google’s services, so it didn’t know our address. It looks like Google estimates the location of the ip address of the client, and uses this as the originating location.
Technorati Tags: Google, Google Maps
Luxor
What do you do when waiting for an appointment, or the train? When I am in this situation, I have been playing Luxor on my phone. This is a pretty addictive game. It is a game where you need to match three or more spheres of the same color, in a moving row of spheres, before the spheres get to the end of the track.
This is game works well a cell phone with the simple controls, and with a small screen. It looks like this game is also available for Mac OS X and Windows, and for online play.
Technorati Tags: cell phone, game, Luxor AR
Trying Bad Behavior again
I have decided to try out Bad Behavior again, now that it officially supports LifeType. This plugin helps prevent spam comments and trackbacks, not by content, but by characterizing the HTTP request itself.
When I tried this last time, it blocked some of the scripts that I use. I will see if the new version works for me now.
Technorati Tags: Bad Behavior, LifeType, spam
Sizzling Keys
Episode number 7 of the Neat Little Mac Apps (This is a pretty good podcast) mentions Sizzling Keys. This control panel allows key combinations to control iTunes.
I had been using Synergy for this. But I had stopped using the notification from Synergy as I have been using the Growl notification though Quicksilver. Also, I haven’t be using the menu icons from Synergy. So I decided to try Sizzling Keys, since it is a lot simpler.
updated newTunes
I got a comment on my previous post about newTunes. The author mentioned that there is an updated version of newTunes, that handles larger iTunes libraries better. I installed it today, and it works form me. ….Now there just has to be a album that I want to buy.
Technorati Tags: Dashboard Widget, iTunes, newTunes
Web browser from the future?
I was looking at my web server logs from a couple of days ago, and I saw these logs. It looks like someone was looking at the posts from December 2009.
xxx.66.195.2 – - [24/Jul/2006:14:21:02 -0700] “GET /archives/2009/11/javascript:history.go(-1) HTTP/1.1″ 200 24152 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”
Probably, this was just an inefficient web crawler. But it makes me wonder:
- What will I hae written in December 2009?
- Will there still be Windows NT computers running in 2009?
Technorati Tags: apache, system admin
software engineer or just crazy
Some times I wonder about myself. When ever work is very busy, and I get home late, I always end up working on side projects until late into the night. And these projects have nothing to do with my day job, but are just things that interest me.
I am not sure why I do them. Obviously these are things that interest me, I just don’t know why I spend the majority of my time on them while things are busy at work. Maybe, when work is busy, these software projects help my mind settle. Or maybe I am a little crazy
