Jul 30
Jeff KelleyMac Tips command-line, Mac OS X, open-source, Synergy
So here’s an annoyance. Having just installed SynergyKM, a great front-end for the awesome command-line utility Synergy, launching it would result in the following prompt:
The promt you get when launching SynergyKM
To fix this, you need to remove the extended attribute com.apple.quarantine that’s on the file. Fire up Terminal and enter the following commands:
sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Library/PreferencePanes/SynergyKM.prefPane/Contents/Resources/Synergyd.app
sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Library/PreferencePanes/SynergyKM.prefPane/Contents/Resources/Synergyd.app/Contents/MacOS/Synergyd
That will remove the flags and prevent the prompt.
Normally, you’d only see this prompt once, but since installing it for all users changes permissions such that your user account can’t remove the attribute, it isn’t removed.
Note: This is assuming that you’ve installed it for all users. If you’ve installed it for one user, it’ll be in ~/Library, not /Library.
Update: I’ve submitted a patch to SynergyKM’s SourceForge page, so if they accept it this will no longer be an issue.
Jul 18
Jeff KelleyMiscellania gross, scripting
I recently wrote a script to automatically install firmware updates for our Macs. The problem with them is that for some, you have to hold down the power button to finish the installation after the machine has turned itself off. Now I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell don’t want to go around to 900 or so Macs and hold down their power button after installing an update. This script, while it can’t hold down the button for me, does allow student staff to automate the proces up to that point. I don’t have to give them a password they could use to break the system, they can do the update for me, everybody wins. It’s a beautiful system.
Well, today, I was testing the script out. The problem with testing it is that you can only test a given computer once; once the firmware update is installed, it won’t show up as needing to be installed anymore. So, I packed up my stuff and went to our biggest computer lab to do some testing. My test subjects were some “CyberStations,” computers we have with basic web-browsing and e-mail loadsets. They’re relatively unused during the summer, so if I broke any it wouldn’t be a big deal. I went up to one, ran the update, and waited. That’s when smoke came out of the back of the computer as the update ran. Oh shit, I thought, this thing is on fire!
Let’s go back a minute to my description of CyberStations. Their loadset consists of a vanilla Mac OS X Leopard install with some applications taken out, Firefox, Thunderbird, and Adium. Basically, it has the Apple-provided web browser, e-mail client, and IM program, as well as the leading open-source alternative for each. Nothing on these computers is too taxing. As a consequence, the fans never need to run too heavily, as the computer never really gets too hot.
Back to the smoking machine. I was sure it was on fire—where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right? Well, the student employee to whom I was demonstrating the script wasn’t too sure. He placed his hand on the back of the computer (an iMac G5, not that it matters) and didn’t feel any heat. So, if it wasn’t smoke, what was it? That’s when I realized what had happened. The fans, never having been run too hard, hadn’t been blowing a whole lot of dust around. When they ran full speed during the firmware update, dust had come flying out of the computer’s vents. A white, puffy cloud composed largely of the dead skin cells that had fallen off of our users’ skin for years. It was coming out of the bottom, out of the back, and even where the screen met the case. I quickly held my breath and stepped back.
I’m really glad that we have student staff to do the rest of this.
Jul 10
Jeff KelleyMac Tips Apple, external monitors, MacBook Pro, screen resolution
So, in a similar vein as to what pushed me to write my Applescript to resize windows, I’ve been looking at what to do about going from using the LCD on the MacBook pro to an external monitor. Now, everyone knows that in order to use an external display, you have to connect the display adapter while the notebook is closed, plug in an external keyboard (and your power supply), and press a button, and boom, you’ve got external display action at your monitor’s native resolution. But what if you don’t want to wait the ten seconds or so it takes to go from awake to asleep? Messing with it, I was happy to note that the following procedure seems to work:
- Plug in the external display, your keyboard/mouse, your power supply, etc—with your notebook open. The external display will mirror your notebook’s LCD, at its resolution (if supported by the display. If it isn’t, you’ll get the highest common denominator, I think).
- Close your notebook cover so the display turns off.
- Immediately open the notebook cover, then close it just as soon, then push a button on your keyboard.
- Presto! Your MacBook Pro should see the display and change the resolution how you want it.
I’ve only tested this on my machine, so let me know in the comments if it works/doesn’t work or if you have a better way.
Jun 29
Jeff KelleyMiscellania blogging, Dreamhost, WordPress
Wordpress.com is, don’t get me wrong, a great service. They offer no-hassle blog hosting for free using WordPress, my blogging platform of choice. At a certain point in a young blogger’s life, however, it’s time to move on to using WordPress’ more advanced features; uploading new themes, hand-editing theme components, and maybe even throwing Google AdSense on there. Wordpress is always free from WordPress.org, is easy to set up, and very easy to customize and administer. So, with a little help from blog-well, I was ready to go. This blog post is a derivation of blog-well’s work (click that link over there to see it), but I’ll be focusing on DreamHost where they focused on GoDaddy.
- Step 1: Obtain Hosting.
Obviously the first step here is to sign up for a hosting account. DreamHost’s process is simple enough that I won’t bore you with instructions.
- Step 2: Tell DNS to point to WordPress.com
Now we have to tell your blog’s DNS servers to point to WordPress.com, where your blog is currently. This step might seem counterintuitive—after all, we’re trying to point WordPress.com to your blog, not the other way around—but this is how you let WordPress know that you’re in control of your domain. Assuming that you want your blog at blog.yourdomain.com, you need to make a “CNAME” entry as follows:
blog 14400 IN CNAME yourblog.wordpress.com
Once that change propagates (which can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, and you may need to reboot your computer), visitors to blog.yourdomain.com will be redirected to yourblog.wordpress.com. For DreamHost, follow these pictures:
- Step 3: Sign Up for WordPress.com Domain Forwarding
This part, unfortunately, costs a little bit of money—$10 per year. When you’re logged in to WordPress.com and at your dashboard, click “Upgrades” and then “Domains.” Enter your new domain in the field once you’ve paid for 10 credits and you’ll see it appear on the domain screen.
- Step 4: Tell WordPress.com to Point to Your Domain
- In the “Domains” view on your WordPress.com dashboard, click “put blog here” next to your domain. This tells WordPress to take all traffic sent to yourblog.wordpress.com to blog.yourdomain.com or whatever you want. The end result should look like this:
- Step 5: Re-do Your Custom Domain
Go into your domain’s DNS settings again and delete the CNAME entry you made earlier. Now you’re all set to go! If you’re using DreamHost, you can do the easy install of WordPress to have it automatically updated to the latest version and the database automatically created for you.
Jun 27
Jeff KelleyMiscellania blogging, Dreamhost, meta, WordPress
I’ve moved this blog over to Dreamhost, which means a couple of things: first, I’m managing my own WordPress installation now, which is pretty cool. Don’t get me wrong, WordPress.com is great—and I’m still technically using it to forward traffic to my old address here—but managing your own server is pretty cool. I can install whatever themes I want and edit them as I see fit, without paying money to do so. Sure, I’m paying money for hosting, the domain name, and the domain name forwarding from WordPress.com, but at least now the blog is here on my own terms.
Moving the blog here was a long and arduous process, one that required patience on my part and that gave me a crash course in DNS for web servers. I was able to do it mostly off of a post at blog-well.com, and since the attached PDF has rights to edit it built in, I think I’ll work on some instructions for this process to help others along. Keep your eyes peeled!
Jun 27
Jeff KelleyMiscellania meta
This blog may be temporarily unavailable as I switch it to blog.slaunchaman.com. Be patient — it’ll soon be back up and all of your old links (including RSS subscriptions) will still work.
May 28
Jeff KelleyMac Tips AppleScript, meta, scripting
After looking at my AppleScript to resize windows, I’ve decided to make a few updates. Instead of manually doing the math for each resolution, I’ve created a new variable, desired_width, which is exactly what it sounds like: how wide you want your windows to be. I’ve also made the other variable names more human-friendly: _nl and _nr are now left_bound and right_bound, respectively, for example. After adding iTunes to my script, I noticed that it was being resized behind the menubar, so instead of setting the upper bound for all windows at 0, I’ve defined the variable top_bound, which defaults to 22 to account for the height of the menu bar. If you find that this setting is incorrect (e.g. if you’ve enabled some accessibility settings that change font sizes and therefore the size of the menu bar) you may need to change it; I haven’t found a way to get the height of the menu bar in AppleScript yet—so far I’ve only found it in Java—so if anyone knows feel free to leave a comment. Finally, after seeing this post by Jamie Matthews, I added some functionality to automatically set bottom_bound to the height of the Dock.
After all of these updates, the script now takes a desired width and moves applications that support AppleScript such that they range horizontally to your desired width, centered on the screen, and stretching from the bottom of the menu bar to the top of the Dock. In the future, I’d like to make a separate application, perhaps AppleScript-based, that will allow for user customization of how the windows are arranged, allow for custom application settings, and perhaps Spaces integration.
May 20
Jeff KelleyMac Tips AppleScript, convenience, Mac OS X, MacBook Pro, screen resolution, scripting
I use my MacBook Pro in a few different scenarios: by itself, plugged in to a 21” Apple Cinema Display, or plugged in to a 24” Dell 2405FPW. I’m also rather OCD; I prefer my Firefox/Safari, Mail.app, and Vienna windows to be centered, stretch from the menu bar to the top of my Dock, and be a certain width. I created a small AppleScript to auto-detect my resolution and size the windows accordingly:
tell application "Finder"
set screen_resolution to bounds of window of desktop
set screen_width to item 3 of screen_resolution
set screen_height to item 4 of screen_resolution
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Dock"
set dock_dimensions to size in list 1
set dock_height to item 2 of dock_dimensions
end tell
set desired_width to 1400
set side_space to screen_width - desired_width
set left_bound to (side_space / 2)
set right_bound to left_bound + desired_width
set bottom_bound to screen_height - dock_height
set top_bound to 22 (* for the menu bar *)
try
tell application "iTunes"
activate
set the bounds of the first window to {left_bound, top_bound, right_bound, bottom_bound}
end tell
end try
try
tell application "Firefox"
activate
set the bounds of the first window to {left_bound, top_bound, right_bound, bottom_bound}
end tell
end try
try
tell application "Mail"
activate
set the bounds of the first window to {left_bound, top_bound, right_bound, bottom_bound}
end tell
end try
try
tell application "Vienna"
activate
set the bounds of the first window to {left_bound, top_bound, right_bound, bottom_bound}
end tell
end try
With that in place, I saved it as an application in ~/Applications, and put it in my Dock. Now, whenever I change resolutions, I just click the button and everything is how I like it.
To change the script, you should be able to add any application with an AppleScript dictionary that supports moving and sizing the window. The numbers I’ve used make the windows 1,400px wide, and the height that you want will depend on the size of your Dock. The script moves windows to the center, desired_width wide, and from the menubar to the Dock.
Note: I have had some trouble recently; sometimes when I change my resolution the AppleScript doesn’t pick it up. To combat this, I told the Displays System Preferences pane to keep its icon in the menu bar; when my script uses the incorrect resolution, I change my screen resolution then change it back, which is enough for the script to detect the change.
Update 2008-05-28: Made some usability changes. Details here.
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