Slash Dot Dash

Want to watch a movie on your iPhone (or iPod)? The simplest method of converting to the correct format and size is to use iSquint an “iPod video conversion app for Mac OS X”.

• Install, then fire up the iSquint application.
• Drag & drop your .avi file onto the window.
• Select Optimize for iPod, Add to iTunes and H.264 Encoding.
• Set the Quality slider (I’d recommend High) and click Start.

Leave iSquint to do its stuff and you’ll have the converted film available in iTunes. For a single CD avi file, expect a final file size of around 300-350MB for High Quality or 150-200MB for Standard Quality settings (at 127kbps bit rate).

Note: You’ll need to manually select the movie for synching when your iPhone or iPod is connected to iTunes.

Mac OS X Leopard arrives October 26.

Before you rush to pre-order / buy it from Apple, for £85, visit Amazon where you can save yourself a fiver and pick up a copy for £79.98 with free delivery.

Update: Ebuyer.com are currently offering £10 off any order over £30 if you pay via Google Checkout. With this you can pick-up Leopard for even cheaper at £71.78 (with free delivery).

An unexpected behaviour of Firefox on OS X is that when tabbing through web pages, especially forms, certain elements are skipped. This is quite annoying when form filling since you cannot tab to the “submit” button (or use the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google without resorting to the mouse).

Correcting this is in fact very simple!

Tabbing problems in Firefox in Mac OS X

The solution I found to the problem was somewhat unexpected. How to address this is that the end user have to turn on Full keyboard access > All controls in System Preferences for it to work as expected. Like this:

1. Open System Preferences

2. Go to Keyboard & Mouse

3. Select All controls for Full keyboard access

Alternatively you can add / change the accessibility.tabfocus Firefox option via about:config to one of the following:

3 to be able to tab to form controls or 7 to be able to tab to everything

Just a quick reminder, since I always forget how to do this in OS X (which uses launchd).

$ sudo launchctl start org.macports.mysql5
$ sudo launchctl stop org.macports.mysql5

(MySql 5 installed from MacPorts)

In Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, Apple introduced a new system startup program called launchd. The launchd daemon takes over many tasks from cron, xinetd, mach_init, and init, which are UNIX programs that traditionally have handled system initialization, called systems scripts, run startup items, and generally prepared the system for the user. And they still exist on Mac OS X Tiger, but launchd has superseded them in many instances. These venerable programs are widely used by system administrators, open source developers, managers of web services, even consumers who want to use cron to manage iCal scheduling, and they can still be called with launchd.

Getting Started with launchd

A couple of quick commands (since I’m forever forgetting them).

Installing a port (example given is for php):

port search php
port info php5
port variants php5
sudo port -v install php5 +apache2 +mysql5

Upgrade all outdated packages:

sudo port selfupdate
sudo port upgrade outdated

For a complete list of all installed ports:

sudo port installed 

MacPorts Quick Start Guide

I only just discovered this recently, if you’re using Firefox on a Mac and yearn for the native aqua feel (plus a faster, optimised build) then look no further. Optimized Firefox 2.0.0.1 for G4, G5, and Intel Macs.

Firefox 2.0

Optimised Firefox 2.0

A quick warning, since these are not official Mozilla releases the Firefox name and icon are not used, instead the browser is entitled “Bon Echo” (the Firefox development name).

References

http://www.mobookie.com/firefox/firefox-intel-2.0.0.1-aqua.dmg

One minor annoyance with my MacBook Pro – hearing the startup sound every time it gets turned on. Not too bad when I’m at home but it’s a major embarrassment out in public. The answer is to install StartupSound.prefPane 1.1b1 which allows you to set the startup volume or to disable is completely.

StartupSound.prefPane is the software which controls the volume of the startup sound of your Macintosh computer. StartupSound.prefPane mute the startup sound without changing the output volume setting. And StartupSound.prefPane limits the startup volume so that it may not become loud even if you make the output volume louder. To set up the startup volume, you select the “Startup Sound” pane added to the “System Preferences.”

VMWare have announced a beta version of their virtualisation technology for Intel-based Macs, codenamed Fusion.

The new VMware desktop product for the Mac, codenamed Fusion, allows Intel-based Macs to run x86 operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris, in virtual machines at the same time as Mac OS X. It is built on VMware’s rock-solid and advanced desktop virtualization platform that is used by over four million users today.

This looks like a promising competitor to Parallels and further advances the Mac as a real alternative. It also comes in handy for Rails developers when testing their latest website with Internet Explorer.

References

VMware opens Mac virtual machine tech to public (reghardware.co.uk)

A minor annoyance with OS X; by default you can’t have a black desktop background. Even from the “Solid Colours” section there are only a few blue / green / grey colours to choose from.

I can understand why the list of colours might be restricted; (a) time to implement a colour chooser or (b) preventing ugly backgrounds(!!) but that doesn’t help me. I actually want a black background because I have a 24” Dell monitor as my main display with the MacBook Pro sat to one side. It makes sense to have a black background since unless I have lots of apps open there’s nothing to show on the laptop screen (and I want to save energy and the pixels).

This is easily fixed by creating you own .png image and placing it in the correct location (example file below):

/Library/Desktop Pictures/Solid Colors/

Finally, I can have my nice Solid Black background:

Download Solid Black.png

Hope that helps anyone who stumbles across this!

By default, Mac OS X’s Finder keeps system files – which generally start with a dot, like .bash_profile – out of your sight. But that makes editing one of these files extremely difficult if you, say, want to customize your Terminal prompt.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

References

Show hidden files in Finder