Changing save file format of OS X's Grab utility
One of the things I love about OS X is the bundled Grab utility.
All OS's allow you to capture screen shots, but most only allow you to capture the entire screen, OS X's Grab allow's to capture either the whole screen, a whole window, or allows you to drag a box over the area you wish to capture. It's something I've come to use everyday.
There is one niggling issue though, by default Grab insists on saving the captured images as tiff files. And there seems to be no easy way to change. After a bit of googling though I found it can be changed using the defaults utility in the terminal.
New Half-Life 2 Mac release advert...
This is why I love Valve, unrivaled brilliance...
Fixing spotlight index
I recently ran into an issue on my work Mac desktop where the spotlight index seemed to become broken in some way. When I went to search for a particular application it was often not finding it or recommending a very old or classic build of the app. This is obviously a big frustration, as Spotlight is a big selling point of OS X and one I rely on in my day to day use of the machine.
To fix this I found a quick and easy way to rebuild the index without having to delve into the terminal, and here's how:
- First, you are going to want to open System Preferences.
My Computing History
A brief outline of every computer I have owned.
Some 486 based machine.
Compaq Deskpro
- Pentium 60Mhz
- Caddy CD-ROM Drive
- Unknown RAM
- Floppy Drive
- 15" Monitor
Compaq Deskpro
- Pentium 200Mhz MMX
- 64 MB Ram
- 6 GB HDD
- CD Burner
- Floppy Drive
- 15" Monitor
Custom Built
- AMD Athlon 1GHz
- 256 MB Ram
- Nvidia Riva TNT
- Voodoo 2
- 40 GB HDD
- DVD Burner
- 17" Monitor
Obtaining, Compiling and Installing the Linux Kernel
Compliling your own Kernel can be very frustrating if you don't know what you are doing. I have done it numerous times yet I always manage to forget a step or two along the way, so I've created this quick and dirty guide to remind myself (and hopefully remind/enlighten you) as to the process.
There a few things that you will need before you can begin the process of compiling and installing a new kernel. You will need to ensure that you have the right compilers and sources installed in order to compile.
Installing the compiler
A brief understanding of what the Linux Kernel does
When people refer to Linux, they are often refering to the entire operating system, ie user and system applications and the user interfaces to use them, such as Gnome. In reality Linux refers to the Kernel at the heart of it all, the one originally developed by Linus Torvalds. As my project involves working with the Kernel and making changes (hacking) to it I decent understanding of what it does is essential. In this post I outline (very briefly and crudely) the main functions of the Kernel.
Installing self developed apps on iPhone without Developer licence
1. Edit: /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS3.0.sdk/SDKSettings.plist and change CODE_SIGNING_REQUIRED from YES to NO.
(Obviously you should change iPhoneOS3.0.sdk to the correct folder for whatever SDK you are planning to use.
2. Run this script:
#!/bin/bash cd /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/Library/Xcode/Plug-ins/iPhoneOS\ Build\ System\ Support.xcplugin/Contents/MacOS/ dd if=iPhoneOS\ Build\ System\ Support of=working bs=500 count=255 printf "\x8f\x2a\x00\x00" >> working
My First Commercial Software
As anyone in the computer industry will tell you, family and friends will always call on you to do everything technical or to help them out with any computer related needs they have.
