I know, rsync is the answer to all my prayers, at least as far as syncing data is concerned. I agree, BUT sometimes you just want a simple GUI (yes pointy/clicky) application to do the job. Well that’s were synkron comes in. A simple applications that does one thing and it does it well, synchronizing your files/folders. It’s multi platform and works really well. It uses tabs to setup multiple synching jobs. It supports 1-to-1 synching or what’s known as multi-sync were synkron synchronises the sources one by one with their representing folder in the destination. This can be used for backups for example. It also has a scheduler/filters/blacklist and the ability to restore as well. The analyze function is also very useful as it can tell you what will be backed up before its backed up. Oh, and it’s open source/free software, so no excuses :-).

Okay so where do we start……yeah good old cpio and tar might be good enough for the true old timers who still back up to tape, but a lot of people these days backup to live Online/Nearline media such as disks. Here is a quick (and platform specific) reference to four backup commands that you should always carry in your back pocket when backing up OSX machines.

1. Ditto is a command line util that comes with OSX. It’s a neat little application since it can preserve permissions, resource forks and extended attributes of OSX files when run as root. There are several ways of running ditto, but if you just want to clone your system using ditto here is the command:sudo ditto -X / /Volumes/Backup
2. Rsync is the grand daddy of file syncing/backup utils out there and it comes with OSX as well. You can also use rsync to create a bootable clone of your system. sudo rsync -xrlptgoEv --progress --delete / /Volumes/BackupIn addition to basic copying, rsync can also sync the remote and local targets — ie: if a file gets deleted on the source it gets deleted on remote as well. In this mode rsync only copies files that have changed on the source, so after the initial backup, all subsequent “sync” operations will run very fast. In the above command the -E option is special for OSX, it tells rsync to copy extended attributes for the files being copied.
3. Next is hdutil which allows you to create a image of your drive in a single file. Although the image is not bootable, it has the advantage of being contained in a nice/neat file. Here is the command to create a compressed disk image of your drive:sudo hdiutil create /Volumes/Backup/mymachinesimage.dmg -format UDZO -nocrossdev -srcdir /
4. Last but not least is asr, the drive cloning util. This one works similar to ditto in creating a bootable clone of your drive, but it does this in block mode. Every block in the source drive is copied 1-to-1 to the destination drive. To clone your drive using asr use the following command:sudo asr -source / -target /Volumes/Backup -erase -noprompt Note that since your using asr in block copy mode you need to be able to unmount both the source and destination drives. So you can’t really use this command to clone your boot partition/volume. You can boot from a OSX DVD/CD and use this command from the command line.

That’s it…..Have fun backing-up……and do it often :-).

Does your OSX Mail app crawl when you start it. Well here is a quick tip to speed things up again. Just issue this command from a terminal window (make sure you’re not running Mail app first).

sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index vacuum;
You should notice a bit of a performance improvement the next time you start the Mail application. This only works for the OSX mail.app, not other mail applications.

Here is a quick command line for all you OSX ppl. If you’re ever in need of turning/converting a .dmg file into a .iso use the following command line:

hdiutil makehybrid -iso -o newfile.iso yourfilename.dmg

Yeah I know what you’re thinking…..who the heck would need that. Well since mac’s don’t have a physical CD eject button on the front plate (ie: eject is done by eject key), if you ever need to put a CD/DVD into a machine without keyboard (server machine and/or if you’re using teleport to share a keyboard/mouse) you’re in trouble. It turns out those Apple geniuses knew about this and gave you a way out…..just open up a terminal (or ssh to your server) and type the following command:
drutil eject

When I bought my Macbook Pro the first thing I noticed was that the function keys didn’t “function” like those on my Powerbook. With all the new expose and spaces functions, you had to decide if you wanted the old style keys (ie: press F5 to increase volume and press Fn-F5 to get whatever was assigned to F5) or the new style (ie: pressing F5 by itself gets you whatever action is assigned to F5 — which btw is nothing — but pressing Fn-F5 will increase the volume). Well FunctionFlip lets you have your cake and eat it too. It turns the Function keys into Hybrid keys. You dicide what the primary function is and what the Fn-Fx function (if any) is. Free and OSX only. Here is a quick run through once you get the control panel installed (just double click it).

1) You choose the layout of keys on your Mac by choosing the function that’s printed on F6 and F8 key on your keyboard.
2) Then on the right hand pane you decide which keys you want to Flip. When you flip a key you make it perform the function printed on the key itself. In my case I like to have F1 and F2 control brightness settings without having to use Fn key with them, but I like to keep my F8-F10 for expose features.

Here are two commands to activate the expanded Print and Save menu’s under OSX by default. You need to type these in a terminal window.

1) For expanded Print menu
defaults write -g PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint -bool TRUE
Logoff and back in again to activate. Reissue the command replacing TRUE with FALSE to turn expanded functionality off.

2) For expanded Save menu
defaults write -g NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool TRUE
Logoff and back in again to activate. Reissue the command replacing TRUE with FALSE to turn expanded functionality off.

Enjoy and Have fun

Here is a quick command to make Leopard’s stacks behave nicer when you move your mouse across the icons. You can type these two commands in terminal to activate the feature:
defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -boolean YES
killall Dock
or alternatively if you don’t like the look, type the following in terminal to reset it back:
defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -boolean NO
killall Dock

You can thank Murat Konar for this free application. GarageRemote is a OSX control panel app that lets you assign MIDI commands to those pesky GarageBand commands. No more using the mouse to press Play/Stop/Record and such. It gets even sweeter if you’ve got a MIDI controller with dedicated shuttle controll buttons.

Research, research, research…..and then some more research. (most) LCD manufacturers are trying to cut costs down so you need to know what you’re paying for before you walk into the store. So here are a bunch of good sites to go to in order to find the relevant information:

• Jeff Atwood’s great little introduction of the basics. If you want to pickup the terms/ideas quickly read this.
• Nice summary table (also on Jeff’s site) of all the LCD technologies and their advantages.
• Table of laptop LCD part numbers (by size and manufacturer part number). Yeah this is where you find out that Apple chimped you by selling you a 6-bit philips panel as “Professional”. More on this below.
• Table of desktop LCD part numbers (by size and manufacturer part number). This is great to peak at once you figure out who manufactures the actual panel in your display.
• Table of laptop LCD models (by size and model). This is useful if you need to find out who manufactures the panel in your particular laptop.
• Table of desktop LCD models (by size and model) This is useful if you need to find out who manufactures the panel in your particular display.
• TFT Central’s Panel part database. Again, great DB based on panel manufacturer and size. You can also use their search feature if you know the model number, panel manufacturer model and response time.
• The infamous LCD thread over at anandtech.com. This is basically the soup-to-nuts explanation of the LCD science…..definitely for the N.E.R.D in you :-).
• Everything you ever wanted to know about LCD and related tech and were afraid to ask. The holy grail of LCD related documents, great reads.
• flatpanels.dk…..THE SOURCE. It’s all there, if it’s not then it ain’t out there (worth it). This is the site that 3 years ago pointed me at the cheap and excellent Viewsonic VP201s panel which I use for my Photography (since I can only see in 6-bits on my Macbook Pro, thanks to Apple).

And now for the Apple portion of this program…..If you’re buying an Apple Macbook Pro laptop thinking that it’s got the PRO attached to it so it must be a great 8-bit panel, think again. They use 6-bit TN panels (as of this writing) like everyone else, but make a point of “millions of colors”, when that’s not completely truthful. See this article to see why I say didn’t say “It’s a lie”.

If you have an OSX machine and want to quickly find out the manufacturers part number of your display(s) (yes even external panels are supported by this program), use SwitchresX. I grabbed the Control panel version of it since I did not want to install the entire application. Once you run the control panel you’ll see the following screen:

DDC block report generated by SwitchResX version 3.8.3 for display
Color LCD (1)

-----------------------------------------------------
------------------- RAW DATA ------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------
      0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  A  B  C  D  E  F
-----------------------------------------------------
0  | 00 FF FF FF FF FF FF 00 06 10 62 9C 00 00 00 00
1  | 0F 10 01 03 80 25 17 78 0A 7E A0 98 57 51 8B 27
2  | 22 50 54 00 00 00 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
3  | 01 01 01 01 01 01 7C 2E 90 A0 60 1A 1E 40 30 20
4  | 36 00 6F E6 10 00 00 18 00 00 00 01 00 06 10 30
5  | 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0A 20 00 00 00 FE 00 4C
6  | 50 31 37 31 57 45 32 2D 54 4C 41 31 00 00 00 FE
7  | 00 43 6F 6C 6F 72 20 4C 43 44 0A 20 20 20 00 EB
-----------------------------------------------------
 <  00FFFFFF FFFFFF00 0610629C 00000000 0F100103 
80251778 0A7EA098 57518B27 22505400 00000101 
01010101 01010101 01010101 01017C2E 90A0601A 
1E403020 36006FE6 10000018 00000001 00061030 
00000000 00000000 0A200000 00FE004C 50313731 
5745322D 544C4131 000000FE 00436F6C 6F72204C 
43440A20 202000EB >

-----------------------------------------------------
                   Valid EDID block: checksum passed

-----------------------------------------------------
------------------- MAIN EDID BLOCK ------------------
-----------------------------------------------------

EDID Version........1.3
Manufacturer........APP
Product Code........25244 (629C) (9C62) 
Serial Number.......00000000
Manufactured........Week 15 of year 2006
Max H Size..........37 cm
Max V Size..........23 cm
Gamma...............2.20
Display Supported Features:
---------------------------

Display type:
-------------  
            RGB 4:4:4 & YCrCb 4:4:4 Color Encoding Formats 
            Display is non continuous frequency 
            Default color space is not sRGB standard 
            Preferred timing mode includes Native Pixel Format

Input signal & sync:
-------------------- 
Digital Input 
           Color Bit Depth is undefined  
           Digital Interface is not defined   

Color info:
----------- 
Red x = 0.595  Green x = 0.319  Blue x = 0.154  White x = 0.312
Red y = 0.343  Green y = 0.545  Blue y = 0.135  White y = 0.328

Established Timings:
-------------------- 

Manufacturer Reserved Timings:
------------------------------ 

Standard Timing Identification:
------------------------------- 

Monitor Description blocks:
---------------------------  
             Descriptor #0 is Timing definition: 
             Mode = 1680 x 1050 @ 59.883Hz  
                            Pixel Clock............. 119.00 MHz  Non-Interlaced
                                                          Horizontal  Vertical  
                           Active..................    1680 pixels  1050 lines  
                           Front Porch.............   48 pixels     3 lines  
                           Sync Width..............   32 pixels     6 lines  
                           Back Porch..............   80 pixels    21 lines  
                           Blanking................  160 pixels    30 lines  
                           Total...................    1840 pixels  1080 lines  
                           Scan Rate...............  64.674 kHz   59.883 Hz  
                           Image Size..............  367 mm   230 mm  
                           Border..................    0 pixels     0 lines   

                                          Sync: Digital separate with    
                                                      * Negative vertical polarity    
                                                      * Negative horizontal polarity 
             Descriptor #1 is Manufacturer specific data (not interpreted here) 

             Descriptor #2 is ASCII data:   LP171WE2-TLA1 
             
             Descriptor #3 is ASCII data:   Color LCD

Now as you can see my LCD’s part number is LP171WE2 (TLA1 is not important). If you type this on LG/Philips lcd site you’ll get the details of it:

Well now atleast I KNOW FOR SURE….I’m in 6-bit Hell….Thanks Apple!!!!

Okay so it’s read-only access, but it’s Free :-). Have a look at HFSExplorer the next time you need to grab a file from that mac formatted firewire drive. It’s a little Java program that allows you full read access to any HFS+/HFSX formatted disk. It works nicely under boot camp to give you access to your OSX partition or even a MAC formatted IPOD. As a bonus the app even allows you access to HFS+ formatted .dmg files without any conversion……what more do you need??? Oh and did I mention it’s FREE.

If you ever need to scan the airwaves for wireless accesspoints, you might want to try the new AirRadar. Yes, there are other programs out there that do similar things (AirStatz or iStumbler), but AirRadar also supports GROWL which is kinda nice

Have you ever had problems ejecting a disk or emptying your trash under OSX. Did you waste time trying to find the offending program. Well “What’s Keeping Me?” is for you. Just run it the next time you get one of these errors, tell it the name of the file that’s giving you grief and it will return a list of processes that have locked that file. Then you have the option of killing those processes. Nice little free util to add to your collection.

Just when you thought your command line life was getting boring, we discover these happy tunes for your cut/paste pleasure. Just select the entire line, copy it, open a terminal window, paste it followed by Enter and marvel at your Mac. Yeah it’s a OSX thing and works best under 10.5, so if you’ve got Vista/XP/Linux, this might be a good enough reason to do the switcheroo :-).say -v Good oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosay -v Bad oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosascript -e 'say "Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum he he he ho ho ho fa lah lah lah lah lah lah fa lah full hoo hoo hoo" using "Cellos"'osascript -e 'say "Dum dum dee dum dum dum dum dee Dum dum dee dum dum dum dum dee dum dee dum dum dum de dum dum dum dee dum dee dum dum dee dummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm" using "Pipe Organ"'osascript -e 'say "oh This is a silly song silly song silly song this is the silliest song ive ever ever heard So why keep you listening listening listening while you are supposed to work to work to work to work its because i hate my job hate my job hate my job its because i hate my job more than anything else No its because youve no life youve no life youve no life and you better go get one after forwarding this crap" using "cellos"'Who said you can’t have fun on the commandline?

If you ever needed a reason to switch to a mac and you were thinking to yourself, “well maybe I’ll wait a bit longer, after all, the malware/virus/trojan scene hasn’t caught up to me yet”, you might want to think again.

Today marks the re-release of Virus.Win32.Gpcode.ak virus for the PC platform. This sucker was released two years ago and went around RSA encrypting peoples files (including, but not limited, to .doc, .txt, .pdf, .xls, .jpg, .png, .cpp, .h) with a 660-bit encryption key. Thank god the boys at Kaspersky Labs found a bug in the code and cracked the code. This time the author(s) are using a 1024-bit key. So if you ever end up with files ending in _CRYPT, you’ve got a major problem on your hand. If the author(s) have done their homework, Karpersky Labs estimates that it would take decades (if not longer) to crack the 1024-bit key.

Now I’m sure you’re thinking I’m spreading FUD, but think about this for a second. How many hours of work would you loose if all your documents were encrypted and you were faced with a ransom note pointing you to pay up to recover them? How much do those digital camera pictures from your last trip mean to you? I don’t know about you but when a virus company comes out and says, “Let’s hope the virus author screwed up or else we’ll be in some serious heat”, I would start worrying.

Anways, something to think about while you’re writing those documents, taking those pictures or creating the next best selling computer game. At the very least you should BACK IT UP!!!! More over at Kaspersky Labs…..

Came across this tip today and I thought it might be useful to some of you out there. OSX, as great as it is, has always had this (atleast) one shortcoming for me. The stupid date display in the menubar. Why did they decide to hide the actual date/day of the week is beyond me. Yes, you can go and grab Magical, I know…..But that’s yet another program that needs to be loaded. There is a simpler solution. Follow the steps below and you can prettify your date display too :-).

1. In System Preferences, open International and go to the Formats tab.
2. Next to Dates, click the Customize button. Arrange your date in the format you want to appear on your menubar. I just simply grabbed the full format. Select the entire date format and copy it to your clipboard (Cmd+A, Cmd+C). Hit OK.
3. Now back in the formats screen, hit the Customize button next to Times. Choose the “Medium” format. Make sure you do this to the Medium format, I tried the other ones (Short and Long) and it did not work (at least under Leopard 10.5.2). Paste the date format on your clipboard next to the time format, and hit OK. I pasted mine inside a set of square brackets in front, you can customize the extra characters to your liking.
4. You should see the changes on your menubar immediately. If you end up with double day of the week display, in System Preferences, go to Date and Time, and uncheck “Show the day of the week.”

Enjoy :-).

Wow, Apple must be doing something right. According to research specialist SCRI, in 2007 Apple took 49% of the US professional editing marketing with Avid trailing on just 22%. There were a lot of rumors during NAB this year that Apple was gonna sell of it’s pro-video division to [your-favourite-video-company] (I heard Thomson/GV). At the time, I thought that would be a dumb thing to do and I said so. It turns out Richard Townhill, Apple’s director of marketing for professional video applications agrees with me. In this TVBEurope report Mr. Townhill says:

I can categorically state, on the record, that is not the case,

referring to the FCP unloading rumors. He then went on to say — about the recently released Final Cut Server:

There are a million Final Cut Pro users out there who need good asset management

Clearly Apple sees Final Cut Server as another mass market product, and why not, when you own 49% of the market, the only way to go is UP afterall.

The long awaited Apple Final Cut Server was released today, ahead of this years NAB show. It’s been a long time coming (more than two years almost), but you can finally have your cake and eat it too. From Apple’s FCS page:

Whether you work in a production boutique or a global news network, you can use Final Cut Server to free up more time for creative work. Final Cut Server can automatically manage thousands of assets, execute dozens of routine production tasks, and keep every member of your team in sync.

The scalable client/server software makes it easy to work the way you want to work, using as many or as few features as you need — whether you’re producing a 30-second spot, the nightly news, a documentary film, or a major motion picture.

1) Bring up VLC and select File/Open Capture Device (Ctrl-A). You should see this screen modify the bottom portion (Advanced Options), so it looks like this picture below. You can decrease screen-fps to 15 if you like to speed things up a bit.

2) On that same screen Click on the Settings… button beside Stream/Save and you’ll see the following screen. Make sure it’s configured this way if you want to do the streaming through HTTP protocol. Audio Codec does not need to be checked, since there is no audio, I just put it in as habit. Note the Address field is the IP address of the same machine (the server in this case), which is 192.168.1.1. This can be a bit confusing.
3) Press Okay twice and your VLC server is up and running serving your desktop to whoever wants to watch (Note: This WILL slow down your server machine considerably).
4) Go to your client machine (192.168.1.2 in our case), run VLC and go to File/Open Network menu option and fill it in as follows. Note that we’re connecting to our server at 192.168.1.1 now.
5) Press okay and you should see the stream from your server now…..DONE!!

A friend passed this on today (thanks Jeremy). If you use a mic in your day to day businness (or even if you’re an occasional ichat/skype user, you should check this out. RevoLabs have introduced a new line of Wireless microphones that come with RF-Armor. What does that mean, well the next time your GSM phone rings/sync/receives email, your microphone won’t be going all crazy. Plus their Solo mics come in three different types:

• Wearable
• Tabletop Boundry
• XLR adapter for handheld mics

All their mics use a base station that hooks up to your PC or Mac via USB (no driver needed) and show up as a sound device. As a bonus the wearable one also has a audio out so you can wear it around your neck (on in your pocket) and hook up a headset to it as well.
They also have larger 4 channel and 8 channel wireless systems that you can mix and match using different solo mics. The preconfigured systems even come with a 4 or 8 channel Gentner echo cancellation device by polycom. Very nice…..