Jan 26
That said, one can do almost anything as long as this anything is not writing a lecture (which that specific one should be doing — at least, theoretically).
Now, I'm not different in any sense. Instead of writing an Image-Based Information Processing lecture (which puts me to sleep almost immediately — or is it the professor who does it?) I've managed to get a VNC working on my Mac. On my home Mac.
Well, it all started with the TeamViewer, which suddenly stopped to work. It was disappointing, as I couldn't play with Boxee on my home computer during the lecture anymore, so I've tried to invent something. Indeed, I could SSH into my iMac (via a resident NAS which acts as an SSH gateway to my home network). What I ended up doing could be best described by these commands:
imac$ sudo port install tightvnc
imac$ vncserver
... password
... verify
... your VNC server is running on iMac:1
nas$ sudo ssh -f roman@imac -L 5901:localhost:5901 -N
macbook$ ssh -f my-nas-username@my-nas-host 5901:127.0.01:5901 -N # it didn't work with localhost here
Then I simply used JollyFastVNC to VNC into my iMac by connecting to 127.0.0.1 and port 5901. Yay!
However, ten minutes later I realised, that in fact I can set up a tunnel to my Mac's default (bundled) VNC server on screen 0. So I did — and apart of the fact that I should've enabled monitor mirroring (otherwise it tried to skew my iMac's monitor + my HD TV connected to it into one rectangular window, which didn't look neither pretty nor comfortable), it did work quite good. That works and an only question I ask myself - why on Earth do I need it if TeamViewer has started working again?
Nov 4
I've got a thingie, you know... this colour calibration thingie named Huey. I got a while ago as a birthday gift from my friends, but when I switched to Mac two years ago it suddenly stopped to work (well it did but it produced
that horrible pink cast – I couldn't use it and I didn't want to). Yet, a couple of weeks ago I decided that this not gonna work this way and sent a request to Pantone to do something about it.
So, after some checks they sent me a replacement. I tried it at home and - yes, the same pink cast. Completely devastated, I decided to take it to work and try with my 24" HP monitor (connected to my MacBook).
I took it. And I tried. And it did work!!! Now my MacBook monitor and HP monitor look if not the same, but very similar at least. Actually, I did a very simple trick to make a non-pro version of Huey to work for two monitors: apparently, Pantone guys didn't know you can change the primary monitor (and it calibrates only primary monitor) just by dragging the menu bar in monitors' settings. I did it twice and it worked like a dream!
Seriously, colours are not perfect. I can see it even though probably none of my colleagues will see any difference after working with calibrated monitor for couple of hours. But – it's much better than original non-calibrated colours, and it makes me happy.
One day I'll buy a semi-pro Eye One Display, but until then I'll live with my Huey.
Oct 29
I bet you're either using MySQL, or going to use it or at least heard of it – I hardly believe anyone of reading my Twitter or blog are not exposed to this field at all. Hence, if you've ever used MySQL you have probably asked yourself a question – "where can I find a decent front-end application"? Of course, there's PhpMyAdmin as well as many others, and they're fine, really ... except they're web applications, and most of us still prefer something which runs on our machine locally - after all, it's totally different experience.
Now, if you're lucky enough to use Mac (and I see absolutely no reasons why you should not) – you've got an app for that, too! Sequel Pro gives you great database navigation, with ability to access server via SSH tunnel (as, obviously, not all servers are exposed to outer world and in fact, most are not). You can do practically all you want via it's UI - view and edit tables' structure, add or change indexes, view the content of even very large tables, and, of course, run SQL queries on the database. And, best of all - it's free! Try
http://www.sequelpro.com and you won't regret – and I can just say "Thank You!" to the guys who made it available.
On the screenshots: Sequel Pro accessing MySQL database with loaded Wikipedia dump via SSH tunnel.
R.
Sep 20
Do you like "Edit in TextMate" command you can use in any Cocoa edit window, and write the text in your favourite text editor? (of course, TextMate that is). I like it too, and since I've switched to Firefox (after 1.5 years struggling with Safari and getting finally tired of it being SO slow sometimes!) I missed it a lot. Well, now you can do it, too – just follow the advice here:
http://blog.circlesixdesign.com/2007/02/23/textmate-firefox/ Little tip: there's no need to create any symbolic link, you can simply specify `/usr/local/bin/mate` as your editor, or, if you didn't install `mate` command when installing TextMate (which I highly recommend to do), you can use `/Applications/TextMate.app/Content/MacOS/TextMate` to achieve nearly identical results.
