Tag Archives: mac

Reformatting The Time Machine Drive

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The backup drive that stored all of my Time Machine backups is going away today, with a little help from HFSExplorer. It’s taken me far too long to finalize my move away from a single platform, but instead to become one with the general concept of Personal Computing.

Of course, now I come back to try and figure out the One True Filesystem… but I think I’m going to just fall back on NTFS for now, seeing how there are hacks to read and write onto this thing, more so than ext3/4. (Wikipedia comparision)

It’s a good thing I kept notes back a couple months ago when I was desperately looking to getting a NAS. There are plenty of ideas cooking in the back of my mind for what I want, but then again, I’m just going to make do with Dropbox and other off-the-shelf programs.

I guess periodic cloning is all I need these days, especially with my media. All other important things should be backed up off site and all over the place. Thank goodness for all these lovely services offering 2GB of free space!

Homebrew (Mac) Installation

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Homebrew is an up and coming successor to Fink and MacPorts. Although a bit generically named, it works quite well for a lot of the things I muck around with these days, which tend to have that web development smell to it.

It used to be that I had to get a git binary, then grab homebrew from github, then uninstall the git through the binary, and then install git through homebrew. Then, the fun would begin.

Now, it’s even more streamlined. Just grab the installer gist from the README.md page, and it should work. Although, I couldn’t get it to work and I was in a hurry, so I just grabbed the master tarball, and just physically moved the resulting /bin, /Library, and README.md.

Note: This probably worked for me because I already did everything else that was in the install script earlier, such as chmod’ing the /usr/local folder, as well as adding /usr/local/bin to the path.

Hooray for adhering to POSIX standards (Reference here: This is an awesome read, by the way, if you ever had any questions about why directories were as such in a Linux/BSD setting.).

brew install git
brew install ruby
brew install stuff

More on how brew affects Ruby on Rails installations later.

Why Somebody (Me?) Needs To Write A Better Twitterific

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It’s been an OK application: A free application with a bit of ads strewn about. I can handle that… but there comes a time when one has to turn to the Pipes and start shouting complaints.

Welcome to my blog.

I do think that the $15 is a bit steep for an application like this, and since there was a free version, I was okay with it. But I’m fed up with it. I feel like writing my own Twitter client and undercut Iconfactory. Too bad I have very little knowledge in the ways of the Objective-C/Cocoa-fu. I guess it’s a good project to do while messing with the language/framework.

Anyway, I haven’t seen a Twitterific update in ages (Looks like it’s going to be about nine months), for one thing, which makes me feel like the people at Icon Factory aren’t really looking to beef this up (although they did release an iPhone version recently).

A few things I still don’t like about Twitterific:

  • Growl issues: I have the Twitterific window selected, and yet it still growls at me. Why? This seems like a very easy issue to fix… and we’re inching into month NINE without an update to this bug. I’m certain this isn’t just me, because I’ve seen it on… at least 4 Macs. (The 4 macs I’m talking about are the one’s that I’ve owned this year… My name is Josh Kim, and I’m an Apple-holic. But that’s a whole other blog post.)

  • Copying URLs and shortening them. I think we’re at the point where we assume that the feature for shortening URLs is built into the Twitter client of choice. I’ve used a couple in the past (Twhirl and TweetDeck come to mind…). There has to be a better UI for this type of action… maybe when I copy and paste a link, don’t count that as a part of the character limit, but have a second stage where you confirm your post.

  • Actually, that second stage would be awesome in reducing spelling errors and silly things that happen with a trigger happy Twitterer like myself. Not only that and the url shortening, we’d be able to input data on location and images that we’d want to associate with the Tweet.

Okay, Mr. Idea-but-no-action-man… get to it. Sigh.

Another Thing I Can't Stand on a Mac: Lag on Dictionary.app Lookup

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Before Leopard, everything was fine. I was able to open up dictionary, look up a word, be happy that I learned a new word, and close the window. Done.

Is it just me, or does the Leopard Dictionary.app SUCK in the lookup time? I’m talking about the time from when you find the word you want and opening up the definition. With respect to Tiger, this is unacceptable. Back in those days, it was actually fun (yes, I’m a nerd, figure it out) searching through the dictionary.

Let me know if this is just me, because I’ve tried this on both my macs, as well as a Tiger machine just to see the search lag difference.

I also should go to the Apple forums to see if this issue has been reported.

EDIT: Looks like 10.5.3 update fixed this. I am delighted.

Quick Twitter Review and Other Ponderings

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Twitter Logo

I’m beginning to like Twitter more and more. The only thing that’s stopping me from using it as much as possible is: the lack of pertinent users. I’m not talking about the awesome developers/leaders of their field people that I “follow”, but people that I actually know in, you know, real life. Outside of my nerdier friends, I don’t know of anyone that use Twitter. Yet.

But this situation is making me think about social networks in general: each network seems to create a culture of its own. This is not a new view on social networks, but it’s interesting I’m seeing it now with Twitter.

Facebook with their college crowd, Myspace with their musician/high school crowd, and now Twitter with their tech crowd.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that these social networks won’t grow into other groups of users. It’s just that certain networks tend towards a faster and wider adoption with the general population than others. And Twitter, at face value, just doesn’t seem to be a service that can grow very quickly.

I would never use the texting feature (thanks to the iPhone, I don’t have to), but I feel like this feature will help Twitter gain a wider appeal with the slightly more techie crowd.

I do like the 140 character limit, and not because it has to do with the limitations of the texting protocol, but because it puts some creative limits on what I am able to “tweet”. Also, the inability to edit an existing post makes you double check yourself before tweeting.

You know, I never thought about it, but there’s probably an iTunes to Twitter Applescript. The Twitter API is so freeing. But also… this can lead to information overload.

So much power. So much responsibility.

And that ends my rambling on Twitter.

Bezel HUD: Quicksilver Interface Plugin

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I love Quicksilver. That’s all there is to it.

But if you can get away with some tasteful lickability, I’m all for it (as long as it doesn’t kill my machine while trying to look pretty).

BezelHUD is just that. I’ve used Bezel for quite a long time now, and this only adds another layer of that delicious icing to the cake. I do like how it fits into Leopard.

And wow, Julius Eckert also wrote the Showcase interface, too, a plugin I used just to have something other than Bezel to play around with. This guy is on a roll! I can’t wait for the SilverFlow interface, now…

One Thing I Can't Stand on a Mac: Lag on Print

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Sometimes I accidentally press cmd + p when I actually wanted to press cmd + [.

The entire computer freezes up, and I swear inside, as I sit in front of my computer for 3 seconds while the beach ball spins and aggravates my innards.

Is it just me? Does anyone else have this problem with the print dialog taking a bit longer than it should be taking?

Buying a MacBook Pro?

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Lots of people are “defecting” (as the masses would say it) or “converting” (as the enlightened would say it) to the Mac platform. But it kills me when people haven’t taken advantage of the pricing structure that Apple offers.

I was going to write up a full post on this, but I might as well let someone else do the talking.

The main point, however, is that if you’re a student: Regardless of your major, you should not be getting your higher end Apple products through the educational discount. Instead, you should join Apple Developer Connection (ADC) and buy it through that.

Example: My MacBook Pro. For $99 (and a little hassle of scanning in your ID and sending it to Apple), you’re saving $200 on top of the educational discount. Overall, you save $100.

Of course, what they don’t tell you… is that when you first join ADC, they send you a nice DVD for OS X. I sold it immediately on eBay for $70. Then I got yet another OS CD… not sure why, but I sold that too. In the end, I paid for an extra 1 GB of memory this way.

And I didn’t think about this one, but… try to see if you know of any friends that work for Apple. It’s even cheaper than ADC.

How to Buy an Apple Computer

Posts that Didn't Quite Make It

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Here’s a quick list of posts that just didn’t make the cut in the past couple of days. It’ll be quick and painless. Skim, please.

Zooom: Increase Window Functionality in Mac OS X

Zooom: Window Stuff, “Done Right” Try it out. I think I might be purchasing this soon.

CommunityNext: Threadless.com Presentation

Yet another video I won’t be able to watch until after lent… this list is getting longer really fast.

Sitting Apparatus: Ergonomic?

In the Year 2000...

I purchased this ball in hopes to alleviate some of the back issues I’ve been having. (On second thought… it might be because of the messed up way I lift, but I’m still trying to figure this out…) That, and the table (pictured) was designed for tall(er) people: That keyboard drawer was most likely designed for a footrest, or something like that. Even with this 65 cm ball, my arms are not resting at my side as they should be.

And if all fails, I could just use it as an exercise tool at home. Hooray!

(Yeah, I know… exercise balls are kinda feminine, no?)

Future of MP3?

Seriously… patent law reform, anybody?

Apple, Samsung, Sandisk sued by Texas MP3 Technologies

Microsoft sued by Alcatel-Lucent for $1.5 billion

Current Status: Awake

It’s late. Like… freshman-year-coding-insanity late… I just ended up cleaning my bathroom for the strangest reason (at least I’ll wake up to a beautiful bathroom tomorrow morning).

Not sure why, but my schedule is off. It’s like… there is no consistency at all. While there is a consistency to what I have to get DONE in a day, the order is just all out of whack. Not sure if this is a bad thing, but it’s not making ultra-planned Josh Kim not a happy man. Maybe super-chill Josh Kim will take over, instead.

I haven’t had one of those long-drawn out personal posts in a while… and while I feel like I have one in me, I’m going to keep avoiding it like the plague. One of these days, though… it’ll just leak out, and I won’t have any control of it.

Oh, right. A new goal: For every personal post, I MUST post a web/technology related post before it. It’s not like I’m running out of web/tech posts, so I won’t be having a problem posting personal stuff.

Okay, here it comes… the brain dump.

Today was insane. I got up, only to realize I didn’t leave my dryer on as I should have. Got into work a little bit later. Skipped lunch. Went to ISR to finish up work. Met up with Mike Cho for the studying/working. Met up with small group for Bible reading. Went to WIMPE until close.

I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be just as insane. Hopefully, this time, I’ll pack a lunch.

State of my heart? HAHA. You’ll be needing to pay for a meal for that one… and a coffee afterwards… to just START talking about this one. Hopefully, I’ll be getting around to the continuation of those entries…

Think! A "Full Screen"-izer Application

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Think 1.0

Just in case you don’t have a TUAW feed…

I’ve been using “Think!” (Horribly named, mind you… try figuring out the right query string to find this application through Google, because I can’t… maybe the glorious google hasn’t indexed it yet…) for a little bit, now, and it seems like MenuShade for the entire desktop. I actually suggest you use both, because it seems like Think! doesn’t actually do anything to the menubar.