This has been probably blogged several million times now, but I am really enjoying the latest release of OS X - 10.5 also know as Leopard.

Lots has been written about it including a really good review over at Arstechnica, but for me most of the downsides they note are ignorable.

1. The 3D dock - I really don’t notice it in every day action anymore, it might be because I am using Quicksilver but its not so bad.
2. The semi-transparent menu bar - well I changed the background to black and white Leopard fur and it looks good.
3. Time-machine - I am not using it at the moment.
4. Stacks - useless until you create your own that makes sense to you.

The upsides for me:

1. Spaces. I have been waiting for this built into the OS for ages..
2. Terminal. Tabbed and better its a much needed improvement.
3. Speed. It does seem faster.
4. Mail. Improved and with some nice new features
5. iChat. I am actually using this now.
6. Network configuration. This makes much more sense now.

Not currently using:

1. Coverflow in the finder. Well I did use it once. Only once apart from playing
2. Time Machine. My external drive is almost out of space, and I have a good backup system in place anyways.
3. The server integration. Doesn’t seem to work as I need it to.

All in all a worthwhile upgrade despite some negative comments.

Finally I have found the tilde on my Swedish Mac keyboard. Its hidden under Option-¨

What a stupid place to put it..

Just been installing Ubuntu 7.04 on Parallels for work, and its not as straight forward as it should be. Luckily there is a good tutorial over on simplyhelp.net.
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Those who have been here before know that I am a big fan of the Django python webframework, and also a big fan of OS X. So I thought that I would install Django on my MacBook Pro.

I did have it all installed on my G4 laptop, but I am going to be using it with at least two different databases on this machine. I am not going to give a complete, what I typed style install, just an overview because it is fairly easy.

1. Install latest version 2.4.* of Python from http://www.pythonmac.org
2. Check out the development version of Django from http://www.djangoproject.com/download/ (I checked it out in /django - probably not the best place to put it.)
3. Install latest stable version (5.1) of MySQL from http://www.mysql.com/
4. Install latest stable version of MySQL tools http://www.mysql.com/products/tools/administrator/
5. Install MySQLdb from http://www.pythonmac.org/packages/py24-fat/index.html
6. Create a symlink so Python can find django: ln -s /django/django_src/django/ /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.4/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django
7. Then I followed some instructions on blog.vixiom.com to add the path that I need.
8. edit your .bash_profile file in your home directory with the following path: /django/django_src/django/bin/:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin:

Now that should be everything needed to start running with Django and MySQL. PostGreSQL is of course the better database but for the testing work that I am doing my webhost at the moment doesn’t support PostgreSQL..

Anyone that has been on this site before will know that I have an affinity for Apple Macs, particularly their laptops. Since moving to Sweden I have now ditched windows machines - full time, almost!

Actually one of the main reasons for getting the new MacBook Pro was that I could run, OSX, Windows XP (or Vista) and Linux/BSD on the same machine. Because of work Windows XP is a major requirement, our software mainly runs on it and a lot of development is done on it and after testing that it ran our OpenGL based VizArtist correctly I knew that it was the right machine to have with 2Gb of RAM of course.

So I knew that that was the right machine, but of course switching using dualboot (called Bootcamp by Apple) can be a major pain, so I turned to Parallels. Parallels allows you to run a virtual machine on top of OSX, but in the latest version is its killer feature - the virtual machine can come from another partition - in this case my bootcamp Windows XP partition. And then it can integrate with the desktop so that you can switch between applications whether they are OSX based or Windows Based seamlessly.

So I get the best of both worlds. Obviously I cant run games using it, but I don’t run games on a work PC. Recommended.

To remove files depending on a certain date on Linux, Unix and OSX (and I presume using Cygwin on Windows) you can use the find command and get it to execute the rm command.

find . -atime +1 -exec rm {} \;

Will send all files in the current directory that are older than one day to the remove command. Its probably best to test it by looking at the files first:

find . -atime +1 -exec ls {} \;

That will show all the files that are over a day old. The remove command is of course useful for cleaning up log file directories from a cron job when daemons or programs running don’t clean up after themselves.

It is finally here!!! The new apple Mac Book, available in white and black with built in iSight and with intel core duo. It looks sweet in black but they are selling that at a premium which is probably not worth it.

Here it is in white, with a 1.83Ghz Intel Core Duo chip, 60Gb HD, 512Mb Ram and a Combo drive it costs $1099.

The specs for the next model up is 2.0 Ghz, 60Gb HD, still only 512Mb Ram and a Super (DVD burning) drive it costs $1299. The black version is costing $1499 which is quite a premium for an upgrade to black and a 80Gb drive. I am hoping that it will change after a few months ala iPod.

It of course comes with iLife, an Apple remote, Magsafe power adapter, WiFi and Bluetooth, gigabit ethernet, digital audio in and out, 2 USB 2.0 and 1 400 Mbps firewire and a scrolling trackpad.

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Just a couple of tricks, first updating the software. Apple has provided the commandline tool softwareupdate which can be used like this:

softwareupdate -i -r

To do installs and updates of the various OS specific and Apple software. Its not Ports, or even APT but its better than nothing I suppose. Another one that is often not known about is the built in, system wide spell checker. Check on the edit menu of alot of applications to see what the shortcut is.

Well NetNewsWire is definitely the best News (RSS) reader that I have used period, so I didn’t have much trouble coughing up the small amount that it cost to get a license for it. If it had the Camino HTML rendering engine built in it would be perfect.

As I have written about before the fact that you can flag items that are of interest is excellent, and presents an easy way of coming back to content later, plus it has features that every other RSS reader would love to have whether on Mac or PC > Tabbed Browsing, Searching, Podcast, Smart lists, Bloglines syncing, Search engine subscriptions, scripting, HTML difference tracking, finding feeds that haven’t been updated in a long time. In fact a lot more, download the trial for more information.

And secondly its integration with MarsEdit was excellent, so I got the bundle deal. I think I slightly prefer Ecto for dealing with weblogs and publishing - it just seems easier to use, but what I really needed was the integration.

Adding images and other things isn’t obvious straight away, but it is under the HTML tags drop down, likewise the custom tags option isn’t that obvious.

So if you care about your news, I can recommend both and I also wish their was a similar product on Windows and Linux.

I need a POP3 server for osx for testing an application that I am thinking of building. I would like it small as in lightweight, osx switch on/switch offable and with little dependancies. Anyone know of one?