Mount partitions like a boss (AppleScript)

Posted by on 15. mai 2012 No comments

How to quickly mount partitions when the need arises? A small AppleScript to help you out.

The need

No good comes without little drawbacks. When I swapped ODD with HDD, I noticed that it was quite a bit noisier than SSD and even compared to similar MBP with HDD in original bay (probably because ODD bay has a slot that lets noise out easily). So, now I tend to eject the secondary disk when I don’t need it, so my Mac can spin it down. All nice and dandy, but reattaching it when needed was a bit tedious.

The Script

set partList to {"Meedia", "BOOTCAMP"}
choose from list partList with prompt "Choose partitions" with multiple selections allowed
if result is not equal to false then
	repeat with part in result
		do shell script "diskutil mount " & part
		display dialog "Volume " & part & " mounted"
	end repeat
end if

This script asks for which of the partitions to mount and then iterates with diskutil through the selection.

Download

You can copy-paste the above script to AppleScript Editor and adjust it to your needs, or you can download this as a ready to use application.

MountPartitions.zip

 

Installing Windows 7 on MacBook Pro without SuperDrive

Posted by on 24. apr 2012 No comments

Right after I swapped my SuperDrive to second internal HDD I was graving to move my 20 GB Boot Camp partition to the other drive and make it bigger, so that I don’t have to carry another USB disk for my games. Rumor has it that Winclone could have done it in a snap, but I thought how hard can it be and set out to do it myself.

Turns out that there were several different complications that messed things up for me, but in the end, I have a working Windows 7 installation on the secondary disk. Read on to find out how I accomplished it.

Read more »

MacBook Pro bidrive or DIY optical bay HDD Caddy

Posted by on 20. apr 2012 No comments

OptiBay

If you ever run out of disk space on your laptop you might have wondered if you could replace your Optical Disc Drive which you rarely use anymore with another HDD. Turns out that of course you can and there are plenty of manufacturers out there who sell kits to do that. One of the most famous in Mac community is the MCE Technologies OptiBay pictured right.

But I live in Estonia and of course I wanted it NOW, so I went out for a little adventure to see if I can fit one of those el cheapo Akasa N.Stor HDD to ODD cases found in local PC store.

For the imatient: yes I can.

Read more »

Ruby (on Rails) toolchest for Windows users

Posted by on 2. apr 2012 No comments

Setting up solid Ruby on Rails developer box based on Windows can be tedious task. More so than on other platforms, because vanilla Windows is meant for end user and lacks proper development tools that exist on other platforms. But fear not, there are many good people out there that have jumped through multitude of hoops to get different parts of the ecosystem working. All that remains is to build a solid foundation for developmer from them. Read more »

TextMate 2 New Window (via AppleScript)

Posted by on 1. märts 2012 No comments

Often I find myself in a situation where I need to quickly paste some text and edit it a bit. Switching to TextMate also switches spaces to my last TM session, which might not be my current space. With other programs (and TextMate 1 for that matter) this can be overcome by selecting “New file” or “New window” from dock menu.

But the problem is that TextMate 2 alpha currently does not have
“New file” option in the Dock menu. I really miss this, because of my workflow – I use spaces to manage projects and programs I have open concurrently and I don’t want to mix the TextMate windows between spaces. So opening new TM2 window in current space is a must.

But surely the developers are preoccupied with more important features and thus I decided to throw in my 2 cents and cobbled together an AppleScript that one can use to open new window in current space.

TMNewWindow

Place this script in your Applications folder and wait until Spotlight has indexed it. Then push whatever shortcut you have for Spotlight (or Alfred, if you are like me) and enter few first chars. I have found that tmn is enough to trigger this application.

Hitting enter will fire this app and a sec later new TextMate window should be opened in current space. Definitely faster than switching to TM2, hitting ⌘N and then moving the window to correct space.

 

Download TMNewWindow

 

 

iPhoto Empty Trash

Posted by on 28. veebr 2012 No comments

If you use iPhoto to manage your photos and you have deleted a bunch of them either because they weren’t so good or perhaps moved to other library using iPhoto Library Manager, you notice that disk space hasn’t been freed. Fear not.

iPhoto Trash

iPhoto uses its own trashcan to store deleted photos for easy retrieval. You can view the contents of trash by clicking its icon in the left pane in the Recent section.

Empty iPhoto Trash

To free your disk space of these deleted photos you have to simply empty the trashcan. To do so, just push Empty Trash button in the upper right corner if you are inside the Trash.

Or at any time select “Empty iPhoto Trash” from the iPhoto menu as seen below.

Now it prompts you with the usual confirmation:

And when you agree, it will move the photos to the Mac OS X system Trash.

Empty Trash

After the iPhoto Trash has been emptied, the files are now in system Trash and to finally free disk space, this also must be emptied. This is done as usual, by right-clicking (Ctrl-clicking) the Trashcan and selecting “Empty Trash“. Again, it will prompt you with confirmation, but this time it includes all the files in the Trash so be sure to be sure. ;-)

Safety net

As you see, freeing disk space from deleted photos can be a long walk, but after all, photos might just be our most valuable files on our computers as they are impossible to recreate.

Always make (several) backups of your photos to be sure not to loose them.

Turn Linux into a remote AirPlay speaker

Posted by on 25. jaan 2012 1 comment

Some time ago Apple game out with the AirPlay feature (an upgraded AirTunes) which enables iOS devices and iTunes play music and videos on a remote device.

 

In our office we have a Linux box, a set of speakers and a few laptops sporting Mac and Windows. Tonight I set out with a goal to turn that Linux box into an AirPlay speaker so that each of us can play music from their laptop without having to reconnect the cables every time.

Airfoil

First off I stubled upon RougeAmoeba’s Airfoil, which is a $25 sofware piece that, enables half a dozen device classes to be hooked up as remote speakers to a Mac or Windows (yes, that too). And, better yet, instead of only enabling iTunes to play, it can reroute all sound to that remote speaker. Though, it’s Linux speaker software is free download, it still seems to require paid Airfoil to route audio, because bare iTunes couldn’t care less of the wannabe Linux speaker that should have appeared to the WiFi. As the price would have been multiplied by the number of laptops, it was unfortunately out of question.

Shairport

With a bit of googling around, I next found Shairport, which (if I got it correctly) is based on data found in a hacked and reverse engineered AirPort Express. ShairPort turns a random PC into a fake AirPlay speaker set. The software itself got installed relatively quickly after going through the short docs (perhaps because I had most of the dependencies like avahi etc already in place because of the Airfoil).

 

Also, for Airfoil, I had already opened firewall to Zeroconf/Bonjour and ports TCP:5000-5005 and UDP:6000-6005  which seemed to apply to Shairport too.

After starting up the daemon, all of our iTunes magically discovered the new remote speakers and allowed us to play music there with a simple mouse click. Even from Windows. And from iPhone. And, if wanted, all at the same time. Voila!

This is definitely much easier than messing with the wires all the time.

 

desopafy Wikipedia

Posted by on 18. jaan 2012 1 comment

Today Wikipedia has a blackout. This is because US is passing a law that can threaten open Internet.

Please read all about the SOPA blackout in the Wikipedia article. I have signed a petition against SOPA and I am fully concerned about what this could mean to Internet.

Wikipedia is main source of information for me and when googling around I hit Wikipedia dozens of times a day. I would not even like to think about what it would be like if Wikipedia would be blocked, because of linking to webpages that, among other things, contained some alleged pirated materials.

 

Now what?

Having said all this and having already put in my 2 cents, I now have work to do and this blackout is hindering my progress, even if for just one day. Fortunately Wikipedia has not removed itself from Internet. It only has drawn a black blanket over it’s contents. So, after viewing this black page and dedicating a few (milli)seconds to think about the consequences of SOPA, tech-savvy people can still reach the articles and make use of them.

NOTE: This post is not about avoiding Wikipedia blackout. This post is about getting work done, after you have signed some anti-SOPA petition or written a letter of concern to the US Senate or your own Ministry of Foreign Affairs if you live outside US.

Desopafy

There are several ways to still access Wikipedia today. Wikipedia itself has pointed out that mobile Wikipedia is still accessible and as the blackout is JavaScript-based, disabling JavaScript, will avoid the blackout too. But being JavaScript based, the blackout can also be reversed with JS. My initial code was a bit crude, so I googled around and found a more thorough version (thanks timraymond and kballenegger). Add this link to your bookmarks (or drag it to your bookmark bar):

Desopafy_Wikipedia

This bookmarklet will hide the blackout and show the Wikipedia article. But please, do at least think of what this blackout means, before you remove it.

Gimp Resyntesize: remove unwanted objects from photos

Posted by on 17. okt 2011 No comments

Probably many of us have seen at least demos of using Photoshop to un-clutter your photos, resulting in almost unseemingly removed objects and restored background. While I won’t argue that Photoshop does excellent job at this, it is good to know that open-source GIMP this functionality too.

The GIMP Resynthesizer plugin makes it easy to intelligently remove unwanted objects from photos. There seems to be a 2.0 version of this plugin available at the developer’s github page (bootchk/resynthesizer), but I haven’t tried that yet.

How this plugin works has been covered number of times before, (e.g this “Content-Aware Fill” clip or this resynthesizer tutorial), so I won’t go into details of this here.

Only difference for me was that I used the Enchance > Smart remove selection... filter rather than Map > Resynthesize... and the result is displayed below.

Using GIMP Resynthesizer to remove unwanted objects

Mail.app Gmail style related messages

Posted by on 6. sept 2011 No comments

Mac OS X Lion Mail.app has a ton of new features and not the least of them is the conversation view that makes it look much in like Gmail.

Still, unlike Gmail, Mail.app by default shows only incoming conversation and omits sent messages, unless one presses the “Show related messages” button.

Fortunately there is a preference option to turn this on constantly.

Go to menu “Mail > Preferences > View” and check “Include related messages” box.

I wonder why this option is turned off by default?