Category Archives: Mac

Turn Linux into a remote AirPlay speaker

Posted by on 25. jaan 2012 No comments

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.

 

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?

MacFuse and Mac OS X Lion

Posted by on 23. juuli 2011 6 comments

Now that I have upgraded to Mac OS X Lion, I found that MacFusion does not work. Before diving into a workaround as back in Snow Leopard days I remembered that then it was because of MacFuse and even that time there turned out to be a build floating around the web that would have worked. As is the case now.

This forum listed one of them that got it working for me - macfuse-core-10.5-2.1.9.dmg.

Though, pardsbane here tells of another project – OSXFUSE – one the way that will support Lion out of the box (when the box is released).

BetterTouchTool and Safari

Posted by on 27. nov 2010 No comments


Few days ago I switched to BetterTouchTool from MagicPrefs because (1) MP somehow blocked clicks when MagicMouse was disconnected and I always had to quit the MP. And (2) BTT lets me configure the trackpad too.

BetterTouchTool lets you define tons of gestures for your Macbooks Trackpad, your MagicMouse and your MagicTrackpad. In addition to that it brings lots of new stuff to MacOS like Windows 7 like window snapping, window switchers etc……

Extensive explanation is at the BTT developer’s blog.

I wanted to add a gesture (four-finger click) to bring up a new Safari window. BTT had Predefined actions to Open Application/File/Script… or Open URL. First of these unfortunately did not open new window, but instead activated one of the pre-existent windows (which I could do just by clicking the Safari Dock icon). The latter did bring up a new window, but I missed the chance to use Top Sites.

AppleScript to the rescue

So I typed four lines in AppleScript and now have an action to pop up new Safari window:

tell application "Safari"
	activate
	make new document
end tell

I saved this as an Application to the /Applications folder just for faster startup and pointed BTT Open Application action to that file. Viola!

Download the Safari New Window action.

MTS to MP4 converter

Posted by on 11. nov 2010 No comments

Following my previous post about iMovie and MTS I always had random trouble with my converter failing/hanging with some  MTS files. And when repeated for the same file – no problems. This way I couldn’t just set the converter to work with tens of files and go for a coffee – I always had to look for hangs and stop the process only to restart it again.

And after I had problems with QuickTime refusing to open the new .mov files and iMovie having no sound, I thought it to be prime time to revisit the script.
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Mac OS X 10.6.5 upgrade freed 2 GB

Posted by on 11. nov 2010 No comments

When Snow Leopard first game out, it was promised to cut back on the OS footprint (in Gigs).

Now, upgrading to 10.6.5, I somehow had insight to take screenshot of disk usage right before upgrading and comparing to the after shot:

Before:

Mac OS X 10.6.4

After:

Mac OS X 10.6.5

As you can see – it freed over 2 GB of disk space. Now this is what I call a good upgrade. Not only adding features and fixing bugs, but at the same time cutting back in bloat.

Note: my Time Machine reported 7.03 GB worth of changed data that needs to be backed up. So get some, loose some. But as my backup drive has lots of space while MacBook has little, I consider myself a winner.

Address Book groups

Posted by on 9. nov 2010 No comments

Some time ago I found a rather useful way to use my Address Book contacts – group them and when you type the name of the group in Mail.app address field, it is expanded to all the contacts. But the problem was that when a contact had multiple addersses, I could not determine which was to be used for the group automatically and if I wanted to write to a specific address I had to manually adjust, which I forgot rather often.

Edit Distribution List

Fortunately Address Book has a way to specify the default address for any group (or distribution list as it is called). Just right-click on one of the groups, as shown below and pick “Edit Distribution List…”

Pick Edit Distribution List from options

Pick Edit Distribution List from options

Now a window pops up that shows you the entire list and all of the multiple addresses for each card. Just skim through the list and highlight in bold the default addresses which should be used automatically for this list:

Address Book Distribution List

Clik OK to save changes and your done.

iTunes, iPhoto and Migration Assistant

Posted by on 18. okt 2010 No comments

I migrated my MacBook to a new MacBook Pro 2010 release using Migration Assistant and just as many others, found that my iPhoto did not show any photos (only thumbnails) as well as iTunes did not show any music. The Finder did show the files though.

Don’t panic!

And don’t blame Migration Assistant for it. What has happened is that you are probably running older versions of iTunes and iPhoto (and probably OS X too for that matter) than you were at the other Mac. So, just run Software Upgrade (with restarts and everything) until it tells you that you are up to date. Then all should be well with iTunes and iPhoto too.

Credit: this tip was kindly pointed out by AndyField. Thanks!

MacFUSION workaround

Posted by on 13. apr 2010 No comments

Upgrading to OS X 10.6.3 broke the excellent MacFusion mounting app. For those like me, who depend upon SSHFS mount, there is a workaround using static sshfs mounting.

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iMovie and MTS

Posted by on 18. märts 2010 7 comments

A few times before I have imported my short clips from the Sony HDR-CX106 camcoder directly using iMovie camera import features. Now, that I had a bit longer videos on the camera, I got to thinking why it takes so long and how come it reports that 60 GB of my hard drive will fit only 1 hour or so full-quality video. It turns out that by importing, iMovie probably converts all the clips into HDV compliant format, thus MPEG2 and thus resulting in wasting my hard drive space.

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