Notebook

I have finished my review of Mac OS X Hacks from O'Reilly.

The review will also soon be posted up on the chicago perl mongers site.

The full review is on the complete page for this post. The short version of the review is that if you want to trick out your Mac OS X installation or want to start digging into the unix side of your Mac (go on. you know you want to), this book is a must have.

Title: Mac OS X Hacks: 100 Industrial Strength Tips and Tricks
Authors: Rael Dornfest, Kevin Hemenway
Publisher: O'Reilly
Pages: 430
Reviewer: Jason Scott Gessner
Synopsis: A great collection of unusual and useful GUI, automation and unix tricks for your Mac OS X system.

Table of Contents:
Credits
Foreword
Preface
Chapter 1. Files
Chapter 2. Startup
Chapter 3. Multimedia and the iApps
Chapter 4. The User Interface
Chapter 5. Unix and the Terminal
Chapter 6. Networking
Chapter 7. Email
Chapter 8. The Web
Chapter 9. Databases
Index

Rael Dornfest and Kevin Hemenway have put together an extensive collection of generally neat and genuinely useful tricks for a Mac OS X machine. The multimedia iApps are covered, explanations of Mac OS X's unix-ness are covered, applescripting and perl all get their place. Overall the book covers the topics given well, but the release of iLife and the updated iApps have made some of the hacks less useful and several important unix sections are either missing completely or woefully inadequate. Thankfully, there are only 2 inadequate sections and the rest of the hacks are well thought out and inventive.

The Good
Multimedia has always been a strong point with the Macintosh and the proliferation of MP3s, digital video and still cameras has made good multimedia software a necessity. Apple's iApps (iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto and iDVD) have been lauded as some of the best around. There are many tips in the book for integrating the iApps, but Apple seems to have pulled the rug out from underneath the authors. The recently released iLife suite contains updated versions of the iApps that already work incredibly well together. You can search your iTunes playlist from iPhoto for a slide show, or from iDVD for a menu screen. iMovie files can now be opened directly from iDVD. Useful tips include some freeware to manage multiple iPhoto libraries, utilities to change the metal applications to an aqua look and feel. brian d foy provides a great article on controlling iTunes with perl and even providing an apache module for that purpose.

The Bad
The sections on MySQL and PostgreSQL installations (Hacks 99 and 100 respectively) are probably the thinnest in the book. Not in terms of page count, but overall usefulness. Compiling, installing and initially configuring MySQL is covered, but testing it is described by creating a PHP script instead of connecting via the command line. The postgreSQL section does a more thorough job of this, covering database creation, command line connections and even JDBC connection settings.
Aside from the limited discussions of the databases themselves. I would have liked to see more uses for the databases on the system. Maybe a hack to send your iCal events to mysql for publishing on your web site, or your address book for a company directory based on postgreSQL.

The Missing
X11 is only mentioned in Hack 56, "Top 10 Tips for Unix Geeks," and then only in passing. This is a major omission from the book. Apple's web site is constantly showcasing scientists and other professionals who are moving to the Mac OS X platform because it can run all (or most) of their unix apps natively and any remotely, but the authors choose not to address it here. Apple's X11 Server is also a major advance for X11 on Mac OS X with hardware openGL support and great integration with the Aqua interface. Apple has also been working to integrate Mac OS X support with the XFree86 maintainers. Regardless of the relatively recent release of the Apple X11 server, the authors missed a great opportunity to showcase one of the many X11 server options available for Mac OS X and its usefulness.

Conclusion
This book is a must have for serious Mac OS X users. The hacks cover every aspect of daily OS X use and introduce many advanced unix topics to the unix newbies. While more coverage on X11 and more creative uses of the database technologies would have been welcome, this book is a gem.

Posted by at 10:52 PM | Permalink

I just got back from my first chicago perl group meeting and it was a lot of fun.

Ed Summers gave a great introduction to SOAP::Lite and webservices in general. His talk is archived here:
http://ink.inkdroid.org/talks/soap/. Thanks, Ed! I would actually like to do a companion talk at some point to talk about the success of webservices for blogging. I should try to put something together.....

The group was an interesting bunch. For each, "I use perl for XYZ at my job" story there was a matching, "I used to use perl for ABC when I HAD a job...." story. feh.

All in all a good evening. Some ale, some code talk and some new contacts.

Posted by at 10:15 PM | Permalink

I am starting to build a name builder.

This is as far as I have progressed tonight. gonna update my iPod and get some shut-eye

view the demo (shockwave 8.5.1 required).

Posted by at 11:34 PM | Permalink

oh yeah. this took me quite a while, but I did get it right last night. I can pass in any image and generate a tiled background that scrolls across the screen. horizontal and vertical offsets can be specified, as well as a blending level. i am happy. Not happy that it took so damn long to do, but that it is done. and it is good.

view the demo (shockwave 8.5.1 required).

Posted by at 9:10 PM | Permalink

This is a new director experiment. The image will pan back and forth. Your vertical mouse position will affect the vertical position of the image and the horizontal mouse position will affect the blending (transparency) level.

view the demo (shockwave 8.5.1 required).

Posted by at 1:54 PM | Permalink

I am starting to go through O'Reilly's Mac OS X Hacks to do a review for the Chicago Perl Mongers.
So far so good. :)
Aside from some trouble getting a couple of perl modules compiled to run the examples, there are some great tricks in here. My G4 is very happy. ;)
UPDATE: I compiled perl 5.8.0 on my G4 and everything is peachy-keen now.

Posted by at 10:43 PM | Permalink

My video piece ORD 09112001 (quicktime files coming soon) will be showcased in FLATFILE photography's project space starting April 25th, 2003 @ 5pm.

view the piece (quicktime required)

Posted by at 9:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Poor Juliana. One of the kitties ate the hands off her doll. When I saw it I started cracking up but she started bawling!!! Tonight we found another one done in. Not quite as bad, but Juliana was quite upset about the whole thing.

Posted by at 9:21 PM | Permalink

this is way lame, but it is a decent start for a sleepy evening.
Move the mouse around to cause little pixels to come up and slowly fade out.

view the demo (shockwave 8.5.1 required).

Posted by at 11:30 PM | Permalink

Maybe my mind would give up trying to solve problems in terms of recycled words. Used phrases, bits ripped from here and there: fragments from my days at Cal in which I had memorized but not understood, understood but not applied, applied but never successfully. (p 201)

My opportunity to change was offered to me and I turned it down; I am stuck, now, and, as I say, know but know not what. (p 214)

Posted by at 10:48 PM | Permalink

juliana is a much better draftsman than I am. ;)

Posted by at 10:17 PM | Permalink

Probably it was necessary that he not remember. Had he been able to recall into consciousness everything, the basis of it all, then the government would have killed him. (the divine invasion p 50)

At once she turned. And as she turned he saw her change. Her nose became different and instead of a girl he saw now a grown woman wearing a metal mask pushed bak so that it revealed her face, a Greek face; and the mask, he realized, was the war mask. (the divine invasion p 50)

Dancing certainly was the right answer; in his mind he could see her dancing, with all the troop, burning the grass beneath their feet, leaving it scorched and the minds of men disoriented. (the divine invasion p 68)

Now, as he sat leaning over her, he saw her eyes shine; he saw spaes beyond her eyes, and if he were looking into something empty, containing huge stretches of space. (the divine invasion p 93) [and should be as???]

Your world obliges you, and that gives it away for what it is. My world is stubborn. It will not yield. A recalcitrant and implacable world is a real world. (the divine invasion p 163)

"I don't mean to compound your troubles, but you are the most fucked-up human being I have ever met. And I see a lot of different kinds of people." (the divine invasion p 211)

"We will win. We have already won. We have always already won, from the beginning, from before reation. What do you take in your coffee? I forget." (the divine invasion p 237)

Posted by at 8:02 PM | Permalink

what he did with the Xerox one, which really wasn't a letter in the strictest sense of the term, I do not to this day know, nor do I want to know. (valis, p 106)

And then as I wake up more I realize that I am living in an apartment in southern California alone. I have no wife. There is no such house, with the back garden and the high retaining wall with wild rose bushes. (valis p 114)

attempting to salvage something from the wreck of his life, had decided to go in search of the Savior. He would find him wherever he was. (valis p 123)

The lights dimmed; the audience of teenagers fell silent (valis p 139)

This means that good will make evil into what evil does not wish to be; but evil will not be able to make good into what good does not wish to be. Evil serves good, despite its cunning. (valis p 200)

Posted by at 7:01 PM | Permalink

there is no browse function for images that you may already have uploaded. Likewise, there are no helper functions for flash/shockwave/quicktime, etc.

i will be trying to correct that once I start my movable type replacement. :)

more details soon.

Posted by at 4:25 PM | Permalink

Posted by at 4:00 PM | Permalink

And here I was worried that one of the largest commuter rail systems in the country wasn't looking out for me.

I found this pamphlet in the Western Ave. train station late last night while waiting to come home from seeing Cowboy Bebop @ the Music Box (more later).

Read the pamphlet here:

Posted by at 3:48 PM | Permalink

not to build a list of what I have been reading to impress people, but to keep my head straight and to try to get more out of what i read.

sorry. disclaimer over.

i have felt like billy pilgrim a lot over the past few weeks. not because i have been unstuck in time. I think it is because I have been sleepy and I am shocked that we have not had any explosions here since the invasion of iraq.

i will add more to this note later. right now I am at work and very sleepy.

Posted by at 3:38 PM | Permalink