February 9th, 2010 by windmaomao
Internet space is becoming more and more important, not only the fun in sharing your photos with your friend, but also in the confidence that you can work anywhere of the world and anytime you choose to.
I used to pay $100 for 20GB using apple MobileMe, no offense of the price, but I have a better plan here. Check out Dropbox where they offer you 2GB for free instantly when you sign up. The software lets it merge with your operation system and be one of the folder. And you get a nice notifier monitoring the usage of this folder as well.
[updates] The sync feature is well implemented, whenever you put file in dropbox folder, it enters an query to be uploaded to the server, and the icon indicates if the file is updating. And when the server gets the updated file, it’ll notify all connected computer to update them into latest version. The drawback you can see from here is that all computers has a copy of all files in your local hard drive. And if you just want to transfer a file from this machine to another one, it’s better to do a direct ssh if available.
As for the charge, they let you to refer to your friends to earn extra free space, after you fills up all referrer program, you can have up to 5.2GB free storage space to play with. And if you really like their service and want to extend it, they offer $100 for 50GB as a start. Very attractive IMHO.
[more updates] Dropbox raised the referrer program to 10.2GB Max free space, which is really nice. And I found out they keep track of the files version, so if you want to go back to old version of any single file you overwrote before, just follow this help tip.
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Tags: dropbox, hard drive, storage, sync
Posted in Mac tips, Software | No Comments »
October 4th, 2009 by windmaomao
Pissed at why some of the key-mapping are just not working in text applications? like textmate. Now you can change this behavior to be consistent to what you are used to according to this post.
Basically you create a new settings rule file DefaultKeyBinding.dict in ~/Library/KeyBindings directory and put the following lines that I modified from the author,
{
/* home */
"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:";
"@\UF702" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:";
"$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:";
"$@\UF702" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:";
/* end */
"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:";
"@\UF703" = "moveToEndOfLine:";
"$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";
"$@\UF703" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";
/* page up/down */
"\UF72C" = "pageUp:";
"\UF72D" = "pageDown:";
}Now you’re good to go. All you HOME/END, PAGE UP/DOWN and Apple+Left and Right will work.
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August 25th, 2009 by windmaomao
actually it takes a bit longer than I thought to install Drupal on mac,
1) install XAMPP if you haven’t got your server running yet.
2) download drupal folder and put it inside Sites folder supported by XAMPP
3) chmod -R 777 drupal, or you will get a error when doing installation
4) Inside mysqladmin, create a database “drupal” using default setting under “root” user
5) Find default.settings.php in drupal/sites/default and change it to settings.php
6) edit settings.php file and change $db_url to = ‘mysql://root:password@localhost/drupal’;
7) edit /Applications/XAMPP/etc/php.ini and change the memory to support 16M, or you’ll get a fatal error when installing drupal
7) run install.php from localhost, fill in the info and it takes 2 secs to install.
Here’s a more complete reference which tells you what to do if you ever get lost in the middle.
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Tags: drupal, leopard, Mac tips
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June 18th, 2009 by windmaomao
For time demanding job, you might get frustrated sometimes a folder you just worked can’t be found anywhere. well, if this happens, the following will do the work.
Right located in Finder->Go->Recent folder, the recent folders you’re been with are listed. It’s free and build-in finder ! If you want to promote one folder to your favorite, just drag it from Finder to the left column called PLACES which can be reached from open and save dialog in most of the applications installed. If you still have trouble finding, try the bottom SEARCH FOR underneath PLACES to search by date. The last draw is to open Spotlight to search.
Another way to reach things quick is to use an application called Quicksilver which can let you reach anywhere by typing a few letter.
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Tags: access, folder, Mac tips, navigate
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June 9th, 2009 by windmaomao
If you ever wonder how to make a copy of what you hear over the internet or some application, here’s a nice tool Wiretap studio, it record from the application you select to any sound format file. Very easy to use, i actually bought it from MacHeist with dozen softwares for cheap prices. For small projects that needs some sound effect for here and there, this gadget is perfect. It’s even stick on the top of the screen 
One thing keep in mind is that the stuff you hear might copy righted, so don’t use it with caution.
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Tags: internet, record
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June 1st, 2009 by windmaomao
When you do recordings, sometimes you want to switch between different source, ex. from external recording interface to internal speaker, soundsource make this job easy. You can download it from Rogue Amoeba and it’s free.
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Tags: linein, soundsource, volume
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June 1st, 2009 by windmaomao
A nice on screen color picker would be handy when you write either software or html website. I’m a color blind, there’s a lot of website that strikes my eyes, but if you ask me to pick my favorite, either I copy from somebody else or most likely went through all the color in the wheel.
I’ve been using Color schemer studio for a while, where lots of handy tools of color are available. But I just found ou there’s a free utility tool in Leopard application folder. After you launch the tool, press CTRL-L to lock the change of color on screen, then you can pick the color code of various format from the dialog. Very handy and free And I found out accidentally by using QuickSilver and typed color.
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Tags: color picker, Mac tips
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May 31st, 2009 by windmaomao
As far as I remember, the first couple of days my new imac arrived, the build-in wireless connection was fine, and then it just went slow as hell. If I placed it closer to the wireless router, it went fine. But none of the problem happened to my other two mac laptops that I can take them to any room and still got decent connection.
Then today I saw a post online saying it might be a channel conflict problem for too many wireless signals around. My girlfriend went ahead changed the channel from 6 to 11, and in a second, my internet gets lighting fast. I didn’t bother to find out how many people around me are using which channel but if you have the same problem next time, just pick your lucky number then.
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Tags: imac, wireless
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February 19th, 2009 by windmaomao
Today I decided to install a website on my local Leopard, ’cause I found that my internet at home is getting slower everyday and constantly updating my blogger isn’t really helpful keeping my temple. So after I found two very useful articles, one Working with PHP 5 in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and the other one Installing PHP, MySQL and phpMyAdmin on OS X 10.5 (Leopard). I went to give it a shot and followed most of their key steps, it worked.
But later on, I found Xampp for Mac, it installed pretty much everything above in a osx native package, and takes 2 seconds to install and gives very nice interface to configure. Very nice. Then I went ahead installed Wordpress and some plugins, then I found out to make upload working, you need to fix the missing temperory folder instructed by the article. Once done, it’s like exact online blogger site.
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Tags: apache, leopard, localhost, mysql, php, phpmyadmin, temporary folder, wordpress, xampp
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February 14th, 2009 by windmaomao
I remember it was a headache back couple of years ago to backup data somewhere, most likely in your external hard drive, CD, or U-disk. But it’s like over the night, things changed a lot. Free internet storage is everywhere, sounds like you can store your whole life on the internet somewhere, maybe couple of places.
I was getting a bit worried about my simulation data lately. So I decide to dive in and take what I can get on my mac. First thing that I sign for is apples’ mobile me. A bit expensive, $99 a year, but it got finder integration that you can access it right on your desktop without considering it’s a online storage. And it also got public folder that everybody else can download from. No much complain from apples’.
Lately I come by a nice tool Macfusion that allow you to mount any server path to your desktop, same as mobile me except you choose your online storage location. It’s a miracle that all my work computer (which is most Linux or Mac machine) hard drive is on my desktop, even in Finder (you can drag them there). You can’t imagine how much time I can save without going through the terminal or ftp client. All access is transparent, and the speed is almost same as local as long as I am on the same network.
Because of that, other things changed accordingly. I used to use terminal a lot therefore a lot shell command, ex. vim. They are nice, but you bet, they are not as nice as apple native applications. But now suddenly, all the mac apps come back to me. I am blessed. Thanks to Macfusion.
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Tags: backup, macfusion, mobileme, storage
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November 12th, 2008 by windmaomao
Ever wonder to hear the sound from your mic or guitar directly without launching any giant recording software ? Here’s a nice little gadget tool LineIn from Rogue Amoeba. Now you can monitor any line-in devices un-noticed, if you know what I mean I was looking for something like this for my digital recorder, and turns out this is free as long as I have my mac with me.
check out the recording of mouse click I did,
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
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Tags: linein, Mac tips, mic, record, Software
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November 7th, 2008 by windmaomao
Ever wonder to preview files without opening them, in leopard, you can do it using quick look build in Finder. check out this article for usage. My two cents I want to add here is that once you are in finder you can hit tab key for navigation instead of arrow keys. Moreover, you can actually leave the quick look window open all the time. Whenever finder is in focus, this quick look will pop up right away. Very neat 
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Tags: finder, Mac tips, quick look, tip
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January 22nd, 2006 by windmaomao
The latest gnuplot 4.0 introduced a new graph type pm3D(or color grid) which I used a lot on my research. So I decided to give it a try on my powerbook. Here is the screenshot
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Tags: drop, gnuplot, Mac tips, pm3D, vof
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January 20th, 2006 by windmaomao
last night, I opened my powerbook and replaced the hard drive with a 7200 rpm Hitachi 60G. It took me a hour to open this beast while following the direction from this japanese site http://mactree.sannet.ne.jp/~kodawarisan/PowerBook/21.html . The pain is actually to pop the key and open the case, they’re so tight. Anyway, eventually I did it and put it back without hurting any thing. The article didn’t mention how to put the key back (F1,F2,F11 and F12, I actually mistakenly took 2 extra keys, ’cause I couldn’t find the screw in the middle turns out it is underneath the memory slot, damn, should follow the article more carefully). Key should be easily installed back by pushing them down. After all the trouble, it took me half a hour to install the OSX tiger and patch 10.4.4; and did a benchmark from xbench and find out I get 5 more points than the only benchmark of my type powerbook 12″ 1.33 on their website. The harddrive gets a bit warm underneath left to your mouse pad. But it’s very quiet as people said at newegg. I’m glad I did right thing, didn’t pick the nosiy 100G Hitachi. Here’s the pic(copied from the above website) inside, I should take one but
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