Rip an Audiobook CD to an IPod

I have been spending time with audiobooks lately. Managing and navigating audio book CDs, which can have up to 99 tracks per disc, can be a nightmare on the IPod unless you build playlists before syncing.

This CNet post, How to rip an audiobook CD to an iPod, was very helpful.

Join tracks in ITunes

If you imported an audiobook CD to ITunes but didn't join the tracks when you imported, there is a solution.

Doug's Applescripts for ITunes will allow you to select a set of tracks (AAC or MP3) and join them into a single file. This is a great help for audiobooks, because there's no reason to have 99 tracks in an audio book. If you have several audiobooks in this condition, they're a holy mess to navigate in your IPod: 26 CDs of 99 tracks each? Try scrolling to the end or beginning of that list and see what I mean. This is a nightmare because my IPod Nano doesn't have a convenient album cover style browse feature for books.

Solutions to missing Home/End keypad keys on Macbook

Do you ever want to quickly navigate to the beginning or end of a Word document on your Macbook?

Do you find yourself missing the old Home and End shortcut keys that are on the keypad of full size keyboards?

The keyboard commands are fn-Command-right arrow and fn-Command-left arrow.

If you said, "Man, that is so not intuitive," you have a couple of options.

1. You can use a two-step keyboard sequence, recommended by lefthander57 on this thread:

just hit Cmd-A, "Select All," then hit a left or up arrow key to go to the beginning, or a down or right arrow key to go to the end.

2. If you like to use the up and down arrows for that navigation in Word, try Daiya's suggestion:

If the problem is specifically in Word, there are commands in Tools > Customize Keyboard that can be assigned to custom shortkeys. Rather hidden, though.

in Word, Tools > Customize Keyboard, click on All Commands in the left column, tab to the right column, and keyboard navigate to the commands:

EndOfDocument
StartOfDocument

This lets me assign cmd-up arrow and cmd-down arrow, which I can hit with one hand (unlike using the fn key).

Duplex printing for Brother HL-2170W laser printer on Mac OS X

I've been disappointed with this printer's lack of at least manual duplexing: you know the routine, print even pages, flip paper, refeed in the right direction, print odd pages. I use the same printer on my Windows bootcamp/VM, and that driver has a nice set of instructions and pictures, showing the user how to feed the paper in easy steps.

Anyway, after another stint of research, I found out where this is accomplished in the Mac OS X driver.

How to print duplex on Brother HL-2170W printer on Mac OS X

In short, the even/odd pages setting is under Paper Handling, not Layout.

Manual duplex printing from the paper tray

1. Choose "Print" from the File menu and open the Print dialogue.
   
2. Choose the "Paper Handling" option in the Presets.
   
3. Choose "Even numbered pages" and click on Print.

4. After the even pages are printed, remove them from the output tray, flip over the paper and place back into the paper tray, so that the printed pages face up, with the bottom edge first.
   
5. Again choose the "Paper Handling" option in the Presets as you did in the Step 2.
   
6. Choose "Odd numbered pages" and click on Print.

Show full path in Finder menu bar in OS X

If you like to see the full path to the active folder in the Finder menu bar, enter this in a terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES
killall Finder

killall Finder will relaunch the Finder with the changes.

Find hidden files in Mac OSX 10.6 Finder

Inspired by Pat Durr's screen capture movie.

My first recording! My first YouTube video!

For my Quicktime recording, I resized my screen to 640x480 for a form factor more agreeable for this narrow blog.

I used Squared 5's MPEG Streamclip for Mac — the beta version was needed to make an MPEG-4 that is visible to YouTube — to downsize it further. I think I need a wider theme if I'm going to embed videos here.

View/hide hidden Mac OSX files in finder

View hidden files in finder:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool TRUE
killall Finder

change to FALSE to hide hidden files.

killallFinder will restart the finder.

You need this if you do any kind of development work on your Mac! This is the best method.

PHPMyAdmin: Setting up the MAMP environment

Continuing notes to self. Followed the PHPMyAdmin macports installation instructions here.

I couldn't get logged in to PHPMyAdmin. When I tried to log in I got the message "#2002 - The server is not responding (or the local MySQL server's socket is not correctly configured)"

I googled the error and found this helpful thread in the MySQL forums. Amusingly, I found that I had previously had the same problem and thanked the poster almost exactly a year ago for the solution. Memory is short and technology is a long bizarre road.

yes- this works for me. You just have to go into the config.inc.php file and change:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = 'localhost';

to this

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = '127.0.0.1';

Configuring my new MacBook Pro for development

I'm setting up my new —well, used, thanks JB!— MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard for development. I'm using MacPorts for simplicity, but of course, one always runs into something that baffles and confounds.

For future reference and benefit as I struggle through this:

Setting up the MAMP environment for Apache

1. Don't forget to install XCode before installing MacPorts.
2. This MacPorts guide is a good starting point.
3. My first struggle was to get the right Apache launching, NOT the built-in Mac version.
4. Make sure that the "web sharing" is off in System Preferences. This should be done before installing the apache2 macport.
5. To check if you're running the right httpd (Apache daemon process) in terminal:
   

   ps -ax | grep httpd

   you want to see /opt/local/apache2/bin/httpd
   
   you don't want to see /private/etc/apache2
6. To get apachectl commands working in terminal, I couldn't get the alias working, I had to add the path to .profile like this:
   export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/opt/local/apache2/bin:$PATH
   That includes the paths that MacPorts wrote.
7. To see if you're going to execute the right apachectl, use this command in terminal:
   

   which apachectl

   and you'll see which one is first in line to execute. Very handy little command.
8. I couldn't get my virtual hosts working until I edited /private/etc/hosts to assign them to 127.0.0.1 as described here. It wasn't enough to configure vhosts or my username.conf file and include it in httpd.conf.

Botnets for Macs

You knew it was coming.

Mac Trojan Horse OSX.Trojan.iServices.A Found
in Pirated Apple iWork 09

Exploit: OSX.Trojan.iServices.A Trojan Horse
Discovered: January 21, 2009
Risk: Serious
Description: Intego has discovered a new Trojan horse, OSX.Trojan.iServices.A, which is currently circulating in copies of Apple’s iWork 09 found on BitTorrent trackers and other sites containing links to pirated software. The version of iWork 09, Apple’s productivity suite, are complete and functional, but the installer contains an additional package called iWorkServices.pkg.

Easily enough avoided, by those who are sensible.

VIM tutorial

nice that vim comes with an interactive tutorial. Perhaps I'll finally remember how to go between edit and command mode.

Just open a terminal, and $ vim tutorial