Jack White shouldn’t play the drums in this band ‘n stuff. He plays a mean geetar.

I’m a fan.

Well most name servers cache, probably all but we’ll play it safe. I use Xmission for my tube connectivity and it’s only 2 actual hops to get to their name server (198.60.22.2). I also happen to know they cache. OpenDNS has been providing free public DNS and let you have fine grain control over which domains you’re allowed to visit. You could block porn sites if you wanted. They cache too. Now we have the Google providing DNS for us. They already know what we search for and what we talk about, just as well let them mine data for what websites we’re going to, right?

Well, faster tubes are faster tubes so which one should you pick?

I ran dig unitedcareerservices.com @198.60.22.2|grep time a few times and came up with these results, discarding the first to ensure that the look up was cached upstream.

;; Query time: 77 msec
;; Query time: 79 msec
;; Query time: 82 msec
;; Query time: 83 msec
For and average of 80.25 msec.

For OpenDNS:
Query time: 73 msec
Query time: 87 msec
Query time: 99 msec
Query time: 94 msec
For and average of 88.25msec.

And for Google:
;; Query time: 134 msec
;; Query time: 98 msec
;; Query time: 126 msec
;; Query time: 138 msec
For and average of 109.0 msec.

What’s the moral of the story? Odds are your ISP has enough users to have cached most of the popular domains you visit. They also have something Google won’t have: A close proximity to you in the network. This means you’re probably still better off using your ISP’s default name servers.

First download git-completion.bash
http://repo.or.cz/w/git.git?a=blob_plain;f=contrib/completion/git-completion.bash;hb=HEAD

I saved it as ~/.git-completion.bash.

Next edit your ~/.bash_profile

Add

source ~/.git-completion.bash
PS1='\h:\W$(__git_ps1 "(%s)") \u\$ '


Finally source ~/.bash_profile to make zee changes active.

What results is this when you are in a git repository:

bigtex:jason(jquery_localize) jason$ git checkout master
Switched to branch "master"
bigtex:jason(master) jason$ git checkout jquery_localize
Switched to branch "jquery_localize"
bigtex:jason(jquery_localize) jason$


I have signed up for an Adsense account and plastered my blog with hideous advertisements.

The server that hosts zzq im and phonese2 is starting to run out of RAM. I can’t add any more RAM to the server pronto dedicated server that I use to host these things because the package I use (AMD Value) maxes out at 512M. I have to upgrade to AMD Power ($70/mo) to pay them money to put some more RAM in it.

At this point I’m thinking it’s going to be better to buy my own server and use their colocation services to host these services. It’s only $35/mo to colocate a server with them so now I just need to come up with the couple grand to buy a real server.

Well the zzq im service isn’t thaat popular and phonese2 isn’t awesome by any means, so I have a hard time justifying $70/mo or $x,xxx for a server (plus a lot to ship) so this is where the ads come in.

Some of my blog posts are popular among the google searches pil on os x for one), so maybe I’ll get a nickle or two.

When phonese3 releases they will probably have ads on them too. I would like to make it last.fm style where you can donate $5/mo to remove the ads from your page for everyone and everyone’s page for you, but that will be a future feature.

Hopefully this will offset some of the cost of the snail like growth zzq is experiencing. If it doesn’t, we’ll have to start harvesting human organs and selling them on the black market in Hong Kong.

There’s a solution to this. Encrypt the sparsebundle images.

• Set up Time Machine to back up to an AFP drive. I don’t think this will work with a local hard drive.
• Let Time Machine start backing up, then stop the back up. This will have created <machine_name>_<mac_address>.sparsebundle on the AFP drive.
• Disable Time Machine.
• Open a Terminal and run these commands:
$ cd /Volumes/<AFP Drive>/
$ mv name_mac.sparsebundle name_mac-old.sparsebundle
$ hdiutil convert -format UDSB -o name_mac.sparsebundle -encryption AES-256 name_mac-old.sparsebundle
  It will ask you for a password. Type in a password you won’t forget.
• Double click the sparsebundle in the GUI. You will be prompted for your password. Type that in and tick the “Remember password” check box.
• Open /Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access and find name_mac.sparsebundle. Right click it and select Copy name_mac.sparsebundle.
• Select System Keychain on the left hand side of Keychain Access and paste it in the main area. Allow this action if you are asked. Remember to lock the System Keychain when you are done.
• Time Machine should not have no problem backing up to the encrypted volume. If everything works as planned, feel free to delete the name_mac-old.sparsebundle

Your backups are now encrypted. How this all pans out in a restore, I don’t know. I reckon a fresh install + the migration assistant is the way you’ll have to restore your computer upon disaster.

Now that you’re all secure, don’t forget those passwords.

If you’re lacking a Time Capsule for yourself, you can get one from MacMall for cheaper than Apple sells them.

I picked these and a couple other light switch covers up earlier today. I feel they add a touch of class to the abode. At some point I should get a rug and some pillows to liven things up around here. The rabbit pelts and snake skins are starting to pile up and make the place feel pretty dreary I’m told.

At any rate, over the few years of using a Mac, I’ve picked up a few tips and tricks that others might find handy.

Tips and Tricks
Here are a few non-obvious things you might want to know about:

Don’t ever buy .Mac. You can do most of this stuff for cheaper per/mo with Dreamhost. I haven’t messed with Back To My Mac screen sharing (Apple just use VNC) much yet, but still it seems like a waste of money.

One of the things that I’m still trying to get used to is the application grouping with Apple+Tab. What you have to do is hit Apple+Tab to get to the application you want then Apple+` (next to the 1) to cycle through that applications windows. This grouping gets especially irritating if you try to use Spaces.

Function keys
By default, you have to push the function key + an F# key to activate the F#. This can be changed in System Preferences->Keyboard & Mouse.

Locking your screen
In Linux, I would bind Scroll Lock to lock my screen for me. In OS X you can’t do that. What you have to do to make it remotely easy is either set up a hot corner to run the screen saver (I always activate it by accident with my wild mouse movements) or go into Applications->Utilities->Keychain Access->Preferences and check the “show in tray” check box. This will put a lock next to the clock and give you a menu that has a Lock Screen option on it.

Adding external speakers to a MacPro:
If you plug speakers into the back of a MacPro sound will still come out of the internal speakers. To make external speakers work, you need to go to System Preferences->Sound and just click “Line Out” then close the window.

Connecting to VNC/VNC server:
If you want to connect to a VNC server, in the Finder Menu (click the desktop) click Go->Connect to Server and type in vnc://host. At the same time, if you want to run a VNC server on your Mac, go into Apple->System Preferences->Screen Sharing

SSH (SFTP) Server:
If you want to start SSH, go to Apple->System Preferences->Sharing and check Remote Login.

Applications
I’ve tried to hunt down beautiful and functional applications that meet my needs on OS X. Here is my list. I would love to hear if you have any extra’s to add.

Terminal
If you’re in a pinch, you can find Terminal in Applications->Utilities->Terminal…
but you probably need a better Terminal if you’re going to be spending any time in it. iTerm is a pretty good alternative to the default OS X terminal. The settings for iTerm are weird. Click Bookmarks from the menu bar, then Manage Profiles. Choose xterm on the keyboard layout and change delete to send hexcode 08 and set Option key to +Esc. You can change the Display Profile if you want. Now go to Bookmark->Manage Bookmarks. Select Default and change the Keyboard to xterm. This will make the keys work the way you expect them to especially with screen. If you use vim, add set term=xterm to your ~/.vimrc to get that to act normal. (Note: The Leopard Terminal.app seems to be a lot better, but I still prefer iTerm.)

If you end up sticking with Leopard’s Terminal go to Preferences->Settings and click Pro then click the default button. Now click the keyboard tab on the same screen check “Use option as meta key”. Now click the shell tab and select “Close the window” under the “When the shell exits:” heading. Finally click advanced and check “Delete send Ctrl-H”. I would also clean out some of the bindings in the Keyboard section.
iTerm: http://iterm.sourceforge.net/

Deskbar Applet
Gnome has a widget toolbar thing called Deskbar that is like Windows version of Start->Run on meth. Quicksilver is the OS X version. I have nothing “stuck” in my dock and I launch all of my applications using Quicksilver. Usually what I do is disable the Spotlight key bindings in the System Preferences then bind Quicksilver to Apple+Space.
When it first opens, push Apple+, to get into the preferences and check “Show icon in menu bar” and “Start at login” then uncheck “Show icon in dock”. This is a cleaner way of running Quicksilver.
Demo: http://www.43folders.com/2007/09/05/quicksilver-demo-by-nicholas-jitkoff
Quicksilver: http://www.blacktree.com/

Web Browser
Safari is alright. Webkit is the application framework for Safari. If you’re like me, you prefer Firefox and it’s plugins.
Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
WebKit: http://webkit.org/

FTP/SFTP Client
Cyberduck, to me, is the best client. It supports FTP, FTPS, and SFTP. When you first get this, be sure to go to Preferences->SFTP and set the Transfer using option to SCP. This ends up being faster.
Cyberduck: http://cyberduck.ch/

MP3 Player
I’ve for a long time tried to find something like Winamp/XMMS for OS X. There are a bunch of old unmaintained applications but you should just get used to iTunes. Sorry.
FLAC/OGG/Others support: http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/download.html

IM
Adium is the best IM app. It’s based on libpurple, the same library Pidgin (GAIM) uses. It ends up being a lot prettier than Pidgin too. Note: When you install Adium it will ask if you want to install Growl. You should agree to it. Growl is a system page that a lot of applications use. It’s very nice.
Adium: http://www.adiumx.com/
Growl: http://growl.info/

E-mail
For a long time I used Thunderbird but ever since Leopard I’ve embraced Apple’s Mail app. If you decide to do this, you might need to tell Mail to use your server’s Sent mail folder by going to Mailbox->Use This Mailbox For->
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

Bit Torrent
I like Transmission the best for downloading torrents for some reason. The vanilla Bit Torrent client is comparable to Transmission for downloading and far superior for creating torrents. I end up downloading/seeding with Transmission and creating torrents with the vanilla BitTorrent app.
Transmission: http://www.transmissionbt.com/
Official BitTorrent: http://www.bittorrent.com/download

Simple video conversion
iSquint is nice and free. It has an older brother called VisualHub. I ended up buying VisualHub and not regretting it. If you want to unencrypt and copy the original DVD there is a program called MacTheRipper that can be tricky to download but Version Tracker probably has mirrors.
iSquint: http://www.isquint.org/
VisualHub ($): http://www.techspansion.com/visualhub/
MacTheRipper: http://www.mactheripper.org/ (version 2.6.6 http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/22715)

Rar Files
UnrarX is nice. BetterZip supports everything (7z) and costs money. I’ve gotten by with just UnrarX because OS X comes with support to untar/zip/gzip/bzip files.
BetterZip ($): http://macitbetter.com/
UnrarX: http://www.unrarx.com/

PDF Viewing
Preview works fine but Skim has support for annotating on the PDF and such. I like this feature.
Skim: http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/

Note taking
Circus Ponies Notebook costs money but seems pretty nice and very pretty. I haven’t had the need to take many notes so I haven’t had to play around with this. It might be handy if you wanted to go to school.
CP Notebook ($): http://www.circusponies.com/

Office stuff
OpenOffice has OS X stuff. They recently made it OS X pretty. I use MS Office 2008. If you want an editor that gets all the distractions out of your way WriteRoom costs money and does a pretty good job at that.
OpenOffice: http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/
WriteRoom ($): http://hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom

Calendar
Sunbird is cross platform and Mozilla. I use and like iCal. If you setup SSHFS or WebDav it’ll give you .Mac-esque publishing.
Sunbird: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/

WMV stuff
Flip4Mac will make WMV stuff work. It has a browser plugin too (that works for Firefox).
Flip4Mac: http://www.flip4mac.com/

Video playback
VLC plays anything.
VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

SSHFS
There are some free alternatives that seem flakey to me. ExpanDrive is really nice. It costs money but it seems like it’d be worth it if this is something you do all the time.
ExpanDrive ($): http://www.magnetk.com/expandrive
I didn’t like this: http://www.pqrs.org/tekezo/macosx/sshfs/

Last.fm
They have a official OS X client. It had some bugs in Leopard. I ended up buying the MacHeist bundle and got CoverSutra. It’s not free but works really well at controlling iTunes via keyboard shortcuts as well as submitting tracks to Last.fm. Hopefully official client bugs are fixed now. If you don’t want to use either I ended up using iScrobbler for quite some time.
Last.fm Client: http://www.last.fm/download/
iScrobbler: http://www.last.fm/group/iScrobbler
CoverSutra ($): http://coversutra.com/

Virtualization
If the only thing you want to do is run Windows apps, maybe Parallels is better. If you really want to do virtualization VMWare Fusion is the way to roll. I say just stick with VMware. They’ve been doing it longer.
Parallels ($): http://www.parallels.com/
VMWare Fusion ($): http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/
P.S. Vmware is beta testing 2.0 right now. It’s kind of broken so download the 1.0 trial and use the 2.0 beta key. It’ll give you a trial until Oct 2008.

Version Control
Leopard comes with SVN. I’ve since moved to Git.
GIT: http://code.google.com/p/git-osx-installer/downloads/

Source Editing
I have a hard time with this. Most editors are cross platform (Komodo Edit, Netbeans, etc). I haven’t used Apple’s XCode much but people like it and it’s on your install CD. TextMate is the editor all Mac programmers will tell you is the best. I use it. It has some nice features. It also costs you money in the form of British pounds (it’s about *2 in dollars. Thanks Bush).
Textmate ($): http://macromates.com/
Komodo Edit: http://www.openkomodo.com/

Encryption stuff
GPG is pretty standard.
TrueCrypt is cool. It will create an encrypted volume for you and mount it like a regular drive. I downloaded some different icons for my encrypted volumes and I assign a different color to each one. This is probably an old find, but I’m just now jumping on the bandwagon. At work (this can work for OS X) I sym link my Mozilla and Pidgin settings and logs to my truecrypt drive and unmount it when I go home. I like the idea having all that stuff encrypted.
GPG: http://macgpg.sourceforge.net/
TrueCrypt: http://www.truecrypt.org/

Uninstalling Applications
Mac people will always tell you “Just drag the app to the trash and it’s uninstalled”. They’re half right as it technically is uninstalled. In OS X an applications is just a folder with a .app extension. It has some of the libraries it needs inside that folder. What it doesn’t have is all the settings and some of it’s extra libraries in it. AppDelete will hunt that stuff down and delete it for you. It’s a free alternative to the prettier AppZapper.
AppDelete: http://reggie.ashworth.googlepages.com/appdelete
AppZapper ($): http://www.appzapper.com/

Information Manager
I’ve only tried one and I haven’t gotten used to it, but Devonthink Pro seems pretty nice. The idea behind this app is a personal knowledge base. You catalog and categorize everything you find and it builds a database based on your cataloging so you can search for information later. It’s one downfall is the lack of syncing between computers. To solve this I created a (4gb) TrueCrypt volume on an 8 gig thumb drive which I mount and read the database from. This app is a niche app and costs money. (DT Personal comes with MacHeist2 and won’t let you specify database files. You can only have one.)
Devonthink Pro: http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/index.html

Twitter
I’ve only tried twitterrific and it does a pretty decent job. Costs money or free with advertisements in the update window.
Twitterrific: http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific

Well, there you have it. I’ll probably end up making this a page rather than just a post and I’ll try to update it as often as possible.