August 21, 2006

TOR

I got sick and tiered of internet commercials!!! I hate those commercials. I got tiered of internet statistics and server traffic. So I decided to install TOR.

This beautiful distributed network tool is no less than fantastic. Ok my bandwidth is reduced a bit, but the reduction is worth it, since you rid all the crap.

After the installation in Firefox and Thunderbird the world has become much more anomymous ..... Ahhhh the commercial free life.

February 18, 2006

ScummVW

Speaking of good clean family entertainment you can trust!

Need I say more?

Well ok DOTT and of course the world known game comic Day After the Day of the Tentacle. Most of the world famous Lucas Art Games are now known as Abandonware. This means that you can get them for free.

I downloaded a couple of Monkey Island from this place www.downloadcentral.dk. They have most of the famous ones. Problem is though they are all packed in the ACE format.

Luckily this is ported with darwinports, so sudo install grace will dump the much appreciated unpacker on your box.

When it's done you should be able to unpack you ownloaded game by:
unace e monkey.ace I created a directory for each game I downloaded, and extracted the game in there. Then I added the game to scumVM.

Subversion & mail man

A long forgotten tool is the command line mail, I decided to start using it again for sending attachments. As this is much neater.

Then I decided to write a block entry here but someone bet me to it: 'SHELLdorado - Sending files as mail attachments'. SHELLdorado is a great resource for shell stuff.

With nothing better to do I decided to read the latest Linux Journal, especially the Subversion article. Rumor has it that subversion will be replacing cvs.

I'm not that big a user of cvs but I decided to have a look at subversion and use for handling my general set up on both my powerbook and my office linux box.

sudo port install subversion ...... Did I mention I'm in love with Darwinports? Then simply follow the article to create repository, or just read the Subversion documentation.

February 09, 2006

The Gimp Deux

I need the gimp, luckily darwinports.org has a resent port of gimp2, and you can install it by typing:
sudo port install gimp2
Wait .......... Once the installation is done typing:
gimp
in a shell'll launch the application. Now you want to set your own splash screen. I choose mine from the GIMP 10th Anniversary Splash Contest. Just dump the splash image as
~/.gimp2.2/gimp-splash.png
There's loats more configuration for the gimp where that came from check the Gimp man page for details.

I found, however, that my XDarwin application needed a good window manager instead of 'just' using TVM, which it is born with. So, I installed Oroborus for Mac. This gives the nice transparent frames just like Tiger.... Grrrr...

All I had to do was to change to my preferred key mapping from the USA.xmodmap to DK.xmodmap. Then Orobrus was good to go. With all the work related issues ready I guess I'm ready to go else where, it's entertainment time: scumVM

January 31, 2006

Emacs revisited

I already installed auqa emacs but that application did not copy an paste at all :( So I decided to install GnuEmacs.

First, I tried the binary package but that didn't work ;( So, I attempted to build the latest version for mac. In the instructions the cvs commando has been replaced. So do a
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.savannah.gnu.org:/sources/emacs co emacs
Cause the cvs ssh has been replaced with the pserver.

To build enacs for mac use the carbon app framework
cd emacs
./configure --enable-carbon-app --without-x
make bootstrap
sudo make install
According to the ./emacs/mac/INSTALL file, The application is installed in /Application/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs

I found mine in /Applications/Emacs.app. I don't know is this application is the one mentioned in the INSTALL file, I think it is, but that doesen't really matter.

I simply dragged the Emacs.app to the Dock for fast and easy execution. There's a great reference for setting up your mac for programming

January 30, 2006

MagicPoint

Well, once the text processing progam of the office suite was installed I found that I was now lacking my favorite presentation tool.

I hate Powerpoint and most of its humongous cusins. That's why I setteled once again for MagicPoint. Editable from Emacs!

Documentation can be found at http://www.freeos.com/articles/3648/ and the SYNTAX file from the tarball.

January 12, 2006

Getting an office suite

On my old slack box I used to run OpenOffice. On my Mac box I want to run OpenOffice as well. So I started looking around to find the mac compatible version. Notice the X11 at the end of the filename.

This means that X11 is needed to run the darn thing! But phear not, here's how to install open office and x11 and even the official apples guide. This was my starting point! I spend some time looking at instalation results and comments before I decided to go else where.

After googling about I choose NeoOffice and XDarwin. Both installed from binary images with no setup, the easy way. First I installed XDarwin, then NeoOffice. This was really easy all you have to do is follow the instructions for both items.

Once you're done two application icon are added to the /Applications/ directory, namely: neooffice and xdarwin. Started NeoOffice and it was like my old slack box! I can start documenting my work for work ;)

One thing happened though, this was after installing the XDarwin application X11 server. My dock changed to the default values? I guess that this came from startig the xservices in Tiger but I'm just guessing here.

I could change the dock back to my prefered setting, and it is still keeping them so I'm a still a happy guy.

January 05, 2006

Configuring apache for PHP

The next step I need is to get apache running on my machine. I need it for maintaining my website, not that I spend a lot of time maintaining this :)

I made a stupid mistake, I completely forgot that MAC OS X was based on FreeBSD. So, I installed apache and PHP via darwinports. Installation went great though!

sudo port -v install apache2
sudo port -v install php

In case you ever need to install them ;) I then struggled and suffered for a while until I realized that all I had to do was to enable the web server on my box, since it was already there!

The you'll have to update apache to run with PHP, if you need to do PHP stuff. Basically all you need to do is to remove the comments from the PHP parts of /etc/httpd/httpd.conf file.

You'll have to be super user to make this change so:
sudo emacs /etc/httpd/httpd.conf
Change emacs with your favorite editor, if you prefer.

The remove the comments from these lines:
LoadModule php4_module libexec/httpd/libphp4.so, and AddModule mod_php4.c

Usually you'll have to add the application types, but my file was born with the IfModule mod_php4.c section I didn't

Add the lines:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php

Now all you have to do a small PHP page to test your new PHP enabled web server.

The web server has two sets of sites enabled. These are available from the UI the first one is, the machines main website http://localhost present at the local path: /Library/WebServer/Documents/

The second one is http://localhost/~user/ present in your home directory under ~/Documents/Sites/

I never managed to get PHP enabled in my specific user space. Not that it matters much since I simply use the main website on the box anyway.

January 02, 2006

darwinports.org

Darwinports the next step. This i just one of the ways to get all the familiar Unix applications running om my machine. Here's how to get the port installed.

There's a similar project called Fink, which I have not tested or used yet. Fink is a port of debian package handling system. There's a guy who blogged a comparison af Fink and Darwin.

I tested Darwin by installing wget, one of my favorite Unix tools, which I found that I really missed. sudo port -v install wget did the trick nicely, And I can now grap those sites using wget.

Dashboard

The first feature I started lovin' is the Dashboard. An unique apple thing, that from a clink on the mouse or F12, that bring to life a number of small and graphically cool applications.

I have my gmail, wifi finder, network traffic, and .mac available. Then I have my calendar and the two sets of world clocks my own, Copenhagen, and my sisters, San Diego, time. Plus, the weather. Not to mention a calculator, and the much appreciated iTunes lyrics karaoke widget.

There are thousands of widgets available, and even a small and neat tutorial. The apple site is packed with cool tips on this here yet another one.