Digsby = IM + Email + Social Networks

Although I love my Mac, I have to use Windows at work. On my Mac I love Adium it lets you connect to several IM services at one time and has some other nice features. I really did not like the latest release of AIM for windows so I went on a search for a new client. I tried Trillian but I really did not like that either. Then I found Digsby. This program rocks! Not only does it let you connect to several IM services, you can check your AOL or Yahoo mail, check your Twitter feed and Facebook feed. There working on a Mac version which I will definately be checking out. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Apple Quick Tips

I was looking through the iTunes music store to see if there were any podcasts I might be interested in. I came across the Apple Quick Tips video podcast section. They are short videos focused on making you life with your Mac a little easier. Some you may already know, some maybe not. I subscribed to the podcast because I’m into making my life easier. You can also view them on Apples site. 

Let me know if they help you or not and if you have any additional suggestions.

iTunes fast forward or “Scrubbing”

Found a nice tip today. If you watch or listen to podcasts, sometimes you want to jump ahead to say skip commercials or parts you don’t want to listen to or watch try this. Hold down the ctrl+option+command (Apple Key) and then press the right arrow. This will skip ahead 5 seconds. 

Let me know of you have any other iTunes tips or tricks.

Developing for WordPress on a Macintosh

I’m helping a local church redesign their website. Since they are not programmers I thought the best approach would be to use wordpress so they can easily update the site. To develop the site I wanted to use my mac and this is how I set it up. Download XAMPP and WordPress. Install XAMPP, just use the installer, it makes it simpler. XAMP installs into your Applications directory and this is the only place it can be installed.

XAMPP stores the web site in the htdoc folder, but I wanted my development sites in my Sites folder, so I had to do a little tweeking. You just need to use virtual hosts to point to you dev site. In the httpd.conf file change the DocumentRoot and the Directory  to “/Users/<your name>/Sites and uncomment the Virtual Hosts include. 

Open the httpd-vhosts.conf file and add the following:

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot “/Users/<your name>/Sites/wordpress”
ServerName <site name>.localhost
</VirtualHost>

Now one last thing, you need to change your host file so you can access you site with <site name>.localhost. You’ll need to add something like this at the end of the file:

## Custom 
127.0.0.1  <site name>.localhost

This makes it nice because wordpress like to be in the root directory. 

Copy the wordpress folder to you Sites folder and your ready to go!

iMovie 08

I have a Sony DCR-SR200 camcorder with a lot of home movies on it. I decided it was time to get the movies onto the computer to edit them and free up some space on the camcorders 40GB hard drive. Getting the movies into iMovie 08 is incredibly easy. Just launch iMovie and plug in the camcorder, select the clips and import. It’s so much faster than my old DV camcorder where importing a movie was real time. After using iMovie a little more each time I learn some new stuff and I thought I would share.

I am running out of space on my notebooks hard drive and as you know raw video footage takes up some room. So if you have an external hard drive, connect the hard drive before you start iMovie and you can import to the external hard drive. Also, you can move imported events to an external hard drive by:

1. Open iMovie
2. Change the view in the Events window to View Events by Volume. You can do this by clicking the Volume icon to the right of Event Library or by right-clicking in the Event Library and selecting it.
3. Open the volume where your events are stored. Select it and drag it to the volume you want to store it in. This puts the event at the root of the volume in an iMovie Events folder.

This is great if you have a notebook like me. 

I also learned how to capture a still from the video, just place the playhead on the frame you want, right-click and select Add still to project. This was a feature I liked in iMovie HD but did not know how to do in 08. It’s also very easy just to drag and drop titles and transitions into the project.

The more I use iMovie 08 the more I am coming to like it. I was like all the other naysayers when the new iMovie appeared, iMovie HD was fine and I was comfortable using it. Give iMovie 08 a try, play around with it, you might be surprised. 

If you have any tips, tricks or questions let me know.

Komodo Edit vs. Textwrangler

I have used Textwrangler on my Mac since the day it was released free. I really do like Textwrangler, but I have been using Komodo Edit for awhile now and I like it. There are a couple of reasons I am using Komodo edit over Textwrangler these days. 1) Auto complete, Komodo Edit has auto completion on the fly, unlike Textwrangler where you have to use an applescript. 2) Code folding, it’s nice to hide functions that I don’t need to see. These are the two big reasons I prefer Komodo Edit. The last reason is I can use it on my Mac and my work windows PC. The only downside to the program is it’s not a native application like Textwrangler, so it’s a tad slow. If Textwrangler ever gets code completion, I’ll be back.

Leopard Upgrade

Well, I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5. And I have to say I love it. For a person with limited memory capacity, I love the quick look feature. The upgrade went smooth except for one small glitch. First I used the excellent Carbon Copy Cloner to back a bootable backup of my entire hard drive. Then I made sure I could boot from it. Then I did an upgrade. This all went very smooth. The only problem was my keychain. I did not have any of my saved passwords. After a little trial and error, I realized that on the Leopard install, the keychain was login.keychain, and on my back up the keychain was wes.keychain. So I copied over the wes.keychain, and renamed it login.keychain. Ran keychain repair a couple of times and all was good. Now all my passwords were available and I did not have to retype everything.

Usefull C# Code

While creating a couple of programs for work I came across some useful C# code that made my life easier. There may be different or better version you know of, but these worked well for me.

cNetworkDrive from http://www.aejw.com/ is very useful for mounting and unmounting network drives.

FTP Client Library from The Code Project is very useful for connecting to and retrieving files from an FTP server.

Let me know if these were helpful for you or a hindrance. Do you have a better code sample?

How to install a java application as a windows service.

At work we had a java application that was written for us. The application needed to run as a windows service so that it would run on the server without the need for a user to log in. It took me awhile to figure it out, as there was not one spot with all the information I needed. Here’s how I did it, your mileage may vary!

This was compiled with references from MS using the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools, you can use the resource kit appropriate to your server install. The only files needed from the resource kit are the instsrv.exe and the srvany.exe files. These can be found on the internet, but for a corporate server install I thought it was best to download the kit from Microsoft.

Now to the steps:

1. Use instsrv.exe to install srvany.exe as the service, from the command line: <path>\<to>\instsrv.exe <application_name> <path>\<to>\srvany.exe.
2. Run regedit and Find: My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ Services\<application_name>
3. Select the <application_name> and select “Edit..”, “New…”, “Key“.
4. Name the key Parameters.
5. Select the Parameters key that you have created, and select “Edit…”, “New…“, “String Value“.
6. The Name should be Application.
7. Double click the name to open a dialog in which you can enter the value <path>\<to>\<jre>\javaw.exe.
8. Select “Edit…”, “New…“, “String Value“
9. The Name should be AppDirectory.
10. Double click the name to open a dialog in which you can enter the value <path>\<to>\<java class files>.
11. Select “Edit…“, “New…“, “String Value“.
12. The Name should be AppParameters.
13. Double click the name to open a dialog in which you can enter the value -Xrs <application_name>

IMPORTANT! : the -Xrs must be in the AppParamenter name.

Notes: Ensure the service is set to “Log on” as a Local System Account, and the “Interact with desktop” is unchecked.

This is how I did it. The most important part was using the -Xrs value. It would not work at all until that value was set.

Comments or Questions?

Which Mac FTP Program?

A friend of mine, Shaun wanted to know of a Mac FTP program. I gave him two choices: Free and Not-Free.
My free choice was Cyberduck. A very nice FTP client for free. Unlike the programmer of Cyberduck, I would prefer to have a pane that shows my local file structure. But you really can’t complain when it’s free.
My non-free choice was Transmit. If I was using ftp more than occasionally, this would be well worth the money. The feature that I really like is the option to transfer files from server to server. Very nice!
What’s your favorite and why?