Problemas com a bateria do MacBook

Acabadinho de vir da garantia, onde passou um mês para trocarem a board sem que tenham conseguido resolver nenhum dos outros problemas que indiquei.

Olhem para a bateria e digam-me se isto é normal:

Skitch Invites (Mac OS X only)

I have been receiving some emails asking me how do I create these images. Well I use Skitch, which is one of my favorite Mac OS X apps (along with Books, Textmate and iSync). Unfortunately it’s still invite only.

Anyway if your interested in giving Skitch a try just leave a comment in this post, and I’ll send it to the email you provided as soon as possible.

Howto: Change folder icon in Leopard

Copy the icon you want to use (PNG), browse to the folder you want to change the icon.

Now select it and press command + I. Now select the folder and press command + V to paste the icon.

There’s something in the air

A razão pela qual nem comentei o MacBook Air prende-se com o facto de ter enjoado o dito portátil em poucas horas. Não porque o seu design não seja incrivelmente apelativo, nem porque despreze a obra de engenharia que foi conseguida. Enjoei porque toda-a-gente falou do MBA e não conseguia ler sobre outros assuntos, por muito que tentasse. Foi o aparecer de um novo caso, da dimensão do da Madeleine/Casa Pia/Insira-o-que-quiser, no mundo cibernético. E o meu leitor de feeds parecia a TVI.

De qualquer forma houve algo que me chamou a atenção. Isto para além do óbvio: Um preço exorbitante e o teclado preto.

Cabos não incluidos? Nesse caso acho que vai haver muita gente a comprar este cabo. Realmente não imagino um gravador/leitor de CDs/DVDS por wireless mas isto é um cabo Steve.

Se quiseres que dê um jeito e crie este dispositivo mas sem fios, envia um MBA para minha casa e eu vejo o que se pode fazer.

Screencast app for Mac OS X Leopard

I’m looking for the best screencast software (sound recording is a must have) to run on my MacBook.

So far I found the following software:

• Adobe Captivate 3 [Windows Only]
• SnapzProX
  
• BTV
• Camtasia Studio [Windows Only]
• iShowU
• vcn2swf
• Jing Project [integrates with webapp, by the creators of Camtasia]
• Screenography
• Screen Mimic
• Screen Record
• Blip.tv [integrates with webapp]
• Screencast [thanks Rui Moura]
• ViewletBuilder

From what I have read so far it seems iShowU gathers most of the preferences. But when a app is prefixed by an i mac users seem to love it immediately.

Anyone tried any of these products? What are your thoughts on them? Which one would you advice me to use?

[EDIT: Currently I have tested most of these products and I'm using iShowU and KeyCastr]

MacBook OS X Leopard Tips: Controlling the fan speed with Fan Control

I use my computer for something like 6 hours a day so it’s bound to get hot. I didn’t like the apple scheme for the fans that consists basically in making no noise until it’s hot and then make a lot of it.

So I looked for a open-source application to help me control the fan rpm and found Fan Control. I wouldn’t even post this if not for one simple fact: The source is included in the dmg file. Good job guys!

Mac OS X Leopard Tips: Change your home directory to a different partition

Here’s something that I thought would give me some headaches. Well guess what I was wrong once again. I’m quite used to this by now so it’s actually fun. I’m sorry to be bothering you with all this Mac OS trash but I like to keep my stuff documented and this is a excellent way of doing so while helping other people.

If you are reading this I assume you want to change your Leopard home directory to somewhere else. So you can start by clicking on the apple on the top left screen and then select System Preferences. Browse to Account and ctrl + click your account to select Advanced Options. There you can change your home directory to wherever you please. Restart and you are ready to go.

Changing your home directory – or any of that other advanced options values – can have some nasty effects on your Leopard. I’m assuming you are an advanced user and familiarized with all the stuff the advanced options window.

If this is not the case and you are considering doing this anyway I’ll leave you with a piece of advice my grandma could have given to me – she actually never did so I have ruined my fair share of computers. And phones. And Playstations. I’ll better stop this list here for my own sake.

Anyway that advice is (should have been): if you don’t know what it is, don’t change it. If you want to change it: learn what it is, how it works, and then you can do what you please. And ruin the computer anyway. But only because you wanted to.

From Ubuntu/Windows to Mac OS-X Leopard

I just got my first brand new MacBook and, as one would expect, some problems emerged by leaving my usual OS combo (Ubuntu/Windows) for Mac OS X Leopard. I’m still undecided whether to install Ubuntu or use VMWare Fusion to use Linux. As for Microsoft Windows as long as I don’t need to use .NET I don’t think I’ll install it. Not even with the free licenses Microsoft provides University of Minho students.

First I had to decide what to install:

• Firefox
• del.icio.us UNSAFE add-on for Firefox
• Portuguese Dictionary add-on for Firefox
• Pidgin Adium
• Nero Toast Titanium
• Office
• Photoshop
• TextMate
• Ruby on Rails
• Java SDK
• Netbeans
• Glassfish
• GHC
• Erlang
• MacTex
• oXygen
• BookPedia
• DB2 (will IBM make it available for mac anytime soon?)

The question you are probably asking is why Firefox instead of Safari!? Because the damn unsafe add-on for del.icio.us is just that: del.icio.us! I just can’t live without it. Maybe if the guys over there worked the basics of security we could say that it’s both excellent and safe! And don’t say there’s a add-on for Safari as well. I’ll only accept it if the add-on is as good as the one provided by Yahoo.

Now we go for the fun part. The problems and solving them. Your attention please, this is only fun for me when I do it on my computer so it won’t be pleasure if you ask me to fix your computer! Joana this one is for you, I know how your mind thinks.. Almost as badly as mine. Oh well, we are related aren’t we? :\ Please release those crazy Christmas photos to the world! :X

I’ll start with a small OS free tip and then go for the Q/A part. If you are Portuguese like myself you just hate all the results that google gives you from .br domains. Most of the results are overrated and most of the times you just wish that they weren’t there. If this is the case just do your normal search in google but write -br in the end. Just test this, go to google and type governo brasileiro -br. It works ;)

1. How do I get my mouse to behave like a normal one by removing this dreadful acceleration?
   

   Easy. Check Rúben’s blog @ http://blog.0×82.com/2007/12/mac-os-and-usb-mouse.html

2. What’s wrong with the encoding on TextEdit? The automatic descovery does not work and even when I specifically tell him to use this encoding it won’t work. The Where is ISO 8859-15 dilemma.

   Still don’t know. Anyone? If you want to test the bug just do this (from here):

   $ echo é > ~/a.txt
   $ cat ~/a.txt
   é
   Open a.txt with TextEdit and get:
   È

   Cracked it! At least I have a partial fix for Migrating documents from Ubuntu to Mac OS X Leopard:

   cmd + space terminal enter

   {go to the directory where the file is}

   bash$ iconv -f ISO-8859-15 -t UTF-8 {filename} > UTF8-{filename}

   For me it was:

   bash$ iconv -f ISO-8859-15 -t UTF-8 Pam.tex > UTF8-Pam.tex

   And yes PAM is as in Pluggable Authentication Modules. So I have a latex work on that :P

3. Where is type-a-name application? It’s not on the dock.

   Just press cmd + space and type what you are looking for. This is called spotlight. Either this or open Finder and go to applications.

4. Why doesn’t it show my dashboard when I go to the left/whatever corner?

   Have you even configured your mac? Common.. Click the apple on the top left corner and go to System Preferences. Exposé and Spaces. And now that you are there take a look around and configure all the other things that you neglected.

5. This computer is always underlining the words in red. (when the spelling is right :P If not you are a dumbass for asking this!)

   Just press cmd + mouse and change the language. Thanks Nuno Veloso from Apple Tech Team for this tip.

6. How can I see the right mouse button menu?

   crtl + mouseclick

7. PageUp/PageDown!?
   

   fn+ up
   fn + down

If after this you still feel like reading about Mac OS for rookies – like myself – you can check this section in Arun Gupta’s Blog or check this extensive list of Keyboard Shortcuts. Have fun!

Now let’s get back to work, something almost impossible when your doing a report on LaTeX and the encodings are never right.

One final touch: ctrl + alt + cmd + 8. Merry Christmas! :)