Macguyver

JollysFastVNC Expiring for you? Here's how to run it

2010-01-09T16:07:00.000+02:00

I used to use the nice JollysFastVNC every once in a while. It would occasionally pop up a message to upgrade to the newest version.

Today, however, I noticed that my version (98.50) expired and that the newest version is no longer free.

You can easily get your older version running by adjusting your system date back to late October and after launching it setting the date correctly again.

Or, you can use these instructions to do all of that automatically for you:

1. Run the following command from you Terminal, just once on each Mac you want the workaround to function, and enter your password:

sudo chmod u+s /bin/date

2. Save the following into a file named jf.cmd in your home folder:

jfvncdate=`date "+%m%d%H%M%y"`

date 1015160009

/Applications/JollysFastVNC.app/Contents/MacOS/JollysFastVNC &

sleep 2
date $jfvncdate

3. Run this Terminal command just once, and enter your password:

sudo chmod 700 ~/jf.cmd

That's it. From now on, to run JollysFastVNC simply run in your Terminal:

jf.cmd

Lumosity getting better

2009-04-20T20:36:00.003+03:00

I've been trying out Lumosity for a while. Seems to have definite positive effects on the psyche, along with adverse effects on both my RSI and certain non-cognitive parts of the psyche..

I quickly reached the most advanced levels of most of the games there (there are a few which I seem to be quite average in though.) But then I noticed a substantial stress getting built up concerning pushing my limits higher and substantial disappointments when I happen to regress in some mental aspects. So this in fact ads a psychological/emotional part that if you bother to observe and appease in yourself, can help you really improve yourself.

Take it for a free trial:

Testing your website's visibility from other countries

2009-04-18T01:08:00.002+03:00

I've been looking for a while for a way to test how different aspects of my websites, e.g. their search ranking, differ from country to country. Normal proxy servers, such as those you can get at xroxy.com, are more often than not slow, unreliable, and worst of all -- tend to get blacklisted by Google and others.

Meet Hide-My-IP: It let's you choose specific countries through which to route your browsing, and does that through private high-performance proxy servers. I'm referring to their paid version ($29) with the "premium subscription" ($7/month) -- the free trial is practically useless.

Give it a try: http://www.hide-my-ip.com/

MacSpeech !!

2009-03-29T01:42:00.006+03:00

I've recently been trying to reduce the strain on my hands by offloading much of my typing to speech recognition software. I gave a shot for a while to the built in speech recognition in Windows Vista but the level of accuracy left me frustrated much of the time. Perhaps if I were to spend patiently several months training it it would have become acceptable, but it unfortunately doesn't have a way to export and import users speech profiles.

Not to mention that I had to use a secondary laptop with Vista installed, plus a clip board sharing program in order to use the dictated text on my Mac.

At last, MacSpeech came to the help! Try it out for yourself and, oh, get a 10% discount by using the code DICTATE10

"Entire Message" search disabled / grayed-out in Mail.app

2008-12-13T21:45:00.001+02:00

The Apple discussion forums are full of people complaining about
Mail.app being naughty and not allowing to search by "Entire Message".

I've also wasted some hours trying to work around this when it
inflicted me, with no luck.

Until, finally, I tried merely restarting the machine and vóila! It
was back...

Solution for launchd not running scripts without any apparent reason

2008-07-03T12:36:00.000+03:00

After many weeks of frustration and research we've finally found the solution for launchd mysteriously not running scripts (and not showing any errors).

The solution:

Simply use an absolute path to your script file in the launchd plist file.

Mac Ports Troubleshooting: "error: command '-DNDEBUG' failed with exit status 1"

2008-05-21T13:31:00.001+03:00

Several different port installation attempts have been throwing this error for me lately:

error: command '-DNDEBUG' failed with exit status 1

I researched a workaround but to no avail.

Finally the solution presented itself:

Simply run the same port installation command again!

If this tip saved you some time, feel free to leave a comment.

Toggle Airport Power On/Off with AppleScript

2008-03-26T12:48:00.001+02:00

If you want to quickly step down your MacBook's power consumption, or you've accidentally hit "send message" for an incomplete or wrongly destined email etc., you'd need to immediately terminate your Internet connection. The best way I've found for doing that is by toggling your airport's power directly.

First, if you don't have MacPorts already installed, visit The MacPorts Project and follow the installation instructions there.

Then, use the terminal command "sudo port install airport".

Finally, save the script below into a file that you can run from the dock or tie it to a handy iKey shortcut.

-- make sure to first use macports to intall the airport port using the Terminal command "sudo port install airport"

-- the airport -p command returns "Power is on/off." but off is considered an error

try

do shell script "/opt/local/bin/airport -p"

do shell script "/opt/local/bin/airport -P 0"

on error

do shell script "/opt/local/bin/airport -P 1"

end try

See which groups an Address Book contact belongs to (Leopard)

2007-12-31T19:49:00.001+02:00

Just hold the option key down while a contact is selected and see to
which groups they belong!

Transport All Windows at Once to an External Display on Leopard

2007-12-19T12:56:00.001+02:00

Leopard differs from Tiger in what happens when you plug in an external display to your MacBook. Unlike Tiger, even if the external display is set to be the primary display (i.e. the one with the menu bar), all windows stay inside the internal display. If you have many windows open, moving them one by one is a major bummer.

To work around this "feature" (read "bug") simply close the lid of your MacBook right before plugging in the external display. As soon as the display is recognized all windows will automatically be moved to it. Only then, if you don't have an external keyboard and mouse (or simply want to avoid overheating of the MacBook), open the lid back.

Toggling Spaces on/off instantly

2007-11-05T12:24:00.001+02:00

Instead of clicking 4+ times to get to the preferences panel and toggle Spaces, you can simply use this AppleScript:

tell application "System Events" to tell spaces preferences of expose preferences to set spaces enabled to (not spaces enabled)

As usual, I hook it up to a keyboard shortcut using iKey.

Enabling Bluetooth File Transfer on Leopard

2007-11-04T00:01:00.001+02:00

Among the changes Leopard introduces is that unless you enable "Bluetooth Sharing" in the Sharing preferences panel, any attempt to send files to your Mac via BT fail. For me, this is a critical part of my GTD work flow, of voice memos from my mobile phone being transfered to my Mac for processing this way.

Outgoing transfers, which I hardly use, seemed to work regardless of
this setting.

Too bad Apple doesn't bring up some informative error message on such attempts and had me waste quite some time figuring this out :-(

Instantly Move Selected Messages in Mail.app

2007-10-31T13:37:00.000+02:00

Being an early adopter never comes without cost. Now, with Leopard and its Mail.app 3.0, plugins such as MailActOn unfortunately don't work.

For a quick workaround I fire up this AppleScript (using a hotkey assigned with iKey) to move the selected messages to my "Archive" folder. It can easily be tweaked to achieve similar functions:

tell application "Mail"

move the selection to mailbox "Archive"

end tell

Enjoy.

QuickSilver Firefox Bookmark Indexing with Multiple Profiles

2007-10-30T18:10:00.000+02:00

QuickSilver (as of b52) only seems to index the last profile, when sorted by names.
So, to index your default profile simply rename its first part (e.g. 'ags7sd6' in 'ags7sd6.default') to something that will appear last among your profiles (e.g. 'zzzzzz').

To index all profile, you could create a fictitious profile and a script to merge all the individual bookmark files. Or wait for the QS plugin to be upgraded and be smarter.