Mac and OS X Goodies

Sponsor Me to help people with MS

Jared — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 02:00:31 +0000

Hi,

I have entered the 2011 Wollongong 24 Hour Mega Swim and I have committed to fundraise $500.00 in support of those affected by Multiple Sclerosis.

Did you know?

- The average diagnosis of MS is 30 years old.
- 3 times more women than men are affected by MS.
- An estimated 20,000 people in Australia have MS.

Please take a moment to view my online fundraising page and help me reach my fundraising goal. It is easy and will take no time at all, just donate online via your credit card by clicking on the link below:

http://events.megaswim.com/?Jared

All information is secure and all donations will be sent electronically to Multiple Sclerosis Limited. A tax deductible receipt will be sent to your inbox once the donation is verified.

Multiple Sclerosis is a disease of the central nervous system affecting more young adult Australians than any other neurological condition. Your donation will go towards MS Australia”s “Go for Gold” scholarship program.

Your support is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jared.

All your nerdy comics in one place @ www.comicscrape.com

Jared — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 23:47:21 +0000

If you’re like me and love your nerdy comics such as XKCD, Cyanide and Happiness, CAD, Dilbert etc, checking them all everyday can be a pain in the ass. Either you need a REALLY good memory, or a whole heap of bookmarks. Anyways now there is a website that hosts all of these, plus a whole heap more all on the one page!

Check it out!

www.comicscrape.com

WEP + MAC Filtering – Why?

Jared — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:16:37 +0000

An interesting article here regarding the use of WEP + MAC filtering for wireless networks from the perspective of a potential hacker.

http://jaredtyrrell.com/blog/2010/10/wep-mac-filtering-why/

Having fun with SSH, say and osascript!

Jared — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 03:30:56 +0000

Playing nerdy tricks on people always fun, especially if they are on a mac and you have SSH access to their machine

Below are some cool commands you can execute via ssh to amuse or frustrate an unsuspecting mac user!

Absolutely nasty:

sudo kill [program id learned from top]

Note: using ‘sudo open’ over ssh does not give the user super-user privileges for the opened application.

sudo halt

sudo reboot

sudo osascript -e 'tell app "[name of an open program]" to quit'

Power:

sudo osascript -e 'tell app "Finder" to sleep'

sudo osascript -e 'tell app "Finder" to shut down'

General:

sudo open /Applications/iChat.app

sudo osascript -e "set volume 0"

sudo osascript -e "beep"

sudo osascript -e 'display dialog "Did you know that you are annoying?" buttons "Yes" with icon note'

sudo osascript -e 'tell app "Finder" to quit'

sudo open [path to an application]

Speech:

sudo osascript -e 'say "[whatever]" using "Zarvox"'

sudo osascript -e 'say "Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum he he he ho ho ho fa lah lah lah lah lah lah fa lah full hoo hoo hoo" using "Cellos"'

iTunes Control:

sudo open /Applications/iTunes.app; sudo osascript -e 'say "Play some music. Go on. I dare you." using "Zarvox"'

sudo osascript -e 'tell app "iTunes" to stop' -e 'say "Please stop playing your annoying music" using "Zarvox"'

sudo osascript -e 'tell app "iTunes" to next track' -e 'say "I did not like that song very much" using "Zarvox"'

sudo osascript -e 'tell app "iTunes" to fast forward' -e 'say "This song is boring" using "Zarvox"'

sudo osascript -e 'tell app "iTunes" to quit'

Thanks to momerath for typing these up so that I didn’t have to! Sourced from Here!

Macbook Pro – Swollen Battery [Fail]

Jared — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 05:39:55 +0000

Just wanted to post some rather interesting photos of the battery of my Macbook Pro battery. A couple of weeks ago it stopped turning on. I pulled out the battery and noticed that it was slightly swollen.

After a bit of research I found that it was a know issue and the this model of battery was recalled by Apple. Unfortunately my battery outlived the recall period so I had to foot the cost of replacement

Anyways these pics are after it sat on the shelf for a couple of weeks.

It’s breaking out! That’s gotta be dangerous right?!

Also, just in case anyone reading this is ever considering getting a new replacement battery off eBay, make sure you buy genuine! The generic knock-offs SUCK!

iPhone / iPod / iPad – Changing “Slide to Unlock” Text Shine Colour

Jared — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 02:59:30 +0000

As shown in the post here: http://osxgoodies.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/iphone-changing-slide-to-unlock/ users with jailbroken iPhones etc can easily change the “Slide to Unlock” text found on the lock screen. This post will explain how to simply change the colour of the Shine that laminates this text (ie, the green highlight in the image below).

Firstly, download one of the below images to your computer, by right-clicking and pressing “Save as”
SSH to your phone, and cd to the directory /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/TelephonyUI.framework

Backup your existing image by typing:

mv bottombarlocktextmask.png bottombarlocktextmask.png.old

Use SCP to copy the image you have downloaded, to your iPhone, ie:

scp /bottombarlocktextmask.png root@/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/TelephonyUI.framework/

Respring, and you’re done! easy

As per usual, let me know if you have any issues!

iPhone / iPod / iPad – Changing “Slide to Unlock” Slider Text.

Jared — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 10:45:16 +0000

After updating my slider image on my iPhone the other day (to a cool little Android dude), I decided to change the boring standard text “Slide to Unlock” on the lock screen to something a little more personalised.. See below:

Anyways, these are the steps that i followed (please note, you need to be jailbroken).

SSH to your iPhone / iPod.
Using your favourite text editor, edit the following file:
- /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/English.lproj/SpringBoard.strings
- Note: If you don’t have a text editor installed, you can download one easily using cydia, or simply scp the file off your iPhone, modify, and then scp back. For this exercise I used vim.
Conveniently, the string we are concerned with is at the very top of the file. It is named “AWAY_LOCK_LABEL”.
Edit away! Depending on your editor, you may see unprintable characters between each letter of the strings, ie ‘^@’. If this is the case, ensure you keep them between each character.
Save and close the file (for vim type :wq)
Respring!

Please note, if you would like to change the colour of the shine that moves through the text, view the post here: http://osxgoodies.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/iphone-ipod-ipad-–-changing-“slide-to-unlock”-text-shine-colour/

It’s that simple. Be sure to leave a comment if you have any issues!

iPad Jailbreak – Spirit

Jared — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:34:25 +0000

Thought it was about time that I got back on the Apple bandwagon, so today I went out and bought myself a iPad. Purchased a 32Gb WiFi model as I didn’t think it was necessary to get 3G model as I can simply tether with my iPhone (which has a much cheaper data plan).

Anyways so I brought it home a couple of hours ago and decided to jailbreak it. To my surprise, this process took all of about 20 seconds (which is a shame because it doesn’t really give me a whole lot to write about!). So anyways the process I followed was this:

First, download the program Spirit. You can get this program for both mac and Windows.
Open the application. Windows users may need to run this as an administrator or in compatibility mode if you are having issues!
Click the Jailbreak button shown here:

The iPad will reboot, and you’re done! Easy huh?! You will find Cydia on your springboard which you can use to download all the goodies you like! If you find anything useful you want to share, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll make sure I post it!

Enjoy!

Preventing OS X from creating .ds_stores

Jared — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 03:48:05 +0000

You may notice that when browsing Samba drives on OS X, a whole heap of little files named .ds_stores (Desktop Services Stores) are created. These are used by the operating system to meta data about the directory’s layout etc.

This may not be so much of a problem for us OS X users as these files are generally hidden, but when browsing the same directory from a Windows machine, you will see these files scattered all over the place. It can become quite annoying.

There is however a way to disable this behavior. Simply open your terminal, and paste the following command:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

Remember, if you ever need to re-enable these guys for some reason, you can execute the same command, replacing the true with false.

Screenshot Shortcuts in OSX

Jared — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 23:00:39 +0000

The ability to take a screenshot is fairly important no matter what you do with your computer. When it comes to screenshots in OSX, the functionality is there, but it isn’t quite intuitive. In Windows we have a ‘Print Screen’ button, but what about on a mac? Anyways the following shortcuts will surely get you on your way.

Cmd + Shift + 3:
Takes a screenshot of the entire screen, and save it to the desktop

Cmd + Shift + 4 + Area Selection:
- This will take a screenshot of an area that you select by dragging the mouse, and saves it to the desktop

Cmd + Shift + 4 + Space + Window Selection:
- Takes a screenshot of the selected window and saves it to the desktop

Cmd + Ctrl + Shift + 3:
- Takes a screenshot of the entire screen, and saves it to the clipboard

Cmd + Ctrl + Shift + 4 + Area Selection:
- Takes a screenshot of an area that you select by dragging the mouse, and saves it to the clipboard

Cmd + Ctrl + Shift + 4 + Space + Window Selection:
- Takes a screenshot of the selected window and saves it to the clipboard

Have fun!