Open Terminal Here - Mac OS X

Nice little app for getting a terminal window open and CD'ed to the current folder of the Finder window. I have it as a shortcut in my Finder toolbar.

Available at Mac OS X Hints
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How to rip and compress DVDs in Mac OS X

John Zeratsky has given made a nice page of instructions for this on his site.
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Allowing your phone access through your wireless security.

One of the better ways of securing your wireless router is to limit access to known MAC addresses.
So if you want your telephone to be able to access your router you'll need to register its MAC address within the router's 'allowed' list.

To find out what your mobile phone's MAC address is (Australians at least),
enter *#62209526# or *#MAC WLAN#
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Google maps - issue with map reset - my wishlist

I have a Map eg. PlacesNearHome.
I search for something, find a site (bookmarks appear - red 'pins') nearby. But I don't want to save Your pin (even if I do, same problem arises)
So I want to edit my map, or just return to my map, which has been removed from the sidebar during the search process.
So I click the link for my maps, or the link down near all the searches listed at bottom of left sidebar, and when my map comes up, giving me the ability to edit and therefor save a bookmark near or at the place I've just searched for.. you RESET THE MAP VIEW!!!!!!!

I do all the leg work to find a street, maybe using street view etc to get to where I want to place a bookmark, and when I go to my map, you reset the view.
FRIG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can you PLEASE STOP THAT.

many thanks, love (most all) your work =)

OS X dashboardadvisory locationd phoning home

having noticed my machine 'phoning home' (dashboardadvisory) I thought I'd take a look and see if I should be concerned about it.

It would seem no. It's merely keeping the widgets updated and not sending anything particularly personal to home.

But in the interests of documenting code snippets for my own failing memory here's how to unload the dashboardadvisory service:

I found two references, not sure which should (maybe) be scrubbed)

sudo launchctl unload -w \
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dashboard.advisory.fetch.plist

sudo launchctl unload -w com.apple.dashboard.advisory.fetch

found these references on Digg

locationd: similar scenario only now we're talking about the clock keeping itself updated and it can *try* to assess your location in order to do that.

Found some discussion at Superuser

Again, it would seem not to be a big [privacy] issue.

Unloading mDNSResponder from OS X

If mDNSResponder is getting out of hand you can unload it,

noting that mDNSResponder is part of OSX's DNS resolution, and therefor network discovery (LAN, WAN etc) requires it (at least to some degree - I need to research more - so, not knowing, I've not unloaded it);

ie. no mDNSResponder, no resolving host names.

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

To turn it back on, just do the opposite:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

Chrome-Design, yes =) ... no =(

Chrome-Design, originally uploaded by Deezplace.

Well I've been using Chrome as much as possible (on PC/Windows) for the last 6 months, and loving it, but all is not roses, or at least so I've discovered since I got back to my Mac.

1st the pluses (for me at least, and therefor in my order of importance =)

Translation: very handy for when dealing with homepages in another language, Chrome offers to translate the page you are viewing. Saves a lot of cut 'n' pasting or redirection via translation sites.

Without a doubt Chrome has the nicest Tab handling. Moving, separating, merging all done effortlessly and (mostly) intuitive. And judging by the (lack of lag - response) speed these processes occur at, the code behind is much improved. Better use of computer (CPU/memory) resources.

The range of plugins for Chrome (which makes Firefox so enabled) is growing rapidly, although I tend to agree with a friend's comment that this is causing FF to become bloatware-ish/sluggish.

The combination of the address and search bar seems a (long overdue) natural evolution.

The options menu is much easier to navigate than the other browsers I usually use (Firefox, Safari, IE, Opera).

Now, again for me, the negatives.

I can no longer grab the Bookmark button (the star to the left of the address field) to drag that bookmark to my Bookmarks Toolbar. This was an incredibly quick/handy/idiot proof way to grab a bookmark.
Now I can only click that star which invokes the Bookmark dialogue which saves the bookmark to the bottom of the list of entries in the Bookmark Toolbar. #fail
I was able to do this in Windows but now no more =(

No border; whilst I love good eye candy and especially enjoy borderless video playback, Chrome looks great but I seem to have no handles to move the window about.
The title bar having been compressed down to incorporate the Tab area means that if I have tabs across the full width of the window mean I have no (or very minimal) area that I can click-drag the window if I wish to move it.

edit: I've installed Afloat to alleviate this annoyance, all is pretty good so far.

A pet peeve of mine is that OSX windows can only be resized from the bottom right corner, unlike the "grab any side" of MS Windows. The pro that makes up for that is the way I can grab the bottom border to move the window whereas in the MS scenario I can only have the title (or the Move option in the top left corner menu - means more clicks)

If I've missed a workaround for this I'd be happy to hear about it, I've been alt/command/ctrl and right clicking all over the place looking for other means of moving the window but so far no go.

cheers, I'm sure Google will improve past these issues, it's why I vote for them.

D

Video conversion - Mac, PC, Linux

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. available here

Big Brother trying hard to squash freedoms

"He’s talking about changing the internet to make everything anyone does on the net traceable and geo-located so the National Security Agency can pinpoint users and their computers for retaliation if the U.S. government doesn’t like what’s written in an e-mail, what search terms were used, what movies were downloaded."

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/cyber-war-hype/

Stress - who needs it?

Watched a great doco the other night, Stress: Portrait of a Killer, which discussed how much stress humans (try) to cope with now, compared to 100s of years ago.

That your position on the job ladder is enough to give you different health issues to those above you (who will have less issues than you); Folks higher up the job hierarchy (in more dominant positions) have more dopamine in their pleasure centers then folk in more subordinate positions, life just looks better to them.

Stress even seems to effect how (where) fat is deposited on the body, so the typical spreading hips is possibly stress related as well as diet/exercise.

Chronic and acute stress both effect memory.

And an interesting study of baboons, very similar creatures to humans when it comes to stress and it's study, showed a period when a certain troop, due to fatal infection from human's dumed food, lost half their male population. The aggressive Alpha males.

The resultant population actually became more balanced as the norm now was to not be aggressive and possessive. The whole troop as a whole became happier.
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Some stuff on youtube