A run down on the apps I use regularly and why. Caution, Mac specific drivel ahead.

I can’t believe I lived so long without looking for a fix to a common issue I have while in iTerm2. Maybe I’m running some GruntJS task that is updating the screen, but I want to do something in the CWD. So I would open another tab ⌘ + t, then cd ... to my cwd. Instead just tell iTerm you want new tabs to open in the CWD. Open up iTerm2 preferences ⌘ + , Go to Profiles > General Now click on Edit under Advanced Configuration for Working Directory Now just select when you want it to open in the same directory like so Now you have an extra 10 seconds a day to do with whatever you want….

Background I’ve set up my VirtualBox to access my localhost (OSX) by following instructions similar to this post, using NAT. Everything was great until I started testing the staging site on the net (not my localhost). Most things worked fine, but uploading larger images would just fail in IE. Uploads worked fine on the localhost, but failed on stage, so I initially thought it was a configuration on the staging server webserver.

Should you upgrade to OS X Lion??? Meh…. it’s presented more problems than previous upgrades. Maybe I should have waited until 10.7.1, so this is my punishment for being bleeding edge. Another issue I saw was the continual nag when I opened some apps (Billings and Cyberduck) that “This program was downloaded from the Internet… blah blah blah” This normally happens once for a program then goes away after you say “OK”, but this was happening every time I opened those two programs.

I took the plunge on Monday and upgraded to Lion. I know better than to do an OS upgrade while I have a mountain of work on my plate, but oh well. The upgrade itself was the easiest ever. Just buy it, download it, then it takes about 30 minutes to install. Done. What I like The interface is cleaner Mission control (aka Expose et. al) is a bit better Full screen is nice.

Here are some instructions for unlocking the Apple iPhone 2G model with firmware version 3.1.2. I ran into a few problems, but having unlocked dozens of these from day one, I’ve yet to brick one. Download the firmware version from apple. You want the 3.1.2 version 250MB Connect the phone to iTunes Hold down the OPTION button and click the “Restore” button. This will prompt you for a firmware file, located the file you just downloaded Sometimes the upgrade gives an error message after its done, I’ve yet to have a problem so you can safely ignore it if you get one.

A coworker had this problem. After installing a plugin-update, the fonts on her Firefox interface were all italic. We combed over the preferences to no avail, then a simple Google search revealed the answer. Open Font Book Find Lucida Grand Regular Right Click > Reveal in Finder Delete it. AAHHHHH!!!! Yes, I’m sure, delete it, Witness the true power of a fully operational Mac Station, it suddenly recreates the font for you.

The number of photos I have in iPhoto is around 10,000. I like the new faces feature, but it just kept grinding my CPU for hours and days. I stumbled on a way to rebuild the iPhoto library, but it’s really hidden and I’ve never run across this type of a setup from Apple Software. Essentially you need to hold down Option + Command while starting iPhoto and keep them held down until you get a window asking you what you want to rebuild.

So today I spent an ungodly amount of time trying to figure out why my Magento module, that worked just fine on my local MAMP installation, didn’t work on the Linux staging server. I thought it was the cache, so I reloaded the cache, changed the cache backend, then I thought it might be a but, then I thought it might be the layouts. The solution? Case. Mac is not case sensitive, Linux is.

I was having some problems with the ALT key on my Macbook in Inkscape. To adjust the text space and kerning in Inkscape you need to use the keyboard. This was not working, so I was stuck. Luckily, as usually I was not alone. I found a way to map the keys to work correctly under X11 and furthermore it makes the CMD key act as the CTRL as well. Double bonus.