Cool Data Structures

Which data structures are really cool but relatively unknown? Bloom filters are way cool. I was using those back in the early 90′s before most people knew about them.

Use Pages to Replace Text on Clipboard

There was an interesting question at Stack Overflow on how to edit styled text on the clipboard. This is how I’ve always done it. Use an editor that supports styled text as an intermediary and do a find and replace within that application. You could use Text Edit, MS Word or Pages. I use Pages [...]

Stirring Plate

Build a stirring plate from a hard drive enclosure

Useful Graphics Commands for the Shell

If you use the shell much or if you run scripts a lot then there are two command line programs you really ought be aware of. The first is actually a little known part of OSX.  It’s a command called screencapture.  Roughly screencapture implements most of the features of the Grab application but as a [...]

Markdown to HTML Service

Markdown to HTML service. Honestly I don’t mind writing HTML.

Select Duplicate Messages

I have a ton of email accounts and then rules to move everything into one master account. For whatever reason I often thereby end up with duplicates. Some of this is just a poorly written rule somewhere I’m sure. Some of it is people CCing me on multiple accounts. Here’s a quick and dirty script [...]

Use an iPad 2 with an ADB keyboard

Use an iPad 2 with an ADB keyboard. Posted just for its nerdines.

Scripting in Preview Disabled

Did you know that Applescript support in Preview is disabled by default?  What the heck!  Fortunately it’s easy to turn on.  But still… sudo defaults write /Applications/Preview.app/Contents/Info NSAppleScriptEnabled -bool YES It’s times like this that really makes me wonder about Apple’s commitment to scripting.

Copy AFP Link to Clipboard

Over at ars there as an interesting question about getting a link for a document such that it’s in the form of a link Apple Mail recognizes.  Links in mail are of the form <afp://server.domain.com/First%20level%20folder/Second%20level%20folder/> In other words all spaces are supposed to be escaped in URL form. The easiest way to do this in [...]

Thoughts on the AT&T and T-Mobile Merger

There’s lots of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth regarding AT&T’s purchase of T-Mobile.  Most of it is over the short terms benefit or pain to users.  Clearly in the short term this is bad for T-Mobile users.  They may not get the low usage and low cost plans that many joined T-Mobile for. [...]

Extracting Article Text

Extracting article text from HTML pages

Switching to Quickeys

Way back in the 90′s before the Mac operating system became a complete unstable joke and I moved to Windows one of my favorite programs was Quickeys. I remember using it first with LightSpeed Pascal and the later with CodeWarrior C to automate a ton of macros. It was great. I truly missed it when [...]

AT&T Moves Against Unauthorized Tethering

AT&T moves against unauthorized tethering. (i.e. jailbroken phones) Although it sounds like they are more basing it on data usage so casual tetherers should be OK.

Noprivacyville

Noprivacyville. Heck, I might even want to live there.

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