How to Automagically Sync Directories Across Multiple Macs with Git & Launchd

In an effort to minimize my downtime when the funny noises this MacBook Pro is making finally amount to something – I’ve wired up a git repository to OS X’s native launchd service. The git repository hold all of my active projects – whether development projects with their own repos, research projects, consulting project. Everything. …

Asks: Should We Buy a HD TiVo?

Our Series2 TiVo is on its last legs. With each passing day, its over-the-air recordings (we’re a no cable household) are more and more unwatchable, while digital over-the-air recordings are getting more stable. But seriously, TV without TiVo is like email without a spam filter. Back in January, I replaced our DVD player w/ a …

Planting Flying Meat Acorn Near Photoshop Elements Grave

Like most professional graphic designers, my career was measured in versions of Adobe Photoshop. v2.5: I decided I wanted to be a graphic designer. The dad of a high school classmate was one. I went to talk with him about it. He worked out of his basement home office with a view of the lake, …

Leopard Installs Not Always Problem Free

After the customary until-you-cant-take-it-anymore 30-minute waiting period, I installed 10.5 Leopard on the Mac mini that serves my local network. The mini isn’t my primary work machine, and it’s regular duties are fairly straight forward: transport backups, be invisible. As such, the upgrade was quick and straight-forward (but I wasn’t really paying attention, I was …

RSS Everywhere: Mail.app

Rex Hammock confirms Mac OS X 10.5’s Mail.app supports reading RSS. While I’ve yet to see Apple implement RSS in a smart way, RSS in Mail.app proves RSS support will be ubiquitous. Just as I mentioned last month. Can’t wait to see if Mail.app is a better podcast-receiver than iTunes. If you’ve got Leopard installed …

MySQL on OS X Reinstall Reminders

First off, if you can avoid reinstalling MySQL on OS X – by all means do. Whatever the reason is that you want to do a reinstall, it’s not a good one1. Just buck up and work around whatever issue you have. It’s not as bad as what follows. Let’s say you decide to reinstall …

How To Install MacPorts, Apache2, Rails, MySql, Mongrel, and Subversion on an Intel Mac

Now that I’m just about ready to deploy my first rails app, I thought I’d get the deployment environment set up rock solid on both the production and the development machines (one Mac Mini and one MacBookPro). Like many other tutorials on this same subject, your mileage may vary. In fact I’m writing this now, …

How To Set Up Subversion, svnX, for TextDrive on OS X

I’m walking through the latest beta version of Agile Web Development with Rails 2nd Edition, specifically the new bits on deploying Rails apps. Capistrano – the preferred and recommended deployment utility. Thing is – Capistrano hinges on Subversion. Not something covered in AWDwR or appropriate to be covered. There’s plenty of other books on the …

Small MacBook Pro Joys

After living with a 17″ MacBook Pro for a couple weeks, there’s a couple things I’ve been pleasantly surprised with: MagSafe magnetic power connectorConnecting the power cord takes far less precise alignment than before. Get the connector near the socket and it’s magnetically pulled in. Small joys. Horizontal scrolling trackpadNo, I probably won’t be complaining …