OSX – kenops

Old fashion “Open Folder” Icon in the Dock

apple-image While the newer versions of OS X have been great and the dock has matured, I hated one thing. Sometimes I just want to put a directory on the dock without it doing it’s crazy effect stuff to it like Fan, Grid, List, etc. Many times all I want is a dock icon that will just open a directory in finder. Fortunately, I figured out how to do this!!!

Create a link to the directory of your choice on the desktop. For instance, I created a link (By holding down the “option”, “apple/command” keys down) of my home directory on my desktop. Now, drag that link to the dock. Bingo! I have a dock icon that will just open a finder window of my home directory.

Cleanup the Open with… menu in OS X

For OS X Leopard this worked for me. Cut and paste this command into terminal:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.f*/Frameworks/LaunchS*/Support/lsregister \
   -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Cool Mac automater Actions

I just found cool automater actions at http://junecloud.com The action I’m especially please with is the “Create Clean Archive” action. This will create a archive zip file that does not have the usualy .DS_Store files and crap. Excellent stuff!

Fixing the command “man” in OSX

apple-image The command ‘man’ in terminal has an annoying feature: it clears the screen on exit. So if you find a command line switch you want to try, when you exit man the detail all disappears.

To correct this, change the following line in /private/etc/man.conf:

PAGER    /usr/bin/less -is

PAGER    /usr/bin/less -isX

Using system wide socks proxy with iphone tethering

apple-image Recently I discovered a program called proxifier, a OS X Leopard program that will send all network traffic through a defined socks proxy server. So instead of defining the proxy settings in each individual program, simply turn on proxifier and redirect all the network traffic.

proxifier is the same thing as WideCap or FreeCap in the Windows side. tsocks for OS X may work as well.

So why is this important? Well, I’m on the road a lot and with a iPhone 3g that’s jailbroken you can install a socks server called 3proxy through the cydia installer and with proxifier you can route all your network traffic on your Mac through your new socks server at 3g speeds. This means I can get email, surf the web, use skype, etc. all through the iPhone Continue reading Using system wide socks proxy with iphone tethering

Back to My Mac Dlink Settings

dlink Here’s a few screen shots of my D-Link DIR-655 router and it’s settings to allow Back to My Mac (BTMM) to work on my home mini:

OSX Mirrored Raidset Recovery

apple-image Today I experienced a firewire drive failure on my mini. To determine which drive was bad was a bit difficult since the apple profiler does not show serial number information about the drives and the firewire id can change depending on which drive was ready first, etc. After the experience I now have the following steps to take to make this easier in the future. The follow was done after I replaced the bad drive — There also appears to be a Disk Utility issue with disk replacements do I went the terminal window instead.

Continue reading OSX Mirrored Raidset Recovery