Ted Leung on the Air

This is a list of hardware, software and information that has been useful to me as I’ve moved over to Mac OS X. I hope that you find it useful as well. This version is now up to date for Mac OS 10.5 Leopard and Intel Macs.

Hardware

• Griffin Powermate
  I love this thing. I put in on my keyboard tray on the other side of the mouse, and use the non-mouse hand to do scrolling. I have a mouse with a scroll wheel, but this lets me scroll and click independently.
• Sandisk Extreme Firewire Compact Flash Reader
  After I got this, my download times went way down. If you are shooting RAW on a digital SLR, you need an external card reader.

Software

Utilities

• Quicksilver
  QuickSilver is the ultimate application launcher and command line for a GUI. I especially like it’s ability to take text and feed it to an Applescript.
• iPulse
  The best way to describe iPulse is as a graphical top, that incorporates a number of system performance indicators into a small area by clever use of color and spatial layout. A quick glance at iPulse gives me a good idea of what’s up on the machine.
• Pathfinder
  CocoaTech’s Pathfinder is a Finder replacement that includes many features. Some of the reasons that I like it are that it can open a terminal window on a particular folder. It supports tabbed terminal windows, which makes it easier to manage a proliferation of open shell windows (I feel that I need this even with Expose available).  You can also have tabs of browser windows and save sets of those tabs, which is really handy for managing different projects.  When you select various kinds of files in the file browser, you get a preview of the file contents. The Drop stack makes it easy to drag files from one place to another without requiring multiple windows everywhere.  Pathfinder 5.0 allows you to split a Pathfinder window into two panes, which helps with file management tasks without proliferating windows.
• DefaultFolder
  DefaultFolder extends the standard open and save dialog boxed you to remember which folders you visited recently, and allows you to make some favorites permanent. You can create sets of favorite folders on a per application basis. This is a big improvement on the standard dialogs, but I wish it worked more like SuperBoomerang, which remembered recent files as well as directories.
• Growl
  A system wide notification service with command line tools and Python bindings. Supported by Ecto, Adium.
• SlimBatteryMonitor
  This little application uses less space in the menu bar than the built in battery monitor, and is a bit more configurable.
• WindowShade X
  WindowShade allows you to use multiple taps on the shift keys to roll up windows like windowshade till they are just the title bar. You can also make windows transparent this way. This is convenient with you need a quick peek at a window right behind the one you are working on. You can never have enough window management.
• Fastscripts Lite
  This is an incredibly useful app that allows you to invoke AppleScripts from a menu in the menu bar. That menu is application aware, and you can assign keyboard shortcuts to scripts. The final killer feature for me is the ability to option-select a script in the menu and have it opened in Script Editor
• TypeIt4Me
  TypeIt4Me allows you define text abbreviations that will be expanded when they are typed into a text entry box. I have a ton of abbreviations, and I am always adding new ones. I preferred TypeIt4Me to Textpander because TypeIt4Me can invoke applescripts from the abbreviations. Support from Riccardo Ettore, the author has been great.
• SuperDuper
  It’s really important to backup your computer. I learned this the hardware when mine was stolen and the backups were old. SuperDuper backs up by copying one drive to another — it doesn’t do incremental backups that allow you to go back in time over versions. That’s fine with me. SuperDuper wakes up early every morning and backs up my disk. Cheap, fast, and good.
• ServiceScrubber
  If you use the services menu, or Emacs, you need ServiceScribber. ServiceScrubber lets you control the structure of the service menu, but more importantly, it allows you to control which keyboard shortcut commands are used to invoke this or that service. When you use Emacs, you find that some services (installed by applications) take over really important Emacs key combinations. No more.
• Lingon
  launchd is OS X’s way of kicking off periodic jobs. Lingon is a good GUI tool for helping to create launchd configuration files. Essential for a highly automated system.
• AppZapper
  Generally speaking application install/uninstall is pretty good under OS X. However, just deleteing application files might not delete all the preferences and application support files. Enter AppZapper. AppZapper will get rid of all that stuff. Provided you remember to use it. I got mine for free, and it’s great when I remember.
• blueutil
  blueutil lets you turn Bluetooth on and off from the command line. Combine that with this hint and you can turn bluetooth on and off from Quicksilver.
• Bwana
  Bwana allows you to use your default web browser to read UNIX man pages.
• MenuCalendarClock
  Gives you access to a full calendar from the Menu bar clock
• Proxi
  Proxi allows you to fire scripts when events happen on your Mac
• Flip4Mac
  You need Flip4Mac’s Windows Media Components for Quicktime in order to play .wmv files on a Mac.
• WhatSize
  WhatSize is a tool that helps you figure out where all that disk space is going. It looks like the column view in the Finder except that also shows the amount of space used by entries in the view.
• osasubr
  A replacement for the osascript command line utility. osasubr allows you pass arguments to an AppleScript subroutine. This is not a Universal Binary.
• qtplay
  This command line utility allows you to play any Quicktime supported format audio file.
• SpeechQueue
  An AppleScriptable application that allows you queue up text to be spoken, with lots of controls.
• TextExtras
  TextExtras allows you to do all kinds of neat stuff in an NSTextView text widget, such as run a shell script, complete based on other words in the widget, etc.
• I-Search plugin for NSTextView
  Adds incremental search capability to NSTextView text widgets.
• Bonjour Browser
  A little application that lets you see what computers are offering which services via Bonjour.
• Sloth
  Sloth a gui for lsof, which will tell you what files are open and which application has the files.
• DisplayWatcher
  DisplayWatcher runs commands/scripts when your display changes, and when you wake up from sleep
• AB-FOAF
  Export your address book to FOAF
• OnMyCommandCMshop
  Add more actions to your command (control-click) menu
• Paparazzi
  A neat little utility for taking perfectly sized screenshots of web pages
• Download comment for Safari
  Store the url of a download in the Finder comments of the downloaded file
• Unicode Checker
  A useful tool for dealing with Unicode. Also makes itself available via the services menu
• cscreen
  Set the screen resolution and refresh rate from the command line – This is not a Universal Binary.
• CocoaDialog
  Mac OS X user interface dialogs that you can call from your favorite UNIX scripting language
• Pashua
  Mac OS X user interface dialogs that you can call from your favorite UNIX scripting language – can also do Applescript
• Stakeout (with Growl Support)
  Run a script when a file (including directories) changes
• osxutils
  A set of command line tools for maniuplating Mac specific information

Applications

• Firefox
  I am primarily using Firefox as my browser.The first order bit is tabbed browsing. Safari has tabs, but its tools for managing tabs are primitive.

  The second order bit is extensions. I am using the Tab Mix Plus extension which provides much better tab management facilities then stock Firefox. Other important extensions that I am using are the Adblock which allows me to kill various kinds of ads/Flash, etc, NoScript, which prevents Javascript from running, and FlashBlock, which prevents Flash from running..

  Greasemonkey allows you to change the behavior of web apps by injecting Javascript code into the page. There are some pretty cool Flickr tools written using Greasemonkey.

  The existence of these kinds of plugins is the differentiator between Firefox and Safari (and everyone else). Safari is faster and better integrated withe the Mac OS (Bonjour and Services support are examplse), but Firefox is extensible and is improving. The fact that Firefox is open source is good (it contributes to rapid improvement), but not as important as the plugin architecture. (Actually I am getting more and more unhappy with the lack of integration of Firefox. I am waiting to see what happens with Safari in Leopard. I am also considering OmniWeb.)

  Doing web development is much easier on Firefox than other browsers, again, due to extensions. Firebug is the most important of the web development extensions that I use, followed by View Source Chart , Live HTTP Headers, and the Web Developer extension. You can see why I’d rather not give up Firefox.

• NetNewsWire
  NetNewsWire is the only Macintosh RSS reader that supports my scan and tab pattern of RSS reading. I open up groups of feeds in NetNewsWire’s combined view, and read as much as I can inside of NetNewsWire. If the article is long or good, I click on it to send it to a tab in NetNewsWire’s tabbed browser. After I finish scanning with the combined view, I then walk through all the tabs and read them. I also make use of the fact that NetNewsWire can run scripts that output RSS to generate RSS feeds from my private servers. I also have a pile of custom AppleScripts and Python OSA scripts which I use to customize and integrate NetNewsWire into my desktop. It is a huge plus that Brent Simmons, the developer of NetNewsWire, is accessible and friendly.
• Ecto
  Ecto is an excellent application for posting to a blog. It handles HTML, HTML previewing, local composition of posts, ping notification, and more. Currently it has support for blogs that use the Blogger, MetaWeblog, and Movable Type (Blogger/Metaweblog combination) APIs. Atom support is supposedly coming soon. Unfortunately development of Ecto has slowed down substantially.
• Evernote
  Evernote is a great application for taking text, voice and image notes. It allows you to tag individual notes for later retrieval. There is a web version of Evernote which can sync to the desktop version and to the iPhone version of Evernote, which is the best note taking application on the iPhone.
• 1Passwd
  1Passwd is the best password manager program for the Mac. It works with all major browsers, including Firefox, Safari, and NetNewsWire. It does a super job of filling login forms, even unusual ones that Firefox’s built in password manager fails to fill in. It also contains a handy strong password generator, so you can stop using the same password everywhere. And there is an iPhone version.
• Pukka
  Pukka is a handly little application for stuffing URL’s into del.icio.us You can use Pukka as NetNewsWire’s del.icio.us posting application.
• Snak
  I spent a lot of time looking for a decent IRC client. On a daily basis, I am in 3 channels for OSAF/Chandler, one ASF channel, #groovy, and #joiito. Managing that many channels is tough. I wanted a way to have all the channels visible at once, which rules out a tabbed interface. I also need customizable actions on a per channel basis. I also wanted to be able to log each channel, since there is often useful information there. Snak allows me to log into all the channels automatically at the start of my day. I create two Snak windows, each tiled with 3 channels, so I can see all the channels at once. These windows and iChat go on the MacBook Pro display, which I reserve for interactive communications. I have actions set to look for my nick in the various channels and notify me accordingly. In the OSAF channels, I get a speech and dock bounce notification. In the others I get beeps. All channels are logged to a directory. Snak is also scriptable, but I haven’t really gotten into that yet.
• Adium
  The best multiprotocol IM client for the Mac. Supports OTR encryption of IM’s. I’m pretty much using this, even though iChat can do audio and video. See the next entry for why.
• Skype
  I switched to using Skype for both audio and video, because it was just easier to interoperate with people on Windows machines. I could never get the iChat video to work with AIM on Windows. I’m only sorry that I’ve added one more communications program to my system.
• OmniOutliner
  I admit to being an outliner lover, all the way back to Dave Winer’s original ThinkTank for the Mac. I use OmniOutliner for all kinds of outlining tasks. I also use it for managing my Getting Things Done system via the kGTD package.
• Mind Manager Mac
  I like Mind Maps, too, but I reach for them less frequently than I should. I was a beta tester for MindJet’s Mind Manager for Mac, and I really like it. The key to working with Mind Maps on a computer is the UI, and MindJet has done a great job.
• Aperture
  I’m using Apple’s Aperture as my primary workflow tool for processing digital pictures. However, I am keeping my eye on Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom.
• FlickrExport-Aperture
  FlickrExport-Aperture is a plugin for Aperture that makes it much easier to upload pictures to Flickr. I swear by it.
• Photoshop CS3
  If you need to make adjustments to just a part of a picture, you need Photoshop. If you need to run Photoshop on an Intel Mac, you need Adobe Photoshop CS3. Unfortunately, it’s that simple.
• MacGPG, GPGMail and GPG Keychain Access
  For encrypted signed e-mail I am primarily using PGP, although I have obtained a Thawte personal e-mail certificate. MacGPG provides Mac compiled versions of the gpgcommand line tools. GPG Keychain Access lets you manage your keyrings in a GUI. GPGMail is a plugin for Mail.app that lets you deal with signing and encrypting mail.
• SubEthaEdit
  SubEthaEdit nee Hydra came to fame because of it allows multiple people to edit a document in realtime. When coupled with iChat AV and an iSight, you really can work on a document with someone else in a distributed fashion. It also happens to be a pretty decent little editor for small pieces of text. I’m using it, along with the realtime preview mode for HTML to edit HTML documents. Not quite WYSIWYG, but plenty good enough. Plus SubEthaEdit is able to take advantage of all the capabilities of TextExtras. There are now two versions of SubEthaEdit, versions 1 and 2 are not compatible with each other. Also the latest versions of SubEthaEdit are no longer free. But if you need what SubEthaEdit has to offer, the money is more than worth it.
• xchm
  xchm is an open source viewer for Windows Compiled Help files. I am using this mostly to read the CHM versions of the Python documentation (available at python.org). The primary benefit of using CHM format is that the viewer contains a good search capability. There’s no need for an internet connection (as would be needed if you used Google to search the web pages for the documentation set. Contrary to its name, xchm on OS X uses wxWindows and doesn’t require the use of X11.app.
• Parallels
  I have some old Windows software that I need to run every once in a while. Parallel’s virtualization software has been just fine for that purpose. It’s also good for letting you run Windows and Linux environments for doing browser version testing.
• Skim
  Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker. It’s open source, and I am hoping that the developers will make it into a competitor for Yep or Papers.
• VLC
  Being on a “minority” platform such as OS X or Linux can be a pain when dealing with multimedia files. Fro those files that QuickTime and the MS Windows Media Player can’t play, I’ve had good success with VLC.
• Audacity
  An open source digital audio editor
• Jet Clock
  A menu bar clock that shows the time in up to 3 other time zones.
• Remote Desktop Connection Client 1.0.2
  This application lets you remote control a Windows machine using the Microsoft RDP protocol. Now the only thing I can’t do is pipe the video from my ATI AIW 8500DV onto the Mac, or I’d be set.
• AntiRSI
  This application forces you to take a break in order to prevent or ameliorate RSI.

Built in apps

• Mail.app
  I switched from using Thunderbird for mail to Mail.app. Here are some of the reasons. I like the integration with iChat – giving the ability to easily reply via IM. I also like the integration with the Mac OS X address book. There are good built in options for notification, including speech. I used to think that the buddy icons in IM programs were just eye candy, but the I’ve noticed that use of pictures in Mail.app and iChat helps to keep things straight in my head when I have multiple threads of communication going on. In fact, I wish IRC clients could do this. The availability of a good PGP plugin also helped (Enigmail for Thunderbird is also excellent). In general, I found Mail.app to be very snapy (compared to Thunderbird), and the searching was fast enough and useful enough that I actually use it. I also like the way the Mail.app handles threads. The visual grouping works well, and threads with new messages sort to the bottom (or top, depending on how you like it) of the Inbox area, making it easy to follow threads. The only flaw in the thread handling is that not all the thread indentation is preserved. Here are some useful plugins for Mail.app, again demonstrating the value of a plugin system.
  • Mail.app plugins
    This is a good directory of plugins for Mail.app
  • Mail Act-On
    Mail Act-On allows you to invoke Mail.app rules from keyboard shortcuts. This is super handy.
  • MailTags
    MailTags allows you to tag e-mail messages and to build smart folders based on those tags. You can also access the tag information from Mail.app rules.
• iTunes
  • Fetch Art
    Fetch cover art.
  • LameBrain
    a LAME encoder.
  • iTunes-LAME
    a LAME encoder integrated with iTunes
  • Ogg Drop
    Ogg Vorbis encoding
• iCalendar
  • iCalibrate
    Lets you customize the appearance of your iCalendar

Unix compatibility

• CarbonEmacs
  If you’re an Emacs users, you need this. If you’re not, I’m not going to try and convince you. This is updated monthly and works great.
• X11.app
  You’ll need this to run some Linux apps. If you need X support this is what you want.
• SSHKeychain (open source)
  SSHKeychain allows you to set the SSH_AGENT (and other environment variables) for the global environment so that programs like Emacs are aware of the SSH agent. It is also well integrated with the Apple Keychain mechanism, allowing you to control addition and removal of keys from the agent on events like screensaving and so forth.
• SubVersion
  Subversion is a version control system in the spirit of CVS that provides atomic commits and versioning of file/directory renames and moves. It is based on WebDAV and can leverage the Apache 2 authentication mechanisms when built as an Apache module (it can also run a standalone server). I’m getting the precompiled versions that come with SVK (see next entry). You can get just the Subversion build too.
• SVK
  SVK is a decentralized version control system built on top of Subversion. In addition to being decentralized, it supports history sensitive merging, which is a big plus.
• arch
  Arch is another new version control system. It is based on changesets which gives atomic commits, versioning of file/directory renames and moves. It also allows for a much more decentralized management of source code respositories. There is excellent support for branching and merging, to the point where creating branches and merging them back in is the conceptual, if not actual, mode of development. See my blog for more articles on arch.
• Zsh
  zsh is the power user’s interactive shell. It has incredibly powerful command (programmable) and file completion, and a host of other features that I can’t even begin to describe. You can look at my blog for zsh related posts.

I used to use the Fink packaging system for bringing precompiled unix binaries to Mac OS X. It uses the Debian dpkg and apt-get tools to do this. I was initially very happy with Fink, but I keep running into Fink related problems, so I gave up. Oddly I discovered that I wasn’t using that much of the Fink’ed software. I also looked at OpenDarwin which is based on the BSD ports system, but that also seemed to have problems.

Self Expression/Customization

Screensavers

I used to use a bunch of different screensavers, but since I started taking pictures, I just put a bunch of my best photos in a folder and let the screensaver cycle through those.

Tips and Info

System wide Emacs keybindings

The Cocoa Text Input system allows you to bind text editing commands to keystroke by placing them in a file.
gnufoo, todbot and Misaka describe how to use this capability to get Emacs like keybindings in most Mac OS X text widgets. I am using Misaka’s keybindings. These bindings use TextExtras, and I’ve included the completion fix described by macosxhints. TextExtras allows you to do all kinds of neat stuff in a text widget, such as run a shell script, complete based on other words in the widget, etc.

Firefox doesn’t use native widgets, so this doesn’t work in Firefox widgets. Todbot describes how to do Emacs like bindings for Firefox

If you want vi style keys, look at this page.

Command Line interface to the Address Book

I don’t make any apologies about being a shell guy, so I like to have command line tools for as much as possible. contacts lets you access the Mac OS X Address Book from the command line. I rebuilt this from source for Intel Mac.

say

One of the nice things about Mac OS X is that you have easy access to speech synthesis. This is useful for all kinds of notifications. Many of the Mac applications can take advantage of this. The say command lets shell scripts (and any program that can exec other programs) have access to the speech syntesizer as well. man say for the details. I use say at the end of long running commands to let me know that the run has finished.

Command line power manager

The built in command pmset lets you display and modify the power management settings.

Controlling NVRAM settings

The nvram command lets you modify the Open Firmware Non-Volatile RAM settings. I used this to make my boot sequence more UNIX like (console w/ scrolling UNIX stuff) by doing sudo nvram boot-args="-v"

Dealing with the Clipboard from the command line

Thanks to Wilhelm Fitzpatrick for this one. You can use the commands pbcopy and pbpaste to manipulate the clipboard from the shell or a shell script.

Manipulating services

The /sbin/service command will let you enable and disable services from the command line

What should I set JAVA_HOME to?

Apple’s Java is a different place that non Mac Java developers will have a hard time finding. Set JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home

lookupd

Mac OS X runs lookupd which caches all kinds of network related information, most notably DNS entries (no need to run a caching bind to get this). If you need to flush the lookupd cache for some reason, do sudo lookupd -flushcache

CUPS tricks

Mac OS X uses CUPS to manage printing. You can get to the CUPS control panel via http://127.0.0.1:631/.

I have a duplexing HP LaserJet 2200dtn. In order to get lpr to do duplexing, I had to do lpoptions -p <printer-name> -o sides=two-sided-long-edge. In order to get lpr to recognize the name of the printer (it’s connected over Ethernet via TCP/IP), I had to muck with entries in /etc/cups/printers.conf and I had to copy/rename ppds i /etc/cups/ppd. It was no fun, but it works.

Repairing disk permissions from the shell

To repair disk permissions from the shell use: sudo diskutil repairPermissions /

Updating prebinding from the shell

I understand the concept behind prebinding, but not the implementation. If you feel that you need to update your prebindings, you can do sudo update_prebinding -root / -force. I did this once and my system acted very weird afterwards. I probably won’t do it again.

Automatically loading ~/Library/Java/Extensions

Mac OS X automatically loads jars from the directory ~/Library/Java/Extensions. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is up for debate.

~/Applications

This one is a personal preference. I’ve installed most of my applications to a ~/Applications directory instead of /Applications.

A bug in Apple Perl 5.8.1

There is a bug in the version of perl 5.8.1 shipped with OS X. In order to get some modules to load, you need to do this:

sudo vi /System/Library/Perl/5.8.1/darwin-thread-multi-2level/Config.pm

Change ld='MACOSX_DEVELOPMENT_TARGET=10.3 cc' to ld='env MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.3 cc'

[ via ] MacZealots

readline support for Apple Python

Due to a conflict with readline’s licensing under the GPL, the Python 2.3 shipped on Panther is missing readline support, which you just plain need in the interactive interpreter. Bill Bumgarner shows how to get it installed

Making Mail.app work with a self signed SSL certificate

This Apple KB article describes how to use a self signed certificate in Mail.app without it asking you about the certificate each time. In step 3 where they say drag the certificate on top of KeyChain Access, they mean the KeyChain Access should not be running, and that you drop the certificate icon on top of the icon in /Applications/Utilities

Enhancing the Panther Calculator

The Panther Calculator ships with a bunch of hidden views. Macintouch reader Norman Palardy describes how to enable them. Search for his name to get the information.

An rm that uses the Mac OS X Trash

For those who engage the fingers before the brain (like me). Use the rmm script to get remove files to ~/.Trash rather than killing them.

Lookup Carbon Error codes from the command line

On Mac OS 7/8 there was a nice desk accessory that let you look up various Macintosh error codes. This MacOSXHints article describes a variety of ways to do this lookup from the Shell on Mac OS X. I ended up using the perl version at the end. If you know of an unobtrusive GUI version let me know.

Automounting SAMBA shares

I have a few of Linux boxes lying around the house doing duty as webservers and so on. Because we used to be a Windows household, each of those servers exports directories as SAMBA shares. I’m not really interested in setting up NFS (although maybe I should — but then I’d probably want AFS or CODA), so I just want a way for those shares to get mounted when I log in or when the MacBook Pro wakes up. It turns out that this is harder than it ought to be.

You can mount shares in the Finder via Applescript code that looks like this:

tell application "Finder"
    try
    	mount volume "smb://WORKGROUP;username:password@machine_name/directory"
    end try
end tell

Automounting of shares in /Network is controlled by NetInfo — you have to use the NetInfo Manager as described in this article. You need to supply a SAMBA url instead of an AFP url.

You can also mount using a shell script.

#!/bin/bash
mount_smbfs //username:password@server1/home ./s1home

You also want to unmount them when you go away / lid close

You can unmount non local volumes in Applescript like this:

tell application "Finder"
	eject (every disk whose local volume is false)
end tell

Running shell scripts at login and logout

Note that this is different from running the .profile or equivalent files, since they apply to shells started in Terminal, iTerm or the PathFinder terminal, etc. These scripts are executed when you login and logout of OS X. Mike Bombich, author of Carbon Copy Cloner (which I haven’t tried yet) has a pointer to doing it exclusively via the command line, or by using his free LoginWindow Manager program. This would be a good place to mount and unmount shares, etc.

Viewing any number of individual days in iCal

[Via macosxhints.com] Press Command-Option-{2,3,4,6} to view 2,3,4, or 6 days. Command-Option-5 shows the 5 day week and Command-Option-7 shows the 7 day week

Virtual Hosts and mod_rendezvous_apple

This article tells how to setup virtual hosts so that Apple’s mod_rendezvous will show each virtual host. Rendezvous access to websites is great for conferences and other ad-hoc in person networking situations, as well as mobile work groups. I wish that Firefox had this.

Quit Mac apps from the shell

Command line http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040623231530448
to quit applications. I’m using the nice zsh functions.

Easier command line Mac app launching

Shell script to make it easier to launch Mac apps from the command line

Tell Mail.app to send a message on a schedule

Andreas Amann’s Mail Scripts, a set of AppleScripts to make Mail.app do various cool things. The one I like the most is Schedule Delivery.

Getting to hidden folders in open/save dialogs

You need to know how to do this!

Using iChat to send SMS’s to a cell phone

The advantage of doing this is that the SMS reply goes to the iChat window, not your e-mail mbox

How to launch a GUI app as root

If you must, you must

Nicer separators for Safari Bookmarks

I’m using Safari a bit more

Rebuilding the Launch Services Database

These sorts of hints remind me of Windows…

How to solve Mail.app index problems

Because Mail.app does hang/crash.

Getting to the console from the login panel

This is handy when troubleshooting your machine

You can pipe the output of a shell command to “open -f” to get that output into TextEdit [via Macworld 10/2004 p. 87 ]

Some of this type of stuff can be done with Quicksilver

Docklet folders

Put commonly used folders into the dock for easy access

Turn on the Safari Debug Menu

There are a few useful items in the Debug menu – like import/export of bookmarks

Good Resources

• Faisal Jawdat’s OSXHack mailing list.
• Mac OS X Hints
• Gibson Research’s ShieldsUP!

A web based port scanner that you can use to test how well your firewall is setup. You have to scroll down the page and click the link (it gets generated according to your IP address)