Dan Makovec’s blog

Just moved to DreamHost

TCH’s comparatively miniscule storage quota was getting on my nerves, particularly with my IMAP addiction.  So I’ve moved to DreamHost, where the hosting’s cheap and the storage and bandwidth abound.Actually, I moved my mail across to DH a couple of months ago.  I just moved my web across this evening so that I can finally give TCH the flick (as soon as the DNS updates, which I’m hosting at E-Info, propagate).It also gave me a chance to install Joomla and a couple of other pieces of software I’m investigating for work.  An interesting afternoon’s research. 

Facebook, meet blog

Very nice!
Just found a cute little Facebook app called Wordbook, which, as you would expect, links my Wordpress blog with my Facebook account. The best bit is that it’s given me some real insight into writing Facebook apps.  I’ve got two doozies I’ll be whipping up pretty shortly.

Remote file editing in Emacs

After all these years, I still loves me Emacs. I’ve been using it since MicroEmacs on the Amiga back in the 80s. So why is it that I only just today discovered Tramp?

It’s really nifty. Rather than editing a file locally, switching to shell, scp’ing it up to my server of choice, this little plugin lets me directly edit the file on the remote server.

I can simply C-x C-f, and type /admin@server1:/home/admin/myfile.txt, and the file is automatically scp’d down to my machine and opened in a buffer just like a local one. When I C-x C-s it scp’s itself right back up to the server! Not only that, but tab completion works - C-x C-f, /admin@server1:/ [tab] shows you the remote directory structure! I’ve already got my ssh client set up for passwordless authentication so I have no idea if Tramp asks you for a password if required - although I assume it does.

Oh yeah, because it allows Emacs to treat a remote file the same as a local one, it works with other extensions too, such as the built in Ediff (fancy seeing and merging the differences between your local and remote files?)

Piece of piss to install too. I had it up and running on Mac Carbon Emacs in about 10 seconds. It’s funny how the simplest utilities can be such great timesavers!

Adium doesn’t delete contacts!

Anybody else have this problem with Adium?

Select a contact and delete them. Confirm when asked, and *poof*, they disappear from your contacts list. Close and restart Adium, and they’re back again!

This shits me and has been doing so for the 6 months or so. None of the Adium updates seem to correct the problem. I’ve still got contacts in my list that I haven’t talked to in ages and have no intention of again.

Please guys, fix it!

Feeling lucky

One of the side effects of my little SEO experiment earlier this year is Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky feature.

Thanks to my efforts, any Google search for my name now puts my blog at the top of the search results, with the consequence that clicking the “I’m feeling Lucky” button brings my blog up straight away.

An extension of this comes from the fact that Mozilla browsers (Firefox et al) make use of the “I’m feeling lucky” feature using the contents of the Location bar as a search term if it doesnt’ resolve to a valid URL. Consequently, typing “Dan Makovec” into the firefox location bar now brings my blog up straight away. Cute!

Anyway, the Snowies were great, although not too snowy except for right on the mountain peaks. It was admittedly a little bit cold up in Thredbo, but the air was fresh and the sky clear. Brian and I spent most of our time walking around the village, sipping hot chocolates down at the cafe, or bobsledding on the steel track down by the village.

On Sunday we went for a long drive right through the mountains, stopping to admire the views of the alpine peaks and beautiful valleys.

We also got to check out the Murray 1 Power Station, one of the core parts of the Snowy Mountains Hydro scheme that brought in over 100,000 migrants to build post world war II. The stats of the scheme are amazing. over 100km of high pressure water tunnels, even more aboveground aquaducts, powerstations all over the place, and enough power to supply 70% of Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney’s peak electricity needs.

It also opened up a massive area of land west of the mountains for farming, as it takes control of the water forming from melted snow and diverts it to irrigation schemes to make otherwise uninhabitable land completely usable.

This trip to the mountains has got me thinking about getting a few friends together to go skiing. I haven’t been for over two years now so I’m pretty rusty (I snowboarded last time and didn’t touch the skis), and would love to go again. I wonder how many of my friends would be interested in a trip either to the Snowies or NZ for about 5 days this August. I’ll have to put the proposition out there and see who’s interested.

CoverFlow

OK, this is very cool. For those who like to listen to Albums via ITunes (on a Mac of course), CoverFlow gives you a far nicer way of selecting the album you want to listen to than scrolling through ITunes filtered tables. Check out the QuickTime video for a demo!

Airport Express 6.3 firmware update

Apple quietly released the 6.3 firmware upgrade for the Airport Express a few weeks ago. I’ve installed it on all 3 of my ApE’s and it appears to have resolved a very annoying problem we had with Airtunes intermittently dropping out. Just in case you’re experiencing the same problems, the update is at http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airportexpressfirmwareupdate63formacosx.html

Intel Macs arrive

They’re heeeeere! Apple announced its Intel Macs today, starting shipping next Tuesday.

The Powerbook has been replaced with the identical looking MacBook Pro. It’s apparently a bit faster (although nobody’s actually *seen* one of these things yet, so who knows?) with a higher res screen than my baby.

I think I’ll hold onto mine another year or two and let them iron out the bugs before switching.

In the mean time, Gizmodo’s put out a cute video to commemorate the event.

Linux in Windows

I’m sure they have a very good reason for justifying this, but it just looks like a wank to me.

IBM have come up with a way to run Linux in a Windows screensaver.

Go figure.

Catch up

Yes, I’m still around.

I haven’t been blogging for a while, mainly because I’ve had a lot on lately. Trips to Adelaide and Melbourne, a rediculously increased workload, preparing to move house, and something big, that if everything pans out the way I’m expecting this week, I’ll be able to mention publicly next week.

I’m thinking about setting up a mini-wiki for my own personal use (and for the use of any friends/colleagues). A colleague has one up that he uses to store handy notes to himself when he learns something new, and I think it’s a great idea. I’ve been playing with Wikis at work over the past month, and finally get them. More soon.

In the meantime, here’s a link to a great tutorial for setting up virus scanning on the Mac using the free ClamAV (we use it on our Linux servers at work). Here’s another one, to an AppleScript that lets Mail.app scan your mail for viruses and deal with it accordingly.