from the edge of the deep green sea

I am being lazy today, so I will show you via youtube how to create a USB bootable drive on OS X.

You need:

• An HFS formatted USB drive that holds > 5 GB data
• An OS X disk image (you can also drag the volume I assume)

So fire up Disk Utility and do this:

Compare that to installing Windows 7 on a USB stick…think you can do it in less than 30 seconds? I think not.

So I got a bit fed up with my Ecto for OS X, which was my previous blog editing software. At the beginning, it was OK, but sometimes it just pulls some wacky editing that makes me go into the html that it generates and try to get the whole thing fixed; which is not only frustrating but time consuming as well.

I have looked for a while, and the best blogging software there apparently is is called MarsEdit, which I am using to write this post.

You basically edit the posts in HTML format, but you have the option to access commonly used markup macros to make everything simpler:

This makes editing a whole lot easier for people who are not really into HTML.

I really like the dual pane view you get in real time on how your blog post will look as well:

To insert images, there is a handy media manager that allows you to upload directly to wordpress & Flickr. While this works great and is way faster than Ecto, I still prefer to use Skitch, the best snapshot taking utility with the gayest icon ever.

I still need to figure out some things, such as finding if there is a way to paste code snippets that will be formatted based on on what they are (C++, Javascript, CSS, etc.). But I have to say that it is snappy and very easy to figure out. Bu-bye Ecto!

Oh, and as an extra, you can add Wordpress categories from the program itself – +10 extra coolness points

Listening to LastFM is amazing, you can find amazing music there based on the music you currently listen to. I was growing a bit tired of copying and pasting artist and album info to find some of their music in torrent sites, so I wrote some applescript code that gets the job done.

This code ONLY works if you are listening to Last.FM with iScrobbler, because the script uses the iTunes applescript dictionary to get the current iTunes song, and iScrobbler does exactly that – play LastFM tracks on your iTunes.

You can watch the script in action in the following link: LastFMFinderinAction

So in order to use:

1. Open Script Editor and paste the script below
2. Compile the Code and save it as an Application so you can quickly invoke it, call it “FindLastFMAlbum” or something more creative
3. Download and Install iScrobbler
4. Tune in a station that you want
5. When you find hear a song you like, invoke the app, it will use artist + album parameters to find the album that has the song

The script:

property this_artist : “”

property this_track : “”

property this_album : “”

property serch_url : “”

tell application “iTunes”

try

if not (exists current track) then return

set this_artist to (get artist of current track)

set this_track to (get name of current track)

set this_album to (get album of current track)

end try

end tell

–Demonoid

set searchString to replace_chars(this_artist, ” “, “+”) & “+” & replace_chars(this_album, ” “, “+”)

set search_url to “http://www.demonoid.com/files/?category=2&subcategory=All&quality=All&seeded=0&external=2&query=” & searchString & “&uid=0&sort=”

open location search_url

–PB

set searchString to replace_chars(this_artist, ” “, “%20″) & “+” & replace_chars(this_album, ” “, “%20″)

set search_url to “http://thepiratebay.org/search/” & searchString & “/0/99/100″

open location search_url

on replace_chars(this_text, search_string, replacement_string)

set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to the search_string

set the item_list to every text item of this_text

set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to the replacement_string

set this_text to the item_list as string

set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to “”

return this_text

end replace_chars

Estoy vendiendo mi Macbook Pro de 15″ – fue comprado en Julio del 2008 (tiene garantía hasta Julio del 2009). Estoy pensando darlo en $3,000 así no más (en Icon ésta máquina está a $3319 http://www.icon.co.cr/shop/product.php?productid=16994&cat=277&page=1).

Los specs son brutales:

Para diseño gráfico y juegos, ésta máquina vuela con los 512MB de la tarjeta de memoria gráfica.

Tiene todo el software del mundo -porqué la vendo? Quiero la de 17″.

Si les interesa, mándeme un mail me@grumpytico.com

Tuanis!!!

This guy has the best tutorials:

http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=1557

I tested mine just now and everything seems good to go.%

+ +

I have bitched in the past about the WRE54G wireless extender. The damn thing works, but configuration is NOTHING short of frustrating. I had the WRE54G stored away for a good while until I needed to extend my wireless network a lot more. So I decided to dust out the old bastard and give it a run for its money. Here is what I did to set up my wireless connection with these three guys:

• Airport Extreme Base Station
• Linksys WRE54G Wireless Extender
• Airport Express

BTW, if you ever need to extend ANY wireless network, go with an Airport Express, those things are a blessing. Setup is a snap, you may even find a refurbished one at the the refurbished apple store:

After upgrading a haxxored iPhone to 2.0, you might be presented with the following message:

when trying to sync your mail accounts.

Found the fix in the modmyiphone forums:

Thank you AgentOrange!!

I call this one: “The Polygon Death”

Confetti Misery

It’s been a since I posted anything Mac related, and now that I am trying to get everything as organized in my life as possible, I’d thought I’d share on how I am trying to achieve a non-entropic life.

I know what you are thinking, well – there is iCal…yes, you are right, but it sucks. I dislike iCal for various reasons:

• There is not a way way to set a user configured default for alarms and notifications
• There is no way to quickly look at upcoming tasks without opening the damn thing
• Selecting Dates for To Dos need to be done via direct edition of dates and months – is it too hard to have a freakin’ calendar to choose the stupid date? I mean, even web applications have this component, why it is not present in iCal is beyond me:

Ok, now that the iCal rant is over, let’s see how I am managing to work more efficiently in all this mess.

Easily Add New Events Todos with QuickCal

The first thing I found was Quikcal. Don’t judge it by it’s look, it’s quite powerful. It allows you to quickly enter events without switching to iCal, bur rather by invoking a widget. Once you have the widget open, you can quickly set up an event or todo by using mere English:

It’s extremely small, unobtrusive, and efficient. It has nice extras such as the ability to have multiple time zones:

And there you have it! You can now enter/view events and Todos w/o opening iCal. If you want to have Growl notifications of your events, check OmniGrowl.

It’s not a short drive:

Tool can be found in the Find Your iPhone 3G web page.