Posts Tagged ‘Mac OS X’

Face the music

Spotify is a source of music that seems too good to be true, but it’s there, it’s legit, and it allows you to listen to pretty much any music you like for free.

The player runs on both PC and Mac (and even Linux under Wine), and it would seem to have an extensive catalogue. The Enemy, for example, is recent and not exactly mainstream pop, but they’re there to be listened to. (They’re good — why not check them out?)

Spotify also has a radio tab, where you can specify which genres you’re interested in, and which decades and the player feeds you relevant music (interspersed with adverts but hey, what did you expect?).

Stop press!

Spotify has announced that they’re allowing UK users to join without the need for an invitation — so if you’re based in the UK then the rest of this article is no longer relevant to you — you can simply visit www.spotify.com and sign up.

Sorry — no invitations left

I’ve handed out all my invitations now I’m afraid — sorry. This article used to say:

If you’re outside of the UK then Spotify is free by invitation only (if at all), and I have some invitations to give away. If you’d like an invitation then drop a comment at the end of this article and I’ll send you one, while stocks last

I’m not connected with the guys at spotify in any way, but such a worthy app deserves to be heard.

Once you’re invited

There will be a link in the email — follow that link, download the app, and you’re there.

The problem

If, like me, you have a Huey Pro and you’re using it under Mac OS X leopard then you may have hit this problem: once you’ve restarted your machine, the screen no longer adjusts its brightness automatically. If you start up and then quit the Huey Pro software then all’s well again until next time you log out or reboot.

It’s strange that (certainly in version 1.5.0) Pantone haven’t fixed this (surely the Mac is a major market for them?), but until they do, here’s a work-around.

The fix

The problem arises because Pantone Huey Pro‘s helper application isn’t started automatically. The fix is to manually add it to the list of applications that start when you log in.

You can’t simply select the helper application as it’s buried within the Huey Pro package, so you need to do the following:

Go to System Preferences->Accounts and select Login Items, then click on + to add an application.

Now, leave that window for now and use a separate Finder window to go to Applications and scroll down to Huey Pro. Then right click (ctrl+click) and select Show Package Contents:

Now browse to Contents->Resources->Support and select hueyAmbient. Don’t double-click it as that will simply start it up. Insteady, drag hueyAmbient to the Add Login Item window you opened earlier and that will select the hueyAmbient helper.

Now click on Add, and you’re done.

If you use Thunderbird on your Mac then you may wish to use an external editor to compose your email rather than the internal one. In my case I’m a long-time vi user so I find it convenient to drop into vi at times, when the editing starts to get non-trivial.

There’s a plugin for Thunderbird which allows you to do this, but setting it up can be tricky, so I thought I’d document it here.

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Having just moved my world from Windows (XP and Vista) to Mac OS X, I thought I’d share some of the differences I’ve come across which can cause irritation or even data loss for the unwary.

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If you’ve set up your MacBook to set its date and time automatically, then there’s a problem: it can’t necessarily connect to any one server from all networks — if you’re behind a corporate firewall for example then you’ll need to use the local NTP server, but that connection will fail when you’re out and about, or sitting at home.

The answer seems to be undocumented, but you can in fact type more than one host name or IP address into the Set date & time automatically field in the Date & Time settings — separated by spaces.

I have mine set like above, so it picks up my ISP (Zen)’s NTP server when I’m at home, the local NTP server if there is one (they’re usually called ntp0, ntp1 etc. or maybe just ntp), or pool.ntp.org if all else fails.

I was having network problems with Vmware’s Fusion (version 2.0.1) — Net BIOS / WINS name resolution failing, occasional long pauses in data flow, and slow startup of the networking in the VM after a suspend.

The fix is t go into the virtual machine’s settings, select Network and then change the setting from Share the Mac’s network connection to Connect directly to the physical network (bridged).

This results in your virtual machine DHCPing etc. in the same way as the Mac, rather than straining your VM’s networking through NAT running on the Mac.

If your network provides DHCP then changing the above setting may result in better, more robust networking.

Surely Adobe’s Photoshop and Mac OS X Leopard wouldn’t share a keyboard accelerator for something important, would they?

Yup Feathering a selection’s edge in Photoshop using Command+Option D (cmd+alt D) in Photoshop on the Mac results in the dock hiding itself. And if you’re an experienced PS user then you probably feather selections all the time.

The fix? Change the Mac OS accelerator for ”Automatically hide and show the Dock” to something different (I use cmd+alt+o).

System Preferences->Keyboard & Mouse->Keyboard Shortcuts

[ I guess this will also be true of other Epson inkjet printers such as the newer R900 and R1900 —Mark ]

I have an Epson R1800 (the A3 variant of the R800) plugged into a PC running Windows and shared on the home network.