Tagging, new approach of organizing
I think it’s time for me to start dumping an old traditional way of organizing my files using folder structure. Instead of categorizing my files in to sub-folder with label name corresponded to the files, I’m now much happier with a new way of organizing, using ‘Tag’.
Tagging gains rapid popularity over the past few years, after several major applications now support tagging system. Take Wordpress for example, the ‘Tags’ is making ‘Categories’ fading away.
Why tagging make my life easier?
spotlight comment
I still remembered how painful it was to find a single file from heaps of folders categorized in another folder, even though the spotlight might reduce the time a bit. Putting tag in ’spotlight comment’ is a good start. At the moment, I’m putting tag on everything on my Mac. If I want something, I just type keyword that come to my mind and spotlight will list everything that related to that keyword.
In addition, I can created ’smart folder’, and tell my smart folder to put anything relevant to the specific tag. For example, I can create a smart folder called ‘@study’ and tell it to put every file that tagged with ’study’ in spotlight comment field.
smart folder
Right now, I’m so happy with my file system with benefit from third-party software named ‘Leap‘. The tagging system totally replaced my old way of hierarchy file and folder.
Leap software
Happy tagging ^_^
My computer timeline
Computer timeline
I am having an idea to keep record of some stuffs that going through my life. I think it’s gonna be cool to look back after a few years. The first thing coming to my mind is “my computer”. Basically, I have changed my computer every few years, however I just found out after I plot a timeline that sometimes I changed my computer every year.
I found a very nice timeline web application at http://mnemograph.com
and my computer timeline is at http://mnemograph.com/app/viewer.php?uid=line_0c27341ae2b6b5fa733cec1a7ef1475d
Mac QuickPwn on iPhone 3G
Yahoo!! finally I got the Installer back on my iPhone 3G. After I bought iPhone 3G a month ago, I tried to jailbreak many times using Pwnage tool. The process went well, I can jailbreak my 3G but I can’t get signal back. I guess Pwnage tool needs iTunes to restore firmware back on it and iTunes can’t bypass the activation process. That’s why I loss the signal from Telstra.
However, after QuickPwn launched Mac version yesterday, I tried again. This time it works beautifully because QuickPwn doesn’t require iTunes to restore firmware back on iPhone. The whole process took less than 10 minutes, so it definitely worths trying.
Download Mac QuickPwn from torrent
Leopard Mail unexpect quit
Today my Leopard Mail quits unexpectedly, so I can’t even start my mail. I don’t think I did something to Mail App at all, it just happened to quit. I start to think may be this is something that MobileMe and Google Mail have something todo with it since I have only these two settings in my Mail App. Thus, I have to start all over by delete com.apple.mail.plist from ~/Library/Preference and start Mail App again. However, I have to setup all the account all over again.
Install Geoserver-Tomcat on Leopard
My next project is installing Geoserver on my Mac OS X (Leopard). First thing I have to do is to install Tomcat on Leopard. There are heaps of instructions on the net but it’s quite complicate. I though Leopard already came with Apache built in, thus should be easy to just add Tomcat on to it. I guess, I was wrong. Tomcat set up is more complicate than I thought. It requires lots of Terminal commands and environment setup.
Nevertheless, I’m lucky enough to find the easiest way to install Tomcat just one click from NetBeans. I download the OSX NetBeans pack which already have Apache Tomcat 6.0.16 bundle with it. This is the easiest way to install Apache Tomcat on your Mac, trust me. After Tomcat installed, I can check if server is running, by go to http://localhost:8084
Next and last step is Geoserver installation. I did followed the instruction on Geoserver website and it works just fine. Here is what I did
1. Download the GeoServer-x.x.x-bin.zip version from the download page on the GeoServer home page
2. unzip to the directory of your choice
3. Open up a terminal and go to the unzipped ‘geoserver’ directory on the command line.
4. Configure your Java environment, on recent versions of Mac OS X this is done by typing
export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home
5. run bin/startup.sh
6. Go to http://localhost:8080/geoserver to configure your server
Now you can enjoy simple Mapserver on my Mac. It took me two days to find the way to do it but 15 minutes for installation both of applications.
Cheers
Spotlight: the best launcher (I guess)
I was a huge fan of Quicksilver for years, however lately it does not launch some applications as I expect. Sometimes it just lists the webpages when I want to open an application.
Spotlight Launcher
Now I’m back to basic and it works so great. Minimal is better, I guess. Spotlight seems to improve after generations. In Leopard, I can launch any application as fast as Quicksilver using Spotlight.
Spotlight Preferenc
- Firstly, make sure that ‘Applications’ is selected in Spotlight system preference
- Then set up the shortcut that you usually used (in my case, I replaced it with my old shortcut for Quicksilver)
- Now when I want to launch anything, I just type the first two letters of that application.
- I think using Spotlight instead of third party launcher, make my Mac cleaner and reduce the Finder crashing.
Push Gmail on your iPhone
I’m a huge fan of Gmail, which can do everything: Checking your other POP mail, forwarding mail etc. The only one functinality that would be killed is “PUSHING”. I think we gonna see it soon, because Yahoo already did it.
I tried to get Gmail to push to my iPhone, with a couple methods (web2mail Exchange server, YahooPush). After hours of experiment, the best method is forwarding Gmail to mobileMe and let Mobile me do the rest.
I have 3 seperate Email accounts so far (2 for my work and one for Google Apps), so I use Gmail to grab all the email into one single email and then use Gmail filter to labeling it. This lables will shows up in Mail App and iPhone Mail IMAP folder as well.
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- Lable in Gmail
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- Different reply from Mail App
Then I just forward Gmail into my MobileMe account. This instruction is a good start. The trick is I have to set up SMTP for Gmail on iPhone in order to reply back the message via Gmail account.
For serveral other email accounts forwarding to Gmail like me, I have to set up fake POP mail so that I can use it to reply back via relevant email address.
Sync iCal with Google Calendar via CalDAV
I heard about Google supporting CalDAV a couple days ago but I just tried it out today. It’s so cool, just like I’m using IMAP calendar (not pushing though).
Everything you want to know about Google CalDAV and how to set up with iCal can be found at Google Support.
OK, here is how I make it to perfectly synchronize with iCal
- First you need to set up you calendar in Google Calendar
- I have setup the label for each calendar on my iCal
- Check the Calendar of each calendar by going to “Calendar Setting”
Calendar ID
- Now go to iCal preperence
iCal setting
- Now click on “+” sign to add new calendar
- Put username (your gmail address), password
- On account URL put “https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/YOUR_CALENDAR_ID/user”
- Replace “YOUR_CALENDAR_ID” with your Calendar ID from Google Calendar
Done, now you can enjoy the new functionality of syncronizing iCal and Google Calendar. When I add new event in iCal, it will appear on Google Calendar instantenously, so it’s really like “PUSHING”. However, it you create new event on Google Calendar, you need to refresh iCal to see the updated event. Nevertheless, you can set the refreshing time to be in the interval of 1 minute which is almost “PUSHING” also.
I think now my mobileMe calendar and Google Calendar are syncronizing in the same rate. Be careful, mibileMe, if Gmail come put with Push … nobody gonna pay more than $100 a year anymore.
Compose HTML email with Mail.app
Send HTML Email
Today I found a question in Thai forum about how to compose HTML email with Mail in Leopard. I think this should be easy, right? However, it quite tricky than I though. I assume that Mail 3.4 should provide some functionality to help composing HTML email. In fact, Apple wants to make composing email easy for beginners but quite inadequate for advance users. Here is what I did.
HTML file on Safari
- Create HTML file and save it on your computer
- Open that HTML with Safari
- On Safari use File > Mail Content of this page
Fix HDCP on HDMI controller AppleTV
After I build my AppleTV hard drive from Scratch, I did some hacking so my AppleTV now can play any file formats and use external USB hard drive to store media (500GB). The big problem occurred when I rented “I am a legen HD” from iTunes and tried to play on my AppleTV (connected to Acer LCD). There is an error said
“This content requires HDCP for playback.
HDCP isn’t supported by your HDMI connection.
Use the component video connection to watch this content.”
So I desperately cannot watch my rented movie unless I change my expensive HDMI to cheap Component cable. I don’t want to mess up with my cables which are quite difficult to reach, so I did a little google and found out that they are many similar cases over the net. I tried many thing but finally this is the step that works for me.
We need to update HDMI controller in AppleTV. Here are the steps.
- Go to http://mesu.apple.com/version.xml with Firefox (does not work on my Safari)
- Use Firefox to download 2 files (These file might change upon AppleTV firmware version)
hdmiutil
FW29050_20080205_dse_hex.sihex
- Copy those two files to AppleTV
- Use Terminal to run this command
$ chmod +x hdmiutil
$ chmod +x FW29050_20080205_dse_hex.sihex
$ ./hdmiutil FW29050_20080205_dse_hex.sihex
- Terminal should respond with this message
hdmiutil - HDMI Flash Utility Version 1.1000 (Mac)
For Programming Silicon Image's SiI1930 (DVI-HDMI) microcontroller.
Copyright (C) 2006-2008, NVIDIA Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Using default I2C configuration on Mac platform.
Temporarily disabling hotplug interrupt processing...
Firmware Filename: FW29050_20080205_dse_hex.sihex
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!! Do not interrupt power or hotplug displays during flashing process. !!!
!!! This might take a while to complete (approx 5 min for each file) !!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sector Erase 0%........10%.......20%........30%.......40%........
50%.......60%........70%.......80%........90%......100%
Programming 0%..........10%..........20%..........30%..........
40%..........50%..........60%..... (goes till 100%)
OK - file FW29050_20080205_dse_hex.sihex firmware flashed successfully!
Re-enabling hotplug interrupt processing...
- After unplug and re-plug, your AppleTV should be able to play rented HD movie.
Enjoy ^_^
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