Bluetooth Proximity Detection on OS X:
“One thing that I’ve been playing with off and on for some time is a small efficient little solution for handling basic Bluetooth proximity detection, specifically for being able to perform certain actions when a cell phone or other Bluetooth device is in range of my Powerbook.”
(Via The Technocrat.)
Great article, what a brilliant idea!
I’ve done something stupid (again!). I recently read a great article on avoiding the use of the float data type in financial applications. I said I’d forward the article on to a friend, but I can’t seem to find it. Does anybody know the article I mean? All help appreciated. Cheers!
[Update] I’ve found the article I meant. It was over at allocinit.net. I found it in a slightly unusual way however, that may be of use to others. I found the site to which it linked, and then used Google to search for sites that linked to the paper using the link: prefix. Lo and behold the site I was looking for was in the first couple of hits 
Automator was introduced with the launch of Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger), so I’m fairly late in discussing it here. However a recent post to my local Mac User Group’s mailing list got me interested. The simple question was “Is it possible to monitor a web page for changes?”.
I’m a big fan of the terminal, so I knocked together a quick shell script to check the page and mail me if anything had changed. I then thought, I’ll just run this every x minutes as a cron task. This would be fine for me, however I then began to think about less technical users- how could I package the script for them? A user on the mailing list had suggested an AppleScript, so I could have rewritten the shell script in AppleScript putting in an infinite loop to allow it to check periodically. I hate AppleScript (I’ll leave that for another post), so that option was immediately out.
Then it struck me- why don’t I create an Automator task for the action?
I had seen the sneaky option for a Shell Script Automator Action:
I thought I’d just sit down, cut and paste my script and be done before dinner…and I was!
The whole experience of creating my own Automator action was great. I referred to the Automator Programming Guide for required information, and surprisingly the whole thing took a little over an hour.
Then Automator’s only weakness became apparent. I searched high and low for a way to repeat workflows periodically. There was none in sight, and I was back to square one. I did come across the third-party Automator Loop Utility which serves the purpose.
In short I like Automator a lot. The ease of development of custom actions is fantastic and the developer’s documentation is well-writen (as always). But I refuse to love Automator until it will repeat my tasks automatically.
Technorati Tags:
OS X, Shell Script, Automator
I’ve just found out about a really neat trick at creativebits. If you hold the option key and drag you can select a freeform area of text. Cool!
Technorati Tags:
OS X
I’ve lost a link. It happened when I was browsing away, jumping from site to site, as you do. Anyway back to the matter at hand. The link I have in my mind refers specifically to a tool that backs up Xcode projects to a zip file. Does anybody know the tool I mean? Please get in touch!
The new screen shots for OS X 10.5 are looking pretty sweet, I cant wait for it to outdate Vista upon its release.
I’ve just come across some cool background images courtesy of Adam Betts. I like a nice plain background, and this hits the spot for me!
I have found X11 forwarding on the mac to be excellent, however there is one tip that I’d like to share.
I have used both the -X and -Y flags as arguments to the ssh command, and found -Y to be faster every time. So when using X11 forwarding on OS X remember to use:
ssh -Y adam@myserver.com
I finally stumped up the cash for a new Intel mac. I went for the 20″ model as I thought the extra screen size would come in handy. I ordered it with a gig of RAM in one Dimm and ordered more from Crucial. I threw in a Aperture too. I’d been meaning to pick up a copy for a while but couldn’t bear the thought of it running on my G4 powerBook. I’ll post a review as soon as I’ve had a chance to play.
Now the all important question- Do I install Windows or not?