Joseph Scott’s Blog

• macosxhints.com - 10.5: Disable Space switching on Command-Tab in 10.5.2 - I am so happy to see this
  Tags: macosx spaces howto

Remember my complaints about Spaces on Leopard? Well good news, with 10.5.2 there is a way to fix that behavior, thanks to the folks at Mac OS X Hints: Disable Space switching on Command-Tab in 10.5.2.

They focus on the fact that this option changes the behavior of Command-Tab, but really that is only one element. No longer does clicking on a URL in Mail force me to switch to a different virtual desktop. No longer does clicking on an already running app in the dock force me to switch to a different desktop. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have this option now. The only let down is that they didn’t include in the Spaces preferences UI.

On the off chance that the instructions this disappear, here is the core details from the OS X Hints site:

The 10.5.2 version of the Dock has a new hidden preferences flag for Spaces. You can now set OSX to not automatically switch between spaces when you press Command-Tab. This is great for me, because I like to divide things by task, rather than by app. For a given task, I’ll probably have a TextEdit window, a Terminal window, and maybe a web browser. By default, when I clicked on a given app, I’d be transported to that app’s space, and have to go through a bunch of hoops to get the new window in the space I wanted. Now, I can just Command-Tab to the app I want, and create a new window in the current space! Here’s the command in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool NO

After running the command, you’ll need to restart the Dock (killall Dock). To undo, change NO to YES, or use defaults delete com.apple.Dock workspaces-auto-swoosh. Note you’ll have to kill the Dock again for the changes to take effect.

The only thing really holding me back from upgrading my MacBook Pro to Leopard now is setting aside enough time to get it done.

• woork: Digg-like navigation bar using CSS - Add this to my collection of pretty rounded menu bars.
  Tags: css digg menubar

• HTML Purifier - Filter your HTML the standards-compliant way! - Makes some big claims, would be interesting to see it put to the test.
  Tags: html php htmlpurifier filter xss

• zfs - Trac - Source and binaries for ZFS on Mac OS X. Seems safe to say that we’ll see ZFS as a built in feature in some future release of OS X (10.6 perhaps?).
  Tags: zfs macosx filesystem

• woork: Digg-like navigation bar using CSS - Add this to my collection of pretty rounded menu bars.
  Tags: css digg menubar

• HTML Purifier - Filter your HTML the standards-compliant way! - Makes some big claims, would be interesting to see it put to the test.
  Tags: html php htmlpurifier filter xss

• zfs - Trac - Source and binaries for ZFS on Mac OS X. Seems safe to say that we’ll see ZFS as a built in feature in some future release of OS X (10.6 perhaps?).
  Tags: zfs macosx filesystem

• Recover Truncated PHP Serialized Arrays // ShaunInman.com - Another example of why databases should NEVER silenty truncate data. If the data doesn’t fit in the field then the insert/update needs to fail.
  Tags: php database

• Facebox 1.0 - Another lightbox clone in the style of Facebook. Requires JQuery.
  Tags: facebox jquery javascript lightbox

• Beastie Blog | Using Screen to log yourself. - I’ve never used the logging feature of screen, might use it next time I setup a new server though.
  Tags: screen

• GrabFS: The Screenshot File System - Not sure I’ll ever use it, but this is just an awesome hack.
  Tags: macosx screenshot grabfs fuse macfuse

• PuTTY Tray - Always important to have a good ssh client for your Windows box.
  Tags: putty puttytray ssh

• The Google Enigma - This was a really interesting read. Are huge tech companies like Google changing everything about business, or confirming what we already know? I have to wonder if Facebook will be going through a similar analysis one day.
  Tags: google business

• 5xm.org / Avatars - Plugin for Mac OS X address book application to download gravatar images for your contacts.
  Tags: addressbook macosx gravatar plugin

• Google Code Blog: nsscache: open source named services system release - Hopefully this will be usable in FreeBSD without too much work as well.
  Tags: nsscache nss

• Phil Windley’s Technometria | Fixing MacBook Pro Sleep Problems - Phil outlines the different states that you can enable for sleep/hibernation on the current macs.
  Tags: macosx sleep hibernate

• ButtonBuilder - Web Button creation for Mac OS X - Mac app for making pretty button graphics.
  Tags: macosx buttonbuilder graphics

It was nice to see Spaces on the feature list for Leopard (Mac OS 10.5). I’d been quite happy using Desktop Manager for virtual desktops on Mac OS X, but once Spaces was announced I think everyone working on virtual desktop software for Mac OS X pretty much threw in the towel.

Now that I’ve had a chance to play with Spaces I have some complaints. Two specific ones that really bother me, both dealing with application pinning. First, having application windows in more than one space. I generally have at least eight terminal windows (thank you iTerm) open in across several different desktops. When I tried to do the same thing in Spaces it would always open in the same desktop, the one where iTerm was first launched in. The “work around” is to open all of the iTerm windows that you want in one space and then go to the Spaces app (the view that shows you all of your desktops) and drag the terminal windows to the various spaces that you want to actually use them in. If for some reason you have to close one of them then you’ll have to go back to the original desktop that iTerm was launched in, create a new window, go back to the Spaces app and drag it back to where you want it. So it isn’t impossible to get around this behavior, but the method involved is really annoying.

My second gripe is one that I haven’t been able to work around at all. When you switch an application your are always automatically moved to the space that the app is in and it is given focus. The classic example of this for me is clicking on a link in an email which opens in Firefox. I generally will go and look at the site later, after getting through more email. Which means I want the link to open in Firefox, but be left in the same space as my email app. But I haven’t found a way to do this in Spaces, you will always be moved. What I’d like to see is that behavior being optional, perhaps only for apps that are assigned to a specific space.

So far I’m fine with everything else in Spaces, although a little pager on the desktop would be nice.

UPDATE 14 Feb 2008: This behavior can now be turned off in 10.5.2

I finally got around to setting up Synergy, sharing the keyboard and mouse between Leopard and Vista. I ran into problems trying to use Leopard as a synergy client, just wouldn’t work. So I took the path of less resistance and ran the Synergy server on Leopard and the client on Vista. That works fine with one caveat, I can’t seem to run the synergy server on Leopard as a daemon, it just dies. Now I just leave it up and running in the foreground in one of the many terminal windows I have open.

Aside from the oddities of getting it to work with Leopard I’ve been really impressed with Synergy. It is amazingly smooth when going from one system to another. I highly recommend it if you need a simple keyboard and mouse sharing solution.

UPDATE 22 Feb 2008: See Comment 14 by jimeh about SynergyKM. On Leopard I’ve switched to SynergyKM, which I’ve been really happy with so far.

• DMC & ME: 88 Miles Per Hour! - Nice that he already had the car.
  Tags: halloween costume

• Halloween 2007: LOLCat - Matt has a history of being dedicated to halloween costumes.
  Tags: halloween costume

• brad’s life - My Halloween Costume…. - Um, I’m not sure what to say exactly. Just check out this costume.
  Tags: halloween costume

• Yank and Paste: MySQL to PostgreSQL - MySQL dump has ansi and postgresql compatible options? Really? I’ll have to check that out.
  Tags: mysql postgresql

• Desktop Manager 0.5.4r1 - MacUpdate - This is a version that works on Intel Macs.
  Tags: desktopmanager macosx

The VNC client situation on Mac OS X has never been very good. I’m hoping that JollysFastVNC changes all that.

When I posted a brief comparison to Amazon S3 and Dreamhost one thing I didn’t do was suggest how one could actually use Dreamhost in a similar way as S3, like backups. For S3 Jungle Disk is one option for backups. Now there is a how to on backing up your Mac to Dreamhost (part 2).

Another approach would involve using MacFUSE with the ssh module. Have I mentioned how much I’d like to see Apple include MacFUSE in OS X by default? Well, I would, a lot.

What this approach doesn’t do that Jungle Disk does is encrypt the files on your remote backup. But on the other hand S3 has a file size limit of 5GB, as long as it isn’t between 2GB and 4GB. So really S3 on supports files sizes from 1-2GB and 4-5GB. Each method has pros and cons.

Google Mac Engineering Manager Amit Singh announced a port of FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) to Mac OS X: MacFUSE.

It would be really great if Apple would integrate into this OS X. It has a BSD license so that shouldn’t prevent them from using it. Making it work with the Finder would be helpful though.

Late last month there was a post on the zfs-discuss email list indicating that Apple may be porting ZFS to Mac OS X. Having read some of docs on ZFS this seems like a great idea. With the ability to easily purchase an Xserve RAID unit up to 7TB, having advanced file system abilities would be a major plus.

A fully loaded Xserve RAID unit runs just over $17k for 7TB. To hit that they use 14 500GB drives. It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to see them using the new Seagate 750GB drive (or something like it) in the future. Using 14 of those would put you at 10.5TB. Given the announced retail price of about $560 for these drives I’d guess that prices for such an Xserve RAID unit could come in around $21k.

There is one more piece to this puzzle that would be really great, an easy to use graphical UI for managing ZFS on OS X. This would be in addition to the CLI tools, not a replacement. So I’m going to wish upon a star for the Apple triple play: ZFS on OS X, a 10TB (or higher) Xserve RAID unit and simple easy to use graphical UI for managing ZFS. And since I have nothing else to do, I’ll predict that this will happen with in the next 12 to 18 months.