Jabber, Emacs, Growl and You
26 May 2008 20:45
It may surprise some people to know that I’m doing most of my editing in Emacs these days. This post isn’t about why I switched over. I’m not one of these people.
I’ve been using jabber.el for a while and like it, but kept missing chats people started with me. I fixed this by sending jabber.el notifications through Growl.
Enjoy. If it melts your editor, blame someone else.
Category: geekery/mac/emacs
Autoplay DVDs in Mac OSX with VLC
04 Sep 2006 15:14
(Or anything else, really, besides Apple’s corporate stooge DVD player.)
I really don’t like sitting through ads on DVDs just because the DVD manufacturer turned off a bit on their disc. A DVD is a medium for storage, not a policy enforcement tool. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t see it that way; their DVD player is a quisling to the desire of the various organizations that can’t deal with me using a copy of content I purchased the way I want. (I have news for you, guys: I fast-forwarded through ads on videotapes, too. It was legal then and it’s legal now, and it will always be ethical. You want me to watch it, you make it worth watching, or does the free market end at your ability to enforce it?)
Oh, wait, this is a technical note, not a rant. Sorry. :)
Because of the above strongly-held beliefs, I wanted to use a different DVD player on my new Macbook Pro. (My other new Macbook Pro—this one hasn’t kernel panicked once!) VLC is great, but Apple’s DVD player would still pop up when I inserted a DVD. That was easily fixed: in System Preferences -> CDs & DVDs -> When you insert a video DVD:, select Ignore.
But could I do better? Could I make VLC open by default when I inserted a DVD? Google wasn’t terribly kind to me; it appears lots of people don’t want Apple’s DVD player starting for them (because it also honors the equally odious region-coding system, and they want to view their lawfully purchased anime and whatnot), but they all seemed satisfied with turning off autoloading and leaving it at that.
Well, it turns out you can make your application of choice run when you insert the DVD, and it isn’t even that hard.
You do, however, have to write some Applescript. Not even that much. If you’re using VLC, you don’t have to write any—just use this one (the text of the script is here). Put this script somewhere, and, in the drop-down box on System Preferences -> CDs & DVDs -> When you insert a video DVD:, select Run Script. From the drop-down box, select your script. You’re done.
Here’s part I of an Applescript tutorial to get started with the language. The useful part for our purposes is GUI scripting, so here’s some details from Apple on that. If you come up with scripts for other DVD players, mention them in the comments.
Category: geekery/mac
Macbook Problem Found
22 Aug 2006 14:59
The hard drive seems to be the culprit. I had a few more kernel panics, and the crash logs griped about the AHCI interface (which I now know to be something SATA-related).
The hard drive eventually fell into a persistent vegetative state, spinning up but refusing to do anything more than click. The machine wouldn’t even POST.
So now I’m waiting for a replacement, and using the Thinkpad again.
Don’t buy any computer, ever. Stick with paper. Maybe revisit it if computers are still around in 400 years. Until then, it’s just a fad.
Category: geekery/mac
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