Hacks Tips and Tweaks for Cross Platform Geeks
This week’s edition of the Knightwise.com podcast brings another installment of Storytime. Sit back and relax to some tunes selected by the Cyberpunk Librarian, Daniel Messer, and two stories from the archives: “Offline” and “When Wanting is More Pleasing than Having”.
Links
Music
Credits
We dive behind the microphone and give all of you Apple users a slice of pie you don’t want to pass up on. We talk about making your Mac “Slider” friendly and how to put up ladders and crawl out of Apple’s walled garden. We have quite a slew of interesting tips and tricks on how to run “cross platform” applications, files, filesystems and connections through your favorite Mac. Learn and listen to this episode of the podcast that is filled to the rim with community feedback and contributions and great music by Youtube princess Juless.
Shownotes.
Tweak code (Copy and paste in your OSX command line)
#make dock appear instantatiously
defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 0 && killall Dock
#don’t reopen every file when you reopen your app.
#in preview
defaults write com.apple.Preview NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false
#in quicktime
defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false
#kill the dashboard
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
killall Dock
#show the path in the finder
defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES
#disable window animations
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool false
#enable direct scrolling
defaults write -g NSScrollAnimationEnabled -bool NO
#no more bouncy windows when scrolling
defaults write -g NSScrollViewRubberbanding -int 0
#set time machine backup to 1800
sudo defaults write/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 1800
#force expanded save-and-print dialogs
defaults write -g NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -boolean true
defaults write -g PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint -boolean true
#no 3d-glassy dock
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean yes
#show hidden files in finder
#defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
#killall Finder
#3d glassy dock
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean no
#make hidden app icons semi transparent
defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -boolean yes
#create a ‘recent items’ stack
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’
#screen grabs in jpg
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
Its that time of the year again. Where we sit down and look back over the last 356 days to try to make sense of the chaos that is is ‘Linear Time’. And it has been quite a memorable year, both personal and on the field of technology. A year where some had predicted that it would be the end of times and in many ways for some technologies .. it has been.
I think it is safe to say that the realm of the desktop is officially over and the period in our lives where we could quite clearly draw the lines between a computer, a phone, a tablet and a laptop, can safely be reserved for the history books. Watching the technological evolution this past year I have seen boundaries fall. I have seen the clear lines of segregation between personal data and cloud data fade away, watched tablets and laptops merge into one , seen privacy and personal data fade away . I have watched the number of emails in my inbox decline and have started talking to my phone. However the one fact that continues to amaze me is the death of the early adopter.
There used to be a time where I was part of the technological elite. The happy few that sported devices and services that where largely unknown to the general public. Where the specs of my hardware or the customisation of my software setups would be lightyears ahead of the general population of “norms”. That time has come to a close.
Case in point was an event I went to a couple of days ago. My hairdresser is quite a geek. Their quaint little salon lies in a small town that can be considered the veritable ‘Anti Cupertino’ of Belgium. An ageing population, low level of schooling and beautiful rolling fields of orchards make this a beautiful area, but also a digital “blind spot” where adaptation of technology is something that moves at a slow pace. So when she decided to have a lottery event where every customer who spent at least 15 euro got a chance to win an iPad .. I frowned a little.
But the day came it was time to draw the winning ticket. In the evening she opened up her salon and invited everyone who had a ticket for the big raffle. I attended more as a curtesy and was very sceptical about the turnout ? Who would even show up ? This was a rural town , these was an ageing clientele.. they would not be interested in winning and iPad ?
3 hours later, when the raffle was over .. I had chewed, swallowed and digested those words. Over a 100 people turned up for the event on order to ‘win an iPad’. Many of them had come to the salon several times (and sent over their family members as well ) to collect as many raffle tickets as possible. I had spent the last 3 hours involved in a couple of high level tech conversations about where technology was taking us. How big were tablets going to be, the fall of the desktop era, the unification between mobile devices and computers, the falling fame of Apple, stagnation of innovation and patent wars. My audience (and very vocal counterparts) in these conversations ? Women between 35 and 65 years old. Born and raised in this very rural town with direct affiliation with the technology industry except that they where a consumer.
2 years ago this kind of conversation would have been impossible. It would have never dreamed of explaining the difference between ARM and Intel processors to a pensioner. I would have never expected that pensioner to reply with the question “Why don’t we use Arm processors everywhere”.
But somehow this evening was very real .. a sign of the times that the realm of the geeks has just hit the mainstream. I saw people sporting phones more advanced then mine. A housewife of 49 told me that ‘Since Steve Jobs died, Apple hasn’t been the same” and it wasn’t at CES .. it was at my hairdressers.
So with great curiosity I look towards 2013, where the age of ‘Consumerisation’ is going to go on and on. Where the fat underbelly of the “Norms” will ride upon the technological plains that used to be reserved for the Geeks and the early adopters. Sure, we are still ahead of the curve .. but not by much, and they are catching up … fast !
So let me close off with wishing you all the best in the upcoming year ! Wether you are an experienced geek or a budding ‘norm’ who has only dipped his toe into the great digital ocean of progress. We have interesting times ahead of us !
I wish you all .. a fantastic 2013.
* Norm : ‘Normal citizen with no tech job or interest”
Links : Kapsalon Hairdreams.
On the very end of the year we give you a preview of the upcoming book “On the Edge” that is about to be published by Knightwise.com. In this weeks storytime we read 3 stories from the book all centered around the very absence of technology. Chill out and enjoy this episode and don’t forget you can get your hands on an advanced signed digital copy of the book by sending a donation our way. Sit back, Relax .. its Storytime.
Shownotes
The “Making OF’ screencast of how this show was recorded.
This week we talk Macs and Mommies with the Charming Melissa Davis. We dive off the deep end in this 90 minute interview on technology, education and how she uses tech in her daily life AND introduces it into those of others. A delightful spontaneous interview that you will surely enjoy.
Shownotes.
“A Reboot” The term has been used many times of the last couple of years whenever it was time to “reinvent” an older concept or tv show into a new fresh format. Take “Battlestar Galactica”, “The A-Team”, “Star Trek”. Many of these old but gold cultural icons have been re-invented into a fresh and novel skin pleasing new crowds with old content.
In many ways THIS is a reboot too. A long overdue overhaul of not only the Knightwise.Com website, but also of the whole Knightwise.com idea that is now finally coming together. For those of you who are new I’ll try to shed some light on the history of the website, for those of you who have been around since the dawn of time, its a little bit of a rehash , but here it goes. Many moons ago I started blogging about my everyday life. Back in 2004 that was “the thing to do” and wether you had something interesting to tell or not did not really matter. More and more those everyday stories got permeated with the use of technology and so this everyday “blog” turned into the story of life on the edge of real and cyberspace. As the audience grew so did the technology and aside from writing up posts everyday, I dove into the adventure of podcasting and later screen casting, bringing all of you the content you’ve come to know and love as the creamy goodness called “Knightwise.com”.
But when comparing the recent material on the website with the original material (that all got migrated over) from 2004 , I started to notice how much content is devoted to technology and “production of sheer content” and how the “backstory” (the “Life” side of the edge of real and cyberspace) has been pushed back. I have evolved from a blogger to a content producer in all those years. A good thing ? Maybe. Not all of you are interested about stories about our hamster, but do perk up when I talk about wiring its little wheel to a usb adapter for hamster powered tweeting. However .. the tech story would not be as interesting if you didn’t know the ‘life’ story behind it .. or would it ?
A major reason for this “shift” can be blamed on social media. I tweet, Facebook and instagram quite a bit, spinning out the yarn that is my everyday life onto the digital frontier, but lately have written almost nothing about it on the blog here. Now lets face it. You guys are not fans of long articles , its a miracle you’ve gotten this far, but I DO want to reach back to the old roots of Knightwise.com a little in this reboot, giving you some more insights on the ‘real life’ behind cyberspace.
So strap in for the ‘reboot’ of Knightwise.com as both the podcast, the screencast and the blog get ready for season three. And you might want to subscribe to the site’s RSS feed just to say in touch with what is going on.
So whats your take on this story ? You want just the tech stories ? Or does the “life” part we tell make the difference for you ? Give us your comments while we do our reboot.
It seems a long time ago. Somehow it IS like another world , another time. And yet, only twelve years have passed. A book review is what started it all off. My girlfriend at the time had to do a book review for school and asked me if I (since i liked to read a lot) would want to do it for her. I agreed of course and pretty soon the book “ Summer seventeen “ was on my night-stand. A book about a seventeen year old boy who bought a bike and went on a solo trip to Santiago de Compostella in Portugal. The story intrigued my .. enchanted me .. enchanted me. As the writer described the rolling hills of Belgium, the golden plain of the French massive and of course the spectacular alps. All by himself the boy cycled through an amazing adventure that was not about the destination .. but about the journey itself.
When I closed the book I remember looking up and saying to myself … This is something I have to do ! Three weeks later I had a holiday coming up and just like that I decided .. I was going to embark on my own journey. True enough Santiago the Compostella was a bit far but a look at the map offered me a very interesting alternative. The coastline in the north of France offered me an interesting route from a possible starting point in the Belgian harbor town of Ostend, all the way down to the French Le Havre, just above the normandic coast. It was may 1995 and the world was mine to explore. So three weeks later I was packed. Borrowing my brothers mountain bike, packed with saddlebags full of clothes and even a tent for emergencies I was of towards the big adventure. Me .. my bike .. and the unknown.
And it where different times. The only peace of technology I had packed into my gear was a walkman and a collection of mixed tapes to form the soundtrack of my adventure. No cellphones, No email, No gps .. Nothing.. Only me… the static hiss of analogue tapes .. music and the great unknown.
And that great unknown came to surprise me everyday , It was in the eyes of every stranger, waiting behind every rolling hill, dancing in the shadows of the morning sun. I remember the second day of my journey that took me from Calais to Boulogne, a 85 km trip along two of the most magnificent cliffs of “la Cote Opale”. “ Vous allez a Boulogne ? “ the old man said when I asked him for directions how to leave the city centre of Calais. “Qui” I replied. “ Sa monte et Sa decent” he chuckled indicating that flat terrain was not going to me on the menu today. As he pointed his crooked finger at the red line on my map indicating “la route de la cote” the first drops of rain drizzled down on the transparent plastic. Half an hour later I had crossed the adjacent town of Sangatte and was faced with a monstrous climb up “ La cape the blanc nez”. As the mist had rolled in from the atlantic the sight was absolutely intimidating. As far as the eye could see there was only the rolling meadows, desolate and deserted, huddled under the cold and wet blanket of the morning fog. Ahead the asphalt road twisted like a slick anaconda into the horizon. Writhing and twisting up and down and left and right in its blackened wetness. At the summit of the enormous mount stood the statue mounted at the top of Cap the Blanc nez. A gigantic black marble speer pointing into the gray abyss of clouds and fog. Defining the very desolate and lonely feeling that crept through my bones. I dug my head into the ground and started pumping the pedals to face this desolate landscape .. alone.
An hour later a speck of blue was to be seen pushing its way up the deserted road , mounting the desolate cliff .. Surrounded by fog and rain. An infinite speck in natures impressive painting. My blue rain-gear had perhaps protected my from the brunt of the rain.. Whatever motivation I had left had been washed out by the pouring rain , or had been blown to shreds by the gail winds of the invisible sea. I stopped. Almost at the summit of the cliff and parked my bike against a shrub. Shoes soaked, feed whet and cold and feeling thirsty yet drenched at the same time.. it was time to take five. I turned around to face distance I had covered and sat down on a rock because I was just about ready to give up. What had I gotten myself into. I was a good 450 kilometers from home. Amid of nowhere, unprepared for what i was facing ( I might as-well have brought a wet-suit to keep me dry) .. feeling cold .. hungry .. soaked and .. miserable. But then the beauty of it all struck me. I was there .. a mer human in a landscape that was devoid of another soul for hours to go. No cars .. no humans .. nothing.. Just the immense landscape.. the fog , the rain , the wind .. and me. And in all its desolate perversion the landscape enchanted me. Letting me feel that it meant to feel small. Sitting there with no means of communication.. No transportation except my trusty bike. An action radius of a 100 kilometers a day .. Totally vulnerable.. isolated and .. absolutely loving it. I sensed the magic of being alive. The sensation of how ones sense of distance expands when technological means of mobility are no longer there. How ones hearing sharpens to detect the sonnet of the faintest seagull on the invisible horizon when there is no Ipod to give you tunes. How one feels in tune with the immediate world around one when modern means of communication are no longer there. At that very moment I felt in awe for the world around me .. and had found an inner peace that has been absent ever since. The raging pulse of the world today … The digital roller-coaster we ride .. the very edge of real and cyberspace .. was nowhere to be seen. I was completely alone.. experiencing the infinite analogue experience of .. being alive on planet earth.
Oh Right.
Sometimes I think I should have become an inventor. That would have been something right up my alley. Sitting there with my think cap on, scribbling mathematical formulas on endless sheets of paper. Fretting around my Frankenstein-esque laboratory and suddenly screaming “ EUREKA “ whilst constructing some immensely complex machine.
The trouble is : I’m horrible at math, even worse at constructing anything with my hands and don’t have a think cap. But I do think outside the box a lot. From time to time I come up with a question of something I want done or something I need that requires fairly recent technology. Its not that I want a food replicator, a Hyperdrive or a Colonial starfighter for my collection. Sometimes I am fretting over an problem and conclude that the solution of the problem must lie in the combination of using technology X , software Y and method Z. When I can’t do it mysellf I step up to the guyz who know about X Y and Z and propose them my solution, naively assuming that they can give me the glue to stick X Y and Z together.
And then I get this blank stare. Not this look that they want to put me into a looney bin, no this look like … “ Oh My God .. thats a brilliant Idea , better not let him know “. Erm .. they mumbel , as I see the faint glow of an idea flaring up in the back of their heads .. “ That doesn’t exist yet “ they mumble. The undertone of their voice betraying that I have just made some kind of startling discovery. “ But thats not a bad idea”
Get is often.
And I get this often. Its not that i’m asking science fiction style solutions, but that in my mind I paste technologies, methods and a lot of “outside the box” thinking together to come up with the solution of a problem that I have. I don’t have the expertise of knowing HOW to glue it all together , but I just know it will work if I combine X Y and Z. So has a great inventor been lost ? I don’t think so. I’m sure that somewhere out there there are people who thought of what little old me has thought of . But the problem with the experts is : they know their field of work very deeply. I have a broader technological knowledge ( not as deep but a little wider) so I start to fish from a bigger , but more shallow pond. Thats how I come up with these crazy “all over the board” style solutions. And I don”t need a million for my bright idea, If i would get a penny for every raised eyebrow that I have conjured up on the face of the experts .. I would be rich already. So maybe i’m a genius, or maybe i’m insane. … I’m just hoping for a little bit of both.
The Knightcast Episode 32 : My Macbook.
Direct link to the show : http://www.knightwise.com/podcasts/kc060606.mp3
Summary.
This week we do an in depth 'Knightcast Style' review of the 13,3 inch tinkerbell of technology called "The Macbook". Is it all that its cracked up to be ? Is it realy that great or is it all just a fab ? We dive down into the bowels of this Mac laptop and see if it can tune tech into your way of life.
Shownotes.
Intro.
Part one.
Part Two.
Part Three.
Keep it simple.
If visitor statistics have proven one thing in the last few days, then it is that keeping it simple works best. A small article about configuring a Ubuntu workstation for grandma turned into a site-rush overnight. The moral of the story ? Linux is being presented as an operating system that is way to hard. Somehow I think that the one thing that is holding back de destribution of Linux desktops to the mainstream is … The Linux community itsellf.
Blame the community ?
Now don't get me wrong. Whenever I was in need of Penguin related information, I knew where to turn. Tons of forums, newsgroups and websites where jam packed with information. And they where more then happy to provide it …. Only .. it was presented in a way that was only comprehensible for “the inner circle of linus-ians “ They where friendly and nice, and the howto's started out pretty friendly and easy , but three posts later in the thread the learning curve had gone allmost vertical and they where talking Grep this and Ls that and what have you. When this sudden increase of complexity startled me and I asked or a little more directions I was redirected to another thread that dealt with that problem on its own. Its like asking somebody to help you because your car door is stuck, and as an answer they give you a manual in automechanics.
My wires are crossed.
Wireless support in Linux is a pitfall in that account. When it works out of the box , its fine , when it does not : You're screwed ! And this is sometimes the fault of the evil hardware manufacturers that don”t want to release their drivers (poor Linux heroes even reverse engeneer them to get it to work). But other times there IS a way to get it going, but you have to edit this, copy that, compile this , download that … AAArg ! By the time I have figured that out my laptop will be outdated anyway.
And once more all together : AUTOMAAAATIX !!!
An example that it CAN work is the famous automatix script, instead of posting a gigantic textfile with a complete list of applications you can make, they decided to script it in a little Gui so people could click and pick what they needed. Is it Linux-geeky cool : NO ? Would bash-brawlers frown upon this de-geek-i-fi-cation of technology ? YES .. Does it work ? Hell yes !
Strip the technobabble from the how-to and bring it down to playschool level : Copy this, past it there, click that. No pipes , no grep, no compile, no wget .. just copy paste and click. And the result : A newbie proof way that has done MORE for the linux community since its early rise a year ago , then pages and pages of “man” files have done in years. I'm not saying we don't need these because we do and they are a wonderfull work of patience and passion, but to somebody who just gets started .. they just don't work.
It can be for dumb people too.
And the other thing is : Using Linux does not mean turning it into some major command line operating system that will be able to run the planet should the white house ever decide to pull the 64 k of ram out of the presidents head. It can also mean using it for a simple system. Or a safe-surft computer. So you see my bearded linux-zealots ! Keep'in it simple is keepin it popular !