Shhh... Go ahead. You throttle that CPU.

Lately I got sucked into looking at methods to throttle CPUs on PowerPC. It started out as a good idea, but my compulsion for completeness made it take on a life of its own and I probably spent way more time reading about it than necessary. But I've come out the other side, and now I'm reading a 580 page book about the Crimean War! Totally useful knowledge. I know how to pick 'em. Anyway, the point of all this is I am now here to share the fruits of my labor and tell you exactly why Orthodox religion and rampant Russophobia in Western Europe led to... I mean, tell you all the ways you can throttle your Mac's CPU.

Throttling CPUs often gets confused with the nice/renice commands, but they aren't quite the same. Nice/renice only prioritizes processes eating your CPU, but all your idle CPU will still be used. CPU throttling actually limits the amount of CPU a process can use. For example, if you throttle Handbrake to 50% CPU, Handbrake won't rise above 50% usage even if there are no other processes running. The practical use for this is mostly for laptops. Let's say you're doing some compiling or video encoding, something CPU intensive that takes a long time, but your laptop easily overheats or you just don't want to hear the fan going. You can limit the heat by throttling the CPU. Sure, it'll take longer, but your laptop won't give you Toasted Skin Syndrome.

For our PowerPC Macs I found a few ways of doing this, all from the command line. First, on Linux there's a program called cpulimit which has you enter a process name or PID number and the percentage of maximum CPU you want to set it to. A typical command would look like this:

cpulimit -e iceweasel -l 50

The "-e" is used when you enter the name of the program (iceweasel). You use "-p" when entering the PID instead, and you can also use -P to enter the absolute path (/usr/bin/iceweasel). The "-l" is for limit, and the 50 is the max percentage of CPU allowed. To exit, just use the standard ctrl-C.

For OS X, I found a couple of ways that work in Tiger. First, there's cpulimitrob. This is a script that someone left on Mac OS X Hints and does essentially what cpulimit does. It uses SIGSTOP and SIGCONT to pause and restart, thereby limiting total CPU time. After you download it and give it the customary chmod kiss (755), you change directories to its current location with the cd command and fire it up as root:

~ dan$ cd Development

~/Development dan$ sudo ./cpulimitrob.sh
Password:
Which process ID (PID)?
297
Sleep time in seconds?
.5
Run time in seconds (e.g 0.5 or 1 ?)?
.5
.................

and the dots continue on and on until you exit with ctrl-C. It mostly works well. The only hitch I found was when testing with TenFourFox, where the browser froze whenever I exited cpulimitrob in the middle of a page loading.

The other tool I found for Tiger didn't have any such problems and appears to exit more gracefully. It's called cputhrottle. However, the binary available for download isn't compiled for PowerPC, and to compile requires Boost 1.33.1. So being the completist that I am, I installed Boost with Tigerbrew (about 3-4 hours to configure and make) and then compiled cputhrottle from source. Using cputhrottle is almost the same as cpulimit, though like cpulimitrob, you need to run it with the sudo command:

~ dan$ cd Development/cputhrottle

~/Development/cputhrottle dan$ sudo ./cputhrottle 1309 50

The 1309 is the PID which you can get from top or Activity Monitor, and the 50 is the max CPU percentage. And again, killing the limit is as simple as ctrl-C.

In case you don't want to compile Boost and cputhrottle, I uploaded the binary I made to my Mediafire folder. It should work on Tiger, though I'm not enough of a compiling expert to say definitively whether it'll work on Leopard. You may also need to run "chmod +x cputhrottle" to make it executable.

Finally, if you just want to prioritize your processes so web browsing or somesuch isn't super slow while something else hogs the CPU, you don't have to use nice/renice from the command line. There's a very old GUI application for OS X called ProcessWizard that still works. In Linux, you can do the same with Gnome System Monitor.

Airdrop and Launchpad Clones for your Tiger and Leopard Desktop

Over the last few itinerations of OS X, Apple has included several new features that would seem to leave PowerPC users in the dust, but if you go looking you can definitely find alternatives that can get things done in much the same way. The two features I'm focusing on today are Airdrop and Launchpad.

Airdrop is a much-ballyhooed super simple way to share files with other Macs that are also Airdrop-capable. You basically just drag and drop what you want to transfer into a special Airdrop folder inside the Finder. Launchpad is a new application launcher that displays all your app icons onscreen in a way similar to Gnome 3 and Unity, but Apple would never steal from those basket cases, right?

It turns out Airdrop isn't so new after all, at least to those who have been using DropCopy. DropCopy is very similar in that it places a small transparent circle on your desktop, and you simply drag and drop what you want to send to another Mac that's on your LAN and running DropCopy as well. The newest version supports Intel only, but an older version is available for Tiger and Leopard. A mobile app is available, too. DropCopy also lets you transfer files long distance if you know the public IP address of the Mac you're sending to.



Launchpad's doppelgänger is called Bevy (above), and it too throws all your application icons in front of you, only in this instance they're organized by folder (Applications, Utilities, and Developer, etc.). A lot of people seem to be annoyed with Launchapd, or at least ignore it, but having a visual representation of all your applications is sometimes useful, and Bevy offers a good alternative to do that. It's nagware, but it's only $9.95.

Now if we could only get Mavericks' dual monitor support, we could...Oh, wait. Dual monitor support was originally effed up in Lion, so we don't need that fix. Glad to see Apple's finally catching up to the Tiger era.

Putting the Christmas Spirit on your Mac Desktop

It's about that time of year again. Time to buy buy buy, and hope you better get something out of your investment at least in the form of a carton of cigarettes or something useful. Too cynical? Right. There's what we say we want for Christmas and what we really want. Anyway, in case that sounds too transactional for your delicate sensibilities, here are a few ways you can put the spirit and cheer and decoratáge of Christmas onto your OS X desktops.

Nothing says Christmas like Christmas lights, so to get those on your desktop you can get MacLampsX. It works on Tiger PowerPC on up, and you can also check their page of custom bulbs to download if you want to add to the default.

Falling animated snow is also doable, with Snö. It can use a lot of CPU, so you'll probably want to dial back from the defaults.

And to round it all off, there's a PowerPC screen saver conveniently called SnowSaver. This one doesn't use a ton of CPU, while managing a somewhat impressive 3-D look.

Here's what MacLampsX and Snö look like together on a Tiger desktop. The Badlands wallpaper probably isn't entirely appropriate, but this is America (in my part of the world).



I looked for some of this stuff on Linux, too, and there's something really cool looking called XSnow, but it's not compiled on Debian for PowerPC and I didn't know how to build it. I'll just have to imagine it, like Santa Claus and his lair, or whatever all that business is.

UPDATE: Thanks to Charles in the comments for pointing out X-MasTree, a blinking light Christmas tree for you desktop (also features a days till Xmas badge). The only download left on the internet seems to be on this Tucows ftp archive. Direct download is here.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Your iTunes Killer

As long time readers may know, I've been on a never-ending quest to find a music player that I like, or to put it another way, that I don't actively dislike. I mostly stuck it out with iTunes over the years, having found the alternatives lacking. This hasn't been a problem in Linux where there's much more choice, including the excellent Audacious, but in OS X things are a bit more constricted.

I did switch to Cog more recently, and I think I wrote about it, too. The deal breaker previously was its lack of an equalizer, but since I found how to enact a global equalizer, I switched. Still, though, Cog didn't support radio streaming and I had to rely on Mplayer from the command line or go back to iTunes for that feature.

Was this the end of the road? Was I to be forever denied local playback and internet streaming in one appealing package? Would I ever find audio nirvana?

Well, I have found my nirvana and it is called CMus.

That's right, CMus is a console player. No mouse, just key commands. It plays mp3, ogg vorbis, flac, aac, the works, and also streams internet radio. And for icing on the cake, it's cross platform. On both Linux and OS X, you just use your package manager to install, so if you're on OS X you'd use either Macports or Tigerbrew.

After installing, the easiest way to get started is by pressing 5 for the browser pane and navigating to your Music folder. Press "a" to add the songs to your library and then press 1 to go to your library in tree view (press 2 for your library in list view). Press return to start playing, or use the arrow keys to choose the artist, the spacebar to expand the albums tree, and then tab to switch the active cursor to the album pane.

To add a radio station to your library, type ":" without quotes to activate the command line section, then "add http://..." and press return. It should be the first item in your library, called "<Stream>". Alternately, you can use the browser pane to navigate to any .m3u files on your hard drive and add them with the aforementioned "a".

The resources CMus uses are practically nonexistent. It's also very fast to load libraries and playlists, and speed is the main advantage of console programs such as this. The downside is that they can be hard to master with many key commands to memorize, but music players aren't all that complex when you get down to it. Mostly, you play, stop, pause, skip, and shuffle, etc. After a quick read of the manual, I got the hang of it in about a minute.

I don't think I'll go full-on frugal computing and start using console apps for all my needs, but in case you're inclined to explore that option there are tons of console alternatives to your GUI apps. There's Alpine and Mutt for email, ELinks for web browsing, also Floodgap's more famous software title, TTYtter, as well as LFTP, SLRN, Pianobar, and more. If you use the functionality of any of these often, you should take a look. You might find yourself surprised.

Sync Files Across Your Macs With Unison

Awhile ago I wrote about Bittorrent Sync, basically your own bittorrent network for syncing your files on your home network. I wrote about it because they included a PowerPC binary with their Linux downloads, but unfortunately their OS X client required Intel so if you wanted to use this on your PowerPC Macs, they all had to be running Linux.

This left me still out to sea. I use a mix of Tiger and Debian machines, so Bittorrent Sync ultimately wasn't for me (it's also closed source and unavailable for security auditing). So having tired of SFTPing my files around and expending brain power to keep all the versions straight, I went looking for another option, one like Bittorrent Sync where I could sync on my home network and without involving the cloud.

At first I looked at rsync, venerable I guess you'd call it, not old :), but that offers mirroring, not two-way syncing. Finally I stumbled upon Unison, an rsync-like utility that's exactly what I need, two-way syncing, and it's multi-platform--Windows, Linux, OS X, everything.

You can get Unison in command line form or as a GUI. The command line can be installed with Macports or Tigerbrew on OS X and is in the Debian repositories. Debian also has the GUI, unison-gtk. Does that leave OS X out of the GUI party? No sirree. Universal binaries for Tiger and Leopard have been made available here, and the thing to note is you need the same version on all computers. Meaning if you install 2.32 on Tiger from the previous link, you also must have 2.32 on every other system you're syncing with. Fortunately Debian makes multiple version available for just this situation, so now I have 2.32-12 on my Tiger laptop and 2.32-52-gtk on my Jessie system (the 12 and 52 don't matter).

Using Unison is as simple or as complex as you want it. You can start by using the GUI app and then graduate to the command line for more complex operations which you can automate with cron jobs. But for now I'll give you a quick rundown of getting started with the GUI.

First, it's recommended you move the folders you want to sync over to your target computer so you start out with identical folders. Then you start up the Unison GUI and create a profile. Here's an example for syncing my Tiger home folder with my Debian home folder on an iBook:



About the "Remote" part, note this is all done over SSH, so make sure you have Remote Login enabled in your OS X Sharing Preferences or have openssh-server running on Linux. Also note that SSH gives you rock-solid security (unless your password is "password"). For "Host", it could be xxx.xxx.x.xxx or your computer's hostname.

Now save it, but say you don't want to sync everything in your home folder. What if you only want Documents, Music, and Pictures synced? You could create a profile for each folder or mess around with symlinks, but a much better way is to edit your .prf file to define those paths. In OS X you'll find it in ~/Library/Application Support/Unison, and in Linux it's in ~/.unison. Here's a simple example of my "powerbook to icebook.prf":

# Unison preferences file
root = /Users/dan
root = ssh://dan@icebook.local//home/dan

# folders to sync
path = Documents
path = Music
path = Pictures

# filenames to ignore
ignore = Name .DS_Store
ignore = Name .localized

# save log file somewhere, anywhere but the home
# folder
logfile = /Users/dan/Library/Logs/unison.log

The first three lines were created when we saved the profile in the GUI, but the rest were added. In the second section, I define the paths of the specific folders I want synced (you don't have to write out the full path as the root is already defined in the first section), the third section tells Unison to ignore those hidden .DS_Store and .localized files in OS X, and the last section tells it where to save the log file (the default is your home folder).

The only trouble I had was with spaces in the folder names. Say if I wanted to enter "path = Pictures/vacation photos" it won't work. Adding \ or enclosing with quotes didn't work, either, so all I can think of is to add an underscore in those situations.

The procedure for all this is pretty much identical in the Debian GUI.

So now you want to get your sync on. So you start up Unison, double click your profile and perform the first syncing. Remember, you're starting out with identical folders, so the first sync is just Unison recording what's what. The only thing you have to note is the direction of the arrows. --> means local to remote and <-- means remote to local. Mark all changes by clicking the left-to-right arrow, then click the "Go" button and it should finish shortly. From then on Unison should only transfer the files that have been changed, and only the parts of those files that need updating. That way you're not uploading huge files when you just need to update small parts of them.

This is also really useful for syncing to a USB thumb drive. You wanna minimize the writes, right? When setting up a profile for that, you just use the "Local" option instead of "Remote" and enter the drive's path. There are a couple of cautions for us PowerPC users, though, in syncing to a USB drive formatted as FAT32. Unison will give you errors about permissions and resource forks, so you want to add the following lines to your thumb drive profile:

perms = 0
rsrc = false

These will tell Unison to leave out permissions and resource forks. And one more thing, when syncing make sure your drive is actually mounted, because if it isn't Unison will think the sync folder is empty and will attempt to delete your files. :o

Anyway, here are a few more links for further reading, including all about syncing more than two computers--star topology--and all that. Have fun!

Unison Manual
UNIX/Linux: HowTo Use unison File Synchronizer
File Synchronization with Unison
Unison - ArchWiki

Cool Legacy Apps for OS X

Some apps out there never seem to die. Their developers subsist on a near-lethal cocktail of cigarettes and Red Bull to keep burning the midnight oil so they can deliver new version after new, year after year. How long has Audacity been around? Or GraphicConverter?

However, some developers want off that train and they drop out. Understandable, but that doesn't mean their software has to die with their masochism, I mean, ambition. With that in mind, I thought I'd give a run-down of several software titles whose development has ceased but are still useful and very much not available in the App Store. Let's do this list style:

Bean - An extended version of TextEdit with added features such as live word count, full screen editing, inline graphics, and more. A great, fast alternative to Microsoft Word.

CocoViewX - An iPhoto replacement without the bloat and bizarre file management, CocoViewX offers photo browsing, meta data editing, camera import, and html export.

Cog - This was a music player that I tried out a few years ago in my never-ending quest to replace iTunes. I didn't stick with it because it lacked an equalizer, but now that I have a global equalizer it's no longer an issue and I'm iTunes-free. Cog also properly supports ogg and flac files and handles large libraries with ease.

Desktop Manager - Spaces alternative for Tiger. It just works.

FormulatePro - Want to edit pdf files but don't want Adobe products clogging up your computer? FormulatePro is a good lightweight tool for this. You can insert text, check marks, and also make use of simple drawing tools.

HimmelBar (link updated) - This is an application launcher that sits in your menubar. It looks for applications in common folders like Applications (duh!), Utilities, and Developer and puts them all in one menu for easy access.

Perian - Not an application, but a plugin for Quicktime Player, it lets you play many many many different video formats.

Play - Very similar to Cog, and people on their user forums observed that Play just sounded better than the competition.

Seashore - Photo editor inspired by GIMP but much more lightweight (and more modest in features). Supports layers and you can also save in GIMP's native xcf format, among others.

I'm sure there are many more for the graveyard, but just because the projects are dead doesn't mean we can't still put them to good use. And we can remember fondly when there was a vibrant freeware/shareware community for OS X before it was destroyed by the App Store. Cheers!

Software Synths on OS X

A few posts ago I mentioned Linux software synths and the wide range of choices on that platform. The unsaid implication was that choices on OS X PowerPC suck by comparison, but that's not totally true. So I thought I'd point out a few software synths freely available on Tiger to get your inner musician musicianing.

Of course, pro DAWs like Logic come with their own synths, but if you're looking to get your feet wet, these plugins should keep you occupied. And they're all AU plugins, not standalone synths, so they'll work in an AU plugin host like GarageBand.



First is Automat. It's a three oscillator synth with an easy to use interface, a few dozen presets, and a great randomizer button to produce sounds you'd never think of yourself (mostly for good reason). This looks good for a beginner, though that doesn't necessarily mean you'll outgrow it.



Next is TAL-Noisemaker. Its sound is "fat and full" and especially good for baselines and also for arcade sounds. Its GUI is a bit CPU intensive, but it comes with a couple hundred presets and plenty of filters. Download the .component.zip 32bit version.



Finally there's Crystal. I had a hard time finding a version 2.4.9 that would run on Tiger, but I finally did here (there's also a CNET download link that says it's 2.4.9, but it's actually 2.5.1 which requires Leopard). Crystal is more complex than the previous two. It's got a manual I'll need to study, but it's been around forever and many people swear by it (not at it).

And finally I'll leave you with this video telling you everything you need to know to make electronic music:



How To Make Electronic Music Tutorial BY DJ NICO MALO

"Minimal effort and no talent." This man is my god.

A Press Release From the Future

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Cupertino, California--May 4, 2018--Apple® has unveiled a developer preview release of the next incarnation of their popular operating system OS X code-named "Persian Kitty."  The release comes ahead of schedule and includes a bevy of new features ported from their iOS such as lick gestures and scratch 'n sniff.

"We're beyond excited about the new features," said Apple CEO Tim Cook.  "We're putting the finishing touches on a journal app that not only looks like moldy old paper, it smells like it, too!"

The new operating system is targeted for official release in September at a retail price of $159, though its moniker at this point is still a matter of contention.  "We're not completely sold on the Persian Kitty name," added Cook, "but we're running out of cats."

As with all new releases, users of certain hardware, i.e. Macs made before 2017, will be unsupported* and must upgrade.  In addition, this release marks the end of several legacy technologies such as the Finder, menus, and preferences.  Login will be disabled without a credit card number.

Apple designs Macs, the most bestest computers in the world, along with OS X, iMWatchingYou, iForYourOwnGood, and iMustNotResist.  Apple leads the digital music revolution with its credit card swipe iPods, and continues to reinvent everything from phones to toasters to even the hair on your ass.  Also, too--iPad.

*Except for only the most condescending of security updates.

TOR on Tiger

(UPDATE: This post is outdated. Please see this post for more current information.)

Well, it's been an eventful last few weeks on the internet with the shutdown of Megaupload, as well as news that Twitter will censor tweets, the FBI is seeking social network monitoring software, and some university student may be extradited from the UK to the US for hosting links on his website.

With all this going on, I thought it might be a good time to try out TOR, the open source privacy software that anonymises your internet activity from prying governments or anyone else. You may have already heard of it as a way to get around the Great Firewall of China. The bad news for us PowerPC users is the browser bundle TOR offers, a specialized version of Firefox bundled with other utilities that you just start up and run, is Intel only. The good news is they offer a "Vidalia Bundle" without the browser (you configure your preexisting browser) that works on PPC and Tiger here. If you're insane you can also compile it.

Vidalia is the name of the GUI utility to set up TOR on your computer, and it's pretty straightforward. The only glitch I saw was there's no dock icon like they said there'd be, only a menubar icon. Maybe a Tiger bug. The only difficult thing in setup was knowing which proxy settings to change in your web browser, but thankfully that task was taken up by the suitably named SimpleHelp.net with the simplest and easiest explanation you'll ever find (pictures, too!).-->OUTDATED: go here instead. You can also look here to find instructions on how to set your proxy system wide. Then it's a matter of going to their test page (alternate test page here) and seeing if you're now anonymous.

I thought performance was pretty good. I'd heard the TOR network was slow as a snail, but that wasn't my experience. Web surfing was a little sluggish, but not too much. Now, it's important to note here that the TOR network does have its limitations. It wasn't made for filesharing, so using it to download torrents is considered a douche move that only slows the network for others. If you want to download TV shows or whatever anonymously, use torrents with a VPN or get a usenet account with SSL support, but let's leave TOR to non-filesharing activities like leaking sensitive documents, mmkay?

On a semi-related note, there's a program out in the wild called Reaver that uses a WPS vulnerability in your wireless router to snatch your WPA and WPA2 passwords. This is not a privacy enhancing program. The solution is to disable WPS in your router, but on many if not all Linksys and Cisco routers, you can't do it. And Netgear users report problems, too. So ultimately you'll have to replace your manufacturer's firmware with open source firmware like DD-WRT which doesn't support WPS.

That was mildly depressing.

UPDATE:  TOR developers have reported a previously unknown security vulnerability that could expose your IP address if you use websocket connections in Firefox.  They've updated their browser bundles with a bugfix, but not the Vidalia bundle for PPC.  I couldn't figure out if the bug applies to just the browser bundle users or to all others who are using external browsers (puzzlingly, TOR has no support forums), so I guess the safest thing is to disable websockets in TenFourFox by changing network.websocket.enabled to false in about:config and restarting TenFourFox.

Posting Binaries on Usenet

I've written about Usenet before, as in downloading off Usenet, but I've never gotten around to posting binaries or feeling a need to. Until now. I saw a request for an old movie that I had as an ancient VHS rip, and the request looked so lonely I just had to fill it. But how? I never posted to Usenet before, so I fired up MT-Newswatcher X and thought it would be a simple process. Instead I found a deal-breaker. First, it doesn't encode files in yenc. Annoying, but not a death blow. But then I found out it doesn't post filenames longer than 31 characters. Hold on. Now I like Mac OS 9 just as much as the next person, but do we really want to go back there? No, no, no. There has to be another option.

So I went looking, and there aren't a ton of choices for OS X. There's Unison by Panic, Inc. (Panic, huh? As in kernel panic? Oh, wait, that's Unsanity). There's also Thoth by living legend Brian Clark. Both of these are shareware, and there's also a shareware utility called Cocoa Newspost whose developer website is missing, so support may have ended.

I also looked at the possibility of using Pan on OS X, but while deciding to steer clear of that PITA, I learned about a command line utility called Newspost. A command line utility? No simple GUI, having to learn complex text commands, having to compile it yourself? Baby, you're a black hole and I'm a nice plump juicy class G star!

Newspost's website calls it a "usenet binary autoposter for Unix," but there is no statement it runs on OS X. However, OS X is Unix, so why not compile it and try it, right? Well, what do ya know, it worked! All it took was a simple make && make install, no configure script necessary. The only glitch was man newspost returned No manual entry for newspost. Don't know why that is since it's in /usr/local. Oh well, the man page is here on the internet, too. Now let's get on to using it!

There are basically two commands you need to enter. First, setting your defaults (just once), and second, the command to post (for each time you post). Setting your defaults is the stunningly complicated and labor intensive task of typing this:

newspost -f emailaddress -F personality -o organization -i newsserver -u username -p password -z 119 -d

Replace emailaddress with the email you want other users to see, personality with the name you want other users to see (enclose it in quotes if it has a space), organization with your organization, newsserver with your Usenet news server address, username with your Usenet account username, password with your password (please make it more complex than "password"). The port number is always 119, and the trailing -d says to make these defaults.

Next it's time to post something, probably to alt.binaries.test for starters. If you're posting a single file, this will require the stunningly complicated and labor intensive task of typing this:

newspost -s "subject of your post" -n alt.binaries.test -y /path/to/file

Posting multiple files can be done like this:

cd to /directory/of/files

newspost -s "subject of your post" -n alt.binaries.test -y filename*

or:

newspost -s "subject of your post" -n alt.binaries.test -y *.mp4

The "filename*" means you're posting all the files in that folder with the same filename but with different extensions (like a split mp4 with a bunch of pars and an nfo). The "*mp4" means posting every file in that folder with an mp4 extension.

And that's pretty much it. The man page and this how-to pretty much tell you all you need. So happy posting! Just don't break Usenet.

TenFourFox 9 is Out!

Well, a release candidate, anyway. But it's the debut of methodjit which will come to our rescue now that tracejit is going the way of the dodo, and as a result our javascript scores won't take a massively negative hit. All the details are blogged by Cameron Kaiser, the lead developer, here (download link included), so go read for the compiler pr0n. But I can report to you my Dromaeo scores are about ten percent faster from version 8 to 9 on my ancient Sawtooth, and Sunspider shows a 25 percent improvement. Not bad work;)

On the GUI side, the only difference I see is a de-coloring of the stop/reload button. It used to be red/blue, but now it just blends with the white of the menubar. I've seen just one rendering problem, unfortunately with Blogger's Dashboard interface, so I'm writing this post in Safari. I could just try clicking the "Try the updated Blogger interface" link that's been staring at me for several months now, but that wouldn't be living up to my namesake. I think I'll deploy a corollary of my tried-and-true life strategy Ignore It Until It Goes Away. In this case, I'll Wait It Out Until It Comes Back. I'm sure it'll work.

UPDATE: The Blogger problem is a Firefox problem, not just TenFourFox.

OS X Stocking Stuffers

Since it's coming up one Christmas, Hanukkah and whatnot season, I thought I'd toss out some little OS X nuggets I've discovered over the years. These aren't full-fledged features per se, more like little stocking stuffers that not everyone is aware of:

Control-Click any text in cocoa apps for a quick dictionary/thesaurus definition. Just choose "Look Up in Dictionary" from the resulting menu and you get a mini popup dictionary. Very handy for when I want to look up a quick synonym.

Command-Click filename in window title bar to get the full path. This is useful if you have more than one partition or you're just disorganized in general.

Command-Click and drag menubar items to change their order. For the proper feng shui.

Shift-Click the Force Quit menu item to force quit current application. This is a nice easy way to relaunch the Finder.

Command-Option-Control-8 reverses or inverts screen colors. This is great if you're reading a black-background web page with white text and it's killing your eyes. Just hit the above key combo and you have black text on a white background. Also this can be good for dimming your screen since most of your screen is usually white or light colors. Like if you want to use your laptop in bed but you don't want to wake your partner after a particularly rigorous lovemaking session, just hit the keys and you have a nice dark screen that still retains contrast.

Also, dragging your home folder into the dock makes the Finder much more usable.

Now if only I could find a way to remove the existential taunting from a blinking cursor.

SVN, Git and Xcode for Tiger

So I'm having this nightmare trying to compile the latest development version of mplayer on Tiger, and I plan on writing about it if my tears don't short out my keyboard before then, but I thought I'd drop by with a quick post in the meantime about some tools you'll need in the process.

These are basic development tools that are getting hard to find for Tiger, and they're also not just for compiling mplayer. If you want to do any compiling or developing, these are the tools you want.

First one's the big one. Xcode from Apple. You can get this either from your install DVD or by downloading it from Apple's website. It's better to download it as you can get the latest version. You have to sign up for a free developer's account and then do a little hunting around on the site, but if you click Resources at the top, then find a Mac OS X Downloads link, you'll eventually come to the Downloads section. Tiger users want to download Xcode 2.5 Developer Tools. Leopard users, your latest version is I believe 3.1.4. The whole install will end up taking a couple of gigabytes, but on the plus side you now start developing all those awesome apps for Tiger you always wanted to.

Another tool you'll need to retrieve source code is SVN, a version control system that supplanted CVS as the popular choice. The Tiger version can be found by going to svnbinaries: Home, then clicking on "Need to download older binaries?", clicking the OS X folder, then choosing Subversion 1.4.6 Universal.

The last tool I have for you is Git, a version control system that supplanted SVN as the popular choice. Honestly, world, I wish you'd make up your mind. Both Tiger and Leopard universal binaries can be found here.

One thing going for Git, it has the funniest install ReadMe I've seen. It says, well, I'll just quote it:

GIT - the stupid content tracker

"git" can mean anything, depending on your mood.

• random three-letter combination that is pronounceable, and not actually used by any common UNIX command. The fact that it is a mispronunciation of "get" may or may not be relevant.
• stupid. contemptible and despicable. simple. Take your pick from the dictionary of slang.
• "global information tracker": you're in a good mood, and it actually works for you. Angels sing, and a light suddenly fills the room.
• "goddamn idiotic truckload of sh*t": when it breaks

I vote the latter.

UPDATE: Oh, look. Somebody made Homebrew for Tiger and Leopard PowerPC.

Spaces Alternatives for Tiger

I've never been a big fan of virtual desktops. They've been a longtime feature on Linux, though not on Tiger, so when Leopard came out with Spaces, I was indifferent. However, I stumbled across a couple of virtual desktop applications for Tiger and decided to take a look at all the fun I was missing.

The first I tried was VirtueDesktops:



Development was halted with the arrival of Leopard, but it still works on Panther and Tiger systems. On my Tiger install it seemed stable but incomplete. The preferences weren't as intuitive as I'm used to, and there appeared to be a pager feature that I couldn't get working. But for simple desktop switching (with hotkey support) it worked well.

The second Spaces alternative is Desktop Manager:



Development seems also to have halted, but it's very polished. Transitions are the same as VirtueDesktops, slide and cube, etc. However, Desktop Manager has a pager in the menubar for quick switching with the mouse, hotkey support, and also has an optional pager for the desktop.

All in all, I liked these little apps, but it's not enough to convince me to switch to multiple desktops. My word processing / browsing / email are so wrapped up in each other I like having the whole mess of them all on one screen. But if you want a little more organization in your life, go for it.

OS X Apps That Still Support PPC

As promised, following my not comprehensive list of old PPC versions of apps that stopped supporting PPC, here now is my not comprehensive list of applications that still, as of this writing, support the platform. There are actually many more, but I thought I'd list a mix of popular titles along with a few that you may not have heard of and should give a try. So download away:

Ableton (music production suite)

Adium (multi-platform chat client)

Audacity (sound recording/editing)

Burn (great disc burning app)

Carbon Copy Cloner (backup utility)

Celestia (astronomy, space simulator)

CorePlayer (I haven't tried this, but everyone who has swears it's the most CPU efficient media player there is)

Cyberduck (ftp)

DropBox (backup and syncing)

GraphicConverter (image editing)

Growl (system notification)

iText Express (TextEdit fork with expanded features, the perfect middle ground between a simple text editor and a huge office suite)

LibreOffice (huge office suite)

Mac DVDRipper Pro (backup your DVDs)

MacFamilyTree (genealogy)

MacTubes (Youtube viewer)

MPEG Streamclip (Quicktime-based video editor, still supports Jaguar!)

MPlayerOSX Extended (advanced GUI for mplayer)

OpenOffice.org (huge office suite)

Perian (extra codecs for Quicktime Player)

SABnzbd (usenet downloader)

Seashore (image editor)

Skim (pdf viewer, note taker)

TenFourFox (really, if you're not using this by now I don't know what more I can say)

ToyViewer (lightweight and surprisingly powerful image viewer/editor)

The Unarchiver (archive decompression, many many formats, essential at this point, just install it and don't look back)

VLC (media player, DVD decoding, streaming, everything)

Warbirds (massively multiplayer online WWII flight simulator)

X Lossless Decoder (CD ripping)

XBMC (all your media are belong to XBMC)

Old PPC Versions of Notable Apps

There comes a time when everyone has to let go. We turn the page and look forward to a new day. Unless we're PowerPC users and that new day isn't any better than the old day and has more RAM requirements. But this isn't a rant. It's merely to take note of some of the more notable applications that have halted PPC support and point out that not all is lost. There are still old PPC versions available for download, and in some cases (Skype) more usable than the new versions. So here it is in list form, my not comprehensive list of applications that have halted PPC support and where you can still download the old PPC versions:

Adobe Air 1.5.3 (a runtime environment for TweetDeck) available here.

Adobe Flash 10.1.102.64 available here.

Firefox 3.6.22 is here (TenFourFox is a PowerPC port for later versions of Firefox).

Google Earth 4.3 can be grabbed here. 5.2 is actually the last PPC version, but it tries to install an autoupdate bug/background-app that is way not cool. 4.3 is free of it.

Handbrake 0.91 (Tiger) and 0.94 (Leopard) are here. An unofficial PPC build for 0.95 is here, but it's Leopard only.

NeoOffice 3.1.2 (OpenOffice.org fork) can be had here.

Opera 10.63 is available here.

Quicksilver B54 (launcher and much more) is here.

Skype 2.8 is here.

Thunderbird 3.1.14 is here (TenFourBird is a PowerPC port for later versions of Thunderbird).

Transmission 2.22 (Leopard) and 1.54 (Tiger) are here (a newer build for version 2.31 that runs on Tiger with the Qt interface is available here).

Next up, in happier news, a not comprehensive list of applications still supporting PowerPC.

Free Racing Games For Your Mac

I have a new addiction. No, not pills. That's reserved for the next decade. No, my addiction is racing games. I made a big mistake downloading a few racing games for the Mac, and I thought I'd share them and turn you into wasted, glassy-eyed junkies, too. The three games are TORCS, VDrift, and Dolphinity Racer. The first two are open source, and all three are freely available for OS X as well as other platforms. They all have their pros and cons and are different enough to make you want to play all three. I tested these on a 1.5 GHz AlBook and a Sawtooth with an ATI 9000 upgrade. So here's the round up:

Dolphinity Racer is the most graphics and processor hungry of the three. The latest for OS X is v0.5.4.3, which is a universal binary so it'll work on PowerPC. Unfortunately the developer hasn't updated the OS X version in quite some time, and it's not open source so compiling newer versions isn't an option. That being said, it looks good in the graphics department, and the physics engine feels realistic.

The base install comes with just one track and one car type, so the idea is to download user-created tracks and cars which you can find links to on Racer's website (there's also a huge number of tracks and cars available here). They're generally high quality though I had to turn down the graphics settings to get good frame rates. On a low end machine like a Sawtooth forget about racing other cars. You can barely get usable frame rates racing alone. Obviously it's much better on the AlBook, and there's also an .ini file you can edit beyond the preferences presented in the GUI.

VDrift is about, you guessed it, drift racing. In many ways this is the best of the three. The graphics look good and framerates are higher than Racer. The physics engine feels very realistic, and you can also download and install new tracks and cars. The only negative was you can't collide with other cars. You just pass right through them (or they through you).

The ability to have car collisions came with the update just released, but it's Intel only. A developer in the forums said they'd try to build a universal binary but wasn't sure it was doable. Also if you download the previous version that supports PowerPC, the AlBook with an ATI 9700 Mobility renders smoke as solid white, no transparency, so it's not playable. The 2009-02-15 version, though, works great. Lower end users like on a Sawtooth might want to try version 2008-08-05 for better framerates.

Finally there's what may be the most addictive of them all, TORCS (The Open Racing Car Simulator). I don't know if the physics engine is totally realistic. It feels very frenetic and too fast at first. I've dealt with this by choosing older "historic" cars to race with (old sports cars from the 60's & 70's) which don't drive as fast and are easier to handle. That being said, this is the most action packed of the three. Some cars even deliberately bump you and try to take you out. The framerates are high, though the graphics aren't up to par with VDrift and Racer. It actually varies between tracks. Some are good, others look very 2002.

The latest OS X version on their website is 1.2.4, but Stephen Hudson has made his compile of 1.3.0 available here (UPDATED link here), so that's the version you want. It's a universal binary so it'll run on PowerPC. Unfortunately the latest version available to Windows and Linux users is 1.3.1 whose most significant changes are the addition of several cars and tracks, including the two best tracks from a graphics standpoint, "alpine-2" and "forza". However, 1.3.0 users can install these, too. You can download the 1.3.1 tracks separately here and install the new tracks in the TORCS app package by clicking "Show Package Contents" and placing the individual track folders in Torcs.app/Contents/Resources/tracks. Dirt tracks go in the "dirt" folder, road tracks go in the "road" folder, etc. Alpine-2 and forza are road tracks. I haven't tried adding cars with this method yet, but I suspect it would work, too.

With all three of these games you can use the mouse for steering. Only VDrift recognized my ten year old Macally iStick. There are no OS X drivers for the stick, so it's a crapshoot whether a game will recognize it. As far as maximizing framerates, toggle the view button so there's no hood visible (in TORCS) or at least put yourself inside the car (Racer), and limit the viewing distance to as little as you can tolerate.

Anyway, try all three. You're bound to get addicted to at least one, and then we can all enable each other's addiction and dig our claws into each other and drag each other down:)

Changing Gamma Settings on Your Mac (OS X and Debian)

One of the things about having an older Mac like an iBook or a Sawtooth running a pre-Snow Leopard system is that the default gamma values on the monitor are too bright. I've found this true under both OS X and Debian Linux. Long story short on the Apple side is the default setting of gamma 1.8 on systems before Snow Leopard was a relic from the black and white monitor days of early Macs, and they never bothered changing along with the rest of the computer world till Snow Leopard. As a result, colors on the web and in photos can look too washed out compared with being viewed on Windows computers, which they were likely calibrated from in the first place.

So to fix this and have photos and web pages display in Tiger and Leopard the way they were intended, simply go into System Preferences-->Displays and click the Color tab, then the Calibrate button. It will ask you to adjust a bunch of settings, and when you get to the "Select a target gamma" section, select "2.2 Television Gamma" and then continue through to the end and save. Afterward, you'll find that pictures look less washed out and have more depth, but you may also find that black text on a white background looks a little harder on the eyes. Try it out and see which setting you prefer.

On Debian, I also noticed the dafault gamma values seemed a little too aggressively bright, so--this being Linux--after extensive research I found you can tone it down a bit by editing your xorg.conf file (if you don't have a xorg.conf file by default and need to create one, learn how here). First you want to find the best setting to your eyes. You test this by using the xgamma application in the terminal. For example:

xgamma -gamma 0.9

will reset your gamma settings 1/10th of a point off the default of 1.0, and will slightly darken your screen's gamma output. You can play around with it, entering 1.1, 0.8, etc. until you settle on a setting you like best (I chose 0.9, slightly off the original too-bright default). Then you open your xorg.conf file and, under the section "Monitor," add the line:

Gamma 0.9 #or whatever value you settle on, and with a tab between Gamma and 0.9.

This will keep your settings on restart, and you can confirm it worked by running xgamma again with no arguments, and it will display the current gamma settings.

UPDATED for clarity.

Top Ten OS X Apps

Since everybody else seems to do one of these, I thought I'd put together my own OS X top apps list with an exclusively PPC bent. Hopefully some of these are obscure enough that this will be new information to you, because as this blog attests, obscurity equals quality. So on to the apps:

1) The Unarchiver -- Simply install this when you first get your Mac and never worry about unpacking zipped or stuffed files again. An essential download.

2) Burn -- Getting errors burning discs? Have an uncomfortable number of coasters decorating your coffee table? Burn will write your discs more efficiently and with more options than OS X's built-in burning software.

3) Transmission 0.8.2 -- Ever wonder why there are so many updates for Transmission? Because each new release breaks something. 0.8.2 is the last version that just works.

4) Seashore 0.1.9 -- Does all the photo editing I've ever needed. There's a new beta out, but it's a single window interface, so let's you and me stick with the old multi-window floating toolbar look:).

5) avidemux -- A cross platform GTK app for editing and filtering video. I use it to splice avi's of old movies and post the clips on Youtube.

6) mplayer -- The best media player out there. Go with the command line version and play 720p HD video on something as low end as a 1.25 GHz G4 Mac Mini, with the right presets of course.

7) iText Express -- Like Bean except it remembers window positions.

8) SABnzbd -- Effortless Usenet downloader, written about here.

9) Camino -- Same rendering engine as Firefox with a faster Cocoa-native GUI.

10) CocoViewX -- A lightweight variant to iPhoto.

11) MacTubes -- Okay, I couldn't leave MacTubes off this list. Plays Youtube content stutter-free by using Quicktime for playback and lets you secretly laugh at all the people on the internets complaining how flash is grinding their computers to a halt.

Honorable mentions go to Celestia, ffmpegX, Max, and Pref Setter. But a top ten list going to fifteen would be ridiculous.

Don't Touch My Levels

One of the ways I like sticking it to the man is by buying really cheap speakers and using the equalizer settings on iTunes to make them sound massively expensive. Well, okay, moderately wallet busting. Okay, okay, not awful. For awhile I pushed many of the EQ sliders above the midpoint much like they are in most of the built-in presets, but it turns out this is wrong. I came across a Macosxhints link that set me straight. Oh, it wasn't the hint itself. The hint just said to push up the levels to this:



No, it was in the comment thread where audio engineers chimed in and set the record straight. That's why I love these kinds of threads. They stick around forever, and people can add to them years afterward explaining why everything you thought you knew is wrong. In this instance, pushing the levels past the midpoint. Instead, you want to do "subtractive equalization," that is, set the levels you want below the midpoint and use the slider on the left to compensate for gain. This ensures you'll get a minimum of distortion and the dreaded "wuff wuff" sound. The goal is not to make your speakers louder, but fuller. Like this:



Now these are for small speakers, so I wouldn't recommend these levels for high quality ones. In fact, when I listen to these levels on headphones, they sound horrible. But for small desktop speakers, this is just the trick.

Oh, and did Apple ever fix the longstanding balance bug, where if you rapidly changed the system volume, it would incrementally throw off the speaker balance setting? 'Cause it's still there in OS X 10.4.11.