Hivelogic: Articles: Synchronicity – “My goal here wasn’t just to have my files be available on any machine I use, but also to have a live backup of everything, so that the loss of any (or worse, several) machines would have virtually no impact on the integrity or availability of my data.”
OS X
Wireless network-aware homepage
From Mac Geekery comes the wireless network aware homepage
Given a list of trusted SSID’s it will test internet connection and:
1. if connected to a trusted network it will load homepage if connected or display an error if not connected
2. if connected to another network it will display SSID and connection status
3. if not connected to a wireless network, show homepage if internet detected (like ethernet or whatever) else display an offline page
I can’t wait to get me a MacBook Pro so I can try out all of these OS X tricks and tips!
Service Scrubber
OS X Dock Dividers
OS X Dock Dividers should prove useful for organizing the application dock.
Free Ruler for Mac OS X
Features:
- A horizontal and vertical ruler which can be used independently or simultaneously.
- Measurement in pixels, inches, picas, or centimeters.
- Automatic alignment of rulers.
- The ability to group rulers and move them around as a unit.
- Shadowless rulers with customizable transparency.
- Interactive tick marks which follow the mouse location for more precise measurement.
- Independent resizing of rulers, from 200 pixels to 5000 pixels in length.
- Single key shortcuts for most ruler functions.
- Conversion assistant to set ruler resolution based on screen size and resolution.
- Unit converter utility for converting numbers between different units of measure.
- Did I mention it’s free?
OS X Annoyances & Solutions
As I make the switch (slowly) to OS X, I keep discovering new and exciting things about the operating system. Occasionally though, I find some annoying aspects that impede my progress, and cause me to question my desire to shift platforms. In addition to the fact that HP hasn’t bothered to write OS 10.3 drivers for our scanner (HP 5370c), which we specifically bought because it was friendly to both platforms, I have run into a problem with using a USB trackball on our fileserver, which runs 10.2.8.
Luckily, in both cases there appear to be independent developers solving the problem.
Scanner Drivers
The TWAIN SANE Interface for Mac OS X makes use of the existing SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) project, which was originally developed for LINUX. I haven’t tested it yet, but I have hope.
USB Trackball/Mouse Drivers
According to a thread at macosxhints the trackball problem can be solved with the purchase of a shareware driver called USB Overdrive. The project site provides a great summary of the software’s purpose:
The USB Overdrive X is a driver for Mac OS X 10.2.4 or later (including Panther) that handles any USB mouse, trackball, joystick and gamepad from any manufacturer and lets you configure them either globally or on a per-application basis.
I look forward to trying it out with a Microsoft Trackball Explorer.
I will post the results of both tests soon.