Kerry Buckley

• KeyCue (€19.99 + VAT)
• Caffeine (free) – prevents sleeping, display dimming etc
• iStat menus (free) – also includes menubar clock like Magical
• NameChanger (free) – bulk file renaming
• Yojimbo ($39) – stores and tags web pages, documents etc (the actual content, not just a link). Also a web version.
• Keyboard Cleaner (free) – disables keyboard
• Audio Hijack Pro ($32) – record any system audio.
• Bento – personal version of Filemaker
• Picturesque ($20 shareware) – uses Core Image to do all sorts of cool image effects
• XLD (free/OSS) – converts various lossless audio formats
• ImageWell (free) – batch image editing (see also Skitch)
• FreeDMG (free, unsurprisingly) – Simple disk image creation
• ZapMac (free) – wacky speed-reading thing
• Nocturne (free) – 'night mode' for working more comfortably in the dark
• Remote Buddy (€19.99) – use Apple remote with any app, or for browsing files. Also allows you to use Wiimote via bluetooth.

[Update: it seems I was misinformed – Skitch is free too.]

Technorati Tags: barcamplondon3, mac, applications

I was quite excited to see the announcement of improved Ruby and Rails support in Leopard, and one of the first things I did after upgrading was to delete my MacPorts installations of Ruby and RubyGems, and try using the built-in ones instead.

For a while, all seemed well. The milk was cold, the food stayed fresh, my specs still passed, my Rails projects still worked, and even the light worked when you opened the door.

But then the trouble started.

Firstly I tried updating and installing gems while behind a firewall. The gem command completely ignored my http_proxy setting, and when I explicitly provided the proxy using -p, I got this error:

ERROR:  While executing gem ... (NoMethodError)
    undefined method `[]=' for #

I worked round this by downloading the gems manually and installing the local copies (despite this being a pain, especially when there are dependencies).

I then tried using gemsonrails to freeze some gems, and it got confused by the fact that Leopard stores built-in gems separately from user-installed ones. Thinking about it, if I'd successfully frozen the gem, it might have turned out to have been tweaked in some Mac-specific way and broken on other platforms.

Forgetting about that issue, I carried on with other work for a while, then found that autotest wouldn't work, and mysteriously was trying to run something from /opt/local (where MacPorts install lived). Even after removing any gem-related scripts from /opt/local/bin, the problem persisted.

Oh well, looks like I'll be re-installing everything using MacPorts. I'm not sure whether all these problems are intrinsic to the Ruby installation that comes with the system, or whether some are caused by lingering remains of my MacPorts installation – I'd be interested to hear how others got on.

Technorati Tags: ruby, rails, mac, 10.5, leopard

There's been a lot of comment about Apple removing the Apple symbol from the command key on the new iMac keyboard, and adding the word 'command'. I tend to agree that it's a good thing. It saves on those ever-popular Just hit command-S. No, the one with the cloverleaf on it. conversations, and it was never supposed to be called the Apple key anyway, as far as I know.

What puzzles me is why they seem to have removed the symbol from the option key (which I refuse to call 'alt') on all their recent keyboards. What are new Mac users going to think when they are presented with a shortcut description on a menu that looks like , and there's no key with the symbol?

I've never quite understood the attitude of people who won't buy an iPod for the sole reason that the iTunes music store uses DRM – after all, no-one forces iPod owners to buy music from iTunes, rather than ripping it from CDs they own or obtaining unprotected MP3s elsewhere. As DRM schemes go, FairPlay isn't too bad (allowing you to burn the music to a CD, for example).

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