fink on Lion

When I set up fink on Snow Leopard quite a while ago, I didn't really care, where XCode and all that went.
Now with Lion things are not running as smooth.
I have to put /Developer/usr/bin on PATH.
But that still doesn't allow to successfully run ./bootstrap . How bad! I think I am going to abandon fink for the time being in favour of DarwinPort.

fink, XCode, connect.apple.com, …

A while after upgrading to Lion, there is a need for me, to make use of fink again. Well, when I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion, XCode did not get upgraded as well. Now that I tried do update fink again, it complained about what ever, but at least it pointed me to XCode and connect.apple.com . So, I hope, that will be a piece of cake. I need Mercurial from fink, and using that I will install GoLang. That's the intention at least.

Update 2011-09-20
The version of XCode within the Apple app store seems the same as the one in connect.apple.com, at least the app store refuses to download XCode, as I already have the up-to-date version of XCode on my disk.

good bye, Snow Leopard! very welcome, Lion!

Just installing ...

Update:
It started with saying "33 minutes ...", but these 33 minutes do not pass as fast as on my wrist watch.

Update:
The desktop started with eyecandy: no longer that well-known starfield, but a rather more modest background.

Update:
In Snow Leopard I had my "desktops" arranged in 4x4 matrix, that's gone now, and I am very sorry for that.

Update:
For running jruby I need a Java runtime system, which wasn't there by default, but "the system" was smart enough to tell me.

Fink FAQ: installing a few "unstable" packages from "fink"

Fink FAQ: installing a few "unstable" packages from "fink"

I don't exactly remember, when I configured fink to also install "unstable" packages, but now I think, that created a terrible mess on my computer. I ran "fink configure" today, and disabled the installation of "unstable" packages there. I hope, fink will work much smoother from now on. No more md5sum mismatches …

Mac OS X 10.6.4 (Snow Leopard): the Finder hangs again

I tried to make LibreOffice the default application for a file on a Samba network folder, and Finder hangs – not LibreOffice. I am now going to kill Finder, and I assume during the remainder of the day I also have to restart the entire OS again, which implies restarting almost all applications with all their current state. Annoying stuff! But it happens with other contemporary operating systems just as well. But ordinary OS X users keep telling the rest of the world, that you never experience trouble with OS X, which just isn't true.

The Finder does not get relaunched, and when you try to launch it yourself, this is what they show you:

The application Finder.app can't be opened.
-10180
[OK]

You can't really do a lot without a running Finder, so now I am going to restart OS X

Even the rebooting procedure stalled at "continuing", and I had to do a cold reboot. This is, how bad it really can get with OS X.

"drag and drop" and the cmd-key

My Situation: 2 finders open, one pointing to a local disk, the other to a remote disk.

If you drag (using the cmd-key) exactly one file from that "local finder" to the "remote finder", the meaning of the operation is "move".

If you drag (using the cmd-key) more than one file from that "local finder" to the "remote finder", the meaning of the operation is "copy".

How do I achieve a "move" for more than one file?


Update 2011-07-23
Starting with Lion you also achieve moving more than one file like that.

emacs documentation

I have proudly owned O'Reilly's "Learning GNU Emacs" since November 1996. It has always been a very, very valuable supplement to the info mode documentation prepared in Texinfo.

That book covers GNU Emacs version 19.30, nowadays I am using version 23.x resp. 22.x. Better GUI integration has happened since and variable customization.

As part of my project "let's create courses and presentations from my e-books!", I recently also acquired the 3rd edition of that fine book, and I used it today as PDF.

I was always happily searching and replacing in case-ignorant-mode. But sometimes my finger do things with emacs, that emacs takes more literally then it was meant. That way sometimes I destroy this and that. LIke my gnus folder and topics structure. One of the minor things is to inadvertently go into non-case-ignorant-mode. But today during my booking-keeping time, I "had to" create yet another nice and useful replacement rule for my bank statement. And again, non-case-ignorant-mode - bad, very bad!

I wasn't lucky, when I tried to look this up in the emacs standard documentation "The Emacs Editor", but looking it up in the O'Reilly book was a hit. There has always been a section titled "are emacs searches case-sensitive?". I speaks about case-fold-search and case-replace. I understand that, and I "customized" the variables. Looking at these PDF files using Snow Leopard and its Preview application is also a big plus, I want to tell you.

a SnowLeopard keyboard in "multi-country mode" showing the German tricolor

The only period of time, that the German tricolor could ever, ever got seen on me was during my military service. I think, that's more than enough.

But … SnowLeopard uses the national flags to indicate, in which country mode the keyboard currently is. Now for a Germany/German keyboard that is the German tricolor.

Now my question: can I replace that with something … different?

Alright, currently I am testing the Austrian keyboard layout, next one will be Swiss German. But the latter still shows a tiny German tricolor. Poor Swiss!!!!!
Looks like the Austrian may win, as there is a better matching regarding the number button overlays…

son#1 teaches me mind mapping - I'm so proud!!!

During my last conversation with my lawyer (she is cute and pretty tough, I hope she is not going to take too much money, but we are going to see; she e-mails with me and she sends me the communication with the other party as PDFs, I am amazed!!! she is a digital native!!!), I asked myself, how often I would have to explain her that situation. Afterwards it came to my mind, I should have created a mind map together with her, and just for fun I did a little research and I also involved her there. And you know what: she told me the names of the software, she has already been using. I was embarrassed, at least a little. Alright I installed Free Mind, and I am a little stuck with it.
Weekend comes, son#1 shows up again, ..., I ask him, whether he know the term Mind Mapping, and yes, he knows it, I am kidding with him, asking, whether he can show me (and teach me), how to do it, and you know what: he said: yes. Yes, he will do it. That was last night or so, around our watching Godfather I.
Now today I set up an account for him on my MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard (and of course he loves that, who wouldn't, it is a hot Mac!!!), I dragged Chrome in his dock, removed a lot of the unnessary stuff there, explained him, how to use the "right mouse button" with the mouse pad and how to scroll with the mouse pad, a few things. And now he gets into that, and I am looking forward to son#1 teaching me mind mapping. I am really amazed. That will be good for the two of us.
I'll keep you updated, watch this location!

Update / 2010-07-24 18:28:
Although son#1 and son#2 are actually hard to confuse, this is actually about son#1.
Son#1 is 13 years old (he learned mind mapping at school, I guess with a teache from SW Germany as well), son#2 is 3.9 years old, I am >40.
And another thing I should add:
Whenever they started calling that sort of stuff mind mapping: one of my teachers on high-school actually taught us that sort of stuff ages ago. And I guess they also did at the Agora of Alexandria.
What a luck, this sort of stuff cannot get copyrighted!!!

peeking and poking Google Chrome

Is there an "ordinary way" to get the "extensions" listed, or is this pseudo-URL "the ordinary way": chrome://extensions/?
(Now, that I wrote of it here, I can finally close that tab, as I was really worried to forget it again. BTW: of course also this list is made far nicer then everything (at least) I can compare. Did you notice, what they do, if you delete a bookmark folder? That's just awesome IMO, if I had not to do a lot of work, I could keep doing that all through the night.)
Oooo, it's under that wrench icon as Extensions. And there is also Downloads. Good, that I found that!
And now I also know, how to underline using the Blogger article editor. Well, switch to "Edit HTML" – you know the rest of the story. It's that simple.

And do you know, how to make the wrench icon appear on OS X Chrome?
Chrome / Preferences / Basics / Toolbar / Show Page and Tools menus.

Have you come across the Task Manager below Developer yet?

And did you dare clicking on Stats for nerds?

How bad, that I can't use Chrome on my Linux notebook, as it keeps negatively interacting with the window manager or so, which after a while locks up.
Well, they are going to solve that issue sooner or later.

what's the right Unix-ish software and hardware in 2010?

In 1994 I had no doubt: it's a PC with some Linux distro on it. And changing my mind was out of the question until not so long ago.
Now in 2010 I am doing things on a Samsung 17" notebook running some openSUSE Linux, and I am doing things on a MacBook Pro with a 17" screen.
I don't want miss either of them. Well, the Samsung thingie's resolution could be way better, but after my Sony thingie broke during my Leopard 2 main battle tank project, I couldn't afford anything better than that, and the decision and the purchase had to happen within minutes rather than within days. Terrible pressure and no mercy with Linux folks over there at defense.
But now I do many, many things on that Snow Leopard thingie, and I terribly enjoy it and it honestly improved the quality of my life a lot. That's what I wanted to state here and now.

learning from others – a temporary home-worker's experience

I really enjoyed working with my design profession mate yesterday. He brought his MacBook with him, and I also learned from him, what the MacBook substitute for the scroll-wheel is: a two-finger wiping over the touchpad.

activating the Meta key for the Terminal app under Mac OS X Snow Leopard

I just came across a description on how to do this, which seems far outdated and just not working. So I thought, I would let you know, how it really works with Snow Leopard.
Here you see the window, that pops up for Terminal's Preferences menue entry:

You can see the Use option as meta key switch – use it, if you want!

Screen Capture in Snow Leopard

Helpful article!!

To take a screen capture press Cmd+Shift+4 on your Snow Leopard. […]

Snow Leopard's "Finder" show sizes of all small network files as 1MB

Googled for this phenomenon, and it looks quite well-discussed already.

getting familiar with a Mac keyboard

I was really afraid, it would take me a long, long time to seriously get familiar with my Mac keyboard, but finding the Keyboard Viewer and having a closer look at it wiped out all these fears.
Whatever I thought would be missing on the Mac keyboard, now I find it easily.

the pidgin Facebook plugin

The pidgin Facebook plugin does not work properly so far. A single Facebook user actually talks to me with yet another id, every single time he sends me a message. This does not look tested well enough.
I am using pidgin 2.6.2 (libpurple 2.6.2) from fink on Mac OS X, Snow Leopard.

Update / 2010-12-28:
For quite a while Facebook chat has now been reachable through Jabber / XMPP.