ResExcellence Week of 10/08/01

After all the months of planning, my new recording studio at The Chicago Recording Company is finally open. Below are before/after images to give you an idea of the process. If you live in the area and would like a tour drop me a line.

Opening GUI Applications from the Command line. by Michael Askew

When Michael Askew first figured out that he could open GUI applications from the Mac OS X terminal, it seemed rather cumbersome to type in the path to the '.app'. To solve this he came up with this approach.

Save the following script as a file named '.getosxaliases' inside your home folder (/Users/yourname/), then open a terminal and type: set OSXAPPSDIR = /Applications

(Make sure to change "/Applications" above if you have your OS X applications stored in another place for some reason)

# The Script:
# Update the .osxaliases file if it's out-of-date
if ( -M $OSXAPPSDIR > -M ~/.osxaliases ) then
echo "Updating OS X aliases..."
find $OSXAPPSDIR -name '*.app' -prune -or -name '*.dock' -prune | awk\
'{\
count = split($0,path,/\/|\.app|\.dock/);\
name = path[count-1];\
name = tolower(name);\
gsub(/ |$|$/, "", name);\
print "alias", name, "'\''open -a \"" $0 "\" \\\\!* &'\''";\
}' > ~/.osxaliases
endif
source ~/.osxaliases

Next add the following line to the ".tcshrc" file in your home directory:

source ~/.getosxaliases

What this pile of gibberish does is provide you with a way of conveniently launching applications from the command line, provided they end in a ".app" or ".dock" extension. For instance to launch the application "Internet Explorer" you can type: > internetexplorer

or to launch Stickies just type: > stickies

You can even open a file with TextEdit: > textedit somefile.txt

The command name for an app will be the name in lowercase letters with no spaces and no '.app' or '.dock' extension. All other characters must be included, but remember you can hit tab to auto-complete long names.

Some limitations/caveats :

1. Only applications that have a '.app' or '.dock' extension will have shortcuts. (Netscape 6 and AIM are a few that don't.)

2. Since these are launched into the background the Terminal will print a line similar to the following the next time you enter a command. This just tells you that it's through with the job. To prevent this remove the '&' from the print statement in the script.

3. When you install new applications the new command will not be available in active Terminal windows. The next time you open a Terminal window you will see the line "Updating OS X aliases..." momentarily. When the prompt appears the new command will be available

4. Don't open two new Terminal windows in rapid succession if the first one begins to update the aliases.

5. Some application names may override existing Terminal commands. For instance, "Mail.app" will get assigned the command "mail" which is already the name of a command line application. To get mail it's regular meaning back, append the following to the end of the script: unalias mail.

Have you heard about the lady who tried to dry her cat in the microwave? These and hundreds of other Urban Myths can be debunked at a cool website I found called Snopes.com. I can spend hours there lost on pages shattering what I always believed as true. I swear, I thought Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen at death.

Carbon this, carbon that. How about diving into the world of pure Cocoa? Cocoa Dev Central is loaded with tons of tutorials. Everything you need to get started is on the MacOS X Developer's Tools Disk.

User Contributed Splash Screens. by Michael Coyle

Win a PowerMax gift certificate worth $50 by having the most popular contribution in the selected category! (How?)

A photo taken from the Moon towards Earth is the center piece of this Giant MOSS by George Bohnisch.
A funny MacOS X Boot Panel from Johnlouis Swaine proclaims, "MacOS X, because Windows sucks."
I don't know who she is, but Fabiano Henrique thought she was worthy of her own Photoshop splash.
Another threesome of Pin Up MOSS are available from John Rose!

Icons - Desktops: We've got (6) Great New Desktops, more current "News From Around the Web" and (1) OSX Icon Set to dress your desktop. All on display for today's update!

MacMonkies.com announces the beginning of a series of Giveaways on Wednesday, October 10. First up to bat are 3 registrations for Kaleidoscope. Let the fun begin!

Check out Live Pencil's new updates: ICONS: More animals by Sergio and a series of Chrome Masks. IT IS YOU: a new section where he makes funny animations out of your personal pictures, and much much more.

Mac Axonz updates with a new desktop picture that celebrates ENTERPRISE, the newest installment in the world of star trek. Also a little teaser of the new iconz set: TriTanium Squared!!!!

MacNerds announces their first update in two years! New desktop images added to the collection! And of course, the good old icons and patterns.

A new desktop picture "Intergalactic Aqua" is available for download at http://www.whythemacissogreat.com ("Why the Mac is so great.com").

Mando Gomez of Mandolux sends out a plea for some help. His school has informed him that they will no longer will host his website because of the available resources necessary to host a 1.3 GB/high bandwidth/high maintenance/1489 desktops website. Visit the website for more info on Mando's plight.

GirlieMac updates with a new desktop picture called United. Beside the dt pic, she has some fun stuff at her web so it's worth the visit!!!

The madness never ends at MacMonkies.com! They've peeled out 3 new desktops, Network news and updates, and plenty of humor to bust a gut. And to top off the MonkieBarrel, a special announcement is comin' up this week. Take a peek!

MacCustomise.com has 4 new icon sets (All MacOS X optimized), 9 new desktop pictures and 6 new desktop snapshots.

Today ResExcellence begins the first contest giveaway for a game. ResExcellence and Vizspring Software are teaming up to giveaway iTarget. iTarget is a simple little moving-target game. The object: try to click on the moving target. There are a total of 5 targets per level, each target worth an increasing amount of points. As you move up on the level ladder, the target moves faster and faster. It becomes very addicting. The game has been set up to accommodate this giveaway by giving you a unique ResEx ID. Download the game, follow the guidelines on the contest page and become one of 5 lucky winners.

Desktop Resetter 2.7 will restore position/size of desktop icons/windows if moved. This version features some bug fixes and a new feature that remembers the size and position of the Mac About Box. See the read me/help for details.

Angelo Scicolone has released a new version of AliasMultiplier 2.0.1. This update fixes some minor bugs and features a new price: $7 only! AliasMultiplier is a simple program that creates single aliases that can open more programs, documents, folders or web pages! "Using AliasMultiplier is very simple: just drag items you want the alias to open over the application icon, then click Save."

File Freak 3.5 is a great little program to list, open or move all your files based on dynamic search criteria. It runs on both Classic and Mac OS X. Changes in this version include:

And now for several ideas for a complete waste of time! Cat-in-the-Dock 1.2 is a Dock pet by StimpSoft, Inc. It hangs out in the dock and performs all sorts of.... well just try it to see. Even newer is their release of the Halloween Dock App. Basically a flickering pumpkin. New faces can be added by making black and white PICT files and placing them in the "Faces" folder. Every place in the picture that is black will show up as a cut out area on the pumpkin. You can also adjust the flickering speed.

iJect 1.2 by Objective Development, will remap the new CD eject button included with Mac OS X from F12 to Apple-F12. Of note in this version is what is listed below.

Xload 1.4.1 displays the processing load on your computer in a meter. It will display both CPU loads on a multi-processor machine. This release is a bug fix for the CGContextClosePath error in Console.log. This is no longer displayed. A screenshot is available here.

While surfing over the weekend, I noticed a couple of make overs to a couple of sites that get mentioned on ResExcellence. AppleScript Central has a completely new look to it. Much cleaner in my opinion. One new feature is that the page will randomly list a script from its archive.

Desktopper has also under gone a complete makeover. Although I am unable to read the page, I am working on finding where their scheme page went to.