Angus Thinks

Month: February 2007

  • Google Talks: Camino

    Mike Pinkerton of Google talks about the Mac web browser Camino. It also includes some interesting history of the Mozilla and Gecko projects.

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6765603919277760697

  • Linux autologin

    I use a collection of virtual machines in parallels for a number of things, like testing SQLEditor and running web apps that would otherwise require lots of software dependencies. However I’ve been getting tired of logging in to my linux virtual machines all the time. If it were just a case of ssh then obviously I could set up ssh key pairs and do auto-login, but I also need direct terminal access too, in this case in the main parallels window.

    With a physical machine to get autologin in this situation would mean that the machine would boot and immediately log the user in without interaction.

    Important Warning

    This represents some security risk. You need to consider your circumstances carefully first to ensure that this will not open your machine to malicious use.

    (Of course there is always the point that if someone has physical access to your machine then there’s not much hope anyway. But still …)

    Fortunately this is possible and actually quite easy if you don’t mind editing a configuration file.

    The file you need is /etc/inittab

    Important Warning (2)

    /etc/inittab is vital to the operation of your machine. Incorrect editing will cause a number of problems.

    If you are making these changes to a virtual machine simply make another. Alternatively try logging in via ssh to undo the changes.

    The change you need to make is to find the line that looks like:

    1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1

    and change it to look like this (where username is the user that you want to autologin as)

    1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty --autologin username tty1

    The original source of this is EasyMameCab; which looks like a clever idea in itself. They are using linux as the base system for building a video game cabinet, so obviously they don’t want logins appearing.

  • HTMLValidator beta 2

    HtmlValidator beta 2 has just been released. The new version offers assorted fixes and a slightly improved interface (a green tick or red cross now appear in the validation window!)

    There is also a new downloads page which currently offers an Applescript to validate the source of the front page in Safari.

    Usefully it validates the actual source that the browser received, it doesn’t download the url itself.

  • Mac GPRS Modem scripts

    Ross Barkman’s site has scripts for using mobile phones as modems with Mac OS X.

    This post is mainly so I remember where it is if I ever need it and don’t have access to my bookmarks.

    Also the tutorial/setup instructions

    It is surprising how often I seem to need to use my mobile to access the internet from my desktop machine. 🙁

  • Keynote in Lego!

    A site called PodBrix offers customized Apple themed lego sets. You too can have Steve Jobs at a keynote or the famous Apple 1984 advert recreated in Lego.

    [link]

    (via reddit)

  • HTMLValidator

    HTMLValidator 1.0b1 has just been released.

    It runs on PowerPC or Intel Macs with Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

    The current version expires 28th February 2007.

    HTMLValidator is a new desktop HTML validator that works on both web pages and files. It’s something I’ve been working on for a while now in between SQLEditor releases. The main motivation is that I often seem to use the W3C validator, but I can’t always do that with files I’m working on locally. I also tried installing the W3C validator on a local web server and although it works, it seems to require a lot of installation effort, with different dependencies. So the idea occurred to me: what if you could have a drag and drop installation. From there came a web version using drag and drop and finally the application bundle version that is being distributed from today.
    The earlier application versions actually displayed the results in an html webview in a window, while the newer releases display the results in a table.

    On the drawing board for future releases are more validation options, the capability to validate multiple pages and the ability to watch pages for changes and then validate. Also better printing and Applescript support (although both of these are present in the current version).

    I’m really interested to know what you think of HTMLValidator so feel free to send in comments, either to me personally Angus [DOT] Hardie [AT] malcolmhardie [DOT] com or to the support [AT] malcolmhardie [DOT] com email address

  • SQLEditor 1.3.6

    SQLEditor 1.3.6 has now been available for about a week and so far it looks good. 1.3.6 was mainly released to fix bugs found in 1.3.x releases and to add in a few important features that had been widely requested.

    MySQL auto increment was probably the main improvement, but there were also some more changes to fix the connection issues.

    One slight change that probably won’t get noticed at all if it works is that the page that version updates are directed to has changed. The url is now a special page rather than simply the product page. This should make it easier to download updates. (I’ve been looking into sparkle and friends for use in some later version)

    I guess the upgrade advice is that 1.3.6 is recommended for all users, but if your current version is satisfactory then no need to upgrade.