nirav May 22nd, 2007
If you are like me, you use X11 on your Mac only for OpenOffice (I am waiting for the native build). But when you start OpenOffice, it also starts X11 - which in turn starts xterm - a command line for X11. I just upgraded X11, and the xterm started coming again. I forgot how I had fixed it last time, so searched for it again. Here’s the perfect solution for doing this. (Taken from a post by Peter on BML)
The default settings for startup under the Mac X11 create an xterm window. This can be annoying if one primarily uses X11 for openoffice or other programs and uses the Mac Terminal program for the command line.
The default settings for startup are contained in the file ‘/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc’. Each user can override this by creating a .xinitrc file in their home directory. One line in this file needs to be changed to remove the launch of the xterm window.
Here are the specific command line instructions for doing this:
cp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc
chmod u+w ~/.xinitrc
sed 's/xterm/# xterm/' ~/.xinitrc > foo
mv -f foo ~/.xinitrc
After this, quit X11 (if running) and relaunch and there should be no xterm window.
Worked like charm!
nirav May 19th, 2007
Wanted to transfer some songs to my phone from iTunes. I have the default encoding set to AAC, so songs that I imported from CDs, get stored as m4a (MP4 audio) files. Realized that this format wouldn’t work with my phone, so was looking for some converter. Tried ffmpegX (that I normally use for video conversion) and it worked fine. But then I was lazy to do all files one by one.
Found Swith! A nice little utility that can batch convert you audio files to and from a number of formats. Including wav, gsm, ogg, mov, aac and mp3.
Worked pretty well and I was ready to roll in a few minutes! Power of simple utilities!
nirav February 23rd, 2007
Finally, the debate over the trademark for “iPhone” between Cisco and Apple is over. They have reached an agreement to use the trademarks in distinct businesses. I was reading about it, and cursing Apple for violating business ethics, but as it’s said, Steve Jobs always gets his way. Couple of places I have heard a few controversies about Steve Jobs now, so iCon is on my reading list now - still about two months away though.
It’s interesting to observe the case though. If you are Apple, you can infringe a copyright, and then settle it with the copyright owner. But if someone else infringes your copyright, you will crush the company! That’s business it looks like, but not many people are happy with it!
All in all, I think both the companies are happy - so it does not matter what the critics say!
December 27th, 2005
Are you a new Mac user? Want to find out what other great free software are available for your Mac? Paul Stamatiou has collected a top ten list of must-have free software for Mac users. You may already be using some of them, but would find some other that you would like to try out right away.
My personal favorites are AdiumX and Quicksilver. It’s interesting to note that some of these apps are actually GPLed free software, and available even for other platforms!
BTW, Digg is not full of praises for this list, so while you are here, take a look at some other items:
Open Source Mac - Free, Open source software for Mac, great list!
Indispensable Mac OS X software - more options - if you want to compare and choose