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Podcast - Mac Geek Gab #157: Startup Secrets, Terminal Tricks, Battery Woes, and Services Menu

by , 10:55 PM EDT, June 23rd, 2008

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Show notes for Mac Geek Gab Podcast For June 23, 2008

John and Dave talk about bandwidth, Mac OS X's services menu, directories in the Terminal, scheduling reboots and more.

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(even an audio comment, if you please!), post in the comments below, Skype your message to "macgeekgab", or call and leave a voice-mail at 206-666-GEEK!

This podcast is recorded on a Mac using Audio Hijack Pro. As for equipment, John is using a Heil PR-40 microphone going through a Behringer Eurorack UB1222FX-PRO mixer, monitored with Etymotic ER-6i Isolator earphones, then straight in to his Mac. On Dave's end, a Heil PR-40 microphone is also used, and the whole show is mixed "live" through a Mackie Onyx 1220 FireWire-enabled mixer before being pumped back into the Mac (via FireWire, of course), and is monitored with Westone ES2 custom-fit earphones. Each microphone is run through a channel on a Behringer Autocom Pro-XL MDX1600 compressor, a touch of reverb is added with an ART FX-1 processor, and the whole thing is then compressed in software on the Mac. The show is recorded to AIFF, and then converted and uploaded with an Automator script. Michael Johnston from iPhone Alley then goes through and enhances the show to provide you with the AAC version. You can hear more details of the setup and how it's mixed on Episode #32.

Theme Music: "The Answer", written by Jeff Steblea and Brian Ayles, as performed by Go Figure. "Made On A Mac" bumper by Mark Fleser

Find more editions at the TMO To Go: Mac Geek Gab index.

Observer Comments

Show: Subjects Only | Full Comments
Close Name:Guest
Subject: Jim's Question: Moving from Finder to Command Line

Dave was right in saying it could be done via AppleScript, and of course, it has been done (and done very well I might add). There's an excellent AppleScript for it here

http://www.entropy.ch/software/applescript/

called "Open Terminal Here." It even comes with a spiffy icon that looks right at home in the toolbar of your Finder on Tiger. Just drag the script to the toolbar of any Finder window and presto you have a new button. There is an updated version for Leopard that has a new icon to match the new look of Finder toolbar buttons in Leopard, and new features related to the availability of tabs in the Terminal. That copy is here:

http://jo.irisson.free.fr/?p=59

Finally, command shell warriors will also be interested in the Finder toolbar add-on called lselect:

http://anoved.net/lselect.html

This lets you select files in the Finder using shell-style wild cards like * and ? (a.k.a. "glob patterns").

Close Name:Guest
Subject: Great show!

Your podcast is great I find it very useful. I always look forward to the next show.

Close Name:Guest
Subject:

Goodness. I've clicked on Services before, but when it was "greyed out" and I didn't want to use Chinese, I just unclicked and forgot about it.

TODAY, after your mention of it, I had a finder window open to a folder in which I had a large number of PDF files. I clicked on one, then clicked on Services, and, amazing, a wealth of options appeared. Just for fun, I clicked Text Edit, then NEW WINDOW and the URL to my PDF file appeared in Text Editor. I suspect there's a lot under the hood here! Delve deeper!

I also note Mac Observer has OWC as a sponsor. Your caller with the suspect battery might need a new one, and I was happy with the one I bought there. Road warriors might want the Battery Charger/Reconditioner, but as I am not at war with the road (and have three different models of Mac laptop), I just filed the knowledge it exists into the drawer marked, "you know where it is if you discover you need it."

iSight? Haven't I learned that the USBus is processor controlled and Firewire400 controlled by a 1394 chip Apple hasn't upgraded? Meaning with new Macs and fast Intel processors, USB flies right by FW400? So that's why the built in iSights are USB, and possibly why any attachment device will also be USB, not FW?

Finally, the caller with the 2.5 GHZ MacBook Pro who didn't want to do a clean reinstall? That machine is SO new he can't have the sort of huge pile of stuff many of us have installed and don't want to lose. Back up your data, guy, and do the install. I recommend backing up the actual data to a USB external drive, then checking to see it is really there and loads from the drive, and NOT using any kind of backup program, especially Apple Backup 3.1.2 or Time Machine. Keep it simple and just drag the data to an external hard drive, and drop it there.

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