Monthly Archives: November 2009

How to bounce an application with Applescript

Say, for whatever reason, you want to bounce iphoto once an hour. You can do that with AppleScript and cron.

Posted in Technical HOWTOs | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Macports fails to compile p5-perlmagick

If you need PerlMagick on a Mac, there was (and still is) a p5-perlmagick package. If you try to install that package now, you’ll find it doesn’t compile (!!). You don’t have to resort to compiling from source, though.

Posted in Technical HOWTOs | Tagged , | Leave a comment

How to fix your ubuntu 9.10 console

After upgrading my server (that isn’t running X) to Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), I found that the console on my LCD monitor was cropping out several characters from the left and right sides. It wasn’t hard to fix, though, given … Continue reading

Posted in Technical HOWTOs | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Download Xcode 3.1.4 for Leopard

Apple’s developer website only links to the latest version of Xcode, which requires Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). If you’re still running Leopard (10.5), you need to go to this alternative developer website: http://connect.apple.com/ Log in with your ADC … Continue reading

Posted in Technical HOWTOs | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

How to serve a transparent 1×1 pixel GIF from a servlet

The first issue was how to build the smallest possible byte array that represents a 1×1 GIF. Using ImageMagick piped to base64 made it easy to embed into java code: convert -size 1×1 xc:transparent gif:- | base64 At servlet load … Continue reading

Posted in Technical HOWTOs | Tagged , | 3 Comments

How to increase maven heapspace in hudson builds

If your maven-built project fails in hudson (especially when you’re using the assembly plugin) and it isn’t a compile or test failure, check the console output. If it says “java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space”, you need to configure your hudson job … Continue reading

Posted in Technical HOWTOs | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

OpenDNS updater for linux/ubuntu

The OpenDNS service is great — it provides anti-phishing and the ability to filter out some of the less desirable detritus from the internets. OpenDNS needs to be periodically notified about what your IP address is, and I don’t have … Continue reading

Posted in Technical HOWTOs | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

How to Convert Your Book’s Images to Kindle

Taking your painstakingly typeset book and shoving it through the kindle “conversion” meatgrinder was an exercise in wincing. Most of the images were corrupted, there was whitespace sprinkled randomly throughout the copy, and it was a general mess. Kindle supports … Continue reading

Posted in Technical HOWTOs | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment