Below you can find a link to the dock resources folder for Snow Leopard.

I’ve been asked for Leopard and other OS X versions of the folder. If you have these then do email them to me so I can add them here!

Snow Leopard: resources.zip

And for the future?

Always make a backup!

Caffeine is a tiny little app that keeps your Mac awake when needed; be it when you’re watching a video (for some reason, Adobe Flash doesn’t keep your Mac awake), reading something off your screen, or anything else.

It sits in the menu bar waiting to be summoned when needed, and dismissed just as easily.

Being the lazy type I am (thanks to the inevitable Quicksilver, dragging the mouse over to this corner to click the icon is just too much work. Below is an applescript which I run from Quicksilver with 3 key presses (I could set it as a trigger if I really wanted) and it switches it on or off, or even opens it if it’s not running.

tell application "System Events"
if exists (process "Caffeine") then
tell application "Caffeine"
if active is false then
turn on
else
turn off
end if
end tell
else
tell application "Caffeine" to activate
end if
end tell

This will launch the app if it’s not running. If it is running it’ll check to see if your Mac is on Caffeine (i.e. if it’s turned on) and carry out the required action.

This is all possible thanks to Caffeine being scriptable. It’s always great when developers add applescript support as well as others to their apps – it makes the Mac experience that bit more cosy.

You can download the applescript here
I’ve even added the right icon to the script

All that needs doing is setting up a trigger in Quicksilver, or placing it in
~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/PlugIns/Extra Scripts.qsplugin/Contents/Resources/ExtraScripts.

Done!

Check out Nicholas Riley’s tiny app (only 6 lines of custom code!) that fixes this:
http://github.com/nriley/keyboardViewer (download)

Once that’s downloaded and installed (you need to go into terminal and move it, or just navigate to /usr/local/bin/ and paste it there), you can then use the applescript listed on the App’s homepage to get it working in applescript.

tell application "System Events"
if exists (process "Keyboard Viewer") then
click process "Keyboard Viewer"'s window 1's buttons whose subrole is "AXCloseButton"
else
do shell script "/usr/local/bin/keyboardViewer"
end if
end tell


I have modified this slightly, as the ‘click process’ part of the applescript uses a deprecated method (Apple’s own fault) and could become obsolete at any point. I just used a simple killall command in its place


tell application "System Events"
if exists (process "Keyboard Viewer") then
do shell script "killall KeyboardViewer"
else
do shell script "/usr/local/bin/keyboardViewer"
end if
end tell


And now, my trusty Cmd + Optn + Ctrl + K Quicksilver trigger is back!

Now, in need of some kind of method to make sure ALL of my tracks get played (I had some un-played from over a year ago because of iTunes’ lack of shuffling) I set up my own custom smart playlist to sit alongside the ‘Recently Played’ playlist.

Recently Unplayed

This is a fairly simple filter that does what it says on the tin.

I set up the filter as below:

My Recently Uplayed Playlist

The last 3 filters just get rid of the junk and make sure it’s only music. You must make sure ‘Live updating’ is ticked.

Now, I can listen to my music on a 40 day or so (for me) rota, with about 50 songs in my playlist at any one time; and this playlist is still on shuffle so it’s never the same

If you’re thinking ‘but I like the way iTunes works. I don’t want to listen to the tracks I’ve skipped!’, then my reasoning would be DELETE THEM!

Hope this helps someone… it took me a while and a bit of searching to find out that iTunes (and apparently iPods as well) don’t really have a random shuffle.

Having wild-camped with my sister and friend for the first time in France for 2 weeks, this summer (‘09) I’m fairly clued up as to the dos and don’ts and also a lot less scared as to what might happen!

Here’s a recap of my experiences;

Camping Spots

The Good

• Picnic (or Pique-nique in French) spots

These are generally quite easy to find, and often offer great camping spots with benches for cooking / eating and sometimes toilets! Most of the times we followed a picnic sign we ended up in a secluded spot that was generally quiet after 20h00.

• Lakes & Other geographical features

Tying in with the idea of picnic spots, these areas generally have a fair number of picnic spots. If not, then lakes and other large geographical features tend to be away from built up areas and offer spectacular places to camp for the night.




Don't worry about the signs

• Forests & Forest Track

Another good one here, as there’s shelter and they’re often pretty close to life so you’re not stuck out in the middle of nowhere. You do need to look out for signs of activity though! A busy forest being cut for logging is not good (see below!)

• Farmers!

We only ever did this once and it turned out well. If you’re ever stuck, just go knock on someone’s door (hopefully you can speak the language!) and ask if you can camp or if they know of anywhere to go. We did this one night and were directed to a nunnery – the best camping spot we found!

Camping at the nunnery

The Bad

• Tracks or People’s driveways

Yes, as stupid as it might sound this did happen. You’d probably think “who in their right mind would camp next to someone’s house, on their land?” and the answer would be YOU, if light was fading, you were hungry and just wanted somewhere to sleep.

• Anywhere showing recent signs of activity

We came across these spots a few times. Vineyards, forests with logging going on are all not good! This is really only relevant for places you *shouldn’t* really be. Picnic spots show signs of activity, but are generally accepted for camping.

This brings up the important point that you shouldn’t leave it too late to start looking for camping spots. We did several times, and it mostly meant an uncomfortable night’s sleep (although it did pay off once, leading us to a nunnery!)

Transport

Now we did all of this with a trusty 306 car and it would have been hell without it.
I guess you could do it on foot, but it would make life a lot more difficult – if you found yourself in a dodgy area with dusk approaching you’d be stuffed.

Accommodation & Cooking

We invested in Quechua (from Decathlon) pop-up tents which, after 2 weeks of setting up camp at dusk and leaving at dawn were a godsend (literally take 10 seconds to put and AND down!). I’d recommend these tents to anybody who’s camping anywhere; they’re cheap and extremely cheerful.

We also bought a portable gas stove – not one of the cheap screw-on tops for gas canisters, but the more sturdy black-box gas stoves for ~£12.99.

One of the Campingaz CP250 gas cartridges (long, tall and thin) would last about 3-4 hours of cooking, just over a week.
Incase you’re worried. These CP250 gas cartridges, as well as other CP206bp cartridges can be bought in France, and I guess most of Europe.

Facilities

Generally, we didn’t have many problems with being smelly or dirty – we’d stay in a campsite every few days to clean up, or go to a beach and wash. In France there’s almost always a shower at the beach.

Outcome

I’d recommend wild-camping to anyone. You won’t get pestered by the law enforcers as long as you’re tidy and quiet.
It’s a great experience, and best of all – it’s free!

Recently, I’ve been looking for a script to toggle my screen-saver password for my MacBook.
While out and about I want to make sure my Mac is safe from stray fingers by making sure a password is required before waking, but when at home or in university there’s no need for this extra layer of protection.

Searching the web I found absolutely nothing, except a few scripts that were old and broken.

The only solution; I decided to write my own. You can download the applescript here in zip form, or view the script in your browser here. (Warning – it’s not the easiest thing to read!)

This applescript toggles the screen-saver password, and then displays a growl notification telling you whether the password has been enabled or disabled – handy if you’ve pressed it one time too many and you’re not sure if your screen is locked or not!


If you don’t have growl installed I suggest you download it now from here!

If you’d prefer not to use growl, then just delete the two blocks of code between the
tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
and the next
end tell


I used quicksilver (download it here if you haven’t already!) to create a trigger that means I only have to press a few keys to toggle the password. Works great!

*** Update ***

If you’ve downloaded this script and it isn’t working, it’s probably because you have different settings in your system preferences to me. To find out what yours are open up script editor (found in Applications/Applescript) and run this script

Hopefully you’ll get a message in the ‘result’ log at the bottom of the script editor. The details in here should match the details on the 3rd line which starts with
if get properties is {require....
except for the first item which should stay as
require password to wake:true,


Enjoy

*** Note ***

If you’re logged into a non-admin account, this will ask you for the password every time. Annoying, but hopefully bearable!

There are plenty of solutions out there to set the order of image loading, and most solutions use javascript. Now to me, this is like trying to fight fire with fire; solving the problem of certain javascript images loading first with yet more javascript. But what’s wrong with javascript, surely a little more won’t harm anyone.
Well, javascript means more work for the client’s computer and makes loading times (only a fraction) slower. Also, if you’re not that familiar with javascript, is can be quite daunting to keep adding this.object(); and that.var=10; to your code.

I’ve come up with a far simpler and easier method to solve the problem using only valid CSS and good old HTML.

My trick uses the display:none; style.

What you need to do is add the img tag:

straight after the opening <body> tag. This will be the first thing your browser picks up, meaning it should be the first thing your browser loads (even though it’s not displayed!) Now when the image crops up again later on in the source, it will have already been loaded into the cache and can be displayed instantly.

A simple, valid, cross-browser compliant solution.

Note: Clip may contain some swearing and violence.
Snuff Box is not for the faint hearted!