Mac OS X Leopard and MySQL 5 Preference Pane

If you have to use MySQL within a Leopard, and you've tried to install the preference pane (that allows you to start and stop the daemon without typing long path names on a terminal), you may have also discovered that it can't work. But that's old news, as some nice guy fixed this, and posted a working preference pane for your downloading pleasure right here. Fetch it while it's still hot! :)

AppleScript and Asus WL500g Premium

Greetings! Today I'm sharing a small script to add to those amazing folder actions your mac supports. Let's say you have an Asus WL500g Premium wireless router. Goo choice, btw! :). Let's say you've made the jump from original firmwares to oleg's precious replacements. (Yet another great choice!). Let's also assume you've connected an USB external drive to the router, and configured it to serve torrent files it receives by sftp automatically, placing the result in a specified drive path (as explained here). Finally, and specially since you're still reading, it's fair to assume you have a Mac OS X :).

So jump in. Start Script Editor, create a file and type in the following:

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items

tell application "System Events"

set torrent_files to every file of folder (this_folder as string) whose name extension is "torrent"

set torrent_files_names to the name of every file of folder (this_folder as string) whose name extension is "torrent"

end tell

if length of torrent_files > 0 then

set theServer to "<your-server-address>"

set theUser to "<your-username>"

set theProtocol to "sftp"

set theUploadFolder to "/tmp/harddisk/torrents/source/"

with timeout of 300 seconds

tell application "Cyberduck"

set theBrowser to (make new browser)

tell (theBrowser)

set encoding to "UTF-8"

connect to theServer with protocol theProtocol as user theUser with initial folder theUploadFolder

repeat with theFile in torrent_files

upload item (theFile as alias)

end repeat

disconnect

end tell

quit

end tell

end timeout

tell application "System Events"

delete (every file of folder (this_folder as string) whose name extension is "torrent")

end tell

tell application "GrowlHelperApp"

register as application "Wl500gPremium" all notifications ["Torrent Upload"] default notifications ¬

["Torrent Upload"]

end tell

tell application "GrowlHelperApp"

repeat with i from 1 to number of items in torrent_files

set torrent to item i of torrent_files_names

notify title "Torrent " & i & " of " & (length of torrent_files) & " was sent to Asus:" description ¬

torrent icon of application "Transmission" with name ¬

"Torrent Upload" application name "Wl500gPremium"

end repeat

end tell

end if

end adding folder items to

Take a look, configure theServer, theUser and theUploadFolder, and save the script. then go to your download folder, right click it, attach a folder action and choose the script file you've just saved. Now go ahead, look for your favorite freeware torrent (like this). And have fun! Feel free to comment out any kind of notifications (I enjoy Growl very much), and to replace CyberDuck with your AppleScript-enabled sftp uploader of choice (beware of their syntactic intricacies). As a free tip, I'll tell you it's great to have firefox open up the save dialog for each torrent. You can save it to the download folder (sending it to your router no matter where you may be), or you can open it locally, with Transmission, for instance. I've benn using this almost over 6 months, and I'm loving it!

Cheers!

ecto Blogging tests

Let's give this a whirl. This is an image I just pasted in my Blog entry:

So this turns out to work, just no the way I was expecting it to. It uploads the image quietly and perfectly to flickr. I guess I can live with that! However, new Blogger bloggers will be kinda frowned when they found out they also have to have a Yahoo! account just to get the images they usually store in Google's account... Oh well. Thus life goes on.By the way, these courts are from a Hotel called Alambique d'Ouro, in Fundão (Portugal). Perfect for a non-summer-placed escapade.

A test for MacJournal, part II

If you see a - Picasa-stored - image here, it means it cannot send directly to the blogger, but it ain’t useless afterall:
:

Cheers!

Edit: obviously this didn't work. But today I found out that ScribeFire is now finally able to do what I've been looking for - direct Blogger image publishing. Let's try again (hopefully there will be an image below):

Edit again - horraaay! It works! Now all I have to do is to help ecto gain a plugin to do this image uploading! I wonder where I can get information. /me creates a to-do entry to seek help in ScribeFire support sites/foruns...

DVD Flick

So I hear you just got yourself into the getadivxthengetasubtitlefilethenwanttousethelivingroomdvdplayerandwhatnow? game. So now you have to know that most operating systems out there can burn dvd's, but the conversion stuff is too kinky for them to work out of the box. I won't go into the required legalese to explain the issues at hand - google for it, if you really want. Let's skip to the interesting part. You're stuck with Windows. I pity you. But it's not a lost cause, at least for a simple task such as divx into dvd conversion. Oh, and I know there are PLENTY apps out there to do the job. But can they also do subtitles sleekly as well? I've used WinAVI Video Converter, but now there's a free (as in speech) little tool that simply works! Get the app, install it, and give it a test. for the record, I'll itemize what this does:

1. Pick an AVI file
2. Pick a subtitle file (srt, perhaps)
3. Produce a nifty DVD playable with a subtitles track!

[Go to DVD Flick for more...]

How-to: Proper Gmail IMAP for iPhone & Apple Mail

There is nothing wrong with leaving your email clients as-is exactly as the Gmail Help documents instruct. Unfortunately, you will start to see a little inconsistency between your email clients and your Gmail web interface.

[From How-to: Proper Gmail IMAP for iPhone & Apple Mail]

I just found this site that helped me get the Apple Mail to handle Gmail's accounts just the way I want them to! Basically, a tip to filter out the labels in gmail - I want to make my own smart-folders and wish not to have double emails (one in "All Mails" and another in the filter(s) in question). Also, the "use this mailbox as *" tip was handy, as it gets integrated "the right way" in the Apple Mail Client. I can be so happy when I get a bit more organized, sometimes! :)

Audacity: Can I remove the vocals from a recording to make a Karaoke track?

Today I was asked to remove the voice from a song (for a kid's Christmas event). I already knew that it is simply impossible to achieve in a general-purpose tool - it depends on the frequency arrangements of the voice parts of the song. However, I found a little program (I've used before) called Audacity that is able to help us with this task. the authors have even written a small page with the necessary steps for a specific (albeit common) case:

1. Import your stereo file into Audacity.
2. Open the track menu (click the arrow next to the track title), and choose “Split Stereo Track.”
3. Select the lower track (the right channel) by clicking it in the area around the mute/solo buttons.
4. Choose “Invert” from the Effects menu. 5. Using the track menus, change each track to “Mono.”

[See the full article in Audacity: Can I remove the vocals from a recording to make a Karaoke track?]