Sat - January 17, 2004

"A Treatise on Newsgroups and Newsreaders" Updated



I've updated the "Newsreaders" page of my HiWAAY site with an entry on Pan, plus a screenshot of same. For those who are wondering how I got the pseudo-Aqua look seen in the Pan screenshot, here's how to achieve it:

1. Install fink
2. Type in Terminal.app fink install gnome-themes-panther
3. If your default shell is not bash, type bash at the next prompt
4. Then, type echo "include \"/sw/share/themes/Panther/gtk-2.0/gtkrc\"">~/.gtkrc-2.0

That's it! (For some reason, the above echo command doesn't work with tcsh.)

Posted at 11:17 AM     Read More  


Fri - November 21, 2003

Fun with X11



Not only do I have X11 versions of Vim, Gimp, Abiword, and xv up and running, I even have Linux's answer to WinAmp set up, xmms:




This skin looks awfully familiar, doesn't it? ;-)

Posted at 12:47 PM     Read More  


Fri - November 14, 2003

Panther Progress



I got Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) a couple of weeks ago, and so far things seem to be working OK (other than the notorious Nov. 4 Security Update--turns out the installer kept crashing because I already had another program on my HD containing the word "Terminal" [an "Open Terminal Here" AppleScript]). One of the nice things is having X11 (now I can compile via fink such CLI programs as cadaver and lame that have ridiculous X11 dependencies). I still don't have the 2 X11 "biggies" yet--GIMP and OpenOffice. I do have ImageMagick (official binary), vim (built via fink), gftp (ditto) and xabacus (built manually using Ernie Rothman's instructions). Now if I could just find a "X11 for Dummies" book...

Posted at 06:38 AM     Read More  


Sat - October 18, 2003

Vim Patch 6.2.124


Fame at last! ;-)



I actually get a mention in one of the most recent official patches for the Unix text editor Vim. The patch can be seen here: ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/patches/6.2.124 (warning to Safari users: this is a FTP link and will open in your default FTP program or the Finder--if the latter happens, you'll be in for a hard restart in a few minutes).

Posted at 08:04 AM     Read More  


Sun - October 12, 2003

Adventures in Beta Testing


Sssh! Don't tell anyone!

I am now officially a beta tester for a OS X product I cannot name (no, it isn't OS X 10.4). I signed up in the hopes I would be rewarded with a free copy of the finished program. I've only tried out the mystery app a little bit, but it's already crashed once (!)

Posted at 07:26 AM     Read More  

GPG 1.3.3 (Developmental Release) Installed



Heard about this on the MacGPG list, so I went ahead and installed it (in spite of the fact it will probably have to be rebuilt when I install Panther). The util/srv.c file had to be tweaked (the past few versions of GPG have had pretty straightforward builds, so this was unusual), and afterward I had to change my gpgphoto alias in my .cshrc to "gpg --list-options show-photos --list-key" because some of the old options are now deprecated.

Posted at 07:23 AM     Read More  

Panther Pre-Order



I pre-ordered Panther yesterday (from MacConnection, because of the $20 rebate). Amazon is offering it for "only" $129 even, at a whopping savings of 99¢. What a joke.

Posted at 07:17 AM     Read More  


Mon - October 6, 2003

10.2.8 Update Revisited


Ho-hum

The new version of the 10.2.8 update is out. I DLed the "delta" installer (not the combo one) just to take a sneaky-peek as to what the installer actually contained (I'm not about to actually install the thing) and used Pacifist to extract the new Chalkboard font.

Posted at 07:15 AM     Read More  


Tue - September 30, 2003

10.2.8 Update


or: If you didn't install 10.2.8, raise your hand.

I'm surprised by the latest MacFixit poll, in which the early adopters come in at about 82% and the cautious at only 18%. (yours truly valiantly tried to download the combo update on a dialup connection [in different sessions] but only got 40% of it downloaded before it was withdrawn). I went ahead and fixed the sendmail and OpenSSH security flaws myself (10.2.8 included patches for these problems), so I guess I really don't need 10.2.8.1 or 10.2.9 or whatever the revised version is going to be called. I'll just wait for this guy instead:

Posted at 12:02 PM     Read More  

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