OS X

22 Dec 2008

tree is a command-line utility that displays a graphical (well, ASCII-art) directory tree. I saw Scott Chacon using it in his GitCasts and tried it in Terminal on OS X only to see that it wasn't installed. One quick sudo port install tree with MacPorts later, it was.

It's really useful for getting a quick idea of the state of a folder hierarchy. Highly recommended!

tree

16 Nov 2008

Safari Borked Graphics

Oh noes, there's something wrong with my new Macbook Pro.

(more...)

Graphics and trackpad glitches on new Macbook Pro under OS X 10.5.5

18 Aug 2008

OS X Leopard comes with Python 2.5.1 and lacks the PIL package for image manipulation. Google App Engine's local SDK uses PIL to emulate its image manipulation features.

The instructions on Google's installation page for PIL are incorrect.

(more...)

HOWTO Install PIL on OS X Leopard

18 Aug 2008

Plagued with random Bus Errors in Python on my Tiger install, and wanting to upgrade to Python 2.5.1 (as Python 2.5 is not supported by Google App Engine and the SDK has errors in it that won't be fixed), I decided to upgrade to Leopard again.

I had initially upgraded right after Leopard was released, at the end of last year, only to experience a myriad of problems like keyboard freezes (and here). I was so disenchanted that I wrote posts with titles like Leopard is tarnishing the reputation of OS X and Leopard: Great eye candy, pity the keyboard doesn’t always work before giving up and downgrading to Tiger.

(more...)

Back on Leopard

22 Jun 2008

iPython is an awesome extended Python shell that gives you goodies like tab completion for instances, history tracing (so you can easily copy interactive sessions as doctests), etc. And, if you install it, your Django project on Google App Engine will automatically start using it instead of the regular python shell when you use ./manage.py shell.

To install iPython on OS X Tiger (yes, my Leopard discs are still safely in their box since I downgraded and I don't see any reason to bring them back out yet), I followed the following steps:

(more...)

Winning at the shell game: iPython on Google App Engine