Results tagged “old icedtrip net”

its time to sit down and write about a little app i have been meaning to suggest for os x for quite some time now. if you have ever used any application that allows you to launch programs and urls from your keyboard without the use of a mouse, you may have a general idea of what this little app is capable of (but that is only a small feature considering the whole of the app). similar programs include launchbar for os x and slick run for pc’s, but i have found this app to be the ultimate command line launcher.

in a very brief overview (more detailed later, if i have time), this app builds a catalog of various parts of your system and applications to allow it to bring up these apps and application functions on the fly with just a few keystrokes. first off, there are several ways for quicksilver to display its information (i.e. bezel, flashlight, mini window, menu, etc), but all images you will see below are the menu display as it has become easily my favorite.

using a key combo (default being apple + space, and most likely the best in my not so meaningful opinion), your choice of display appears. at this point, you can type in the name of an application, safari bookmark, address book contact, among many other options and sources. you are also given a list of the closest matches of what you typed if you have chosen to do so within the preferences of the app (turned on by default). upon bringing up your application, contact, etc; you are given various actions that can be performed for that particular command (“open…” being the most common). of course the actions presented all depend on what you are trying to do. for example, address contacts and other forms of data other than applications allow you to invoke commands specifically for that source, such as opening mail.app and composing a message to the contact you inputted. there are too many variations to name them all, but to say the very least, this app is expansive.

other features include typing a ” . ” or ” ’ ” to bring up a text box. this will allow you to type in a url, terminal command, or any other command you wish. a lot of these commands can call plug-ins that can also be installed to do anything from querying dictionary.com to define a word, to doing calculations with the calculator plug-in. once more, there are too many plug-ins to mention and way too many features of these plug-ins to discuss, so that too will be reserved for another time.

unfortunately, that is all i have time for, a quick overview. I will possibly do a little more thorough look at different features of this app if i can find the time. until then, check out the below shots.

icey::phoenix linkshell

well, i am starting another blog even though this one has not gotten a lot of attention. the other blog has a focus whereas this one has not up to this point. i.c.e.d::t.r.i.p will of course still be around and updated, but i wanted to put together a site for a linkshell group for final fantasy xi.

now this linkshell has not been formed yet, and whether or not it will go on to see the light of day is yet to be seen, but i wanted to put some of my design skills (or lack thereof) to use elsewhere. if nothing else, at least it offered a little practice.

i used the basic design of this site as the basis of the icey::phoenix, with a revamped logo and banner. let me know what you think. now all i need are some members, a little more work on the site and some time to play the actual game.

decided it was time for a little desktop change and ran across a couple of great desktop pictures over at homestarrunner.com. Click on the image to show the true desktop size.

the theme is section-9 by nori (go here). i have adium x running as my chat client. a terminal session is open ready to be used. geektool is using ‘tail’ to display my ‘httpd.log’ and ‘mail.log.’ it is also displaying a stock graph of the company i work for and ‘cal.’ oh, and it is also showing ‘uptime.’ the menu contains romeo for my bluetooth phone, konfabulator (displaying only the clock in the top right), quicksilver, and menumeters, among several apple menus.

hope you like!! the bed is now calling!

well, well, another week is upon us. that means one main thing, i have made it through yet another week alive in this world, and for that, i thank god. not too sure what this week may bring, as i am trying hard not to think too much on what it is that work will bring my way. the weekend was nice, helped build a habitat for humanity home, the villages comes highly recommended, i now know how to put together a 7’ by 7’ rubbermaid shed, and not too much else.

happy anniversary mom and dad, one more year to 30 years!!

to another week, to another day. i’m out.

one of these days i plan on catching up on some much needed sleep. have not gotten in bed before 2 for the past few nights. while this was quite acceptable in college, i am struggling. not enough coffee to handle it, but oh well.

in my regular plunge into the net today i discovered a nice little series of macdevcenter guides for ssh. thought they may be nice and useful for someone else, so here is the 3 part series.

inside ssh, pt 1 http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/07/09/insidesshpt1.html

inside ssh, pt 2 http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/07/13/insidesshpt2.html

inside ssh, pt 3 http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/07/20/insidesshpt3.html

enjoy. quite useful and informative.

this is the start of a form of entry that i will simply label as iceyguides. that said, don’t expect heaps of knowledge that will make you one of the intellects of the world, but it is an offering of a little bit of my knowledge (very little, but when you don’t have much, you can’t offer much). so enjoy ‘fink link pt 1 - intro.’

finklogo

http://fink.sourceforge.net

what is it?

this will be the first entry in a series concerning fink, the project that brings the world of open software into the mac os x world. yes, it has been around for awhile, and yes you do have other options (self compiling and darwinports, among others), but i have been using fink for the past couple of years and have come to have a fond love/hate relationship with it. this is just an intro into what fink is and later i will get into what uses i have found with it.

before going much further, fink is not something that everyone will see as useful. for those that have no need for open source, such as the gimp, openoffice, gnome (yes i know it is a desktop environment, not an app in and of itself, but it is cool to see on top an os x install), or any other open source replacement piece of software, then go ahead and pass up this suggestion.

one thing that i love about fink vs. any other form of unix software distribution is how everything is contained in one folder, /sw. now this folder can technically be named anything and placed anywhere, but the fact that removing fink involves simply deleting this folder (and maybe xdarwin stuff if you decided not to use x11.app) makes it easy to at least try. there are no worries about cramming software packages into standard *nix directories, that may ultimately not make things play well together.

how does it work?

fink is an extremely large topic to write about in a single entry, so this will be a brief overview of how things work within fink, then we will revisit the topic later to get more in depth.

first, there are a couple ways to use fink as far as installing fink and software is concerned, compiling and binaries. the fink install can be either compiled on your system or installed through the use of a binary, and yes compiling can take some time. likewise, software is installed in one of the two manners. if you choose to use a directory other than /sw, then you have no option than to compile everything, but if you use /sw, then you will simply need to use apt-get to install your software.

software installed by fink can be executed out of the /sw/bin folder either through a term (once the path is set for fink) or through x11/xdarwin (if it is an x window app). in an x environment, you can specify different window managers and even desktop environments (gnome and kde) that have been installed by fink.

that should give a very short overview at what fink is. in depth topics i plan on writing include, but are not limited to:

• compiling vs. binaries
• /sw location
• stable vs. unstable
• troubleshooting & problems

icedtrip

i was able to make some changes today to the site. i was running into several problems trying to install the mtrecentimages plugin, but discovered that the plugin wasn’t looking for my perl modules in the right place. now onto problem 2 with the plugin. i am now having problems getting the thing to develop proper thumbnails, but i will get it to work. now if i can find something to do some kind of filtering to the images before putting them in my column to the left. we’ll see.

in the meantime, look below for some of the sites i was referring to in an earlier post:

oh the headache i now have. i have accomplished nothing that i had hoped for on the site tonight. i ran into some heavy computer complications where i was not able to connect to my own site for about 3 hours. not too sure what happened, but after starting and stopping and starting and stopping apache time and time again, nothing came from it. i upgraded the firmware in my router, nothing. then just out of the blue, i was able to connect again. you’ve got me. oh well, i am back up again, but will not be able to play with the site until tomorrow.

i briefly tried playing with mtrecentimages.pl tonight with no success due to not being able to get it to recognize the html::parser perl module. oh well i will figure it out tomorrow.

good night to all…

i will be putting some updates to the site tonight. i do not know fully what i will be doing, but i am going to try my best to get some images going to the left column. i am going to be experimenting with some mt plugins to do this (possibly most recent entry images or something). i will also be putting up a disclaimer in the top right that will bring it to everyone’s attention about my desire to purposely not allow internet explorer to view the site properly due to stupid inabilities of the browser.

i also may play with my colors a little bit. maybe make them a little brighter. on a mac everything looks fine, as a mac screen is typically brighter and more vibrant than that of a pc. i guess i will help out in that one area of the pc since i have to use one here at work and may do some posting here from time to time (albeit with mozilla, not ie).

wish me luck to follow through.

ok….now that we are up, it is time to let people know that we are out there. does that mean that we need to let all the blog sites know? no, but i will steadily let the communities i am involved with know about the site, so that some proper conversations can pursue. whether the topic is music, software, hardware, hacks, or whatever, it is certainly welcome.

to begin, there are 3 authors. will this number increase? only a simple maybe will have to suffice for now. this is testing grounds to be honest with you. the authors are toilet johnnies, sal magicpants, and of course myself…icedtrip. both of the above are from my kdx server. they are the 2 admins. anyone is welcome to drop by anytime, but instead of dropping the address and port on the page, i will suggest using “joshuamac.homeip.net” tracker to find me under the macintosh heading.

lastly, before i hit the sack, the column to the left will be used. i am aware of the title with nothing underneath, but it will eventually serve a purpose. ok….i’m out.

ok, work can sometimes get to you. i am ready to go home, but can’t, so i decided to take to writing on the blog that has been so severely neglected. not that it really matters, as no one looks at the site anyway, but nonetheless, i write.

i had been browsing through a few sites the other day and realized that tasteful design has gone away. whether this is through the fact of no actual talent, or simply that most people do not have taste for what they are creating. regardless, something needs to happen. some of the sites i visited included the cult of the dead cow, mac underground, and the new dive site that has been set up by shoe (where dawn’s dive went? i don’t know).

now, one thing that i have come to love in website development is simplistic design. there is no need to have 100 bright colors on a single page, nor is there any reason to have a page that is so busy it takes the reader’s mind off the main topic of the site. now i will give it to cdc and will not pick on them too much as their abilities could make me suffer from what i say, but their site needs a minor face lift. their site is set up as many sites are today (such as this one), in a blog format, but the site itself is simply too busy for words. i do understand that they have been around since ‘84 (recently having celebrated their 20th anniversary at defcon) and that they have just a multitude of t-files and loads of information that has been gathered over the last 20 years, but the site needs help in the area of organization and contrasting colors. sure they have a menu in the top left for navigation, but after visiting their first page, it took me too long to figure out how to navigate. now, shoe’s new site (the gran dive) is one that i like. simple and informative with good design principles. the site is in its infancy, and will develop even more over the next few months, but shoe knows his design.

now i am not saying that i am the design king, as i have far to go, but one thing that i do know is that if a site is kept simple and well organized, without much flash (not flash vs. html, but pizzazz), then it will catch my attention. having said that, i do not like looking at a site that is so simplistic that a 10 year old could have designed it with a set of crayons, but simple does not mean bland. good color contrasts, good use of ‘white’ space, moderate use of page real estate. many of these concepts could be followed to make a pleasant looking website.

to be continued at a later time…gotta go…

thus begins the rant:

i do not, and will not, support internet explorer on windows for many reasons, but most importantly due to the fact that i find it to be a very mediocre browser. the only thing it has going for it is being the most used browser on the market due to the most used os on the market. for that, i have to give it to bill. the man knows business and knows how to deliver and sell mediocre products. hey the man makes money, no one can argue.

back to the topic at hand. as you may see (especially if you are viewing this in ie), i am very blatantly not supporting ie in a way that should not effect any browser during this point in technological history. simply put, the inability to portray my image format of choice, the png.

Continue reading “the rant: part 1”

i was going to spend a little time this evening to do a little rambling about the specifics of why i will not support internet explorer with the site, however, after a long day at work and playing pool tonight in a smoke filled pool hall, i need my sleep. not that a single soul really cares, but i will hum a few bars on it later.

one of these days, i swear i am going to post something before 11pm.

ok, months later, the basic design is done. i have modified the basic layout of the site the way that i like it, so onto the additions. slowly but surely i will be adding different stuff to the blog. now that the layout is here i can start looking at some movabletype plugins, etc. until then, i will try and post from time to time just to get some entries out there. i have had this thing set up since the end of january and have yet to really do anything with it. oh well, more will come. till then, check out my most recent desktop.

ok, so i haven’t figured out exactly what to do with the site yet. i know this seems to be the theme right now. oh well, until then i have decided that it will be a place for me to post some of my images and pics of my desktops, computer arrangements and setups, etc. i will also use it to post any kind of funky mess i have decided to label as a personal creation or whatever. in any case, without further ado, here is my first one. click it to see the full size pic.

it has been awhile since my last entry, but here is the next one. actually, the only reason i am writing this one is to have another entry on the page, thus no real reason for writing. i have still yet to decide what i want out of this site, but hopefully some day i will have an epiphany that will lead me to the true form of the site. i know, i know…..it may take awhile, but hey, i’m young with not much on the mind. you may never know what may come from a blank mind. all i have to say is…..any day now.

just a quick second day update. i have noticed as i am building the site that i am running into a few css problems that may have some pages looking quite bad. i am slowing eliminating them, but i may have some show up from time as i continue to post and new aspects of movable type start to show their heads.

**another note - i looked at the site with internet explorer today, and it doesn’t look pretty. you have been warned.

this is the beginning of my blog. this entry is simply to put something up on the web as an intro. i do not have a distinct direction this site will have. that will develop over time. i will be including links to yet undeveloped areas, and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. please forgive me for the current look of the site. appearances will change over the next few week and all entries for the time being will simply have updated information concerning the development of the site.

i also understand the simple look of the blog as it stands. this will change slightly, but not much. i will always maintain a simplistic look for the fact that it is more pleasing to the eye. there will be no flashy colors nor annoying animated gif’s. if you like the look as it develops, please tell me. if you do not, let me know as well. i will always take ideas into account during the building process, so please advise me with some good direction.

i do reserve the right to delete or mod any entries and comments i deem stupid and serve no purpose. this is not a place were freedom of speech will play a role. taking it back to childhood, “my site, i do as i please.” simply remember this, if your entry disappears, don’t complain, you were warned. otherwise enjoy watching the evolution of the site.

**note - this site will not look good using internet explorer. ie cannot use css properly and i am beginning to think that it will never support transparencies in png formats. for mac users get safari or any browser using the mozilla engine. for windoze users, go with a mozilla based browser.