Finally, popular P2P streaming player Sopcast is available for OS X. Some may prefer using an external video player like MplayerX or VLC instead of the embedded mplayer; here's how you can do that.
The Sopcast OS X application is basically a package of the streaming server (sp-sc-auth) and a video player (mplayer) together with a simple GUI. The mplayer part is a very basic instance without keyboard shortcuts, so some functions like setting aspect ratio are missing. One may prefer to use the full MPlayerX application or VLC as the video player. Using Terminal it's possible, the only drawback is the missing convenience of clicking on sopcast: links in browsers. The link should be copied into a terminal command:
sop://broker.sopcast.com:3912/xxxxx is the sopcast: link from browsers, xxxxx will be a Sopcast channel number.
When the stream is working (Mbits of upload and download traffic), start MPlayerX or VLC and open the URL:
http://localhost:8902
Sometimes for some reason the video players can't pick up the video stream, they need to be restarted. To stop the streaming server, press Ctrl-C in Terminal.
[kirkmc adds: I didn't test this. I had never heard of Sopcast before either.]
Following a discussion on Twitter a few weeks ago, Jeff Porten shared with me an AppleScript he uses to listen to podcasts on his Mac at faster or slower speed. The script lets you choose a playlist, then choose whether you want to listen at 75% or 150% of the normal speed. It then opens the podcasts in QuickTime Player and plays them.
It's a nifty script, and if you like to speed up podcasts on your Mac, as you may do on an iOS device, this makes it easier to do so. It's a bit more sophisticated than the script in this hint from 2006, as it can keep going through a playlist.
(*
iTunes FastPodcast 1.2, by Jeff Porten
jporten@gmail.com
Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
*)
tell application "iTunes"
set setupNeeded to false
--fetch prior selected playlist name and playback rate
try
set targetPlaylistName to do shell script "defaults read com.jeffporten.fastpodcast SelectedPlaylist"
set playbackRate to do shell script "defaults read com.jeffporten.fastpodcast PlaybackRate"
on error -- probably first run of script
set setupNeeded to true
end try
if setupNeeded is false then -- confirm using last settings
set userReply to button returned of (display dialog "Play playlist \"" & targetPlaylistName & "\" at " & playbackRate & " speed?" buttons {"Cancel", "Change...", "OK"} default button "OK")
if userReply is "Change..." then set setupNeeded to true
end if
if setupNeeded is true then -- set up new settings
set listPlaylists to the name of every playlist
set targetPlaylistName to (choose from list listPlaylists with prompt "Which playlist to play?" without multiple selections allowed and empty selection allowed) as text
set selectedSpeed to button returned of (display dialog "Playback rate to use?" & return & return & "(½X and 2X correspond to iPod playback speeds, actually 75% and 150%)" buttons {"Custom", "½X", "2X"})
if selectedSpeed is "2X" then
set playbackRate to 1.5
else if selectedSpeed is "½X" then
set playbackRate to 0.75
else
set playbackRate to text returned of (display dialog "Enter a playback speed. (1.0 is normal speed, 2.0 is true double-speed, 0.5 is true half-speed.)" default answer "1.0")
end if
end if
--store settings in a non-AppleScripty way
do shell script "defaults write com.jeffporten.fastpodcast SelectedPlaylist " & (quoted form of targetPlaylistName)
do shell script "defaults write com.jeffporten.fastpodcast PlaybackRate " & (quoted form of (playbackRate as text))
--actually do the playback in QuickTime Player
set targetPlaylist to playlist targetPlaylistName
set trackList to tracks of targetPlaylist
repeat with i from 1 to count trackList
set thisTrack to item i of trackList
set podcastName to album of thisTrack
set thisLoc to location of thisTrack
set thisDuration to duration of thisTrack
tell application "QuickTime Player"
activate
open thisLoc
play document 1
set rate of document 1 to playbackRate
--if some podcasts should never be rate-altered, delete last line and use this instead
--if (podcastName does not contain "Onion") then set rate of document 1 to 1.5
--or for multiple podcasts, add as many of these as you like before "then set rate":
--and (podcastName does not contain "someOtherPodcast")
set nextTrack to false
set j to 0
--if the QTP player is manually ended by dragging the slider to the end, automatically starts next podcast
--if QTP player is closed, script errors out of existence
--otherwise, when playback is finished, script will close the QuickTime Player document and open the next track in the playlist
repeat until nextTrack is true
delay 2
if current time of document 1 ≥ duration of document 1 then set nextTrack to true
end repeat
close document 1
end tell
--mark the track as played
set played count of thisTrack to (played count of thisTrack) + 1
--I use this AppleScript line to set the rating of the podcast track to one star, which I delete later from a smart playlist
--set rating of thisTrack to 20
end repeat
end tell
Up until Mountain Lion, you could hover over the Install or Download button in the App Store Purchases list and an x would appear. Clicking this x would hide the app, removing it from the purchases list.
Now, in Mountain Lion, you need to right-click or Control-click and choose Hide Purchase from the one-item contextual menu that displays.
To unhide an item, click on the Account link on the main page of the App Store, then go to iTunes in the Cloud > View Hidden Purchases.
I recently upgraded to Lion and miss Exposé's "All Windows" Hot Corner feature, which showed clearly all windows of the current Space. With Mission Control, you have to delicately hover over tiny slices of windows and keep hitting the space bar to switch between windows or, using a hot corner with "Application Windows," select among all windows of a single app from all desktops (plus windows that aren't even open)! I'm a power multi-tasker and I use desktops to differentiate between projects that all use the same apps, which means that Mission Control is virtually useless to me. Thus, I have put together an alternative that is far from Exposé's previous functionality, but a wee step closer, and for me, a huge boost in productivity.
This hint uses two third-party preference panes (Witch and Corner Click) and an AppleScript.
First, make sure that the hot corner you want to use for Witch is not set in System Preferences.
Install Witch and open it in System Preferences.
Enable using the checkbox at the top.
Under Triggers, make sure the shortcut for All applications non-minimized / Forward is set as option-tab.
Under Behavior, show list right away so the hot-corner response is immediate, and un-check Releasing all modifier keys activates the selected window.
(Optional) Under Appearance, I maximized the size sliders, selected Show mini window previews if possible", and selected Pop up a preview... after 0.1 second delay.
Install Corner Click and open it in System Preferences
Under Settings, check Corner Click is enabled.
Under Actions, select the corner you want to use. Click the + button, set the Trigger to Hover, and for the Action, select Run Applescript, and choose the following script. You'll have to paste this script into the Script Editor and save as a script file:
tell application "System Events"
key down option
keystroke tab
--delay 2
try
repeat while (value of seventh attribute of process "witchdaemon" is true)
delay 0.1
end repeat
on error errStr number errorNumber
key up option
error errStr number errorNumber
end try
key up option
end tell
This script basically "holds down the Option key" (and taps the Tab key) and keeps the tab down until you've made your window selection.
I may be tweaking my settings as time goes by, but this to me is much better than Mission Control or the "pplication Windows hot corner simply because I can select among all windows on the current desktop quickly using a hot corner and a single click. No more delicate window slice navigation and space bar nonsense.
if you take movies with your iOS device (or other camera) that need to be trimmed, you may have encountered the following. If you do not trim the movie on the device, but do it later on your Mac using QuickTime, the file’s date will change to the date you trimmed it, resulting in an incorrect sort order in iPhoto.
Terminal and touch come to the rescue:
First check the original file’s date and time in the Finder by selecting it and pressing Command-I.
Then, in Terminal, use touch to change the date and time. Here’s an example:
This will change the file's modification date to August 19, 2012 at 12:30. Doing this before importing the trimmed video will keep an appropriate sort order in iPhoto.
Check man touch for more on using this command.
[kirkmc adds: The touch command is nothing new, and there's even a hint about using touch with iPhoto that's more than ten years old. I thought it was worth posting this, however, because of the issue with dates that are changed when editing files such as movies.
Growl includes a feature to pause and resume notifications, which is very useful when giving presentations or screen sharing. Unfortunately, the UI only exposes this feature via the menu icon. With this script you can hide the icon and control notifications via a launcher such as QuickSilver or Alfred.
* Pause and resume Growl. Use in a launcher like Quicksilver or Alfred to
* pause and resume Growl when the menu bar icon is disabled.
* Author: Andrew Berry, deviantintegral@gmail.com
*)
tell application "Growl"
register as application "Growl pause/resume" all notifications {"Growl paused", "Growl resumed"} default notifications {"Growl paused", "Growl resumed"} icon of application "Growl"
if is paused then
resume
notify with name "Growl resumed" title "Growl resumed" description "Growl notifications resumed" application name "Growl pause/resume"
else
notify with name "Growl paused" title "Growl paused" description "Growl notifications paused" application name "Growl pause/resume"
pause
end if
end tell
If you don't care for Apple's skeuomorphic design in Calendar and Notes in Mountain Lion, here's a way you can change Notes to use a gray titlebar and inactive buttons.
Do the following:
Copy Notes from /Applications to a safe place in case you want to revert back to the original.
Download this archive which contains a few gray graphic files.
Unzip the archive; it contains a folder called Notes dark grey.
Browse to /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/Resources in Finder. (Right-click on the Notes app and choose Show Package Contents, then go to the Resources folder.)
Quit Notes if it is running.
Copy the 5 PNG files from Notes dark grey to /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/Resources.
Restart Notes.app and enjoy
[kirkmc adds: Beware that this may not work after an OS X upgrade, so you may need to do the above operation again.]
Preview in 10.8 has removed a number of export options. If you choose File > Export, there are only six options in the Format popup menu, compared to 13 in the Lion version of the application.
Alas, this is yet another feature that has more options hidden behind an Option keypress. Hold down the Option key when clicking on the Format menu to see all 13 available options.
You can drag an e-mail from Mail to Notes, and Notes will display a clickable link with the subject of the e-mail. Click that link to open the e-mail in Mail.
What's interesting is that you can then copy the link to the message by right-clicking and choosing Copy Link. When you paste the link into a text editor, it will look something like this:
If you paste the link into an application that can recognize it as a link, it will be clickable, and will open the e-mail. For example, TextEdit will display this as a link, if you're using an RTF document. I use BusyCal as my calendar application, and pasting an e-mail link in the Notes field results in a clickable link; however, Apple's Calendar doesn't recognize it as such. The Scrivener word processor recognizes it as a link, but Microsoft Word doesn't.
With the Share button in Safari on Mountain Lion, you can share web pages using Twitter or Messages. There are no default keyboard shortcuts, but you can create your own.
Open System Preferences, click on the Keyboard icon, then the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Click on Application Shortcuts, then click on the + icon. Choose Safari as application, then enter either "Twitter" or "Messages" as the Menu Title. Enter the keyboard shortcut you want; I use Command-Control-T for Twitter and Command-Control-M for Messages. Click on Add to apply the shortcut.
Quit Safari and relaunch it. If you click on the Share button in the toolbar, you won't see your new shortcuts, but they work. You can see them by choosing File > Share.
Whenever you want to share a web page via Twitter or Messages, you can now do so with a single keystroke.
