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I’ve set up SMS Server Tools on my Mac Mini so that I can send text messages from my PC and I thought someone might be able to use the Applescript I’ve created or even suggest a better way of doing things.

If you’re not familiar with SMS Server Tools it’s a really great utility for sending text messages from your PC (I use the term generically) it works on (almost?) all UNIXs and Windows too. It works by having folders which it monitors for text message files and then sending them via the phone. It was very easy to set up just download the source, make, make install, edit the config file and away you go.

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A while ago I had an old Nokia N-95 plugged into a Gentoo box and I was using SMS Server Tools to send myself text message alerts. I got rid of that sim and so stopped using it. The phone has been sat in a drawer since then along with a couple of others.

I recently decided I wanted to set it all up again, this time on my Mac Mini. I was trying out different phones and settings but I couldn’t get the N95 or an old Motorola V series phone to do anything even after plugging them both in! Read the rest of this entry »

You may or may not know that Windows and Unix end lines in text files differently. Windows uses both a line feed and carriage return characters whereas Unix uses only the line feed character. This can be annoying if you’re working with documents on both systems interchangeably and you need to preserve a lot of indentation . One example for me is xml files I like writing them in a plain text editor because I cannot find an xml editor I get on with.

The solution is to use PERL:

• To convert Unix style line endings to Windows style
  • perl -p -e ’s/\n/\r\n/’ < unixfile.txt > winfile.txt
• To Convert Windows style line endings to Unix style
  • perl -p -e ’s/\r$//’ < winfile.txt > unixfile.txt

The use of single quotation marks in both command lines is important because it prevents the shell from trying to evaluate anything inside.

That’s it. A simple way to quicky convert line endings letting you get on with the job.

If you like risk then you’ll probably already have come accross the java version written by Yura Mamyrin. If you havent well its a java implementation of the classic board game Risk where the objective of the game is to conqueror territories to achieve an objective, either world domination or some other mission, as well as these great features:

• It is multiplatform unlike Risk II which is windows only but is also very good
• You can easily create your own custom maps
• There is a neat network play feature for long distance domination
• Its free

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Came across this problem trying to copy my ssh private key from my old machine onto my new mac.The solution is to change a setting via the terminal.

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

Finder needs to be restarted for this to take effect and that can be done via holding the option key (alt to me and everyone else not used to macs) and then clicking and holding the mouse on the finder icon in the dock. A context menu will appear, select relaunch.You’ll now see a lot more files in finder which some people may consider a downside in which case you can always change the setting back to NO.

Ever needed to get rid of GRUB from a partition but didn’t know how? I managed to install GRUB onto my swap partition whilst setting up dual booting with Gentoo on a Mac Mini and faced this same problem. Using rEFIt it automatically detected GRUB on the partition and it showed up as a bootable option. I couldn’t be doing with that so I started looking for the solution. Loads of forum posts suggested fixmbr or fdisk but I didn’t want to replace GRUB I wanted shot of it. Anyway turns out the solution was to use dd.

# dd if=/dev/0 of=/dev/sdX bs=446 count=1

Where sdX is the partition to clean.