XiphQT + Fluke = Flac in iTunes

Well, since Flac is more and more popular in world of music sharing, it's time to let iTunes support Flac !

There're some trick about flac in iTunes:

First, you need to install XiphQT to play flac with Quicktime core.

Then you still need a plugin named Fluke. Since iTunes won't accept flac ether in dragging files into iTunes database or double clicking flac files, with Fluke, you could cheat iTunes to add flac when double click on flac files.



http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/download.html

http://blowintopieces.com/fluke/

Keyboard & Mouse settings in OS X Terminal

Are you bothering with no PageUp/Down & Home/End key to use in Terminal ?
Well, just set the following keyboard mappings in OS X Terminal preferences.
And you'll get all keys work !
Key       Escape Sequence
Home      \033[1~
End       \033[4~
Page Up   \033[5~
Page Down \033[6~

Besides, if you would like to scroll terminal by mouse,  MouseTerm will be helpful.

iphone addressbook 排序方式

iphone的contacts有很多種排序方式。比如筆劃、拼音、英文字母排序等。以OS 3.1.2而言，排序方式是照系統語系設定；繁中=筆劃，簡中=拼音，英語=字母。然而，筆劃排序不受大眾所喜愛。(除了很熟字典的人，誰會用筆劃排序阿Orz) 所以就出現了許多workaround；像是在last name寫" C.陳"。如此的確可以讓contact照拼音排序，不過又醜又麻煩。

後來，我查到了contact中有隱藏欄位「Phonetic Last/First Name」。如果在OS X中的AddressBook加入此欄位，並且在Phonetic Last Name中打上羅馬/漢語拼音。那麼就會照拼音排序嘍~!

這似乎是個perfect solution ?



不。當以上的方式，碰上了iphone voice control，一切就變了樣。以3.1.2而言，Voice control已經可以獨立設定語系。可是當你用中文發音之後，voice control的reply竟然是讀phonetic name..... 以小弟的聽力，實在是很難確認是哪個人名，還得看iphone螢幕確認一次。這麼一來，voice control的實用性大幅下降。



所以，要兼顧2者的實用性，最好的方式就是將contact排序與系統語系分開設定。

以下就教你，如何自訂contact的排序方式~



原來contact中的排序方式，是寫在以下的plist中。



/System/Library/Frameworks/AddressBook.framework/xxx.lproj/ABContactSections.plist


所以只要把想要的排序方式從A語系copy到目前的系統語系，就能轉換成所要的排序方式!



比如我想要讓英語界面下的addressbook以簡中的拼音方式排序，那麼就進入ssh



iphone#cd /System/Library/Frameworks/AddressBook.framework/Englist.lproj/

iphone#mv ABContactSections.plist ABContactSections.plist.origin

iphone#ln -s ../zh_CN.lproj/ABContactSections.plist ABContactSections.plist


然後重開機，或是把系統語系換成別的再換回來。即可生效!

Iphoto 09 face recognition - rescanning faces

Since my iphoto is a mass, I dont want to recognize faces before finishing photo organization.

After the work done, I just cant find the option of "rescanning faces" !

How thankful as I saw the tips of enable rescanning in apple-support-discussions by BobbrkerMyHero.

Here comes the solution of rescanning faces.

**Before we start I recommend you BACKUP your iphoto with time machine or manually, or whatever you want to do. If you don't back it up and for some reason it doesn't work, don't blame me**

If you want to rescan the faces in your library this is all you need to do:

***CLOSE IPHOTO BEFORE YOU START THIS***
Open finder, go to your pictures folder.

-Find the "iPhoto Library"
-Right click (control click) on it
-Click "Show Package Contents"
-Find the files that hold the face detection information
Should be something like:
"face_blob.db"
"face.db"

-You need to move these files out of the folder, you can either delete them, or just move them to the desktop just in case something goes wrong.
-Open iPhoto back up, and it should rescan for faces!
-If everything goes correctly, you can delete the old files you moved to your desktop if you didn't delete them before.

Hibernate on OSX

As on Tiger, we have already had the hibernate functionality. Apple call it "Safe Sleep". Some people might use "Deep Sleep" for it.

Safe Sleep is to use /var/vm/sleepimage for saving data in the RAM to disk (by default). And once you lost your power of Mac, Tiger will read the sleepimage and restore your working stage. But in Energy Saver, there's no option about this Safe Sleep functionality. Many people said that you can input root#pmset hibernatemode 3/0  to switch safe sleep on/off. What if I want to safe sleep then power off ( just like Linux and MS' system doing ) ? The answer is unclear. Until....

I saw the article about new options of Leopard's Hibernate and a "Hibernate Bear".

Now I understand, the Evil Apple just hide the power manager's functions again.

So, if you aren't interested in HOW TO CUSTOMIZE YOUR SLEEP MODE. Just try the Bear above first. The bear support 3 sleep modes. That may satisfy your need.

##CONTINUE##

For further tuning about energy saving, I tried to man pmset. 

It said that 

• hibernate mode=0: This mode is to perform normal sleep. NOT safe sleep.
  
• hibernate mode=1: This mode is to save data to sleepimage then shutdown.
• hibernate mode=2: This mode is a SMART one. It will perform normal sleep when the battery is full. And when battery level is under "Hibernate Free Ratio"( Integer percentage ),  it will change to perform safe sleep. 
• hibernate mode=3: This mode is to save data to sleepimage then sleep. If you lost power supply, OS X will use sleepimage to recover working state.

Because I use Macbook pro, and the energy saving is important for a notebook. So, I tuned as follows.pmset -b hibernatemode 2 hibernatefreeratio 5 

pmset -c hibernatemode 0

Parallels on OS X

最近試了將Parallels裝在Leopard上。有些心得與設定事項要注意。

1. 因為Parallels有自動的post install，所以最好是用正版的Winxp安裝。
2. 即使是用繁中的原版光碟安裝系統，在控制台/語言的設定中，卻是英文。這會造成一些亂碼與錯誤。比如 當你想要安裝程式時，卻出現了 NSIS Error 的錯誤。那麼請先去改成中文語系設定。
3. Virtual Machine的設定從「Shared networking」改成「Bridged Ethernet」。速度會比較快一些。
4. 聽說 usb的外接device會使得parallels不穩，但firewire就無此問題。

其它的小問題，等遇到了再來記錄~

TCP connections in OSX

隨著P2P分享軟體的增加，愈來愈多人使用這類軟體，使得本來的TCP連線數不夠用。
雖然調過Winxp上的TCP連線數，但是OS X上的要怎調整呢?

其實很簡單。因為OS X底層是採用FreeBSD的改良，所以調整系統參數的方法與FreeBSD相同。
使用sysctl這指令即可。
相關的文件可參考
Mobile01 【分享教學】使用sysctl 調校你的OSX (之一) 之二

Textmate的543

Well, seems textmate is the best code editor about keyword/code completion.
Although there are so many hotkey you need to remember before you can perform a MAGIC completion of all kinds of programming language, it still is worth a try.
##CONTINUE##
IF you are a vim user or your mother-tone is a CJK-language, you MIGHT need the following plugins of textmate.
There are so many "programmers" using VIM or something else. And some key bindings are very important, especially vim's hjkl moving mode. But native textmate doesn't support this.

Hence, the "vimate" was born and it is still under developing. The most recent update is on Sep. 07'.

Another important thing is the width of the CJK words are 2-byte and obviously textmate treat them as 1-byte font. 
A good news is textmate 2.0 will support utf8. But just like the slogan of apple's new OS - ONLY IN LEOPARD ! Yes, textmate 2.0 is only in leopard. Damn...

Before apple ships leopard, we have another solution: make a new font with 1-byte-width CJK word. Thanks to Japanese-hetima to provide this idea and shinbang to provide his own new font.

試用OS X Tiger 10.4.10

話說，對岸同胞加入了mac os x crack之後，mac的資源更多了。
還有很多附帶著序號的軟體........看來即使沒有傳說中的嘿嘿嘿，也能擁有一堆軟體啦~
前幾天翻到了10.4.10的installer dvd，unhuck v1.3版的。
這安裝片解決了我失敗了n次的更新( 10.4.9 ->10.4.10 )；雖然可以直接從iwork的package中更改版本限制，使iwork 08能安裝在10.4.9。但是，ilife可就不一定能這麼搞了。還是一口氣裝到Tiger終極版吧!
目前的系統運作穩定(在Asus U5f上)，但是音效只能用Internal Speaker(接上SPDIF無效)、無線網路沒有穩定的解決方案(Intel 3945abg)。扣除硬體驅動的問題，這系統還不錯用。尤其是美工、程式界面，Vista輸太多了阿! 哈哈
經過了近一週的惡搞後，OS X之路，不再是像盲人摸黑了；至少看得到腳下的路嘍

待用過iwork 08與ilife 08之後，再來分享心得 !