Installing PostgreSQL on OSX

I've been playing around a bit with PostgreSQL on OSX, and I had to use a bit of *nix/bash general knowledge to get it working, hopefully this can save someone else a little time.

After running the installer that you can find here: http://www.postgresql.org/download/macosx

1. Switch to root ( su - ).
2. Then su - postgresql (the installer creates a postgresql user on your box, but you can't login directly as that user, except through root since su - as root bypasses password checks).
3. Go to your bin directory for PostgreSQL (default on OSX through the install wizard is /Library/PostgreSQL/9.0/bin) and run ./createdb -s -P yourusername (I used my default OSX user). It will prompt you for a password that you want to use for this user. I used my default OSX user's password. One less thing to remember.
4. Exit back to your default user.
5. In your .bash_profile, add this to your PATH variable :/Library/PostgreSQL/9.0/bin (change this if you installed to some other directory).
6. Be sure to run a source ~/.bash_profile so this variable takes effect in your current terminal session.

Now your default OSX user can run PostgreSQL commands.

I Heart Automator

Every time I wish there were some way I can automate something in OSX, I find out there is a way, through the nifty scripting utility Automator.

I had a particular problem I wanted to solve, which was to add spotlight comments to multiple items. This way I can do dynamic searching of files based on keywords instead of creating an entire folder hierarchy and having to drill down to get to a specified file.

And here's my Automator plugin in action, accessible right from the finder menu. Slick!

Keynote 2008

So I've just done my first presentation with Keynote 2008, and color me impressed. When you compare iWork vs MS Office, I consider Excel better than Numbers, and Word better than Pages. Keynote however, is far better than Powerpoint. Both programs have a practically identical purpose and workflow, but where Keynote excels is in the quality of the default templates, animations, and graphics. Basically those things that taken separately, don't matter much, but taken as a whole, it makes Keynote the superior presentation building application.

I wonder if OSX 10.5.7 will be included in Mac Box Set Family Pack. If so, I may have to pick that up so that I can iWork 2009, iLife 2009, and OSX 10.5.7

Automator for OSX

I've begun using a software VPN utility called Hamachi, owned by the guys at logmein (every family IT dude's friend). Alas, there is a slick Windows client, but the OSX one is pure command line. I'm totally fine with that, but I figure "let's see if I can make it all OSeXy". So I created a bash script to execute all the Hamachi commands, and I combined that with some Applescript and OSX's Automator, which is kind of a wysiwig script editor. I could have done it all in bash or Applescript, but I wanted to put my script on the dock and run it from there. Only Automator "executables" can be moved directly to the dock.

Here's a sample from my automator window. Note how cool it looks to have a wysiwig script editor!

So the end result is I have a clickable "thing" on my dock which will start up or quit the OSX Hamachi client. I also added in a Growl notification for fun, which is shown below.

Evernote

Evernote is one of a long line of notetaking applications, from Microsoft OneNote (which is supposedly pretty good) to Zoho. In my search for a notetaking application to supplement my brain (which has horrible short term memory), I settled on Evernote as the most full featured of the bunch:

• Has a desktop AND web AND iPhone client
• For notebooks that are synced to Evernote's servers, free OCR
• The ability to have synced notebooks (to take advantage of web/iPhone clients and free OCR), or desktop only notebooks (for sensitive info)
• The ability to add pics, pdf, word, excel, numbers, pages, webpages, or free text to a note
• quick searchability

The only thing remaining for me is to put my local Evernote notebooks into my truecrypt partition, then I'd be all set

Remember The Milk

I was a dedicated omnifocus user, but I just switched to Remember The Milk. If it was just my notebook or a desktop, omnifocus is the top GTD app hands down. However the omnifocus iPhone app is just tooo..... clunky. I have all the usual complaints about it, it loads slow, too much navigation to do simple things, so on and so forth. To me it seems like their developers are too used to the high horsepower of modern macs, and are having a hard time writing an app for a processor/ram/hd constrained product like the iPhone.

Remember The Milk on the other hand, is a pure webapp for macs, with a syncable iPhone app. The webapp is slightly slower than omnifocus for mac, which is understandable. However, their webapp has gmail like keyboard shortcuts, which is nice. I do miss omnifocus's ability to add a new task from anywhere. Remember The Milk also integrates well with gmail, I subscribed to my task list as a calendar in iCal, and has nifty settings like "postpone", and understands natural language as you input data. Unfortunately for omnifocus, the faster Remember The Milk iPhone app made me a switcher. 

Dropbox is pretty nifty

So to take a break from constantly writing about Delphi and RAD Studio, here's a little bit about Dropbox. Dropbox is an online file storage application which interfaces seamlessly with Finder in OSX. It's actually pretty nifty to be able to work on remote files in exactly the same way as you would a local file. They probably use MacFuse to some extent on their backend. 

Here's my Dropbox directory viewed on the web

Here's my Dropbox directory viewed in Finder

Wow RAD Studio is fast

For the project that I participate in, I usually work remotely through logmein, and that has been my only experience with RAD Studio. Trying to solve my visibility problem prompted me to install RAD Studio on my MacBook Pro through Parallels on Windows XP, so that I could work on code that I own and can post freely online. 

Holy crap RAD Studio is fast, even though I'm running it through a virtualized OS. Now I just need to buy more ram so I can stop using virtual memory so much. I guess OSX + Firefox + Parallels + Windows XP will eat up 2GB =P.

So I can mark up one win for RAD Studio, it definitely executes faster than Visual Studio.

See... my experiences with Delphi and RAD Studio aren't all bad.

Delicious Library

Just checked out Delicious Library 2.0, and it's surprisingly fun to manage my physical media in a GUI format.

Addendum to OSX apps I use

Adium: Tabbed chatting, custom backgrounds, what's not to love? Oooohhh that's right, ichat still holds the edge in tele/video conferencing, as well as screen sharing. For straight up text chatting however, Adium is the bees knees.

Parallels: It's a toss up between Parellels and VMWare, both are good. I can run my bootcamp partition as a virtual machine from within OSX, which is nifty, and Coherence mode tries to make it appear that the Windows apps are running natively in OSX.

Google Notifier: I use gmail and google calendar to organize my life. I figure iCal and Mail.app have gotta be slick, but I can't think of a reason to force myself to use either. iCal+Mail has a smart text functionality, where it can parse your emails for contact info, dates, etc., and makes those actionable items. However, I can send an sms to my gmail account, and I can sms a new entry to my google calendar, which is extremely nifty. Perhaps with Apple's new mobileme service they might be comparable to Google Apps, but seeing as Google Apps is free..... I dunno. Google Apps still wins with me.

NTFS-3G: I WOULD be using this every day if I could get it to work properly. I'm not a *nix noob, I'm perfectly fine with manually mounting and unmounting volumes, but I think having my NTFS formatted drive mounted while I installed ntfs-3g is causing me to have problems. So it's either reinstall ntfs-3g, or reformat my external drive.

I heart my mac

I always made fun of maczealots, poked at the linux people, and stuck my nose in the air at people who only knew windows. However, I now have to eat all the words I ever said against apple fanboys. If it wasn't for games, I'd never leave OSX. Not only is OSX all shiny and slick, but all the things I thought were just eye candy actually end up increasing my productivity. Coverflow for folder browsing, Expose as an app switcher, tagged files searchable through Spotlight, Multitouch for touchpad interaction, not to mention a fantastic screen and great keyboard. Here's a quick list of the apps that I have come to use on a near daily basis.

MS Office 2008 - yes yes yes, I know. As a converted macdude, I'm supposed to hate everything made by M$ (or whatever the cool kids call em nowadays). Word and Excel still can't be beat. And I still hold Visual Studio for .NET as a shining example of what a modern IDE should be.
iWork - I haven't found a need for Keynote yet, but I do use Pages on occasion. Pages isn't as full featured as Word is, but it is much much easier to write a pretty document in Pages. Case in point: I made my newest resume using Pages, and exported it into a *.doc.
Eclipse - Not as good as Visual Studio, but getting closer.
Terminal - OSX's terminal does all the good things that terminal apps other *nix os's do, tabbed sessions, etc. Not to mention all my familiar *nix commands which I can run. Indeed, I manage all the application servers at the office from Terminal.
Safari - not as good as firefox, but I need my Multitouch, which only works on Cocoa apps. No firefox extensions makes me a sad panda.
Omnigraffle - WOW. Just as full featured as Visio, and extremely well put together. I use Omnigraffle for mind mapping, especially when I have to learn new things.
Omnifocus - double WOW. I've read all about the GTD (Getting Things Done) fad, I thought it was just for people who don't know how to use post-it notes or a text editor. While I don't have to eat my words again.... I may have to nibble them.... just a little.
iTunes - Meh. I liked using Media Center in Vista better. Media Center's "album view" is just as pretty as Cover Flow, and lets me see more albums at once.
VLC - Oh yeah!
TrueCrypt - This app is a must. Seriously. The entire world should be using this.

Laptops only

My personal computing life has taken a change recently. I have moved from a homebuilt desktop only kinda guy, to a laptop-everywhere-I-go kinda guy. It all started when my graphics card died on my desktop, and I realized that in order to fix my pc I would need to rebuild it from scratch as my components were 2-3 generations old. So I figure I'll try a laptop. I originally bought a Gateway MT3422 from Best Buy, and I firmly believe that as of today, it is the most laptop that you can buy for the money.


Then came a lan party. I haven't been to one of those things in years, and indeed it had been about 2 years since I had played a pc game. Holy crap I forgot how much fun gaming is! So since my trusty gateway had only integrated graphics, I decided I needed an even better newer laptop. I began looking around at the flagship laptops from Apple, Dell, Lenovo and Sony. Do you know what the interesting thing is? When you spec out a Sony, Dell, or Lenovo to equivalent specs of a MacBook pro, they end up being about the same price! With that in mind, and the fact that you can use bootcamp to dual boot WinXP/Vista with OSX, I figure... why not. So I splurged and bought the high end 15" MacBook Pro. 



I've had my MacBook pro for about a week now, and I can honestly say that it is tied with my first homebuilt pc as the finest piece of computing hardware that I have ever owned. It is totally worth the money that you pay.