How it works: When run it asks how many minutes you want to wait before “going to sleep”. It then waits until “fade_for_minutes” minutes (default is 10) less than the time you specified and starts to fade out iTunes. It pauses after the fade completes, then restores the volume to the setting it was started with.

Example:
Run at: 10:00pm
Sleep time: 60 minutes
fade_for_minutes: 10 minutes
initial volume: 100 (iTunes volume ranges from 0 to 100)

At 10:50 fade_sound will start running. It will decrease the iTunes volume by 1 every 6 seconds ((fade_for_minutes*60)/initialVolume).
At 11:00 it will pause the currently playing track, reset the volume to 100, and quit itself.

You can either try to copy/paste the script below in to Applescript Editor, then save as an application and be sure to check off “Stay Open”, or you can download the Application.


property lastSleepLength : 5
property fade_for_minutes : 10

return (sleepLength * 60) -- Return in seconds
end getSleepLength


So, I opened up Activity Monitor and did some quick searches to see if I could find something related to iTunes, Boxee, and Sound. Anyway, there is a process called coreaudiod – the core audio daemon. Force-quit that (requires admin privileges) and boom! iTunes works again.

Enter the following into $HOME/.exrc file. First entry is to make DELETE work as Backspace and Remaining/Subsequent 4 entries are traversal into file using Arrow-Key. All 5 entries are applicable for “Editing” mode of vi editor.

DO NOT COPY/PASTE THIS:
:map! ^? ^H
:map! ^[OA ^[ka
:map! ^[OB ^[ja
:map! ^[OC ^[la
:map! ^[OD ^[ha

To type all CONTROL (the ^ and ^[ characters) characters:
^? = CTRL-V + DELETE
^H = CTRL-V + BACKSPACE
^[OA = CTRL-V + UP-Arrow
^[ka = CTRL-V + ESCAPE + k + a
^[OB = CTRL-V + Down-Arrow
^[ja = CTRL-V + ESCAPE + j + a
^[OC = CTRL-V + Right-Arrow
^[la = CTRL-V + ESCAPE + l + a
^[OD = CTRL-V + Left-Arrow
^[ha = CTRL-V + ESCAPE + h + a

For example, if cell A1 has the time 6:15 in it, and you want to add 15 minutes to it for cell A2 simply set it =A1+(15/1440).

The reason for this is that Excel (and Numbers, and.. most likely any other spreadsheet software out there) keeps track of dates, not time – so if you have a date of 6/19/2009, and in the next cell you want 6/20/2009 – you add 1. Well, there are 1440 minutes in a day, so you simply have to add a fraction of a day equal to the amount of time you want to add. So 15/1440 = 0.0104166667 days.

property numFFWindows : 0
property FFPos : {}
property FFSize : {}
property iTunesPos : {}
property iTunesSize : {}
property iCalPos : 0
property iCalSize : 0
property AdiumContactsPos : 0
property AdiumContactsSize : 0
property AdiumIMSize : 0
property AdiumIMPos : 0
property OFPos : 0
property OFSize : 0

display dialog "Set Window Position or Save Window Position?" buttons {"Restore", "Save"} default button "Restore"
set theResult to result

tell application "System Events"
    if (button returned of theResult is "Restore") then
        -- Restore Settings
        if (numFFWindows > 0) then
            tell process "Firefox"
                repeat with i from 1 to numFFWindows
                    set position of window i to (item i of FFPos)
                    set size of window i to (item i of FFSize)
                end repeat
            end tell
        end if
        if (iTunesPos is not {0, 0}) then
            tell process "iTunes"
                set position of window 1 to iTunesPos
                set size of window 1 to iTunesSize
            end tell
        end if
        if (iCalPos is not {0, 0}) then
            tell process "iCal"
                set position of window 1 to iCalPos
                set size of window 1 to iCalSize
            end tell
        end if
        if (OFPos is not {0, 0}) then
            tell process "OmniFocus"
                set position of window 1 to OFPos
                set size of window 1 to OFSize
            end tell
        end if
        if (AdiumContactsPos is not {0, 0}) then
            tell process "Adium"
                set position of window "Contacts" to AdiumContactsPos
                set size of window "Contacts" to AdiumContactsSize
                repeat with i from 1 to (count windows)
                    if ((window i) is not (window "Contacts")) then
                        set position of window i to AdiumIMPos
                        set size of window i to AdiumIMSize
                    end if
                end repeat

            end tell
        end if

    else
        -- Save Settings
        tell process "Firefox"
            set numFFWindows to count windows
            set FFPos to {}
            set FFSize to {}
            repeat with i from 1 to numFFWindows
                set end of FFPos to (position of window i)
                set end of FFSize to (size of window i)
            end repeat
        end tell
        tell process "iTunes"
            set iTunesPos to position of window 1
            set iTunesSize to size of window 1
        end tell
        tell process "iCal"
            set iCalPos to position of window 1
            set iCalSize to size of window 1
        end tell
        tell process "OmniFocus"
            set OFPos to position of window 1
            set OFSize to size of window 1
        end tell
        tell process "Adium"
            set AdiumContactsPos to position of window "Contacts"
            set AdiumContactsSize to size of window "Contacts"
            set AdiumIMPos to {}
            set AdiumIMSize to {}
            repeat with i from 1 to (count windows)
                if ((window i) is not (window "Contacts")) then
                    set AdiumIMPos to (position of window i)
                    set AdiumIMSize to (size of window i)
                end if
            end repeat
        end tell
    end if
end tell

My Bachelors Degree in Computer Science

(I have a bunch of posts I have started but not finished. So I’m going to start posting them. Some of them may not best, but I’d like to get them cleared out. Here’s my oldest post – draft dated 10/16/2007, finishing it up today.)
Please Note: This is a rambling.

So I have my Bachelors degree in Computer Science. This is great, but my thoughts about it really boil down to this: big deal. I have learned a decent amount throughout college in regard to my major, no doubt about it. But I believe I have missed many more opportunities in the process such as:

• (Indie) Software development
• Other Business – this is sort of a big list

I really have not progressed in my knowledge of OS X specific development, even though I finished my BS 1.5 years ago. I can blame many, many things for this, and a post about this is coming up soon. The biggest loss here I think is lost experience-time on the platform. If I am not able to make it on my own with OS X software development, I’d at least like to work for a Mac software company. I have done some development on Windows, but at school and at EMC I work exclusively on Linux. In terms of business development, I’ve made only moderate gains where I believe larger gains should be possible, as well as let a few entire business ideas not see the light of day because “I don’t have time”.

My biggest gains from going to college:

• Friends/Contacts
• Ideas
• Some maturation(I’ve been told this is disputable though)
• It was fun… Lots of fun
• I learned a few things too

I don’t plan to expand on this too much. I am happy I went to college, and to have earned my degree. That being said, I just sometimes wish I had been able to spend my time on other things. I believe many of the required courses outside of my major were a HUGE waste of my time. You can give me the “it makes you a well rounded person” BS all you want, but I believe a dedicated course on “Software Engineering” or “Debugging and Performance Optimization”, beats out “Philosophy in Film” in terms of usefulness by a nearly infinite amount. Or how about a course I would have loved: “Mac OS X Software Development” – I tried to do this as a directed study for a project sequence in late 2007, alas the proposal fell on deaf ears and I instead went with “Internet and Web Systems” (read: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you know things I had been doing since I was 13).

Yada, Yada, Yada

The experiences and friends gained throughout my college years are priceless to me (Should I count the student loans?) – and having the degree looks good on the resume if I need it. I hope I don’t though, I don’t believe that I am meant to be a 40+hr/week worker. I love running my own business(es) and hope to continue to do so. I look forward to sharing my escapades in starting a few new ones with everyone this year. Here’s to 2009.

With 3GB Physical RAM in this system, I was left with 750MB free:

This, is no good.

Update (12/29/09): I finally googled this, no idea why I waited so long. Anyway, Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor.

Original idea was from Instructables. I adjusted for size of the MacBook Pro, and used 1/2″ instead of 3/4″ PVC. 3/4″ seemed far too heavy duty for this.

If you want to make one for your 15″ MacBook Pro I recommend using 1/2″ PVC.

You’ll need the following pieces:

• 2x 11″
• 4x 5 1/2″
• 2x 3″
• 4x Elbow Joints
• 4x T-Joints

Assembly is pretty simple. I actually did it right in Home Depot in about 10 minutes.

What I wanted was to be able to see today, maybe the day before, and the next 5 days. After all, the past 6 days is seldom useful, but it’s nice to know what is happening the next 3-5 days.

This script will do this for you. It does so by changing the “Start Week On” preference in iCal everyday at midnight.

To reiterate, my preferred setting is to have the SECOND day of the week be TODAY. If you’d prefer another day, change the number 5 in the script below(4 = 1st day, 5 = 2nd day, etc).

The Applescript to perform this is:

-- Quit iCal if it is open
tell application "System Events" to set isiCalOpen to count ¬
	(every process whose creator type is "wrbt")
if (isiCalOpen is 1) then tell application "iCal" to quit

-- Make the change
do shell script ¬
	"defaults write com.apple.ical \"first day of week\" -int " & ((((weekday of (current date)) as integer) + 5) mod 7)
delay 2
-- Open iCal
tell application "iCal" to activate

Open in Script Editor

If you’d like to have this script run everyday, you may want to check out the excellent Launchd editor, Lingon. My LaunchAgent file can be downloaded here: iCal LaunchAgent.