Getting SimTower set up on a modern machine.

Getting SimTower set up on a modern machine.

MCMap Live is a Minecraft mapper, like Cartograph for Mac OS X. It is a wrapper for mcmap, Zahl's fantastic and fast isometric Minecraft map renderer. What makes MCMap Live special is that it renders maps in pieces and lets you view them right away in an intuitive, minimalist interface. You can scroll and zoom all around your world and as quick as mcmap can render the chunks, you will see them.

Automated scripts for getting a development environment going in OS X 10.6 Lion

How to play Sim Tower on OS X

Are there other ways I can install Lion besides the Mac App Store? How can I reinstall Lion if something goes wrong?

I’m going to walk through the process of making a bootable Mac OS X 10.7 Lion installation drive out of any USB flash drive key. This is similar to the process of making a bootable Lion installer DVD, but I prefer a USB flash drive because it’s faster, smaller, and I have a MacBook Air so an installation DVD isn’t too useful for me.

Here are the requirements I have for any paper-free system:

* The scanned files need to be OCR’ed so I can search them easily. I’m too lazy to categorize and tag files manually.
* I need to be able to scan files anywhere. If I’m out at dinner I want to be able to snap a picture of my receipt and tear it up right there.
* No “cloud” services allowed for unencrypted important documents. I simply don’t trust Google/Dropbox/etc enough to put my bank statements and such there.
* Files need to be backed up securely in case my apartment burns down.
* The entire process needs to be automated as much as possible, otherwise I’ll get lazy and not scan things.

So after 15 minutes trying to understand how Mail.app stores the IMAP messages locally, I did a small .mairixc, set the output as mbox into a newly created folder, and pointed mairix to a incoming IMAP folder.

Install ssh-copy-id on your Mac, or any other UNIX machine.

Mac gamers are in for a treat today, as the Steam client for Intel-based Apple systems has finally been released. We had fun playing with the beta, and now, with the full release, anyone can jump in. Here's the best part: the list of games available is much wider than we had anticipated.

Portal is available as expected, but so is Civilization IV. So are a bunch of Lucasarts adventure games. You can pick a copy of Torchlight, newly on sale for $10. You can buy Braid, or Peggle, or City of Heroes. Right now there are 63 games for sale in the Mac store, and it looks like all of them feature the Steamplay logo, so if you own the PC versions you can download and play the Mac versions for no extra charge.

Just to get you started, you can play Portal for free on your Mac or PC until May 24. The prices for games are all over the place, and of course there are some sales going on (and more coming), but for a launch this is pretty damn exciting. No Left 4 Dead yet, but we'll be patient. If support continues and the game selection continues to grow, this is going to be an easy way for Mac gamers to enjoy their hobby.



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It was a simple idea: take a collection of independent games, offer them with no DRM, and allow people to pay whatever they'd like. The result? 123,182 people have paid for the bundle so far, and the total raised is now an incredible $1,126,563.

That generosity will be rewarded. "As of 5/11/10, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, and Penumbra Overture pledge to go open source," the developers blogged. "We are preparing the sources right now and will be releasing them ASAP." The sale was a huge success, began many conversations, and it provided insight into the behavior of gamers. Here's a look at what comes next.





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This is a very basic set of shapes for making wireframes (low-fidelity web page schematics) in OmniGraffle (Mac OS X).

In Part Two, you'll learn how to use the terminal app to look at external volumes, then enable ssh to access files, scp to securely copy them remotely, sftp for secure ftp, and finally how to use rsync to synchronize files between two computers.

Set up a webdav server. There are quite a few documents published on this subject so I only give a brief summary of the steps I took to accomplish that task. Then things get a little more complicated as I had to convince my systems to use my webdav server

Cloning Mac OS X disks

All about AppleScript, from Apple.

Here is a list of short tips on using various UNIX tools under Mac OS X

WriteRoom is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment.

Max is an application for creating high-quality audio files in various formats, from compact discs or files.

“VirtueDesktops” is a virtual desktop manager for Mac OS. It offers features, eye candy and configurable options that no other desktop manager on the mac has added yet, and is under active development.

Mac OS X-like dock for KDE