Category Archives: Uncategorized

On Mac OSX I would recommend first installing hombrew’s ruby-env and then the latest version of ruby/gems Then you can do: gem install chef –no-ri –no-rdoc gem install knife –no-ri –no-rdoc I think by default these files go in these locations: USERNAME.pem ~/.chef validation.pem ~/.chef knife has an interactive setup tool invoked by knife configure

I just finished writing up a short article describing how to convert h.264 files into .ts files for Amazon Cloudfront streaming with HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) It is not a difficult process although you need to have the latest version of ffmpeg. For more details about converting mov files to ts files for HLS streaming, check out How to use HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) with Amazon CloudFront

Apple has retail stores all over the place. In the United States, Apple doesn’t have retail stores in some smaller cities, but there is at least one Apple Store in every state. For a full list of retail stores you can visit the apple store locator.

I’ve circled the “PbTl” in red in the screenshot above. So I simply selected the text and changed it to “GrTl”, saved the file with the .atn extension and held my breath. When I loaded it back in Photoshop (Actions panel fly-out menu > Load Actions) it worked like a charm and Select brush was now Select gradient (tool) – see screenshots below. So what good is this? I don’t know and, right now, I don’t care. I’m a firm believer of following what interests you and whatever it is will probably come in handy some day. You never know when a tidbit of knowledge like this might fit with something else you’re working on. And it’s not that often we non-programmers get a chance to see behind the scenes, as it were. UPDATE Take a look at James Walls’ comment below to see how he used this trick. Thank you James for your input. Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Probably Useless: Editing Photoshop Actions .atn Files: James Walls: Fantastic advice – and anything but useless! I’ve used this as part of porting my extensive actions(and associated scripts) from photoshop CS2 to CS3 – previously I’ve had to re-record portions of the actions to point to the right scripts directory locations, but this has enabled me to replace CS2 with CS3 in the file path within each action – saving me several hours of unwelcome rework. Thanks! Mohmaher: I was asked recently to do some hex editing … Continue reading →

If you’re wondering what Popup.app is on your Mac, the little program that has a lighthouse as an icon, and you are questioning “How did this thing get on my computer?”, well, I have your answer. Popup.app is the pharos print popup manager. If search your hard drive for Popup.app you should find it located: /Library/Application Support/Pharos/Popup.app The version I have says: Popup.app, version 8.1 (5169) Copyright ©2004-2009, Pharos Systems

There are a few subscription widgets out there for Mailchimp and WordPress – but the big problem is none of them effectively let you choose which list you would like to subscribe to. Recently I came across the Gravity Forms’s MailChimp Add-On: Our MailChimp Add-On makes integrating your online forms with your MailChimp mailing lists quick, easy and pain free. It will in fact let you set up feeds from forms, which can be set as widgets, and then pipe the users to different lists based on “conditional logic” that is defined in the form. It is quite advanced and I think it’s the solution for me.

Below is a Color Picker / Color Chooser Applescript for Mac OS X. The code originally appeared on `http://assortedgeekery.com/scripts/ChooseColor` but is no longer available there (404) so I’ve posted it here. It gives you a system-based color chooser, and after selecting a color you are able to copy the value to the clipboard as a RGB value or a HEX code. Screenshots and code below. Download the Application: Or get the code and create it yourself: (* Choose Color Chris Biagini updated Aug. 4, 2005 Republished via http://techblog.willshouse.com/?p=2222 Invokes the Apple color picker from anywhere, and prepares some useful information about the color you chose. *) property my_color : {0, 32896, 65535} set my_color to choose color default color my_color set red to round (first item of my_color) / 257 set green to round (second item of my_color) / 257 set blue to round (third item of my_color) / 257 set red_web to dec_to_hex(red) set green_web to dec_to_hex(green) set blue_web to dec_to_hex(blue) set red_web to normalize(red_web, 2) set green_web to normalize(green_web, 2) set blue_web to normalize(blue_web, 2) set red to normalize(red, 3) set green to normalize(green, 3) set blue to normalize(blue, 3) set decimal_text to “R: ” & red & ” G: ” & green & ” B: ” & blue set web_text to “#” & red_web & green_web & blue_web set dialog_text to decimal_text & return & “Web: ” & web_text set d to display dialog dialog_text with icon 1 buttons {“Cancel”, “Copy as Decimal”, “Copy for Web”} default … Continue reading →

As of the time of this writing google chrome has three releases: v 15: Stable v 16: Beta v 17: Developer Beta is buggy on lion so you should really use the Developer version, which you can download from google here: http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_dev.html?dl=mac