Entries in Category: Mac
How to compile lftp on OS X Leopard
I've recently been missing a few pieces of software from my linux days most recently, lftp. It wasn't as simple as I had hoped it would be so I thought I'd record how I did it here.
# Download and install readline
$ wget ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-6.0.tar.gz # (or latest stable version)
...
$ tar zxvf readline-6.0.tar.gz
$ cd readline-6.0
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
...
$ make
...
$ sudo make install
# Download lftp
$ wget http://ftp.yars.free.net/pub/source/lftp/lftp-3.7.15.tar.gz # (or latest stable version)
...
$ tar zxvf lftp-3.7.15.tar.gz
# Here comes the magic
$ CXXFLAGS="-O0 -Wall -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti -fno-implement-inlines" \
LDFLAGS="-Xlinker -search_paths_first -L/usr/local/lib" \
CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include" \
./configure --with-openssl --disable-shared --disable-nls --prefix=/usr/local
...
$ make
...
$ make install
.. and that should be it. As I understand it, the 'magic' part tells the compiler to look in the right place for the readline library.
UPDATE: I suggest you now ignore this and use Homebrew where I have contributed an lftp recipe.
My favourite podcasts (at the moment)
I've been finding recently that I seem to spend a lot more time watching and listening to podcasts than I used to and I thought I'd list them here to see if anyone else has similar podcast taste or if anyone has any podcast recommendations.
Apple Quick Tips: Weekly, short tips on how to use Mac OS X. These are often things I already know, but sometimes the odd gem of a tip comes up.
Best of Chris Moyles Enhanced: Since I don't commute to work any more, I seem to not catch much of this show when it's on in the morning, so I catch up on it with the podcast.
CNET TV's Loaded: A (generally) less than 5 minute look at the latest news stories in Tech. Presented by Natali Del Conte.
The Collings and Herrin Podcasts: Weekly musings from Richard Herring (ex of Herring and Lee) and Andrew Collins (ex of Collins and Maconie). Often quite crude, always very funny.
Diggnation: A hilarious look at the weeks top stories from digg.com. Presented by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht.
GeekBrief.TV: Shiny, happy Tech news.
Hak5: Info and tutorials on all sorts of geeky topics.
Layers TV: Short tutorials, competitions and news about all applications in Adobe Creative Suite.
The Perfect Ten with Phill Jupitus and Phil Wilding: The first podcast I've heard with rules: * 10 Subjects, drawn at random from a fine-looking hat * Only 30 minutes for the lot * No returning to subjects - EVER! It ruins the time/space continuum. Another very funny podcast.
Photoshop User TV: Tutorials, news and competitions focused mostly on Photoshop (and sometimes Lightroom).
Pixel Perfect: Presented by the Photoshop wizard that is Burt Monroy. He shows you how to create all sorts of things from scratch in Photoshop.
Robert Llewellyn's Car Pool: The actor behind Kryten in Red Dwarf and presenter of Scrap heap Challenge. Drives people around in his car and has a chat with them. Fantastically simple concept which makes for a great podcast.
Scam School: Bar scams and tricks. Another great podcast from Revision 3.
SModcast: Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier (with occasional guests) chat about anything and everything.
Systm: Patrick Norton, David Caulkins and Roger Chang talk you through all sorts of geeky projects. From building a robot, to making a Media PC.
How long does it take to do a 7 pass erase with Disk Utility
Since I couldn't find any solid figures for how long it might take to run the 7 pass erase, I thought I'd feed Google with my findings in the hope that it might help someone else in future.
I ran the 7 pass erase on an 80GB Hard Disk and it took around 4.5-5 hours.
Hope that helps someone.
Another lolcat

Just a quick note to mention that I got both of these lolcat images off of random websites whilst searching for 'happy cat' or 'sad cat', so I don't own the copyright. If you do and you don't want me to use them, let me know.
iPhone impatience...

I think O2 heard me:
Date: 9 July 2008 21:01:45 BST
Subject: Order Confirmation
W00t! My order is confirmed, so ought to be here by Friday!
Bootcamp blues
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Netnewswire 3.1 is now free!
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Solution to getting iCal to Sync over SSL
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iGTD and Quicksilver
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Testing Textmate Blogging bundle
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Huzzah for Widgets
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Tiger... finally
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Telling OS X which wireless networks to trust
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Powerbook....
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and so...
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