So you want to do the SICP...

         Programming

That's awesome! But maybe you don't know where to start. So here we go! Wait, the what? Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, a.k.a. the SICP, is an MIT class teaching computer languages turned into a book. Why should you care? I'll let Stack Overflow answer: SICP, however, is in a different league. It is a book that will enlighten you. It will evoke in you a passion for writing beautiful programs.

Convert .approject to .aplibrary

         OS X      aperture

If you ever backed up Aperture projects outside your standard library, you probably noticed the default format for exported albums changed from .approject to .aplibrary in the update from Aperture 2 to Aperture 3. The Finder correctly reports these new .aplibrary as “Aperture Library”, but it seems to have forgotten everything about the old .approject who now appear as standard folders (it appears to be a weird bug on my machine, but still).

The Zen of updating Wordpress

           wordpress

Wordpress automatic updates never work. No matter if it's a major version change or just a small bump (let's say… 3.0.4 to 3.0.5, uh?), I always end up downloading the whole thing and updating it manually because the update page stops responding and plainly goes blank. Instructions for update are here, by the way. And after the steps to update, they include that little snippet of wisdom: How could anyone be angry at Wordpress after that?

Ye old Dock: Leopard-style Exposé under Snow Leopard

         OS X      minitip

Samuel Clay shares an awesome little tweak: replace Snow Leopard's Dock.app by the Dock.app from a beta version of SL, and Exposé will get back to the way it acted on Leopard, i.e. the size of the thumbnail is proportional to the size of its window. And it rocks.

Can't find the PostgreSQL client library (libpq)

         OS X

You might encounter this error while trying to install the pg gem (v0.10.1), or when updating from v0.10. My stacktrace on Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.6 with Rubygems 1.4.2, Ruby 1.8.7 and Postgres 9.0.2 was the following: Building native extensions. This could take a while... ERROR: Error installing pg: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby extconf.rb checking for pg_config... yes Using config values from /usr/local/bin/pg_config checking for libpq-fe.

Tunalysis - with screenshot

           tunalysis

For all of you number junkies out there: Tunalysis development is doing good, as sporadic as it may be. The next step is to rework/refine the algorithm giving rankings, in order to achieve better results. I'll try to include the “Last Played Date” in the mix, and maybe also use the Date Added. More good news: no need to install gems by yourself anymore, everything's included by Bundler. Tunalysis's on GitHub!

Set up a mail server on Amazon EC2

         UNIX

This post will explain how to set up a Postfix mail server on an EC2 instance. First, a word of warning: Amazon IPs generally aren't highly considered, spam-wise. Meaning that even if you take all the precautionary steps, your emails might end up in spam folders. If email is business-critical for you, you might want to consider other options: host your mail server somewhere else? Use something like SendGrid? This said, let's dive in!

Remaildr - the tech bits

           dns · linux · remaildr

Here are a few small things you might want to know about http://remaildr.com. Or maybe not, but then again, nobody forces you to read, stranger! “Hardware” Remaildr is hosted on an Amazon EC2 micro instance, benefiting of the free tier offer. Apart from the static IP that will probably end up costing me something, remaildr should be about free. – Edit: as of may, remaildr is now hosted on a VPS at OVH.

Tunalysis - analyse your iTunes music library

         OS X      itunes · ruby · tunalysis

Tunalysis is a small(ish) Ruby script that will read your iTunes library, crunch numbers, and gives you a few interesting facts about it, such as: Total number of songs Total number of playlists Average song length Average bitrate Average play count Average skip count Total time spent listening to music Some of these statistics are already available in iTunes, but Tunalysis ultimate goal is to expand iTunes (limited) stats and to give you hindsight on your musical habits and tastes.

A bit of Terminal-fu

         OS X · UNIX      bash · OS X · Terminal

Yesterday, my little brother was typing something on a linux bash and suddenly went back to the beginning of the line with a simple Ctrl-a. It blew my mind. I don't know why, but it never occurred to me to look for shortcuts in Terminal (and bash in general), other than Ctrl-c for badly behaving processes. I just cursed myself and frantically typed on the left arrow key each time I typed cd instead of cp.