Entrepreneur Geek

I love National Geographic photographs. Sujeet linked to a Nat Geo photo on a tweet today, and that led me to setting up National Geographic Photo of the Day as my Mac desktop wallpaper using an Automator action.

Interested? Here are some notes:

• Nat Geo offers free Windows and Mac screensaver applications of their best Photo of the Day. If you want a screensaver and not a desktop wallpaper, that’s your best bet!
• This work on Mac. Haven’t searched for Windows / Linux alternatives yet.
• Download the NPODWallpaper Automator script by Maxwell Duncan.
• When unzipped and installed, it will create an Automator application in your Applications folder.
• Double click and run it. Status messages will be shown in top menu bar.
• If all went well, your wallpaper would have changed. Hit F11 to quickly verify.
• If you are happy, setup an iCal event to run the script everyday. That will give you the latest POD from NatGeo automatically!
• Sweet, uh!

I still remember the sweet old Webshots days! Beautiful wallpapers are always refreshing! May be time to try out their beta mac application!

My MacBook has started misbehaving after 3 years of good service! Last Monday it did not boot. Came with “the folder with question mark”. Which means it did not detect the hard disk.

Removing the battery and putting it back in fixed it for the day. I was able to work happily. Took a backup later in the evening before leaving for a small vacation.

Then yesterday morning when I booted it, it did not boot again. Removing power and booting from battery started it well. Disk Util permission verification and disk verification did not report any problem. All was OK.

I was able to boot again yesterday night. And it froze while I was working.

Sometimes it starts booting, but hangs in between with a crossed circle. Keeps spinning without moving forward.

Not sure what the problem is. I suspect it’s the hard disk – but then it should not boot at all if it’s the hard disk.

Randomness makes a problem all the more difficult!

Time to take it to the service center?

I copied some songs from a CD and ended up with a folder full of locked files. iTunes can’t save changes to song info (ID3 tags) until I unlocked them. How can you unlock files recursively on Mac OS X?

If you have a folder full of locked files on Mac OS X, you can quickly unlock all of them recursively with the following command. Open a Terminal, go to the folder containing locked files, and type:

chflags -R nouchg *

An excellent introduction to chflags on Mac OS X Hints. Here’s an excerpt:

In addition to the standard UNIX permissions (read, write, execute for owner, group, other), OS X has a few flags that can be set on files and folders to make them locked.

These flags supersede the standard UNIX permissions. If a file is locked, that overrides the write permissions so that applications treat the file as read-only. If a folder is locked, no files can be added or removed from that folder, no matter what the write permissions on the folder are. These restrictions apply to all users, independent of the permissions that are set on the files or folders. They even apply to the root user (or to admin users using sudo).

Read more about chflags at Mac OS X Server FAQ.

HTH!

We applied for an iPhone developers account at start of December. It’s been about 3 months now, and we have not yet got the Developers Account despite sending all documents and repeated followups.

We have 4 iPhone products ready to deploy, but our hands are tied because we don’t yet have a developer’s account. We would get emails saying that Apple is looking into this and that we should be patient. But how long?? A delay of 3 months would simply kill your idea. Why does Apple have to be so lazy in granting a developer’s account? I am scared to think how much time they will take to approve an application for AppStore.

The frustration levels went so high, we decided to just drop the plans to release these products.

Then we got an idea! Why not release them on the Mac?

So from frustration to joy, we present to you Picture Puzzle!

Picture Puzzle - more info and download

Picture Puzzle is a Mac OSX memory test game. You see a collection of pictures one after another. The objective of the game is to arrange them in right order after initial display. This tests how well you can remember the order of images. It stimulates your brain and helps you remember things better.

It’s a free download, and we encourage you to donate!

Are you an iPhone developer? Know someone? How long did it take for them? Are we the only sufferers?

I love books, I read some of what I collect! I may go from one book to another without finishing it. I love coming back to books I read earlier. Two weeks ago, I bought 26 books in one shot. The largest purchase of books I ever made. I was fulfilled!

My library case is already filled up and I needed a way to organize the books I have. I had tried with a spreadsheet earlier, but I wanted something better this time. I did not even want to type in all titles and details myself. That would be too much of work! I would rather read a book in that time!

Enter Books! A MacOS X application that can read barcodes using the inbuilt camera on my MacBook and fill up book details! Just what I needed! (It’s Open Source too)

Books - Add a new book screen

I used it and I can describe the experience in one word – Delightful! I was so happy with the ease, I have already shown the app to my family. That’s unique – does not happen for a lot of apps!

• It correctly detected ISBN for most of my books.
• I did not have much luck with 13 digit ISBN – though detection worked, I was not able to find book information from Amazon/others.
• Especially so with Indian publishers. For many, I had to enter the title and pull info manually.
• I wish Gujarati books had ISBN too! Would have made it so easy! (I inherit a huge collection of Gujarati books from my dad
• In just two hours, I could add about 90 books to the system! That was cool!

Books - Main Screen