Entrepreneur Geek » Apple

Finding number of lines in files recursively

Nirav — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 04:37:51 +0000

I wanted to find the number of lines from a set of files – spread out in nested directories. The shell command “wc” is best for finding number of words / lines in files but it does not have an argument for recursive searching.

Here’s a quick shell command sequence that will find you the line count from all files in a directory – recursively.

find /topleveldirectory/ -type f -exec wc -l {} \; | awk '{total += $1} END{print total}'

Replace “/topleveldirectory/” with your directory of choice. Leave it as “.” to find from current directory and below.

Found on Unix.com

Recursively unlock files on Mac OS X

National Geographic Photo Of The Day Wallpaper on your Mac Desktop

Nirav — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:53:26 +0000

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!

No related posts.

MacBook won’t boot – sometimes!

Nirav — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:54:10 +0000

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?

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-03

Recursively unlock files on Mac OS X

Nirav — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:01:43 +0000

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!

Picture Puzzle – an iPhone application turned to Mac app because of delays from Apple

Nirav — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 06:12:45 +0000

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?

Organize your books collection – without tearing yourself

Nirav — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 07:31:33 +0000

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

Setting JAVA_HOME on Mac OS X 10.5

Nirav — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 07:48:37 +0000

I have been playing around with a lot of Java tools these days! I was trying out XPlanner and when I ran the startup shell script, it spit out the infamous error!

The JAVA_HOME environment variable is not defined correctly This environment variable is needed to run this program NB: JAVA_HOME should point to a JDK not a JRE

I tried a couple of things, but they did not work. A bit of Google, and found an easy way.

Here are the steps!

Open Terminal.
First confirm you have JDK by typing “which java”. It should show something like /usr/bin/java.
Check you have the needed version of Java, by typing “java -version”. My setup shows java version “1.5.0_13″
JAVA_HOME is essentially the full path of the directory that contains a sub-directory named bin which in turn contains the java.
For Mac OSX – it is /Library/Java/Home (There are other directories too, but this is the simplest!)
Set JAVA_HOME using this command in Terminal: export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home
echo $JAVA_HOME on Terminal to confirm the path
You should now be able to run your application

This sets JAVA_HOME only for this session. If you want it to persist, you will have to add the command to your ~/.profile file.

For more details on this, refer to Sean Brown’s blog post.

.bin and .cue files – combine to .iso on Mac OS X

Nirav — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:05:51 +0000

I got .bin and .cue files from a friend. And was wondering how to use them on my Mac.

What are .bin and .cue files?

They are essentially CD/DVD image files. The .BIN / .CUE CD image format was made popular by the CDRWin software. Afterwards many programs have started supporting or partially supporting it, including: Nero, Blindwrite, CloneCD, FireBurner. The .CUE file contains the track layout information, while the .BIN file holds the actual data.

.ISO is also a CD image format, but is sometimes used for 'ISO9660 format' (standard, recognized by all applications) and sometimes for unique Easy CD ISO format.

So how can you open them on a Mac OS X?

Apple's DiskUtility does not support these formats. Roxio Toast or other CD burning software can open and burn from .bin+.cue files. But if you don't want to do all that, there is an easy way!

Use the bchunker command line program! You can download a Mac compiled version from James Sears' site and run a command like this to get an ISO file. This ISO file can now be easily mounted by DiskUtility.

PLAIN TEXT

CODE:

bchunk myinputfile.bin myinputfile.cue myoutputfile

Resources:

Building an iPhone app, want to mock it up quickly?

Nirav — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:05:55 +0000

Are you building an iPhone app? Or have an idea? Do you want to mock it up quickly? The iPhone UI PicKit can help you!

This is a kit of widget images that you can use in your image editing software. This way you can easily create prototypes of different screens and share them with others. There is also a layered PSD available.

iPhone UI PicKit

No need for the iPhone SDK! No need to learn Interface Builder! Just grab the screens and mock your iPhone idea! Thanks Daniel!

(BTW, if you are through with the idea, let us know if you want to develop it. We do iPhone development!)

Apple’s Marketing Secrets

Nirav — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:01:25 +0000

What do you attribute Apple's success to? Steve Jobs? Usability? Cutting edge technology? Innovation? Or their extra ordinary marketing skills?

I think much of Apple's success is because of their marketing focus. The customer experience focus comes from marketing focus.

Steve Chazin, an Apple veteran, has written an insightful eBook - Marketing Apple. The eBook uncovers the secret of marketing that Apple uses. The principles are very smart and I believe if you use them, you would be successful too!

This is a must read for anyone interested in Apple or Marketing.