/Volumes/GROUP/projects/56465/proofs/example_file.png

…or…

file:///Volumes/GROUP/projects/56465/proofs/example_file.png

…(respectively) to…

http://projects.example.com/56465/proofs/example_file.png

Well, I do this a lot throughout the day and finally tired of it enough to be motivated to write an Automator workflow to do the URL conversion automatically.

This allows me now to simply right-click on the file, select my workflow from the Automator contextual submenu, and then paste the converted path into an email.

Consider it this:

With SSH alone, you come to the door, present your password to the security guard and if authorized, are granted access.

With an SSH-key, you don’t have to interact with the guard because you have your own key. You can use your key to open the door and get in.

For security however, SSH keys are encrypted and require a password to decrypt them. So, following the same analogy, you now have a key, but the key has a combination lock on it that has to be unlocked before it can be used. This is for good reason as keys in the wrong hands can be a big security risk.

If you are logging in and out of a server frequently however or using SCP to copy files repeatedly, entering your password to decrypt your key again and again becomes very tedious.

Enter SSHKeyChain. What this utility does is “holds your key open in a decrypted state” (by entering your decryption password once) for a specific amount of time or until certain events occur. You can have it hold the key open in a decrypted state indefinately, but this is dangerous unless you are absolutely confident of physical access to the terminal/workstation that you are running it on as anyone that sits down will have access to the remote server. For example, one of SSHKeyChain’s features is the ability to store your decryption password in your Mac OS Key Chain. I would strongly recommend against this however since I like the extra layer of security. I would also strongly recommend locking your workstation whenever you step away if you are using SSHKeyChain. I have my preferences set to remove the keys from SSHKeyChain whenever the system goes to sleep or is rebooted.

Beginning with the basics…

rsync A B

…would ensure that directory B has copies of all of the files in A. This does not necessarily mean that they will be identical however (B could have more files then A). If you want B to be an exact back up of A, then you must purge the difference out of B:

rsync --delete A B

You will also want to add recursion so that it will include all sub directories:

rsync -r --delete A B

If you are going to use the recursive flag, you might as well use archive instead though as it executes “rlptgoD” (which is what you want and more—check the manual for what each do) all at the same time:

rsync -a --delete A B

And, while we’re at it, we might as well toss in the zip (to make things quick) and the extended attributes (realizing that Mac OS support isn’t 100%, but it’s better then not trying) flags as well:

rsync -azE --delete A B

So, now that we have an identical backup (and hopefully two or three), we need to start archiving the changes instead of allowing theme to be overwritten or deleted. This is done with the backup flag:

rsync -azEb --delete A B

Running that with default settings will save a copy of the old file (next to the one that was just updated in the backup), appended with a tilde (so that the filenames are different… so that it isn’t overwriting the backup). Saving this archived version into the backup is no good though since we are using the delete flag! So, we need to specify an alternate location for the archived files to be saved:

rsync -azEb --delete --backup-dir=/path/to/archive/ A B

Another benefit of saving the archived files in a separate location is that they do not need to be renamed to “file.txt~”.

We almost have it now but there is one more important point. If we run the above command as is, we will have a source, a backup, and a one step back archive. Each time a file is changed (and the command is then run), the file will be synchronized to the backup and the changes that were overwritten or deleted will be copied to the archive… but, when they are copied to the archive, they will overwrite the previous archival and although a better solution then no archive at all, it’s not a good one since you cannot reach very far back in time.

Thus, we take advantage of the suffix flag. With the suffix flag, we can append a string of our choice to the end of an archived file. (We could have used this earlier to replace the tilde with something else of our choosing.) Simply appending something to the end of the file (file.txt.old) isn’t sufficient however; the suffix must be unique each time the script runs (such as the date and time).

Thus, the command that I would recommend for a backup and archive solution using rsync, is:

rsync -azEb --delete --backup-dir=/path/to/archive/
--suffix=.2007-04-16_07-22-03 /path/to/source/ /path/to/backup/

If you are like me and like to see what it’s doing, I would also recommend throwing in the progress, verbose, and stats flags as well:

rsync -azEbv --progress --stats --delete
--backup-dir=/path/to/archive/ --suffix=.2007-04-16_07-22-03
/path/to/source/ /path/to/backup/

And, if you do not want to have to manually update the date in the suffix flag each time you run the command (if you are using launchd or cron to run it for example), you will want to replace the suffix value with a variable that is set in a shell script, like this:

#!/bin/sh

right_now=$(date +"%y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S")

rsync -azEbv --progress --stats --delete --backup-dir=archive
--suffix=.$right_now files backup

Officially launching tomorrow, I present the Utah Graphic Artists Forum, a gathering place for local graphic artists. My purpose is to promote and support the development and expression of graphic arts and to facilitating and ecouraging conversations and interaction between graphic artists in Utah, in an environment free of dues or obligations. I hope to provide something of value to members involved in all forms of the graphic arts, including illustrators, photographers, graphic designers, typographers, user interface designers, and web developers.

Both working professionals and students are welcome and encouraged to participate, discussing current events and trends, historical topics, theory, techniques, technology, business, and/or employment.

Features include a forum, mailing lists, an IRC channel for chat, job announcements, RSS feeds, syndicated calendar events, and plans to meet periodically for socials and workshops. Membership is free and open to anyone interested.

I encourage you to visit the site, register an account, and participate in the forum.

My reason for writing today however isn’t just to sing iCal’s general praise, but to specifically point out it’s powerful publish feature. I manage several user groups and publish calendars for each to a remote server with iCal. This process is quick, efficient, and seamless. I add to and edit the calendars locally in iCal and the changes are then automatically synchronized to the server. Group members can either view the calendar in the web-based PHP iCalendar viewer or subscribe to the feed locally in their own copy of iCal. What a powerful and proficient use of technology! This (syndication and web-enabled applications) is what I believe to be one of the most exciting and useful uses of the internet.

For a new project that I am working on though, I was looking to publish a calendar of events from several different sources. Agregating this isn’t something that I wanted to do manually. Well, I am pleased to report that iCal didn’t let me down. Using a Calendar Group (basically a folder containing one or more calendars), I was able to combine both local calendars that I created myself (and here’s the beautiful part) and syndicated calendars that I had subscribed to and then re/publish the entire thing as one combined calendar!

With Mail 2’s new sidebar though, it is impossible to collapse it however. I have resized it before but not until last night had I discovered that it can be shrunk to the point where only the folder icons are visible. Although not ideal, it is closer to what I had before.

First, it is important to understand how this process works and what the script is doing. The script is not generating the text message. The script is simply interacting with a script on Cingular’s server; one that normally receives it’s information from a “send a text message” web form hosted on Cingular’s website. This by-passing-the-web-form-without-human-interaction is done with a command line application called Curl. Curl posts the necessary values to the script, virtually “submitting” the form.

Begin by launching Terminal. It is located in the Utilities directory. When Terminal is launched, a new shell session is automatically begun and you are automatically positioned at the root of your home directory within the file system. A shell is a tool to enable users to interact with the system. Usually shells are text based and command line oriented. Examples of popular shells include bash, tcsh and ksh. Shells are usually run in a Terminal window.

Note: The following instructions contain strings of text called “commands.” These are designated in monospaced type and are to be typed into the terminal verbatim, followed by a strike of the return key which executes them.

To begin, we will create a directory called “scripts” inside of the user’s Documents folder to put this script in:

mkdir ~/Documents/scripts

Next, we will create the script. Using the command line text editor vim, open a new, blank document named “curlsms” in the new directory:

vi ~/Documents/scripts/curlsms

Enter edit mode by striking the “i” key. Then, copy the following from this post, switch back to Terminal, and paste it (command + v).

curl -d "from=$1&min=$2&msg=$3" http://www.cingularme.com/do/public/send >> /dev/null

Exit edit mode by striking the escape key. Then save the file, close it, and exist the editor by entering a colon charater (shift + semicolon), an “x” character, and then striking the return key.

The script is now created, but we need to alter the files permissions in order to run it. This is done with the following command:

chmod a+x ~/Documents/scripts/curlsms

Now we are ready to use it. The template for this is:

~/Documents/scripts/curlsms sender number "message"

…replacing “sender” with your name, “number” with the phone number that you are sending the message to, and “message” with the body of the message, in quotes.

There are many ways to via RSS feeds. There are dedicated readers and then there are applications that have added this feature such as web browsers and email clients. Safari added this ability with the release of version two that shipped with Mac OS 10.4. Websites that offer syndicated content will usually state so on their home page or in the footer of the site. Look for the words “syndication,” “feed,” “RSS,” and/or small orange icons with similar text. Many web browsers also now automatically detect sites with feeds and display a graphic letting you know that it is available.

Safari does this with the blue “RSS” icon that appears in the address bar:

You will notice that this is the case when viewing this website. Clicking the “RSS” button in the address bar will switch Safari into RSS view mode, displaying all of the articles in a text-only format.

Personally, I find this way of consuming news not very user friendly. It is fine for a one-time quick glance on a new website, but for the feeds that I subscribe to daily, it does not work very well for several reasons. First, it does not keep track of what articles I have read and it also requires that I visit every website individually to view their feeds—something that I feel negates the very benefit of feeds. For this reason, I use the dedicated reader New News Wire Lite by NewsGator. It allows me to browse through new content from over seventy feeds within a seconds. I have even configured custom key strokes through the Keyboard System Preference Pane to allow me to navigate as quickly as possible.

To subscribe to BYU MUG’s feeds in New News Wire Lite, right-click on the one of the feeds links in the footer of the website and select “Copy Link.” Then switch to New News Wire Lite and select New Subscription from the File Menu. The feed that you have copied will appear, pre-polulated in the New Subscription dialogue, requiring you to only click the Subscribe button to complete the process. This new feed will then appear in the feed list along with other feeds that you have subscribed to. You can even create folders to organize your feeds into.

BYU MUG Events (retired)
BYU MUG Stories (new URL)
UPHPU Calendar (temporarily unavailable)
BYU MUG Comments (new)

1. rysnc must be fixed
2. split pane Finder (and the UI updated to match the new lean style of Mail and iTunes) and possibly tabs (haven’t decided if I think that tabs should be implemented or not yet)
3. Spotlight UI fixed/improved/redone (searching for files takes too many steps, especially when you don’t care about it’s name—just want to search by criteria such as modified date). System performance during large data transfers needs to be addressed as well. They system should be smart enough to wait and cache later instead of bringing itself to it’s knees.
4. ability to lock workstation with keystroke, publicized as a lock method instead of a side product of initiating the screen saver
5. ability to alter the dock’s background transparency
6. ability to save workspaces (window sizes and locations, similar to how it is down in Adobe apps)
7. Finder keeps a browse history just like a web browser does. You can browse back and forth with with cmd + [/]. I want a History page for Finder where I can bring up with a keystroke, scan through the places, and select one as you can in Safari.
8. a graphical utility for using launchd (including creating launch plists)
9. A way to have the system automatically (nightly) make snapshots of itself that you can roll back to. You should also be able to do this manually before you make big changes so that if something goes wrong, you can roll back to a few minutes before. This should be implemented database-info style so that only the changes are recorded and not the actual files saved. In other words, this would be done “Aperture-style” instead of making an entire copy of your multiple-gig system.
10. A professional theme that matches the pro apps. No, I do not think that Mac OS should be skin-able or even tint-able (as Microsoft Windows is), but I think that a lot of professionals would like a professional theme. Two options, standard and professional, would be nice. This could even be a choice during installation so that two copies of the graphics do not have to reside on the system.
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