Started working with Homebrew recently instead of Macports to install third party packages on OSX. Homebrew comes with a doctor command that lets you know any conflicts that may cause it to not function properly. Short of it all is that Homebrew told me I needed to modify my path to make sure the /usr/local/bin is before /usr/bin. But where is the path defined on OSX? it is in /etc/paths (at least on OSX Mountain Lion). This file is a list of paths, each defined on a separate line which also specified their order. In order to update it run:

sudo vi /etc/paths

here is what mine looks like:

/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

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The other big news out of Apple today was FaceTime for Mac. I personally think that windows should be next, but its a great step towards making this iPhone 4 function more usable. If you have a Mac, get your beta copy here. read more

Did you watch Apple’s keynote speech this morning (or afternoon depending on your timezone)? There were some pretty interesting announcements, but the most significant of those is the new Mac App Store. Its being opened in 90 days and it works pretty much just like the iOS App Store. But, what does that mean for the apps that it offers, and for the developers? There has not been anything like this before, and its a merge of two different ways of thinking (so to speak). The success of the App Store has been mostly due to it being the single source to get software, but you cannot discount the pricing of the apps that are found there. I mean anything above $5 is considered pricey for the App Store. In the mean time, there are apps that go for hunders of dollars in the desktop space, not to mention the fact that most companies offering apps already have a sales channel. Does this mean that they will just add 30% to the apps to make them more easily available? What does the licensing mean to these vendors? Will every app need to be reviewed and approved? With the App Store, you can buy a single copy for all your personal Macs, and updates are free if its anything like the iOS App Store. There was no mention of how the latter situation would be handled specifically since major upgrades are never currently free, but as you can see it has a lot of implications. I couldn’t get any more details at this stage since the site would not let me in right now, but what are your thoughts? read more

I recently had to move a project off of Google App Engine. To my surprise, Google App Engines performance was just not fast enough for this project. In any case, this lead to my installation of Tomcat on OSX and integrating into Eclipse so here is how to do it:

1. Get the latest tomcat: http://tomcat.apache.org/index.html. You need to make sure you get the tar or zip file.
2. Move the download to /usr/local/.
3. Start a super shell:

$ sudo sh

4. If you downloaded the tar, you may have noticed the warning that it will not work with OSX tar command, so make sure to use gnutar which comes with OSX.

$ gnutar xzvf apache-tomcat-6.0.26.tar.gz

5. Now you can change owner ship on this new folder so you can start and stop tomcat without having to sudo, but I left it as is.
6. Create a link to the folder so that you make your life eaiser in the long term when you install newer versions:

$ ln -s apache-tomcat-6.0.26 tomcat

7. Go back to your home folder and create a new script :

#!/bin/sh
export CATALINA_HOME=/usr/local/tomcat
export JAVA_HOM=/usr
if [ "$1" == "start" ] ; then
    $CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh
else
    $CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh
fi

8. Now you can start and stop tomcat from your home folder

$ sudo ./tomcat.sh start  <== To start
$ sudo ./tomcat.sh        <== To stop

Now that Tomcat is setup, you need to configure it in Eclipse:

1. Go to Eclipse Preferences ->Server -> Runtime Environments
2. Click Add and select the right Tomcat Version
3. Put in /usr/local/tomcat for the Tomcat Installation directory (the link we created above)
4. Click Finish and you should be setup
Good Luck! read more

Mac OSX Hints has a very nifty tip on launching VNC from The terminal! Take a look: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20100927085636535 read more