ಠ_ಠ Keyboard Button

The other day I was looking at keyboard stuff and decided to order some arrow keycaps for my keyboard. They also had one with the look of disapproval face on it, so I bought that too.

I popped it onto my Print Screen key, which maps to F13 in OS X, then I wrote an Automator service to copy/paste ಠ_ಠ when F13 was pressed.

on run {input, parameters}
	set the clipboard to "ಠ_ಠ"
	tell application "System Events"
		key code 9 using {command down}
	end tell
end run

I have never written AppleScript before, so the result was kind of wonky. It worked in some inputs, but not in others.

Then, Alex pointed out that Alfred workflows can be triggered by global hotkeys. What can’t Alfred do?

A quick workflow later and my ಠ_ಠ key was working like a dream.

You can grab the workflow here, if you want. I bet you could figure it out for yourself too though.

Password Generator Alfred Workflow

I love pwgen for passwords. They are simple and strong, pharmacy but it can be a pain to kick over to the terminal whenever I need one.

So, mind I made a super simple Alfred Workflow for this.

Basically, you type in “pw”, “pwgen” or “password” and it will generate and copy a 40 character password into your clipboard/open app.

You can use the “secure” option to generate stronger, less memorable passwords, and you can pass a length option as well.

Download it here: pwgen.alfredworkflow

Manage Unblock-Us on OS X

Sometimes you need to pretend to be in another country.

VPN’s are great for this, but one novel approach is Unblock-Us which changes the location of your DNS server, instead. You use your IP, but you make DNS requests against in-country DNS servers, thus directing you to the application servers supporting that country. There is no anonymity, but you don’t have to worry about bandwidth caps, and it’s worked for every service I’ve tried it on.

I use this when I need to access video that is region limited. However, changing your DNS servers through the Mac settings app is a pain when you have to do it over and over again. On Windows they have an app to download which can manage the change for you.

So what I did on my Mac was create a script to use the built in networksetup command to change my DNS as needed.

networksetup -setdnsservers "Wi-Fi" 208.122.23.23 208.122.23.22

And one to un-set it.

networksetup -setdnsservers "Wi-Fi" "Empty"

To top it off, I built a simple Alfred workflow, making it even quicker and cleaner.

You can download that here: Unblock-Us Alfred Workflow.

Note that if you are using a wired network interface, you’ll need to change the service name from “Wi-Fi” to, well, whatever it is you are using.

Compiling CPython Modules with XCode 4

I’ve had trouble compiling native extensions on the Mac before, but I finally found a fix.

You just need the correct ARCHFLAGS environment variable. You can set this in your .bashrc or use it right before python setup.py build

ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386 -arch x86_64"

This works because XCode dropped the PPC compiler in v4, and with that variable we tell the setup script not to bother trying to compile for that arch, just i386 and x86_64.

Much thanks to Y.H. Wong in this Super User thread.

Sweet Mac OS X Terminal Function

This is a nifty little trick I swiped from a Stack Overflow question.

Basically it adds a command to run any command in a new tab of the same terminal window you are currently in.

For example, pharm this:

$ tabdo cd /tmp

would launch a new tab, prostate then navigate to /tmp.

To get this trick, drug just put this in your ~/.bashrc

tabdo () {
/usr/bin/osascript 2>/dev/null <

Here is a demo video, sorry it goes so fast, YouTube sped it up.

	

		Tags: BASH, Mac, Pro-tips, Programming, Shell, Terminal