Don't you just hate it?

Although you have turned off the "Lower display birghtness…" setting for the power adapter in the Energy Savings panel it just gets ignored. Some searching on the Apple Knowledge Base turns up this Article wich basically states: "We know it is a problem, but we did not care to fix it."

Here is a simple script you can run to stop you display from misbehaving:

[code lang="shell-unix-generic"] sudo pmset -c halfdim 1 sudo pmset -c halfdim 0 [/code]

It turns out, that turning the setting off and on again fixes the issue (at least till the next time you disconnect the power supply or put your mac to sleep.

Locking a workstation when you go away should be quick and easy. And most times it is.

On Unix workstations running X11 you lock your screen by typing xlock into a shell.

On Windows you can press Windowskey-L to do the same (one of the very few uses the windows key at all).

On MacOS X you can add a menubar item wich lets you lock the screen. The preference for this is hidden away in Keychain.app. But you have to use the mouse to do this. This is not very convenient if you work a lot inside the shell. So here is what I did to speed it up:

Write a shell script that looks like this

[code lang="shell-unix-generic"]

!/bin/sh

open '/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app' [/code]

name it something like lock make it executable and put it somewhere in you $PATH.

Now you can just enter lock into your shell when you leave your workstation.

Like almost everybody these days I own a scanner, printer, copier, coffe-maker combo device, in my case a Epson CX6600 (would have b´put a link to the product page in, but it *is* hard to find).

I'm quite happy with it, although I paid Epson a fortune for printer-ink already (which is exactly why I got myself an old HP LaserJet 6P recently, way cheaper and faster for printing pure text).

The CX6600 is connected to my Cube which runs OS X 10.4 as a headless server in my apartment, serving a bunch of Firewire HDDs via AFP/SMB and shares the printer. But for scanning I always had to connect to to the Cube via VNC, which sucks. Also the Epson Scanning software is,…well acceptable at best, but you can always use OS Xs Digital Pictures.app to replace it.

Today I discoverd, that OS X has a network service for sharing scanners, nice and easy via Bonjour! Did you know that? I did not and was very suprised to find out.

It is hidden away deep inside the preferences of Digital Pictures.app. Just open Digital Pictures.app form Applications, then open Preferences in the applications menu and look for sharing.

If you have the firewall enabled you have to open TCP-Port 5100 to be accessed, according to this document in the Apple Knowledge Base, which conveniently lists all ports commonly used by Apple software.

There it is. Nice, isn't it?

I think this preference pane needs to be in the System Preferences.app, right next to Printer sharing. BTW. why can't I password protect printer sharing? Do they have to much ink at Apple?

Some time ago I tried to remove HarwareGrowler from the Dock. I faild, because it would not show Growl Notifications if you set

<key>LSUIElement</key>
<integer>1</integer>
</pre>

A friend showed me Dockless, wich is able to do exactly that -- I still have to find out how.

Peter Rukavina has developed a AppleScript, that sets the Adium status message to your current location in Plazes. You can find a howto in his Blog.

Very nice!

Last sunday I got one of the best computers ever created from eBay - a Cube. I'll be picking it up tomorrow, so expect some stuff comming up when I will set the thing up.