Jeroen Schaftenaar

Stuff I do and more…

Archive for the ‘Apple’ Category

Mac OS X – Show/Hide Hidden Files Automation

mac_automatorLately I’ve needed to show .htaccess file in finder. In finder every file with a dot in front of it is hidden. You have to change this using shell commands. But this is a superfluous process. I scoured the internet and found ways to automate this. There are some software solutions but the way I will tell about is using the Automator


Step 1
Start up your Automator. It is under Tools in your Applications. On opening the Automator choose Custom. Choose Run Shell Script and drag it into the workflow area. Automator_Step_1


Step 2
In the input area copy the code:

step2

Code:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit';
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to activate';


Step 3
From the top menu choose File -> Save As Plugin. This script will show the hidden files. Save it as ShowHiddenFiles.
showhiddenfiledialog


Step 4
We successfully created the Automator script to show the hidden files. Repeat the steps to create the script to hide the files again using the following:

Code:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit';
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to activate';

and save it as plugin as HideHiddenFiles

Use it:
In finder you can use Control Click -> More -> Automator to access the Automator scripts you just created
infinder

Another New Year’s resolution?

After reading Sam’s inspiring blog post I had to think of my own New Year’s resolution. I will actually have to do something to keep myself on track to make this new year’s resolution. I still didn’t finish the book Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki. This book is good and when a book is really good it takes time to read it well. It’s a near 500 pages book and I am exactly on page 250 right now.

Reality Check quotes and talks a lot about other books. The book iWoz by Steve Wozniak one of the founders of Apple is one of them. This is the next book on my list I plan on reading. I just hope I can find it here in Puchong. After iWoz I will hold of on the Apple related books for a while… I might start reading some thrillers or mafioso books since reading next to being informative and fun should also fuel your imagination and business books for a big part take away a large part of that imagination.

Two days ago I released the first version of Inscorta and I plan to work on this a lot during Chinese New Year. Another New Year? Time for another New Year’s Resolution! Any suggestions for a good New Year’s resolution?  Also my birthday is coming up(It’s already tomorrow) and this again is a New Year. Damn those New Year’s resolutions. Who was the idiot(I am just kidding) that had this great idea to put three New Year’s in such a short time span?

I have better things to do then to worry about New Year’s resolutions all day. I am busy with work and I cancelled my trips for this New Year’s Holiday to work on Inscorta, Launch poetsplaza.nl and write a report(which I almost forgot about) for my school.

The top 10 tipping points of things that matter

Since everyone is doing a top 10 list of greatest things here is my cut. If you don’t know about the tipping point:”It is the moment things get momentum or die out (something like that anyway)”.

My tipping point top 10:

1. Learning Mandarin. After a few months with Chinese people I am starting distinguishing and perceive more sounds. When I first arrived at this place I never had a clue what they were talking about, nowadays nothing has changed :P except: I hear more, A lot more… Somehow before I was deaf for this Chinese language. I did not experience this with German and Bahasa Indonesia.

2. Dropbox, Twitter and Jaiku for being great services but with lousy business model. Don’t get me wrong these are all great services and they should be cheap. But they have no way to get paid… Almost nobody minds paying for something good but these services have almost none or no payment plans at all.

3. Digsby and Google Chrome for almost being great applications. You guys will be great when you are available for OSX(and Linux). How can you expect to bring something revolutionary when you bring it only to windows? Hurry up with the versions on OSX…

4. My fellow blogger Saiful Rizal with his plan to inspire us all. He is a bit late with the twitter thing but this also tells us twitter still has momentum. He made a list of youtube videos that I found motivating, this made me check his blog once in a while.

5. The book Reality Check of Guy Kawasaki. It is the book I am reading now and it is really good so far and if all the books were this interesting and fun to read at the same time the next point won’t be a problem at all.

6. My plan to read one book a week. My New Year’s resolution, it’s HiDef :P

7. Arie.nl werkkleding & werkschoenen, Poetsplaza.nl, Baliday.com and some other projects I am working on.

8. Inscorta is the name of an open source project I am starting. It is actually the code behind Arie.nl & Poetsplaza.nl. Until now the development has been done solely by me. It turns out to be a great software package but further development is slow and difficult since I am do it all. That is why I decided a long time ago to make this software public so everyone can use it and help to improve it.

9. Me turning into something usually named blogger. This is not a New Year’s resolution, I just enjoy it. 

10. Me turning into an Apple Fanboy! Like the attack some M*$*&*F*#^%*rs did on my villages in Tribalwars, I am afraid there is no stopping to this Bill and Steve.

Ok, this is not exactly a tipping point list.

“Whaddaya gonna do, life goes on” (My favorite quote from The Sopranos)