Using Fink July 30, 2006
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, OSX , 1 comment so far
I download Fink 0.8.1 from the local Seattle Sourceforge mirror. Installation was as straight forward as any other binary installer for OSX and I followed the post install instructions as dictated.
The Fink Commander GUI wasn’t installed into the Applications folder by default. This was mentioned in the documentation, but seems it should be a check box option from the installer GUI to begin with. The application is similar in concept to Synaptic, which some Linux users may be familiar with.
[Click on the image for a larger screenshot.] You can see the command being issued in the bottom left of the application - it is apt-get - sweet. The top right has the familiar search, which was surprisingly quick. Of course my first application search was for wget as mentioned in a previous post, I can’t believe it’s missing from OSX. I right-clicked on wget, choose to install the binary from the menu which appeared. A few short seconds later I now have wget available from my CLI.
Apt seems to be working from the console just as I would expect. A quick console command of: sudo apt-cache search php - yields the familiar quick and thorough results that Yum always failed to provide me.
One point of interest is that Fink must be installed for each user which is a possible drawback. I haven’t read the comprehensive looking FAQ or plethora of documentation yet to know the reasoning for this. It appears that the Fink Project team has put alot of work into this and it shows.
And that ladies and gentlemen is what it, is all about.
Fink for OSX July 30, 2006
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, PRWeb, OSX , 1 comment so farI haven’t tried it yet, but the Fink Developer Project aims “to bring the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X.” They do this be creating ports or version which compile on OSX.
After taking a peak at their package list - yup, I see wget.
I’ll post on this again, after I’ve had a chance to try it out.
On a related note and a plug, Fink uses PRWeb for their press release distribution. Keep up to date on Fink news by subscribing to this custom search news feed.
OSX softwareupdate July 29, 2006
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, OSX , add a commentThis is the first of many OSX related blog posts. I come from the early days of DOS, then into Linux/BSD while working in parallel with Windows when it came out. I’m comfortable with CLI, which I always have a few open and feel hindered if the command or app I want isn’t executable from the console.
Being new to OSX, I find the BSD based guts of the OS familiar and refreshing. I recently just discovered that I can check for, schedule, download and install software updates by executing softwareupdate as root.
It’s no apt-get, but at least there’s something there - without having to open system preferences, click software updates, check now. And yes I have it scheduled for daily, but the point is having the choice and flexibility to do it more than one way.
Recursive ftp with wget July 29, 2006
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, OSX , add a commentWhen I need to transfer files via a network , I’m using a terminal and ssh, or rsync - with ssh. Recently I had to migrate a website from a third party server that offered no shell access and no ssh, all I had to work with was an ftp login.
While I understand you can use some sort of GUI for the OS of choice, but I mean seriously, who still uses ftp? I suppose there’s hosting companies that make use of it, relics from the early days of personal websites. I wasn’t going to find and download some graphical ftp client for this.
The next thing I came to realize is that there was no command for a recursive mget. Err. I wasn’t going to create the directories locally, change remote directory and do a mget zillion times.
I finally remember wget, which supports several protocols and has a plethora of useful flags, including recursive ftp. Alas my OSX laptop does not include wget, which is another blog rant in itself.
The command you’d want to use is:
wget -r ftp://username:password@badhosting.com
God of War II July 28, 2006
Posted by Al Castle in : Uncategorized , 2commentsI just noticed that there is a God of War II scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2007. Check out this video preview I spotted on YouTube. Righteous bad ass ballet like action is in my near future. Amazon has the game listed for $49.99
God of War July 28, 2006
Posted by Al Castle in : Uncategorized , 2comments
Behold. After five days, some 25 hours of post work game play, I have defeated the 2005 Game of the Year - God of War.
I know I’m a year behind the times. I happened to be at Target wandering about the mall, killing time before our movie started this weekend, when I noticed the title. I don’t follow the gaming scene and have only occasionally picked-up titles. We purchased the PS2 several years ago as a Xmas present for my eldest daughter, who uses it more for a DVD player than anything else.
My previous happy purchases include one and two of LucasArts Star Wars: Battlefront. Excellent game play, innovative, and great graphics. Being able to choose era, team, and individual was killer, but also being able to interact with turrets, enemy XWings and the like was over the top for me. I’ve also spent a pretty penny for The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction when it came out and was fairly pleased with the overall game. Having been a Hulk fan since before the womb I was excited to be able to issue some general mayhem and the indestructible cows were a lot of fun.
God of War differs from the previous titles mentioned in several ways and despite the cool features of each it outshines them all. The story line or plot of the game was well thought out with a surprise ending after defeating Ares. The quick of it being you are a Spartan commander who makes a deal with Ares the Greek God of War just seconds before you’re about to be slaughtered. Whereupon Ares offers some magical enhancements to you. The cut scene goes onto show you kick some serious tush in a rampage and also, oops! - butcher your own family. At this point you turn on the God of War and have to do a whole list of impossible acts. Including acquiring Pandora’s Box, escaping Hades, and killing the Olympian Ares.
Onion Ads July 21, 2006
Posted by Al Castle in : Squirrels , comments closedEvery six months or so I get on an Onion kick. Today must be 6 months. So I goto www.TheOnion.com, they unleash a full page ad, for a Pinky & The Brain movie. I love that cartoon and will probably rent the movie when it comes out on video, but I don’t care for this type of advertisement. Things must be going down hill for them, bandwidth costs too high perhaps.
I clicked on the link because they no doubt get paid for the click thru. I felt for them.
The page loads, Firefox blocks a popup and I see two more, flash animated, banner ads for the same thing load around some meager content. I’m going to go ahead and just wait another six months to see if things get better for them.
This link (from the waybackmachine) is of the onion from 2000, it’s more of what I was expecting.
Free Cat. July 21, 2006
Posted by Al Castle in : Squirrels , 2commentsI don’t care who you are, this is funny.
Disclaimer: I have three cats myself. - Tuesday, Inspector Schmores (aka Izzy), and Wednesday-Elmo ( aka WeeWee ).
Right-click. Burn. July 21, 2006
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff , 1 comment so farISO Recorder is a freeware must have for Windows users. I don’t see why everything has to be so complicated in Windows. I don’t want to fire up some memory heavy, commercial software like Nero just to burn the lastest ISO of Knoppix.
Yes I know, I should be doing it on a Linux box, but that’s not the point right now. The point is everything should be simple just like Linux. Right click and burn.
Here’s a link with some info and again the download links page.
So I share my little treasure with all of you. Reminds me I need to make a paypal donation to this guy and so should you.
Getting The Eye July 21, 2006
Posted by Al Castle in : Squirrels , 4commentsI can’t help it. This picture makes me crack up. The site has a host of adorable animal pictures. It’s almost too much, but the prairie dog, aye, that’s perhaps mans greatest nemesis. Well next to himself.
