In a terminal, type in the following to remove X11:
sudo rm -rf /Applications/Utilities/X11.app /private/etc/X11 /usr/X11R6 /usr/bin/open-x11 /usr/lib/X11 /Library/Receipts/X11User.pkg

Uninstalling X11 from your Mac

I have been using my MacBook Pro for over 6 months now and have come to likes and dislikes with it. I will discuss the Operating System(OS) and not the hardware in this post and will include Vista just so that I don’t look as though I’m bashing Mac Fans (Dave). Remember this is my opinion / preference more than the general public and I still consider myself a Mac n00b compared to Windows.

Mac OSX

Likes

• Spaces – Very useful and was one of the unique points for using a Linux windowing environment. Although it’s not 100% bug free and mature as Linux’s virtual desktop it works very well.
• Expose – I use this feature everyday and is very handy. It serves as a shortcut when I’m using the mouse
• Quicksilver/Spotlight – Another well used feature and whilst Quicksilver is not bundled with OSX by default I do believe it’s a worthy replacement to Sportlight. Linux’s Beagle doesn’t seem to compare to it and Windows has some third party launchers but nothing shipped by default.
• Dock – A much better taskbar than Vista ever had. Applications can animate when they’re loading and icons can adjust in size depending on the dock width. It also serves as a good quick preview bar with programs like iCal using it effectively displaying the current date.
• OSX boot time – Even with all my startup services and apps it still seams to start up a lot faster than Vista
• Bundled software – I think the software that comes with OSX is a lot more useful than Windows. For example the iLife suite is really good and comes on all new Macs for free!
• Stacks – not as used and useful but nice to have and a cool effect
• Icons – I think the icons look a lot better than both Windows and Gnome visually and the styling
• Front row – A nice and easy to use application with my free remote. No need to worry about which version of the OS comes with it.
• No DRM checks – the lack of online checking to verify or falsely verify the authenticity of OSX
• Keychain – Remembers credentials for a lot of things and allows applications to use the keychain

Dislikes

• Menu bar – Seems stupid to detach the menu bar from the application window when the menus are program specific
• Quiting programs – Why does OSX require you to use a keyboard to close it’s application with the Command+Q?
• Enter renames a directory – That’s right it does not open the folder/program it goes into rename mode. To open the file or folder you have to use 2 fingers and press the Command+Down Arrow
• Full does not = full screen – It does kind of make sense that the dock shouldn’t be covered up unless you have auto hide on but then it still can’t go full screen
• Copy & Paste address bar – Without modding Finder you can’t copy or paste a path into it.
• No paint application – There is no built in painting application like Microsoft Paint or Gimp
• iTunes – Have never liked because of it’s a bloatware
• Support for Java – OSX is still stuck on Java 1.5 whilst the rest of the world has moved onto 1.6. Also they do not follow the same version convention as the Sun version scheme
• Get Info – Does not show all the information on a file or directory such as the invisible flag

Windows Vista

Likes

• MP3 tagging – Can be done in Explorer and can also show the tags in an MP3
• Widgets – The ability to display widgets without pressing a hot key and it’s always visible on the desktop
• Windows DreamScene – A very cool feature which allows a video to be used as a background
• Games – Yes the new games in Windows are a lot better and out numbers the Mac.

Dislikes

• Long boot time – Says it all
• Driver compatibility – Improving yet problems still exists
• Aero requirements – Not so much the look and effects but the requirements to run it
• Number of versions – Does Vista really need to come in so many flavors?
• Widgets – Lack of quality widgets compared to OSX
• 64bit support – OSX made it look like child’s play moving from 32 to 64.
• Pinball – The Windows game Pinball has disappeared.
• Start Menu – I hated the scrolling start menu but now it’s forced upon us unless you want it to look old and classic
• Improvements – No real great improvements or changes to help the end user from XP

I’m sure there will be others that I have missed off but these will do for now.

I have been away from my main computer for a while and coming back to it and it feels so slow (not to mention the broadband but that’s not my fault)! I can only point the finger on Windows Vista because I have been using Linux and Mac OSX with a hint of Windows XP for some gaming. I just hope Microsoft get’s their act together for Windows 7 because my next OS I will re-install back on this system would be XP.

Introduction

Chris Pirillo mentioned a library software for the Mac. It sounds boring but it’s pretty neat. It tracks your items which you enter and it does a look up on Amazon. It downloads all the details and picture of the item and onto your “shelf” you can create your own custom shelf categories but the default are item types like “Books”, “Video Games”, “Albums”, etc. The creators of the software are called Delicious Monster.

Basic Functions

Items are entered and searched against Amazon databases. Items can be entered in manually if it’s not on Amazon but it is not very user friendly. The details of the item is in the lower 3rd of the screen and you have to constantly scroll back and forth when your looking for a field.

The best feature about this software is that it can scan bar codes. O.K nothing special. Did I mention with your camera? Using the built-in iSight or external sources can capture barcodes and then automatically downloads and categorises the item. The MacBook Pro iSight wasn’t ideal for doing it because of the reflection from the monitor on DVD cases as well as glossy books so I plugged in a Sony DCR-TRV950 camcorder which worked perfectly. This camera was using the firewire connection. Not only does it pick up my books, music CDs, software and video games but also my TomTom Go 700 barcode, Logitech mouses, etc into a gadget category. I went back to trying the iSight and managed to get better results by tilting the item so it wasn’t face on to the camera. It would be o.k to use the built-in iSight camera for one or two items at a time but a better external one would greatly improve your scanning speed when there is a batch of items to do.

They do offer a bluetooth barcode scanner when you buy the software for $40 but the scanner costs well over $200.

When a barcode is found and scanned it plays an audiable beep. This means the computer scanned the barcode successfully. When an item is found and added to the library it uses the built in voice to read out the title and author of the item. This means the monitor doesn’t have to be facing me when I go through my room ransacking the shelves for barcodes. If you enter or add a duplicate item into the library it warns you and does not add it initially. You can press the +d to add the duplicate. I found 1 duplicate CD and 1 duplicate film which I didn’t know about.

The library allows you to mark items out on loan to people and it picks up my contacts from Address book built into OSX. Nice time saving feature. Of course it allows manual editing to the friends list.

Delicious Library 2 Has some fancy animations when a title is added or deleted to a library shelf. A skeleton square appears when it’s added and then when a picture is found and downloaded from Amazon, millions of parts pour from the top into the skeleton to form the picture. When an item is deleted, it explodes into million pieces.

Navigation

I tried using the Apple remote to navigate the library but it lacked a back button so once you chose a category like gadgets, you couldn’t go back to select a different category.

Delicious Library 2 uses the built in speech recognition to locate your items. It’s a nioce feature and works as long as the speech recogition picks up what your saying.

Publishing / Export

It can export your library to different formats including XML, Delicious 1.5, CSV, Text, etc. The program uses SQLite version 3 database which is open source.

You can publish the library to your iPod, iPhone, FTP and to a folder. It generates nice looking web pages when you choose FTP and folder which has 2 styles, shelf and pecil sketch. The published version can be quite big. The pencil sketch takes up more space. It lacks a search feature which yould have made it practical rather than just a pretty show off page to your friends and family.

I’ve got my iPod sync’d up to my Windows computer and didn’t want to mess with it.

Printing

I haven’t managed to set up the printer on the Mac (or Linux for that matter) because it doesn’t seem to be as easy as Windows to add a network printer running on a CUPS server. I looked at the print preview instead and it looks great. All black and white with the image to the left and description next to it on the right.

Purchase Process

The demo allows 25 items to be added but it has all functions enabled. When you hit this limit you have to buy the software before you can add more. I kept scanning before Terina noticed the demo limit had been hit and all the items I tried to add beeped to say it recognised the barcode but nothing to say it had hit the limit.

I went on to purchase the software and it’s all done from within the software. It gathered the details and filled in the form automatically but as I found out you should check it because I got my email address wrong! Once the payment has been sent and authorised, the program automatically downloads the license key into the software. Magic!

Windows Library – Libra

There is a windows version which is free for non commercial use but the barcode reader is not as good as the
Delicious Library. I haven’t had any luck getting it to read a barcode but I have only tried one Logitech Orb camera. The camera view finder in the program doesn’t have any guidelines like Delicious Library 2 does so you line up the barcode straight and true.

Libra has the ability to import Delicious Library 2 XML files but it didn’t work with version 2. I can see this is only a matter of time before the update it so that it can. I didn’t have time to try exporting and importing other formats like CSV.

There is a nice community button which loads the main window with the forums. Editing items are full screen in the software compared to a 3rd of the window in Delicious Library 2.

It also doesn’t seem as up-to-date as Delicious. It doesn’t have the extra categories and extra functionalities like activity monitor, fancy add and remove item effects, iPod like scrolling overlay which tells you the alphabet range currently in view, etc.

The interface isn’t like the traditional Windows applications (can be a good or bad thing) like a menu strip at the top.

The Cons

Both systems are limited to Amazon’s stores. Whilst it does search through the different locales of Amazon like US, UK, Japan, etc it does not let you add additional sites.

I did have some obscure items which were not on Amazon but the majority were found. The other problem was some items didn’t have any barcodes or the barcodes were too small. This required a manual search through Amazon and if it wasn’t there then you can enter it manually.

The export and publish feature is nice but takes a while for the process to complete. Maybe an incremental update to the files it creates would speed up the process.

The $40 price tag is quite steep but I think it’s worth it if it’s going to save me from buying duplicate copies again.

Developer Official Website
Libra Official Website

I have been trying to get get a bluetooth GPS device hooked up to various computers from mobile phones, Asus EEE PC to a Vista desktop. I thought it would be fairly easy but boy was I wrong.

Starting out on Linux with the Asus EEE PC the idea that Linux has is a daemon called gpsd which handles the commication between the computer and GPS. The clever idea for this is so that you can have multiple programs which “asks” the daemon for GPS information so not one program hogs the device. Also once you configured the daemon, it keeps all the settings from port to NEMA specification so all of this does not have to be repeated.

Linux

The first problem I had was establishing a connection between the GPS and computer using bluetooth. Ubuntu kept on saying the device would not accept an OBEX connection. Further investigation and I had to install gnome-bluetooth and bluez-utils. Using apt-get this was easy but it still wouldn’t let me. So I did it via command line:
hcitool scan
This picked it up and I used sdptool to get the serial profile for the device which my GPS supports.
sdptool browse xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
Replace the ‘xx’ with the MAC address of the bluetooth GPS device which is displayed when you use the hcitool scan command.

This was where I got stuck. The sdptool didn’t create a serial profile and I stopped there.

Mac OSX 10.5

I then went on to try and get it working with the Mac. There wasn’t a lot of native GPS software for the Mac (that was free) but using port you could install gpsd. For port to run you need to have Xcode installed because it needs a c compiler. Xcode was over 1GB to download so it slowed my progress down. I created a bond between my MacBook Pro and the bluetooth GPS and that was fine. The cool thing was it even tells you the serial port it was on. I tried using KisMac with the GPS module but it didn’t work and also used GPSylon, a java open source GPS software.

After Xcode was downloaded and installed I had fetched gpsd but got confused to how to set up and lauch the daemon on the Mac.

Windows XP/Vista

For XP i used my bootcamp partition and Vista is my normal desktop computer. It was kind of pointless setting up GPS with the desktop because I won’t be able to move it about with me but it was worth a try. I used GPSylon but had trouble with the serial port because GPSylon was designed with *nix in mind and Windows used COM ports. Later on I found I had to jus change the line:
/dev/tty
to the COM port but I have yet to try it.

Mobile Phone

The best luck I have had was on my Motorola Ming(A1200). Technically it is and it is not a computer but it worked best here. I used GPS Track which was really good. JavaME has JSR179 built into the framework specification for location based devices. I would have thought these specification should be ported to the Java SE so that it too can make available the API’s needed for any mobile stuff but they weren’t. Also JavaME isn’t as easy to code for once you are use to version 1.5 and upwards.