That’s cool and all, but what if you want to access that information programmatically? Turns out you can also run the System Profiler from the terminal by executing this command:

jerod@mbp:~$ /usr/sbin/system_profiler

What’s great about this access method is that it allows you to slurp that data into any other program and have your way with it! For instance, I wanted to track my new battery’s cycle count and charge capacity over time. Why? I dunno, because I’m a geek, okay, get off my back!… Anyways, with the system_profiler command I simply run this little Ruby script every day:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

require 'date'
 
data      = `/usr/sbin/system_profiler SPPowerDataType`
cycles    = data[/Cycle count: (\d+)/, 1]
condition = data[/Condition: (\w+)/, 1]
capacity  = data[/Full charge capacity \(mAh\): (\d+)/, 1]
 
File.open('/Users/jerod/Documents/battery_history.csv', "a") do |file|
  file.puts "#{Date.today},#{cycles},#{capacity},#{condition}"
end

Ruby uses the (possibly familiar) backticks (line 3) to capture output from a shell command. All that was left for me to do was to parse the raw data and save it to a CSV file.

Finally, note that the my script is passing SPPowerDataType as an argument which narrows down the returned results. You can learn more about how to use the system_profiler command by readings its manual. Just:

jerod@mbp:~$ man system_profiler

Thankfully, we don’t have to live with such monstrosities. Here’s a quick fix to free yourself from the blue haze. Fire up Terminal.app, then:

1
2
3
4

cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/
sudo mv expose-window-selection-big.png expose-window-selection-big.ugly
sudo mv expose-window-selection-small.png expose-window-selection-small.ugly
sudo killall Dock

This will disable the blue rings altogether, but you may want to replace these two images with some custom ones that look a little cooler instead.

Let me know via the comments or on Twitter if you find some replacement images!

***UPDATE***

My friend Doug provided some drop-in replacement images that are a huge improvement. Just drop them into the directory after renaming the default images. So after step #3 above, do:

4

open .

This will open Finder in the current directory. Now drag the replacement images into this directory, provide your password, and kill the Dock.

5

sudo killall Dock

Voilà!

DOWNLOAD HERE

Thankfully, MacPorts has a readline variant that can be easily installed:

sudo port install php5 +readline

If you execute the command above, apache2 will come along for the ride because it’s a default variant for the PHP5 port. If you don’t want apache2 (OS X ships with apache2 anyways), modify the command to look like this:

sudo port install php5 -apache2 +readline

Not sure if your PHP install has readline support? Execute this one-liner to find out:

<? echo function_exists('readline') ? "yes\n" : "no\n"; ?>

1. Too complex to configure
2. Insecure by default

But lets face it, sometimes you need to set up a quick and dirty FTP server for one-time use. Sure, OS X supports FTP file sharing natively but its a bit clunky because you have to either A) allow Anonymous access, or B) create a user account on your system and set up sharing on it. Lame.

There are many freeware,and shareware FTP clients but not too many servers. After a cursory review of all the offerings on IUseThis, I settled on PureFTPd Manager which is a free and open-source front-end for PureFTPd…and what a great choice I made.

Why does this app rock my socks off?

1. Dead simple configuration – nice GUI walks you through everything
2. Virtual users – one new system account and endless virtual users it can represent
3. Logs and live status updates from GUI
4. Uninstalls in a few clicks
5. SSL/TLS support

Its a difficult feature to explain but it basically allows your to divide your spaces by task instead of by application. I was dying for this fix because everytime I would switch to an application in a space that didn’t have it open already, I would be whisked away to another space that I did not want to be in.

To activate this feature just open the Exposé and Spaces preferences pane and unclick the following checkbox:

Read Gruber’s post on this for a more eloquent and thorough explanation.