Wishful Coding

Didn't you ever wish your
computer understood you?

Good looking X11 apps on Mac

A while back I discovered that Pidgin is now available for Mac. The problem is that it is still a GTK app. For Mac users that means it runs in X11. It has always bothered me that all X11 applications you run on Mac look so extremely ugly. When I used Ubuntu a few years back I discovered mac4lin, a funny project that intends to make a Mac theme for Gnome. Ironically, since Gnome is based on GTK you can run mac4lin on the system it intends to emulate, which would give your GTK apps a nice Mac look. Let's see how... For this example I'm also going to install Pidgin, to show you how it looks. First, however we need to get a bunch of software. You need to have MacPorts installed for this to work.
  1. First we need to get GTK without X11. You can leave of the variants if the build fails to get the X11 version.
    sudo port install gtk2 +quartz +no_x11
  2. Now we can get Pidgin, or any other GTK2 app.
    sudo port install pidgin +quartz +no_x11
  3. To be able to easily switch theme later we also need this little app.
    sudo port install gtk2-chtheme
  4. Now download and extract the latest version of mac4lin from their website.
  5. Extract Mac4Lin_GTK_Aqua_v1.0.tar.gz in the GTK folder to /opt/local/share/themes/ (You'll need to authenticate)
  6. Run /opt/local/bin/gtk2-chtheme, select the newly installed theme.
  7. Click the font button and set it to Lucida Grande at 10pt, done!
  8. Run /opt/local/bin/pidgin to see the effect.
Before: Good looking X11 apps on Mac After: Good looking X11 apps on Mac Keyboard shortcuts: You might also want to use this hint to enable the CMD key for keyboard shortcuts. Sound: By default Pidgin uses you 'system beep' to notify you, solution:
sudo port install qtplay
Good looking X11 apps on Mac

easy_install: no eggs found

I blogged about this before, but I was bitten by the same issue again! When you run an old version of setuptools and easy_install, you might get an error concerning eggs not being found. If you're having the same problem, the solution is simple:
easy_install -U setuptools

Manage your social networks

I recently had one of my "search for relief" attacks, which means I start to try out a lot of software in search for something better than I already have. This happens a few times a year, and leads to a lot of (remainders of) crap and cool software on my computer. After I went through the OS(Mac), browser(WebKit), chat(Adium), editor(MacVim) and maybe more, it was time for the social networks. I have now figured out a set of social networks I like, but that led me to a new problem: management! An ideal piece of software would be able to manage at least:
  • Gmail
  • Wordpress
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
And probably also:
  • Delicious
  • Flickr
  • Buzz
Manage your social networksThat ideal application would be Raindrop, but there is a small problem, it isn't finished yet. I tried very hard, but it would not work for me at this stage. Manage your social networksWait a minute... All those services above are websites, aren't they? So, why not use the browser? Because you'd have to open about ten tabs and handle each service separately... Unless you use Flock! Flock is a browser that is based around FireFox, but with social networks built right in the core. This might be your solution, but it is not mine; I like the speed, simplicity and integration of WebKit(developer version of Safari). My solution is quite the opposite of Flock. I try to use applications for what they are meant to do, and update as much networks as possible on the way, which in practice means linking networks together. Here is my current setup:

Manage your social networks

Let me explain that in more detail. A lot of these services include an option to either read or write to Twitter, and for those that do not write to Twitter there is TwitterFeed to parse RSS feeds into Tweets.

  • Buzz is kind of redundant, but when you click 'connected sites' under Buzz in Gmail it can dupe your Tweets for those that do use it.
  • Facebook is not just another Twitter, so it might need some extra attention, but you can cover wall updates and photos by adding the Twitter app and importing your Flickr photos. To do this
    1. Go to your profile
    2. Click 'Options' and then 'Settings' just above your feed
    3. Select Flickr
    4. Figure out the rest
  • Flickr can also be used as an Twitter image/video service by adding Twitter as a blog via http://www.flickr.com/account/blogs/ and then clicking 'blog this' above any photo. There are numerous Flickr uploaders to use if you want to.
  • Wordpress, Delicious, GitHub or any other service with a feed can be linked to your Twitter with TwitterFeed. You might choose to install additional software to facile operation of Wordpress and Delicious.
  • Update: By adding 'http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/<username>.rss' to TwitterFeed you can publish Twitter to Identi.ca and some other services as well.
Manage your social networksI suggest you browse around my social network a bit and check the 'via' tag to see where the content is coming from. If you are unsure how to connect a certain service, leave a comment, and I'll elaborate on that. I'm starting to get a little concerned about content duplication, any thoughts about that?