Permission error of AppleScript in iTunes

January 31st, 2010

I was getting a permission error (code -54) when trying to set an id3 tag of a track using AppleScript. The solution was to add a delay between each operation: delay 1

Note that the track will remain “locked” until you restart iTunes.

Скрипт для замены основного шрифта сайта

January 22nd, 2010

Я написал небольшой скрипт для файрфоксовского плагина GreaseMonkey, заменяющий основной шрифт сайта на Helvetica Neue. Это имеет смысл в тех случаях, когда дизайнер сайта использовал шрифт, отсутствующий на вашей Mac OS X, а предлагаемая им же замена выглядит намного хуже оригинала.

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Inability to upload files using any browser on Windows

January 17th, 2010

One my friend who runs Windows XP encountered a strange problem: she couldn’t upload any large (more than ≈100 KB) files using upload forms on websites under any browser. We tried Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome with no result, although Flash uploaders were still working. The solution was to change the MTU value in the registry.

Slow startup and sleep problems on MacBook Pro 2,2

January 17th, 2010

Once I noticed that it has been taking up to 5–7 minutes for my MacBook Pro 2,2 to boot (the longest phase of the startup process was the blue screen which usually appears right before the desktop) and additionally, sleep (hibernate) mode stopped working. Both problems appeared simultaneously, so right from the start it was clear that they’re related.

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Create an iPhone ringtone on Mac

December 26th, 2009

This “how to” will guide you through the process of making an iPhone ringtone from a mp3 file using free tools on Mac OS X. I’m pretty sure most of those steps can as well be reproduced on Windows, since both applications we’re going to use — Audacity and iTunes — exist for both systems.
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“Building boot caches” error when changing startup disk

December 11th, 2009

Once I tried to change the default startup disk on my Mac running Snow Leopard and the following error appeared: “you can’t change the startup disk to the selected disk. Building boot caches on boot helper partition failed”.
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“Failed to expand the files” error

December 10th, 2009

Getting “failed to expand the files” while installing Canon camera software, such as ZoomBrowser Ex? Just turn off your antivirus.

BBEdit preview shows raw PHP code

December 10th, 2009

If your BBEdit preview shows raw PHP code, go to “Preferences” and configure a “HTML web-site” with “Use local preview server” ticked.

Launch character palette using AppleScript in Snow Leopard

December 6th, 2009
tell application "CharacterPalette" to activate

There is an issue though: the new character palette doesn’t get “bound” to any of the applications, therefore double-clicking a symbol doesn’t paste it automatically to the text field. You’d have to drag-and-drop.

I’m posting this because most results from Google were telling me to launch a “.component”, and that “.component” doesn’t exist on my Snow Leopard system.

Restrict page access to authorized MODx managers only

December 6th, 2009

A while ago I needed to create a private zone with documentation, accessible only by the MODx managers. In order to restrict access I wrote a simple snippet, which you can now use as well.
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