i've noticed..

I do this so frequently lately. But luckily this time, I realized that Cmd + Shift + t (which regularly performs an “Undo last tab close” action) will bring back your previously opened tabs if you inadvertently quit Chrome :)

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Thanks to some of the great comments I’ve received on the last post, I’ve found ways to simplify the setup and enhance the presentation of the Mute OSX script. I’ve even written the script for you this time around!

Install the script

Head on over to this link on github and download mute.php. All you need to do is place this file in the Sites directory in your home folder.

Also, I’ve included an icon in the file. To use this, simply save the image bellow as “muteIcon.png” in the Sites directory.

Note: You may need to enable PHP. I’ve found a good guide here.

Okay, the script is in place. How do you access them?

First, you must make sure that you have Web Sharing enabled by opening the Sharing panel in System Preferences.

Once this is enabled and you are on the same network as your Mac, you will be able to access the script from your mobile phone by going to the following address in your web browser

http://computer_name.home/~User/mute.php

Here is the only “iPhone only” part of this post:

You can then simply bookmark the page and add it to your homescreen and you have a “Mute My Mac” button on your iPhone!

Any smartphone with a web browser will be able to run the script. Just bookmark the page for easy access.

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Countless nights, I would be laying in bed when my iMac would announce “It’s 11 o’ clock”  from one room over. I had been listening to music or watching some video and left my volume up. Now, I was forced to either walk to the other room to turn it down or deal with Adium chimes and time announcements all night while trying to fall asleep.

Or.. I could reach over to my nightstand and grab my omnipresent smart phone and mute it from there. To do this, you will need to write two simple scripts.

Update: Check out the Updated Article for a much simpler way to do all of this.

The scripts

The first script is used to set the volume of the computer to the lowest value. Name the file “.mute.scpt” and place the file in the Sites directory in your home folder. The file contains just one line to set the volume to 0.

set Volume 0

This number is variable and you could use the steps in this guide for any number. In fact, I have scripts named “loud”, “louder” and “loudest”.

The second script is to run the previous script from the web. Since this file is an OSX script, it could be run in any number of ways. I, however, wanted a “button” on my iPhone to mute my iMac so I set up a script I could access through mobile Safari. In the same directory as the previous script (Sites) create “mute.php”

<?php exec(“osascript .mute.scpt”); ?>

<h1>MUTED!</h1>

Note: You may need to enable PHP. I’ve found a good guide here.

Okay, the scripts are in place. How do you access them?

First, you must make sure that you have Web Sharing enabled by opening the Sharing panel in System Preferences.

Once this is enabled and you are on the same network as your Mac, you will be able to access the script from your mobile phone by going to the following address in your web browser

http://computer_name.home/~User/mute.php

Here is the only “iPhone only” part of this post:

You can then simply bookmark the page and add it to your homescreen and you have a “Mute Computer” button on your iPhone!

David from Seattle wrote a nice followup to the Thunderbird Incoming Server Already Exists article in the comments section. In his followup, David explains how to fix the same issue on a Windows machine.

So without any further delay, here is how to fix the “Incoming Server Already Exists” bug in Thunderbird for Windows. I think David has really nailed the root of the issue. Maybe one of the Thunderbird developers will stumble upon this and fix the root of the issue so we no longer have to work around it :).

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Finding an apartment with Craigslist can be a pain, but I’ve found a way to make it a little easier on myself this time around. Google Reader.

If you don’t already use Google Reader, it is an RSS feed aggregator, which takes all of the update streams from your favorite sites and manages them in an easy to navigate list. With Google Reader, you can keep track of items that you have read and items that you like. This is where Reader is an indispensable tool for apartment hunting. I will show you how to use Google Reader to get up to the minute results for your search and how to edit your feed with new search terms after the jump.

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I was looking to recreate the look and feel of a NYC subway map for a project I’m currently working on when I realized that I couldn’t figure out what font the MTA uses for city names. I checked the commonly used standards, Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, but couldn’t find one that lined up good enough. The “M” in Manhattan is bent inward, a characteristic not found in any of the fonts I listed.

I used a screenshot of the map and the wonderful WhatTheFont! to get a little closer to the font used.

After selecting my characters in the image, I was given a pretty long list of fonts that could possibly fit.

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I wrote this technique to highlight text on a webpage as you type. It is a little clunky, but may get you off on the right foot. Sorry it isn’t tabbed properly. Tumblr is not the best for posting code.

Basically: You have a form that, onKeyUp(), runs a function to change the style of text that matches text in the form field. The one problem is that it doesn’t ignore html, so it may highlight the “br” from “<br/>” or other tags.

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If you remove an e-mail account from Thunderbird, you may have trouble if you decide to re-add it later.

Because Thunderbird saves e-mail accounts in a very inefficient way, if you don’t do a proper uninstall, it will still think that your accounts exist when you try to add them again. Thunderbird will complain “Incoming Server Already Exists”, even when you have no accounts created. This was a pain to deal with for me, so I thought that I would blog about my very specific problem, hoping that it helps someone else.

These instructions are specifically for Thunderbird 3 on Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala. I had originally installed from source, so I may be a bit redundant if you already know how to install Thunderbird 3 with apt-get.

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Enabling emoticons on iPhone allows you to use them in messages to other iPhone users, whether they have enabled the emoticon keyboard or not. I’m pretty much going to steal this post from Appmodo. It’s not like I have a large audience, but I feel the people I do reach would like this information.

To enable emoticons on your iPhone keyboard you have to activate the Emoji international keyboard. To do this, follow these (very strange) steps:

1. - Download the free app “Spell Number” from the app store
2. - Start the app and enter the number 91929394.59 and hit “return”
3. - Go to your iPhone Settings
4. - In settings, Select General > Keyboard > International Keyboards
5. - Find the Japanese Keyboard settings
6. - Enable the “Emoji” keyboard

Now that you’ve enabled the icons, you can use them almost anywhere you can enter text on the iPhone. To do this you simply select the Globe Icon in the bottom left corner of your keyboard.

Just found this setting in Google Reader that allows you to show the favicon next to your subscriptions.

Not sure when this was added. But it seems to have been done so quietly, because I’d have definitely turned it on by now if I had known. It really makes it easier to pick out feeds.

Lightning, one of the most important Add-ons to Thunderbird, is not yet compatible with the newest version released earlier this month. Lightning is a calendar Add-on that lets you add events and interact with meeting invitations. If you plan on using Thunderbird for any sort of professional communication, you need this Add-on.

To get the Lightning extension working with Thunderbird 3.0, you can download one of the working nightly builds directly from Mozilla’s FTP directory and follow these directions:

- Select your operating system from the directory: Linux (linux-xpi), Mac OSX (macosx-xpi), or Windows (win32-xpi).

- Download the lightning.xpi file by right clicking and saving it on your computer.

- In Thunderbird, go to Tools -> Add-ons in the menu bar. I’m using Linux, so this step may vary depending on your OS. Just find the Add-ons settings.

- Click the “Install..” button and Thunderbird will prompt you to find the file that you just downloaded. Find the file, click open and Thunderbird will prompt you to install it just as you would from the Mozilla Add-ons website. Restart Thunderbird and you’re good to go.

It’s a step that’s easy to forget and one that could cause you a lot of pain. When you’re planning a trip, make sure that you call your credit card company and let them know that you’ll be spending in some areas that are going to look strange to their security department.

If you don’t, you could end up with a frozen card when you try to check in to your hotel with no way to pay.

The process is simple. Just call the 800 number on the back of your card, pass the standard security questions, and ask to put a note on your account. The company should have a standard script in which they will ask you where you’re going, when you’ll be there, and if any of the additional authorized users on your card will be going with you.

(This blog clearly has no common theme, BTW. First three posts have been about MySQL, coconuts, and credit cards respectively. May keep it that way, or a subject may just arise.. whatever.)