Stupid Mac Trick

The Mac OS X 10.5 (also known as Leopard) introduced a few usability tweaks to window management and Finder that users of Linux desktop environments such as GNOME had been familiar with for quite some time. One of the new features was “Spaces” which is Apple’s implementation of virtual desktops. It includes the basic functionality such as a configurable number of screens, keyboard shortcuts and some tunable toys. It has some nice UI polish and takes advantage of Apple’s love of 3d swoosh effects when you use a keyboard shortcut or a dock icon to “Show Spaces”.

The “Show Spaces” effect shows all of the virtual desktops at once. It effectively presents a live scaled down view of each desktop with the wallpaper, dock, and a few other UI elements removed. You can click and drag applications between desktops and it shows an appropriate amount of visual cues. One nice feature is that you can activate “Show Spaces” and then activate “Expose” and you will see every window on every desktop at once. It is a nice feature and useful to the point that I never use “Show Spaces” without immediately hitting the “Expose” button.

Unfortunately Leopard seems to lack a built in configuration item for this so you have to resort to a small bit of Applescript to make this happen. This article from macosxhints.com has the basic idea but my newbie self had to fiddle around to figure out how to get it to work. So here is the basics:

• Launch the “Script Editor” tool either using Finder (Applications > AppleScript > Script Editor) or search for it using Spotlight or QuickSilver.
• A script editing window should appear. Cut and paste in the following:

tell application "System Events"
	key code 100 -- F8 - Spaces
	key code 101 -- F9 - Expose All Windows
end tell

• Click the “Compile” button.
• Save the file using File > Save As. Save it as File Format “Application”. Make sure “Startup Screen” is not checked or you be prompted for your permission to run the script every time you try to use it. Once you click “Save” you will have created an application file.
• Close the Script Editor and open the “System Preferences” window using the Apple menu.
• Open “Keyboard and Mouse” and find the mouse or keyboard shortcut you wish to bind this action to. For my use I use Mighty Mouse’s “side” buttons. Click on the option and choose “Other…”. Then select the application file that you just created.

It should now work. The downside of this approach is that you will be executing a script whenever you hit this button. You will see the AppleScript logo do a quick appearance and a bounce or two on your dock then it will disappear and the swoosh effect that normally accompanies “Show Spaces” will start.

I do have to say it amuses me to see a dozen or so terminal windows move around when Expose kicks in…

(Oh, Ben? You are behind and your default WordPress theme is hanging out…)

EQ2 Christmas Quests

As is often the case in MMORPGs games will temporarily put in some form of content to celebrate major holidays. EQ2 is no exception to this and their Christmas holiday content is currently live. EQ2’s holiday presentation is actually of a decent size and contains things like a zone for crafting worthless but amusing holiday items, a parody of the famous “A Christmas Carol” and a few quests.

When you first sign in you receive a fake advertisement in the in-game mail system. You later can find a quest where you must save christmas by shutting down this advertisement operation. Lead by “McScroogle” you must locate and burn the source of all the advertising. The quest contains some video game related humor and even pokes fun of the “kill 10 rats” quest concept. So basically you save christmas by shutting down a spammer.

SOE Never Learns

Someone from the SOE Everquest 2 team needs to lose their access to the administrative tools.

It seems that the guild Unhallowed Triad, now on the Unrest server, was recently moved there lock, stock and barrel from the Test server.

They were moved to Live despite SOE’s prior assurances that no guilds would ever be moved from Test to Live.

As you all probably know, you get double exp for kills on Test, so it’s twice as easy to level there.

As you may not know, this guild formerly had a GM account in it. That GM account helped this guild gear up on Test by killing monsters they couldn’t kill on their own, so they could loot them.

They didn’t learn not to pull this shit from the drama train wrecks such blatant favoritism caused back when people gave a crap about EQ1? The gear was stripped but they were still handed a very nice set of armor and their characters benefited from the unique features and events that occur in a test environment. You can’t put game content in that causes competition and then show favoritism to one of the contestants by pulling this shit without causing a major PR mess.

I don’t raid and don’t have any plans to but this still manages to piss me off. I feel bad for the raid guilds on that server who now have to compete with a group who apparently has a pet SOE employee on speed dial.

Update: Someone found an example user profile with a particular piece of rare contested gear on a user profile that would not seem to match a character that would have legitmately attained it. That would seem to indicate not all gear was stripped. Of course a couple hours after it was covered on the forums the profile is no longer visible…

NSA Security Guide for RHEL 5

The National Security Agency has a guide covering how to secure servers running Red Hat Enterprise 5(pdf). It goes into some detail on configuring specific services. While I have not looked at all of it in detail the sections I checked covered the usual items and seemed accurate and useful. It might be useful as checklist material.