russds.com » Mac OS X

Mac OS X command to log out

russds — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:23:44 +0000

Every once in a while, not a whole lot, but more than mac finantics are willing to admit: My mac goes wack, and for whatever reason my only hope is to either log out, or force the machine down (hold down power button for 10 seconds). Well, as I enjoy a long uptime just as much as the next guy, I would much prefer to log out rather than shut down. If my mac is really not responding, here’s what sometimes will work:

1. SSH into the mac from another machine. Use a tool like putty to login to your mac from another machine.

2. Get the PID of the “loginwindow” command.

ps -Ajc | grep loginwindow

3. Kill the loginwinow PID. The first column of the output line of the above command will be the PID, you want to kill the process.

sudo kill PID

For example:

russds:~ russell$ ps -Ajc | grep loginwindow
russell 38 1 38 729f750 0 Ss ?? 0:24.37 loginwindow

Then logout with:

russds:~ russell$ sudo kill 38

Wondering what a brand new macbook’s battery life is?

russds — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:42:43 +0000

I just got a brand new macbook. The White unibody kind. It’s actually for my wife. Here’s a screen shot of the brand new battery to use as a reference point. Notice the cycle count and full charge capacity.

OS X Wireless Problems? Reset it all.

russds — Fri, 28 May 2010 17:22:08 +0000

Wireless connection problem. Extremely slow wireless connectivity at home and work. Called apple care, they had me delete files:

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist,
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist,
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.network.identification.plist,
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist

And restart.

You’ll have to re-add the wireless network settings you once had, but this should fix the problem.

How To Auto-Capitalize “I” In Mail, iCal, And All Of OS X

russds — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:45:55 +0000

One thing I deeply missed when I started using a mac as my main system was the auto-capitliazation of the letter “i”. When I was typing an email, or document it was almost second nature to just type “i” because I knew that Word would have me covered and auto-capitlize that puppy into “I”. I wouldn’t have to worry that I might look like a fool when I shot off an email or document with lower case i’s in it. Well, hello OS X, the dream OS with funny commercials. Low and behold the all-mighty mac doesn’t auto capitalize i. So when I went to write emails or documents, I had to always remember to go back and capitalize the i’s so I didn’t look a lazy teenager when I sent stuff out. I googled a couple times to find a solution, but nothing stood out as a simple fix. Until I found the ‘Text Substitution’ option which is an OS X option, prebuilt into almost any area where one could type text.

Right click (or control click) anywhere you don’t actually have text
Select “Substitutions” -> Show Substitutions.
Click “Text Preferences”
Click the + sign on the lower left, and add the substitution i and I.
Then on the Substitutions window select “Text Replacement”

There you go. And the beauty is that you can do this in almost any area where text is available: Textedit, Mail, Addressbook, iCal, Web Sites, etc.

My current computer desktop

russds — Fri, 22 May 2009 05:58:57 +0000

Using geek tool to display the calendar and system status information. Changed the folder icons of a ‘Tickler’ folder and ‘temp’ folder, also the appearance of the Hard drive. In the Menu bar I’ve got:

Quicksilver
Adium
Coffee
Syngergy
MenuMeters
Time Machine
Volume
Spaces
Wifi
Date/time
Battery
Spotlight