• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Who Needs Root When You Can Have Simple Finder

    Here’s the thing: I’m not very good with computers. So to keep me from hurting myself too badly, I need the simplest interface available that allows me to run multiple applications. But most of the command keys shouldn’t work in this interface and I should only have Finder, file and Help menus. Luckily for my poor MacBook Airs, Apple thought of people like me when they wrote the Finder and invented something called Simple Finder which makes OS X even simpler than it is by default to use. To enable Simple Finder, just go to Parental controls, enable controls for a user and then check the box for Simple Finder.…

  • Kerio,  Mac OS X Server

    Can't Undo Deletes in Kerio

    When you setup a Kerio server, by default there’s a feature called AutoExpunge. This feature keeps mail clients from showing a message with a strikethrough through it when a message is marked for deletion. Once items are processed the message is moved to deleted and the strikethrough message is removed from the folder it was deleted from. Many users can get confused by this, so Kerio built a feature called AutoExpunge. That AutoExpunge feature instead of striking through messages just tosses them. That causes you to be unable to undo a delete. To disable AutoExpunge, stop Kerio Mail Server and then look for AutoExpungeOnDelete option in /usr/local/Kerio/mailserver/mailserver.cfg (I like to back…

  • Mac OS X

    Debugging Twitter

    I was recently working on a new project developing against Twitter using their JSON interface. Turns out that the Twitter app has an awesome little feature to assist with such a task, a Console. To see the menu for the Console, enable the Develop menu, by putting a true boolean ShowDevelopMenu key into the com.twitter.twitter-mac.plist: defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac ShowDevelopMenu -bool true Once enabled, use the Develop menu to open Console. Here, you can select various buttons and see the GET, POST, PUT or DELETE sent. as well as the entities sent. To disable the Develop menu: defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac ShowDevelopMenu -bool false

  • Mac OS X,  Unix,  Windows XP

    Subversion Cheat Sheet

    I’ve done a few articles in the past on different tasks in svn and git, but I have a little cheat sheet of sorts I’ve been using for awhile for Subversion on Mac OS X and thought I would share it. Before you get started, check your version. I use 2.0 but I seem to remember all of these are about the same as they were previously: svn --version To get started, Subversion uses a repository to store projects. Each client needs a repository and these should be on direct attached drives. The repository hosts a Berkeley database a folder per project you check out, or import. To create a…

  • FileMaker,  Unix

    Delete All WordPress Comments

    WordPress uses MySQL as a back-end. I’ve seen a number of scenarios where someone was comment spammed. The comments weren’t approved and so never appeared on the site, but they were starting to fill up the MySQL database given that there were about 40,000 in one case and about 55,000 in another. In order to trash them you can use the following query from mysqladmin (once connected to the database of course): DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = ‘0’

  • Windows Server,  Windows XP

    Keystrokes For Windows/Windows Server Explorer

    There’s nothing that makes you faster with navigating around any GUI-based OSen than keystrokes.  Navigate around the system, browse web pages and even swap between command windows at blazing speeds.  You’ll get faster but you’ll seem exponentially faster to those trying to watch you work.  I’ve done posts on Mac OS X and Safari.  Now, here’s one for navigating around Windows with the same speed with which you navigate OS X.  If I skipped something feel free to let me know and I’ll add it; there are a plethora of options and these are the ones off the top of my head…  While I was shooting for Windows Explorer, most…