• Mac OS X

    Mac OS X 10.5: Disable Glass Shelf in Dock

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal For early Leopard adopters that don’t like the new look and feel of the dock, here’s a command to disable that Glass shelf look in your dock: defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES killall Dock If you would like to revert the setting: defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO killall Dock click on the code and choose run to activate or deactivate this setting

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Mac OS X 10.5: The New Terminal

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal Apple has been slowly winning over a lot of traditional Unix and Linux converts. This new breed of switcher is after a cool shell environment. In Leopard, Apple has upgraded Terminal.app to provide a whole slew of new features that are sure to continue winning new converts. Let’s just take a look at a few of them: Secure Keyboard Entry – Prevent other applications from detecting keystrokes used in terminal. Enable this using the Terminal menu. Tabbed Interface – I always have 3 shell windows open. That’s how I roll. But with the new tabbed interface (which you can access using the Command-T keystroke) I find…

  • Mac OS X

    Mac OS X 10.5: Solidifying the Top Menu Bar

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal In Leopard the Top Menu Bar is fairly transparent and will overlay on top of the background image. For those who want to disable it the following command will do so: write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 1 If you later start to miss this menu bar then you can undo this change by using the following command: defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 0

  • Mac OS X Server

    Mac OS X Server 10.5: Introduction to Ruby on Rails

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal So Ruby on Rails… What does this mean for me and what exactly is Ruby on Rails from a systems administration standpoint? Ruby on Rails was created by David Heinemeier Hansson from his work on Basecamp, a web-based project-management tool, by the company 37signals. Ruby on Rails was first released to the public in July 2004. Ruby on Rails is a web application framework designed to support the development of dynamic websites. To see some sites built using Ruby on Rails check out http://happycodr.com Ruby is an object-oriented program language that Rails is built on.  To access rails, you can use the rails command. The Ruby…