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  • in Apple
  • 1 min read

How to unregister Viscosity

I was helping a colleague of mine set up VPN, with the client Viscosity to be specific, on macOS. During the process of setting it up, we noticed that remains of an old license, from another place, was still there. When she tried connecting to one of our remote servers, she got the following error:

This copy of Viscosity is registered using a license that does not allow connections to one or more of the remote servers for this connection. Please contact your VPN Provider for further details.

Tried searching for options to unregister the old license, but there was nothing visible in the GUI. I finally found a solution though, but it needs to be done in the terminal.

defaults delete com.viscosityvpn.Viscosity License

Then press Enter. Now start Viscosity again, and it should no longer give you that error. If your trial period has ended, you will have to enter a new valid license.

  • in Apple
  • 1 min read

iTerm and alt+backspace

I recently changed jobs, going from a Linux environment to macOS. When I worked in the terminal in Linux, I got used to using alt+backspace to delete entire words. Unfortunately, it seems that this function isn’t native to the Terminal application that macOS has.However, in the application iTerm2 it’s possible to add your own key-combinations so that alt+backspace, or in this case cmd+backspace, works as it does in Linux.

Just follow these instructions:

  • Open up iTerm2 and head on over to Preferences
  • Go to Keys -> Key Mappings and press the +.
  • In the Action field, select Send Hex Code.
  • In the field Keyboard Shortcut, just press cmd+backspace.
  • In the field Hex code enter 0x1B 0x08.

And that’s it! cmd+backspace in iTerm2 should now have the same functionality as alt+backspace in Linux!

  • in Apple
  • 1 min read

Problems with XBMC-audio on Apple TV 2

I have an Apple TV 2 that I’ve installed XBMC on. For a while it was working great, but out of the blue suddenly the sound got choppy. I guess there was an update that changed something. The best description I have for it is that the audio sounded like a machine gun – very annoying! And made movies unwatchable. Luckily, there’s a way to fix this. You simply need to change some of the XBMC-settings.

Go to:

  • System
  • System
  • Audio output
  • Check/uncheck Dolby Digital AC3 and DTS as capable receivers

This should do the trick! It certainly worked for me, so sure hope it works for you.

Continue enjoying your movies and series!

  • in Apple
  • 3 min read

iPad and Comicbooks

So what can I say. I finally succumbed and bought an iPad. Mainly because my friend Kevin kept nagging me about how wonderful it was. Bastard. Gríma Wormtongue is his new nickname. I’ve had my iPad for a couple of weeks now.

But seriously though, the iPad is doing great stuff for me. I’m using it for all sorts of purposes, and the one I’m going to bring up in this case is reading comicbooks. I use an application called Comic Zeal. Now, I’ve never been a particularly avid reader of comicbooks, but I remember back during my younger years when I sat at the library, reading every edition of Elfquest that I could get my hands on. So years (yeaaaaars) later, I finally wanted to give it a try again. That’s where Comic Zeal comes into play.

comiczeal

Comic Zeal is an application able to (taken from their site):

  • Organize your comics using Series and Dividers, don’t look through hundreds to find the one you want.
  • Search and find your comics by title. On the iPad you can tag your comics for even easier searching.
  • Use Comic Zeal‘s copy function to organize your collection in amazing ways.
  • When you finish reading one comic, Comic Zeal automatically opens the next one.
  • Avoid seeing the same borders page after page with Comic Zeal’s zoom lock.
  • Load your comics through USB or wi-fi using iTunes file sharing, or other apps like Drop Box!

It really works great, I can truly recommend it.

Now, I’ve only come across a few good comicbooks so far, but the ones I can recommend are:

American Vampire

americanvampire

The series imagines vampires as a population made up of many different secret species, and charts moments of vampire evolution and inter-species conflict throughout history. The focus of the series is a new American bloodline of vampires, born in the American West in the late 1800s. The first of this new species is a notorious outlaw named Skinner Sweet, who wakes from death, after being infected, to find he has become a new kind of vampire, something stronger and faster than what came before, impervious to sunlight, with a new set of strengths and weaknesses.

The Walking Dead

thewalkingdead

The Walking Dead is a monthly black-and-white comic book series chronicling the travels of Rick Grimes, his family, and other survivors of a zombie apocalypse. Shot in the line of duty, Kentucky police officer Rick Grimes wakes from a coma in the hospital to find his town filled with walking corpses.

Witch Doctor

witchdoctor

Witch Doctor combines elements of the horror and medical drama genres. The protagonist, Dr. Vincent Morrow, is a maverick doctor who specializes in “supernatural medicine,” supplementing common medical practices with magic. Dr. Morrow’s “cases” predominantly involve infectious supernatural creatures like vampires, demonic possession, as well as elements based on the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft. In the first Witch Doctor mini-series, Dr. Morrow treats (and battles) a vampire, demons possessing a child, faerie changelings, and Deep Ones (crossed with the Creature From the Black Lagoon), among others.

So there you have it! If you have any other suggestions (I’ve been recommended Sandman, Fable and Y: The Last Man so far), let me know!

  • in Apple
  • 3 min read

Before I start listing some of my favourite Mac OS X-software, let me just say that my Mac OS X 10.5-frenzy is over. :P Some things were just too laggy in Leopard, on my Powerbook 12?, so I decided to go back to Tiger. And with 1.25GB memory on the machine, it’s working with flying colors. Now, on to the software!

  • Quicksilver
  • Allows users to use the keyboard to rapidly perform tasks such as launching applications, manipulating files and data, running scripts or sending e-mail. It is similar to the Mac OS X applications LaunchBar and Butler, but uses a different interaction paradigm. Although it is a complex application, it is centered on a very simple three-panel interface, called the “command window”: the user performs complex tasks using simple, configurable key-combinations. Quicksilver’s icon is based on the alchemical symbol for mercury (quicksilver is another name for mercury).
  • Adium
  • A popular free software instant messaging client for Mac OS X that supports multiple protocols through the libezv (for Bonjour) and the libpurple (all other protocols) libraries. It is written using Mac OS X’s Cocoa API, and it is released under the GNU General Public License, and many other licenses for components that are distributed with Adium.
  • OnyX
  • A popular freeware for Mac OS X developed by French developer Joël Barrière. It is a multifunctional tool for maintenance and optimization, and can control many basic UNIX programs already built into OS X. It can also help set hidden preferences otherwise modifed by using plist editors and the command line.[1] It has become a highly praised utility among many in the Mac community, in part due to its extensive language support and excellent help files.
  • VLC
  • A portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to stream over networks and to transcode multimedia files and save them into various different formats. VLC used to stand for VideoLAN Client, but that meaning is now deprecated.
  • AppCleaner
  • A small application which allows you to completely and properly uninstall unwanted apps. It isn’t, in fact, sufficient to just delete an application. Installing an application distributes many files throughout your System using space of your Hard Drive unnecessarily.
  • SSHKeychain
  • You no longer have to cancel your ssh request because you forgot to load your keys. Because SSHKeychain acts as a gateway between you and the agent, it can automatically add keys when you need them. SSH will just pause for a few seconds, and you’ll be on your way. SSHKeychain integrates with the Apple Keychain. All key passphrases can be stored, and you can use all your keys just by unlocking the Keychain.
  • Safariblock
  • The goal of SafariBlock is to provide a seamless extension to Safari Web Browser that supports ad-blocking. It is by design an imitation of Firefox’s AdBlock extension.
  • in Apple
  • 2 min read

Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) on a PowerBook G4 12”

I briefly wrote an entry about how getting VLC to be your default DVD-playing application, and how to get it to start viewing a DVD you’ve inserted automatically. I even mentioned that I had installed Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) on my Powerbook. I’ll go into further detail about that. The installation went okay, BUT, it took ages. One and a half hour perhaps, and I was tempted to reboot to see if starting the process all over again would do it good. But one thing did occur to me during the installation – it was 9G with data that was being installed. Not your usual stripped 150MB installation of Debian, eh. So I waited, and waited. And finally it was installed. I actually think my PowerBook was handling Leopard smoother than Tiger. But it’s probably all in my head. The specifications for my Powerbook G4 12?; 1.5Ghz processor, 512MB RAM, 75G disk (just about), you know, a pretty standard Powerbook. I even ordered 1G memory for the Powerbook yesterday, and it’ll hopefully be arriving today, working miracles with my machine. Now, having said that Leopard is working fine so far, the native DVD-playing software isn’t. In fact, by running the application I’m guaranteeing myself a reboot – really. It locks up the PB so bad, waiting ages doesn’t really help. So what I did was that I just uninstalled the software, along with iTunes and some other crap I didn’t need, downloaded VLC and set that as my default DVD playing software. You gotta love VLC. I haven’t really tested heavy applications on the PowerBook, as I use it as a work/media computer. That means having Terminal, SSHKeychain, Safari, Adium and VLC up and going. Working great so far. Now to see how long it lasts. ;)

  • in Apple
  • 1 min read

Mac – Play DVD automatically on insertion in VLC Media Player

So I’ve installed Mac OS X 10.5 on my PowerBook G4 12?, and it’s working quite well so far. Until the native DVD-playing software went haywire that is. Needless to say, I turned to VLC. Now the problem is getting VLC to automatically launch and start playing the DVD when a DVD is inserted. Here’s what you do. Open up the program Script Editor, and place the following in there:

tell application "VLC"
OpenURL "dvdnav:///dev/rdisk1"
play
next
end tell

Save it, and close the application. Now go to System Preferences -> CDs & DVDs and when pressing When you insert a video DVD, select Run script… and just use the applescript you just made. Voila, it works!