Ghost in the Machine

My MacBook Pro 3,1 (non-unibody) died a couple months ago and I replaced it with one of these fancy new SSDs. I had low expectations, but have been blown away since. If you’re thinking about getting an SSD — just do it.

Below are the benchmarks from xbench. Note that my MacBook Pro doesn’t have a newer Sata interface, so your performance will likely be higher.

Results 184.94
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.6 (9G55)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBookPro3,1
Drive Type OCZ-VERTEX 1199
Disk Test 184.94
Sequential 140.15
Uncached Write 217.65 133.63 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 187.94 106.33 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 69.09 20.22 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 240.85 121.05 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 271.83
Uncached Write 109.47 11.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 309.98 99.24 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1776.55 12.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 558.10 103.56 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Have you updated iTerm recently to find that your preferences are blown away? Feeling a rise in blood pressure because your bookmarks are gone?

Waaaaaah!

Never fear, you can get them back.

The recent iTerm update is using a different .plist filename, so just:

mv ~/Library/Preferences/iTerm.plist ~/Library/Preferences/net.sourceforge.iTerm.plist

And you’re all set. See ticket 2064198.

Another miscellaneous, marginally useful post that hopefully saves someone’s day.

Eric Meyer updated his reset css in January 2008. I’ve re-sassified it here.

Sass CSS Reset Revised

download

// reset-revised.sass
// Generated 04/07/2008
// yong joseph bakos
// This is a sassified version of Eric Meyer's latest reset.css
// http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/01/15/resetting-again/
//
html
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent

body
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent
  :line-height 1

div, span, applet, object, iframe, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent

blockquote
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent
  :quotes none

pre, a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent

del
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent
  :text-decoration line-through

dfn, em, font, img
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent

ins
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent
  :text-decoration none

kbd
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent

q
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent
  :quotes none

s, samp, small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var, b, u, i, center, dl, dt, dd
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent

ol, ul
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent
  :list-style none

li, fieldset, form, label, legend
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent

table
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent
  :border-collapse collapse
  :border-spacing 0

caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td
  :margin 0
  :padding 0
  :border 0
  :outline 0
  :font-size 100%
  :vertical-align baseline
  :background transparent

*:focus
  :outline 0

If you’d like to display certain Unix directories within your Mac’s Finder, don’t use

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

which clutters your finder with every hidden file. Just use

SetFile -a v someFileOrDir

which lets you selectively display whatever you want in OS X’s Finder. (Restart Finder for the change to take effect.)

SetFile is in /Developer/Tools

So long, and thanks for all the fish.