Edit: Darn, I’m getting this error when trying to open remote documents: (MacOS Error code: -25293)

When I’m working on two projects at once, or want to grab a remote file from FTP when I already have one FTP site open, it would be nice to run two instances of TextWrangler at once, since it only supports having one FTP site open at a time.

I figured out how:

-Go to Applications/ and right click on TextWrangler and select Duplicate.
-Rename Textwrangler copy to Textwrangler2
-Right click on Textwrangler and choose “Show Package Contents”
-Open info.plist inside the Contents folder
-Change the data from

	<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
	<string>com.barebones.textwrangler</string>

to

	<key>CFBundleIdentifier<</key>
	<string>com.barebones.textwrangler2</string>

Now you can open both TextWrangler apps.


Optionally, grab this snazzy textwrangler alternative icon from this page:
http://sethlilly.deviantart.com/art/TextWrangler-Replacement-Icon-180898652
Right click and choose "copy image". Then get info on TextWrangler2, click on the small icon in the top right, and hit command-V to paste. That way it's easy to tell the two instances apart in the Dock and switching between applications.

I went home, determined to either fix the home button myself (they cost $5 online) or try a software update. I tried updating to 4.3.3 first, the latest untethered jailbreak. This is trickier now that 4.3.5 is out.

First, I ran AptBackup, a package you can find in Cydia to save all of your jailbroken apps for restoring later. (Edit: AptBackup deleted all my AppStore apps, people recommend PkgBackup instead.) I also saved my SHSH blobs in Cydia (important) when it prompted me, so that I could upgrade or downgrade my iOS freely.

I downloaded iOS 4.3.3 from here and tried option-updating or option-restoring in Itunes, but it gave me the error “The device isn’t eligible for the requested build.” I learned this is because Apple stopped signing iOS 4.3.3 in an effort to prevent jailbreaking.

I followed Saurik’s old guide, adding the line “74.208.10.249 gs.apple.com” to my /etc/hosts file to have Saurik’s Cydia server spoof apple’s verification servers. This bypasses the “eligible” error in iTunes, but as described, at the end of the restore I got the error message The iPhone “iPhone” could not be restored. An unknown error occured (1015)” Saurik writes that you should restore twice, but that you will get this message both times and get stuck in recovery mode, and then you should jailbreak.

Then, I tried using the latest version of RedSn0w to jailbreak. RedSn0w requires you to enter DFU mode by turning off the phone, but in recovery mode the phone turns on automatically when it’s plugged into USB. Regardless, I was able to enter DFU mode by holding down power for 2 seconds, pressing the power and home button for 10 seconds, and then releasing the power button and holding home for 10 seconds. Then, the phone hung on the “Installing Activation Bundles” screen and then rebooted and was stuck on the recovery screen.

I tried the application “fixrecovery43″ but it didn’t work. (I got the error: libusb:error [darwin_transfer_status] transfer error: timed out)

What did work for me was installing TinyUmbrella and clicking the “Exit Recovery” option. TinyUmbrella crashed a few times on me, I think because of conflicts with Apple’s httpd server. I had to disable websharing and type “sudo killall httpd” in Terminal first. Then I clicked TinyUmbrella’s “Start TSS Server” and then it ran better. Open up /Applications/Utilities/Console.app for more details on what’s happening if you’re having trouble with TinyUmbrella. Evidentially you can use their TSS servers to restore the phone via iTunes as well but it didn’t work for me (I got a “could not connect to apple servers” error in iTunes).

Note: TinyUmbrella edits your hosts file and deletes everything except the gs.apple.com line. If you have other lines in your hosts file I suggest backing it up.

First I tried DFU mode, but the “fix restore” button didn’t work (the phone got stuck on a greenpois0n screen with the message “unable to find gbdevlist” and “unable to find fs_mount”). What worked for me was leaving the iPhone in recovery mode (iPhone screen on, usb cable icon pointing to iTunes icon), and then it shows up in the list of devices in recovery mode. Then I simply clicked on “exit recovery” and my phone booted normally into 4.3.3. Whew!

Finally, I reinstalled AptBackup and clicked “restore”, which restored all of my Cydia apps, but deleted all of my appstore apps. None of the suggested online fixes (installing an appstore app, resyncing with iTunes, turning on and off restrictions) worked. People online recommend PkgBackup instead of AptBackup, note to self. Anyway I restored my apps and settings from backup again using my old backup in iTunes and all is good. So far so good with the home button. If your iPhone 4 home button is still on the fritz, there are some good voodoo tricks in the comments here.

I don’t have to worry any longer (until AES is cracked, anyway), because it is easy to create an encrypted disk image on OS X. I followed the instructions here:

http://blog.smalldog.com/article/1814/use-disk-utility-to-encrypt-files/

I chose a 2.5 GB image, which automatically suggested a CD/DVD type partition. I’m not sure what partition type to use but don’t think it matters. These were the settings I used:

This will create a .sparseimage file. Sparse images are nice because they don’t actually take up their entire hard drive space until they’re filled with contents.

Note that after you drag the files in, you still have to delete the originals. Then when you eject the encrypted image, they are protected. When you double click on the image again, it will ask you for your password. Don’t forget this password, because it is impossible to recover!

I used spotlight to search my computer for files containing my passwords or social security number. If they were necessary, I dragged them in here, otherwise I deleted them.

1) Launch Syphone, open the Preferences, and UNcheck “Run helper app in the background” (leave it unchecked if it already is).

2) Close Syphone.

3) Go into ~/Library/Application Support/ and delete the folder named ‘Syphone’.

4) Go into ~/Library/Preferences/ and delete the file named ‘com.micromat.Syphone.plist’.

The Syphone application now just displays a link to techtool pro, but you can still access the preferences menu and turn off the Daemon. If you can’t run Syphone for some reason, the following commands will unload the daemon and delete it:

$ launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.micromat.SMSDaemon.plist
$ rm ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.micromat.SMSDaemon.plist

Apparently SMSDaemon may have had an enormous memory leak; I’ve come to my computer with 1.5 TB free and yet gotten the “there is no more disk space on the startup disk to write, please force quit some applications” errors before. Others have complained of memory leaks too; my machine seems to be running better now.

Edit: While the sound controls work, I’ve been having major issues with soundflower, from audio disappearing to getting stuck and looping on a sample. Looks like soundflower still needs a bit of development. :(

This has been driving me nuts for years.

I have an external firewire audio interface, a MOTU 896, that has served me well for 7 years. It powers my studio monitors, has multi inputs and delivers superior sound compared to my internal computer speakers.

The only problem with it is that OS X’s volume controls don’t work with it. The volume keys don’t work on the keyboard, the apple remote volume doesn’t work, and you can’t control the volume with AirMouse on the iPhone. In system preferences, you get the message “The selected device has no output controls”, and you get an annoying disabled speaker when you try and use the volume controls.

Thanks to this post and the wonderful folks at Cycling 74, there is a free solution. You can install soundflower, which allows you to route all of your audio to a soundflower device. Once you’ve installed soundflower, you can run Soundflowerbed from your applications menu, which makes a finder menu appear that allows you to choose which device to route audio to. Choose your external device, and you’re done!

Finally, you can leave the volume knob on your external device in one setting, and control the volume from across the room with a remote! Glorious!

Soundflower is also a great app for interapplication multichannel audio routing, similar to rewire or jack.

Change “jordan” to your username (home directory), or the whole path of the log if you’re monitoring something else. “Vine Server” is the alert title, which could be anything (“Hello World”).

Save this as a file such as vncnotify.sh. Run
chmod 755 vncnotify.sh
and then you can run the command by typing ./vinenotify.sh.

Duplicate this file and name it vinenotify.command.
Finally, in System Preferences > Accounts > Start up items, add vinenotify.command, and make it hidden, and it will run when you log in.

Things I’m still working on: preventing a string of notifications when you launch VNC; hiding the terminal window when you log in; and grepping for only connect/disconnect/login failures.
Thanks to drewish.com for the growl tail code.

On OS X, typical directories I look in are /var/log/, $HOME/Library/Logs/, and /private/var/log/.

Jungledisk is better than Mozy and is my preferred online backup utility. It’s secure, it uses Amazon S3, it supports versioning, and allows online access. Anyway I noticed their latest version of the app allows you to show the app in the status bar instead of the dock. Update Jungle Disk and then go to Configure > Application Settings > Show application in: Status Bar.

QuickSilver is another great keyboard launcher app I use all the time. It also supports hiding the app from the dock. Go to Preferences > Application and uncheck Show icon in dock. It automatically shows in the status bar when you do this.

Growl is one of my favorite apps, as is HardwareGrowler. However HardwareGrowler has no user interface but still hangs out in the dock. You can fix this by following the instructions on this page. It took me a couple tries (I put the <key>LSUIElement</key><true/> in the wrong place the first time and had to start over…Also you touch the whole HardwareGrowler.app package in the finder), but now it’s hidden from the dock.

Now if only I could get VineServer working with Growl. VineServer does allow you to install a system server, but unlike the app, it does not notify when someone connects, which I prefer to know about. So for now, VineServer sits in my dock as a hidden application.

The first thing you’ll need is iPhone Backup Extractor. It’s a mac program, but there are other cross platform backup decoders out there such as mobilesync-inspect. You’re looking for the SQLite SMS database (iPhone Backup Extractor calls it SMS.db). iPhone Backup Extractor is not compatible with iPhone OS 3.0 yet but it does work with 2.2.1. Hopefully 3.0 will work soon.

Run iPhone Backup Extractor and select your most recent backup. Scroll down to the bottom of the applications and choose iPhone OS. Choose a folder to save it in.

Then, use an SQLite browser such as SQLite Manager (don’t know why this is a firefox addon, but it rocks) to view the database.

All of the SMSes are stored in the messages table – you can right click on it and export it as a CSV. Alternatively you could export the whole database as an SQL or XML file. But open up the CSV in excel and you’re done! Sweet!