blog

[download]

Recently SeeqPod.com went offline. I don’t know if they’ll be coming back or not. However, the widget I wrote about a year ago never worked well because of inconsistent results. I know they were caching content, but my widget didn’t have access to that content, so it never worked well. I’m going to make wild assumptions that this is why they were taken offline as well.

That being said, the widget itself is essentially dead. But in the event it might help someone I’m posing the source code for the widget and its downloading component. It is a fairly comprehensive example of how to integrate an external plugin into Dashboard Widget. Also its an example on how to use the NSURLDownload objects.

If you have any questions about it, leave a comment with your e-mail. There is no real license for it, just do what you want.

Download Here

A bunch of people have asked me where they can start learning about how to use the Terminal.app in Mac OS X. Unfortunately, this is a pretty loaded question with no direct answer. So I’ve been slowly working on a tutorial to introduce people to “The way of the terminal.”

It is available here: http://barelystable.com/tutorials/terminal/

So if you have a desire to find out a little bit about the underbelly of Mac OS X, please read it. You’ll note that there are pages that are devoid of content currently, I will be updating from time to time. I’d also like to get some feedback on what people would like to learn and I’ll work on those. Please comment, yo!

Really I just wanted to post something and keyboard shortcuts are as random as any other reason. For some reason a lot of shortcuts aren’t widely known. There are two shortcuts I find really helpful when turning on my computer at school. If class has started or something and you can’t remember if your computer is muted or not, you can hold down the “mute” key immediately after pressing the power button. This should cause the boot chime to be silenced. I haven’t tried it yet on the new Macbooks, but it worked on my old MacBook Pro and I’ve used it on the Air too.

The second shortcut every good “Genius” knows. Holding down the mouse button, or in some cases the spacebar, will eject an inserted CD at boot. This prevents the annoying “wurring” noise I get when I leave in an old video game or something in the drive before turning it on. However, this does come with the obvious clicking as it ejects.

There is an article for most of the interesting shortcuts available: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343

Probably my favorite mint is ICE BREAKERS mints from Hershey’s. They’re strong, come in a couple of different flavors, and come in sturdy plastic containers that survive life in my backpack.

I go through one every two weeks or so and these little plastic boxes seem pretty handy. Today I came up with at least one useful thing to do with them. After spending 10 minutes untangling my iPhone headphones, while simultaneously devouring my last mint, I struck upon genius.

Presenting the IceBreakers Mint Headphone Case. Crappy name, easy hack. Enjoy.

It will probably end up with an Apple sticker on the back of it by the day’s end as well.

SeeqPod is a handy website when looking for some new music to listen to, or when you’re away from your music library but want to here a specific song. However, they don’t provide you with direct links to download the music. Now that is no longer a problem!

Download

Introducing, as my first Dashboard widget, SeeqPod Widget.

Installation Instructions (copied from Apple)
“Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or later is required. If you’re using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’ss icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you’re using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.”

Note: Currently I have only tested this with 10.5. I just don’t have a 10.4 system anymore. Grab it, play with it, send me feedback. I’ll try to get access to a 10.4 machine somewhere.

General Information
With the SeeqPod Widget you can now search for your favorite or new music from within your Mac OS X Dashboard and quickly save them to your desktop. Type any keyword into the search box and press return. The results will pop up in a list box for downloading.

Before using the widget you will need to create an account at SeeqPod.com. They will provide you with a User ID that needs to be copy and pasted into the back of the widget.

This release is what I’d call a beta release. It’s worked pretty well for me. But I’m kind of excited to get other people to try it so it might be rough around the edges. If you have a problem send me an email with what you searched for and which link you clicked on.

Features:

• Searching SeeqPod for music
• Returns the Top 50 results
• Allows you to download the music
• Monitor the progress of the download

Current Limitations:

• Unable to cancel downloads. Just haven’t put the button in yet.
• Does not tell you why it failed

Known Bugs

• SeeqPod’s website can play more music than the widget can download. I think they’ve caching music and not exposing it. Nothing I can do here.
• If you switch between tabs really quickly sometimes the interface gets messed up

Future Plans:

• Implement direct to iTunes importing
• Growl support
• Inline playing of music. Sampling is good.