Mac Tricks And Tips

I like using Terminal a lot. So much so I have a word document full of tricks and tips. Most I don’t use very often, but the ones I do use I will eventually end up sharing with you. As you develop scripts and programs using the bash Terminal, you may only want to select certain parts of a commands output. In my previous tutorial I used this command extensively. For example cutting certain pieces of information out of the hostname command. This is very useful to cut down on clutter. It doesn’t take long to implement. This sort of command is not designed for everyday use. Mostly in scripts.

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If you have a laptop or a normal Mac and you are interested in a way to find out the culprit of the person who has stolen it you Mac there are a couple of applications out there which can help you. Although you can use these, they are not as fun as making your own. This post will go through the steps needed in creating your very own thief catcher script that will take pictures of the culprit and email them back to you. It has taken me a couple of days to get this script working and I think it does the job well. Like many programs there is always more than one (better) way of doing it. I have previously written a shell script previously to logcpu load. It is located here. This script builds upon that previous post.

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Every so often you will come across a file or folder that will just not delete when you try. This quick trick tonight will explain how to delete this problem file using both Terminal and a minimal amount of writing. It will get rid of any file you want. Perfect.

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This is going to be a quick a post about Terminal. It is going to feature five quick Terminal tips that can make your life just a little bit easier. These tips are designed to be small and easier to remember. If you know of any quick one line tips please leave a comment. Terminal, if you don’t know by know, is open by going to Applications > Utilities.

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This trick I have been wondering about for a while. The idea behind this is that it logs your load usage of your computer. You can then graph, using a program like Excel, this data. You can use this data to see how your computers load is running over a period of time. Like many methods in Terminal there are hundreds of ways in which you could do this, how many ways can you paint a picture? This tutorial, although a bit complicated, goes into a lot of different subjects. Most of them won’t be talked about in a lot of detail. There is a lot of pages on the web which goes into more detail on each of the different areas covered in this post, a quick search will reveal them. This post has taken me a long time to prepare, due to a lot of little problems a long the way, it has taken me a couple of hours to debug a little problem. You will probably encounter them too. In the comments if you have any questions I will try and answer them as well as possible.

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This post is very similar to a previous post I have done about unzipping files using Terminal. This time it is about unrar’ing files. Although this type of trick wont be used every single day for unraring files. Programs like stuffit can handle that, but this trick has one awesome feature which I will explain shortly. The first step of this trick is to download the binaries.

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