I Machttp://norman.walsh.name/2007/08/15/IMac10822007-08-15T12:37:35-04:00$Date$NormanWalsh2007Norman WalshMy out-of-the-box experience. Or, learning to use the Mac.DougGwynUNIX was not designed to stop its users from doing stupid
things, as that would also stop them from doing clever things.At the end of the day, I had to give it a try. I ordered a
17" MacBookPro with all the knobs turned to eleven. It arrived on Monday so I've
had about two days to learn my way around. Here's how the experience has gone
so far. [Too salty for us, Norm, the censors had a field day –ed.]Unpack. Boot. Follow the prompts. Hey, it's a laptop!A laptop with
a dumb name. Let's call it “traytable” instead. Heh.Get Firefox.I think to myself A machine without emacs isn't
a machine I want to use. [As a typographic device, the thought bubble
is a little much, even for you isn't it? –ed.]Install Aquamacs.Configure the keyboard: $DIETY intended that key labelled
“caps lock” to be “ctrl”.Development tools. I need development tools.Install XCode (gcc, make, etc.)Install Firefox and the necessary extensions (Adblock Plus, del.icio.us,
Firebug, Flashblock, Greasemonkey, ScrapBook, Tab Mix Plus, Web Developer).Install Subversion, Python, and Mercurial.At least I don't have to install Perl.Web server, I want a web server.Enable Personal Web Sharing.So far, so good; that's a nice Apache web server. But I'm trying to setup a
staging area for what my web hosting company serves, so I need suexec.
Luckily, I've done this dance before.Get Apache 1.3.33, configure, make, and install suexec in the right
place (/usr/sbin/suexec).I have questions. My friends have answers.Install Adium.
Install Growl (Just because).Time to get my home directory. This is going to be easy because I just
put it all under Mercurial.hg clone ssh://user@domain.com/path/to/homeUnfortunately, some of the old chat logs have names that differ only in
case. So the command fails. What the beep?!
The OS X filesystem isn't case-sensitive!? I repeat,
What the beep?!
Of all the stupid beepbeepbeep stupidity. Luckily, I say
luckily, the case-collisions are unimportant and as much
accidental as anything else.Go back to my old box Beepingbeep
idiotic
beep
filesystem
beep. and move some files around. Update
the repository. Clone it to the Mac.Install
SSHKeychain. Enable remote login.No dircolors? Beep?Install netstat.Bah, that's a dashboard widget. Where's the
beep command-line tool? Oh, over there.
Nevermind.Install
QuickSilver.Hmmm. What's missing?Get the sources for wget, do the configure, make, make install dance.Get the sources for gnupg, do the configure, make, make install dance.Installing common software from source. How quaint.Music. I need music.Fire up iTunes. Point it at my music share.What the beep!? The iTunes player
doesn't understand FLAC!? Beep!
I don't suppose RhythmBox has been ported? I have no (particular)
interest in buying music from Apple, I wonder if there's a descent
DAAP-aware,
Last.fm-aware music player?Aquamacs: it's a nice port; perfect for a Mac junkie, I'm sure. But it's
more Aqua, less ’macs. Beep your standard
Aqua UI, I want emacs. You adapt to me, machine, not the other way around.Install CarbonEmacs.Ahhh, that's better.Install Colloquy.Is that my best bet, IRC-wise?Click-to-focus sucks. It really beeping sucks.
Especially since it makes you click twice most times: once to
get the application's attention and once to do the action you intended when you pushed
the beep button in the first place!
But I concede that the title bar on the top of the window makes focus-follows-mouse
more complicated. I guess I'll learn to live with it.Modules. I need modules.Update CPAN. Install LWP::UserAgent, XML::XPath.Bah.Download, compile, and install expat.Install XML::XPath, XML::Parser, Proc::ProcessTable.Attempt to install Flickr::Upload, Flickr::API, …Why the beep won't
XML::Parser::Lite install?Why doesn't head work?
What the beep is going
on?Holy beepingbeep!
I let LWP::UserAgent install /usr/bin/HEAD!
Oh beepingbeepbeepbeeping
case-insensitive filesystem.
What the beep am
I going to do now?Beep! Not on the install disk.
Beep! At least
not outside of some archive. Uhm. Anyone around?
Hey, EddDumbill, uhm, you there? Any chance
you could send me /usr/bin/head? You can. Got it.
Thank you!
Whew!
Beepbeeping
filesystem!Beeping
XML::Parser::Lite still won't install. What's the deal? I wonder if it works for
anyone else?The damn trackpad $DIETY, I hate
this beeping trackpad. Constantly taking my
fingers off the home row to move the beeping mouse.
Why can't I have my pointing stick back? is a little off-center
and I keep resting my right palm on it. I wonder if there's some sort of “palm
detection” setting hidden somewhere?Install PyXML.I wonder if I should be worried that it isn't being maintained anymore?Next up, email.Wrestle with emacs.Wrestle seriously. Turns out, if your
$MAIL environment variable is set incorrectly, things fall over
in a distinctly not-obvious way. Not obvious to me, anyway.Hey, I can read my mail! Can I send it?You'd think, since the Mac comes with
Postfix
installed, that it'd
“just work.” It doesn't. Web searching reveals that someone will sell you a $10 tool
to make it work. Buy a tool to make installed standard system
software work correctly? What's up with that? Web searching will
also reveal
an alternative.
I did that. Sending mail is a little bit complicated
for me because corporate mail must go through a corporate
relay and I don't really want to send all my personal mail through that relay.Download, build, install, and configure msmtp.DanConnolly and HenryThompson both suggest that
I should really solve this in Gnus instead of at the
MTA
level, but I solved
it at the MTA level anyway.Part of my problem in this transition is that I want to port an environment
that I've crafted over the last ten years, changing as little as necessary because
I know how it all works. Sometimes that means I'm trying to do things in very
non-Mac ways.
Beep you. You adapt to me, machine,
not the other way around.Yay! I can send email.If I start Emacs from a shell window where my environment is setup, things
work well. If I start Emacs by clicking on the icon in the applications folder,
they don't. How do I configure things so that apps inherit the right environment
by default?And if I do, will that make Emacs aware of SSHKeychain for managing
passwords? I fear not.What the beep? How come if you're
tabbing through fields on a form in Firefox, it skips right past the
pulldowns. I don't want to use the mouse.Now, can I collect new email?To read my email, I download it with fetchmail and hand it to the local MTA which
procmails it through ClamAV and DSPAM before delivering it. DSPAM in turn relies
on a MySQL database.There's a long, brutal story to tell here about how I managed to
download, install (or build and install, as appropriate), and
configure
MySQL, DSPAM, and
ClamXav. I even ported my existing DSPAM
database. And it almost worked. (Something about porting the old
database didn't work; I had to retrain it.) So I gave up. I've simply
outsourced all my spam filtering to the corporate email servers and
GMail. So be it.Somewhere in here I got the Mac equivalent of the
BSoD. Snort. That's
not supposed to happen.This 1920x1200 display is saweet! But the fonts are a
little small even for my taste.Get the DejaVu fonts and install them.Configure the terminal to use DejaVu Sans Mono.Eeww!Why isn't that anti-aliased?Next, I setup my Mac to use both displays. I have to
say, if TimBray hadn't told me about it,
I never would have thought of dragging the menu bar to the other
screen. I lived with the menu bar on the top of the bottom screen for
most of a day. Just grabbing and dragging it is either way cool
and obvious or very subtle and frustrating. I'm not sure which.Get the sources for links, do the configure,
make, make install dance.Why does my staging area for norman.walsh.name
serve up the wrong stuff?Disable content negotiation in /etc/httpd/httpd.conf.
You know,
EvanLenz’s right, it would be nice
if the top opened a few more degrees.Hmph. QuickSilver crashed. Maybe twice. Bzzzt. But thank you for playing.Install TigerLaunch.Install LightRoom. Install X11. Install OpenOffice.And on we go. First look: LightRoom is awfully nice.Lest it seem from my commentary that I'm deeply disappointed with
traytable, let me just say that I'm not.
It's gorgeous. And fast. And I think I'll get used to it.
Change happens, right?More to come. [With less ranting, please. –ed.]