Category Archives: Mac Hacking

Centering A Dialog Under A Status Item In Cocoa

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Steve

So you have an NSStatusItem, and you want it to pop a dialog for whatever reason, perhaps a settings window.  Where should that dialog be positioned?  If you’re not placing it centered on the main screen, you probably want it … Continue reading →

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Radiance: Stupid Developer Tricks

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Steve

As some of you likely know now, I’ve been working on Radiance 2.0, which will hopefully be a significant improvement.  The current application is a hack at best; I wrote it for me rather than for the masses.  I’m working … Continue reading →

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Locking And Unlocking Files From Terminal

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Steve

Ever needed to change finder’s lock bit on a file from the command line?  Well, it isn’t really a finder thing.  To wit: # Lock a file $ chflags uchg /my/favorite/file # Unlock a file $ chflags nouchg /my/favorite/file I … Continue reading →

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Radiance 1.2: Now Supporting Mountain Lion

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Steve

So I finally got around to updating Radiance for Mountain Lion, which was more difficult than it sounds. The old version used the undocumented O3Manager API to control display brightness, but Apple removed it in 10.8.  External displays can’t be … Continue reading →

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Guide To Blocks & Grand Central Dispatch

Posted on May 26, 2012 by Steve

I needed extremely simplistic concurrency support for an application I’m working on, and that led me to stumble over a 2009 article on Grand Central Dispatch.  I have to say, it’s one of the cleaner implementations I’ve seen, and I’m … Continue reading →

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