Signature when composing in Mac Mail appears to have a bigger font

1. Go to Mail > Preferences
2. Click on Signatures
3. Select the offending signature
4. Highlight the text that is mysteriously enlarged by Mac Mail (ie probably the entire signature)
5. Right-click (bottom-right side of trackpad) and go to Font > Show fonts or select these from the menu bar. (but don't forget to highlight the text)
6. Now set the size to your desired size. Mine was set at 13 but should be 12. 
7. When you now open a new mail, NOTHING HAS CHANGED. This is normal.
8. Send a test mail, for instance to your own gmail acccount. 

Now the size should have been adjusted. I have found that there is no way to 'apply' or 'confirm' the changes. Just select a new size and close the inspector window. Hope this helps!

Prevent Dock from showing Recent Files

defaults write org.videolan.vlc NSRecentDocumentsLimit 0
defaults delete org.videolan.vlc.LSSharedFileList RecentDocuments
defaults write org.videolan.vlc.LSSharedFileList RecentDocuments -dict-add MaxAmount 0

defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX NSRecentDocumentsLimit 0
defaults delete com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX.LSSharedFileList RecentDocuments
defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX.LSSharedFileList RecentDocuments -dict-add MaxAmount 0

defaults write org.m0k.transmission NSRecentDocumentsLimit 0
defaults delete org.m0k.transmission RecentDocuments
defaults write org.m0k.transmission RecentDocuments -dict-add MaxAmount 0

defaults delete org.niltsh.MPlayerX.LSSharedFileList RecentDocuments
defaults write org.niltsh.MPlayerX NSRecentDocumentsLimit 0
defaults write org.niltsh.MPlayerX.LSSharedFileList RecentDocuments
defaults write org.niltsh.MPlayerX.LSSharedFileList RecentDocuments -dict-add MaxAmount 0

Source - http://simon.heimlicher.com/hints/macosx/disable_recent_items

Basic SQL

Host - localhost
user- root
password - root
DB Name - Feedback

Connecting to a DB
/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql -u root -proot

Exporting a DB
/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysqldump -u root -p FEEDBACK > FEEDBACK.db

Importing Data into a DB
/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql -u root -proot -h localhost FEEDBACK < FEEDBACK.db

Time Machine Backups to Network Drive

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

Changing Picture date and time

Date/Time Shift Feature ^

Have you ever forgotten to set the date/time on your digital camera before taking a bunch of pictures? ExifTool has a time shift feature that makes it easy to apply a batch fix to the timestamps of the images (ie. change the "Date Picture Taken" reported by Windows Explorer). Say for example that your camera clock was reset to 2000:01:01 00:00:00 when you put in a new battery at 2005:11:03 10:48:00. Then all of the pictures you took subsequently have timestamps that are wrong by 5 years, 10 months, 2 days, 10 hours and 48 minutes. To fix this, put all of the images in the same directory ("DIR") and run exiftool:

exiftool "-DateTimeOriginal+=5:10:2 10:48:0" DIR
The example above changes only the DateTimeOriginal tag, but any writable date or time tag can be shifted, and multiple tags may be written with a single command line. Commonly, in JPEG images, the DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate and ModifyDate values must all be changed. For convenience, a shortcut tag called AllDates has been defined to represent these three tags. So, for example, if you forgot to set your camera clock back 1 hour at the end of daylight savings time in the fall, you can fix the images with:

exiftool -AllDates-=1 DIR
See Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details about the syntax of the time shift string.

Source - http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

Using apt with a proxy in Ubuntu 10.10

1. Edit the fiel /etc/apt/apt.conf. Create one if it does not exist.
2. Add the following lines after making changes to the proxy server.


Acquire::http::Proxy "http://proxy.example.com/";
Acquire::ftp::Proxy "http://proxy.example.com/";

SyncServer running with high CPU

Run the following.

/System/Library/Frameworks/SyncServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/resetsync.pl full

More Details - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1627?viewlocale=en_US

Enable Cut in Finder

To enable cut operation in Finder,

defaults write com.apple.finder AllowCutForItems 1
killall Finder
open Finder

Finally to add the keyboard shortcut,
Go to System Preferences
Keyboard
Keyboard Shotcuts
In this windows press + on left botton
All Applications
Menu Title:Cut
KeyBoard Shortcut:command+X

Show hidden files in macos

Use the following command to show hidden files in Finder.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

Restart Finder for changes to take effect

iTunes Scripts

In Finder, go to your Home/Library/iTunes folder.
In this folder look for a folder named "Scripts", and if it does not exist create it.
By copying Applescript scripts inside this folder you make scripts available in iTunes Script menu, on the right or normal iTunes menus.

iTunes Script folder is only available on a per-user base, there is not a system-wide iTunes Script folder.

Delete Thunderbird Search Index

Thunderbird search index can get corrupted causing bad search results. You can delete the search db which in turn causes thunderbird to reindex all the email. Follow the process below.

1. Quit Thunderbird
2. Locate your global-messages-db.sqlite file.
/Users//Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/
3. Rename (or delete) both global-messages-db.sqlite and global-messages-db.sqlite.journal
4. Start Thunderbird
5. Reindexing begins

Change screenshot save location on MACOS

By default, anytime you take a screen capture in Mac OS X it will save the screenshot file to the current users desktop. You can adjust where Mac OS X saves a captured screenshot to any other location, here is how to do this:

Launch Terminal and use the following syntax:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /path/

For example, if I want to have the screenshots appear in my Pictures folder, I would use:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Pictures/

To have the changes take effect, you then must type:

killall SystemUIServer

So the next time you take a screenshot (or as Windows converts like to say, Print Screen on a Mac), the screenshot file will appear at the location you specified.

You can change the saved screenshot location back to the default setting by specifying the desktop again:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop/

Again, you’d need to kill SystemUIServer for changes to take effect.

Moving SVN to new server

I recently had to move our main Subversion repository to a new server the other day, so I thought I would pass along this quick how-to.

To move a Subversion repository from one system to another you only have to enter a couple of easy subversion commands. To start, go to the source system and at a command prompt or terminal window type:

svnadmin dump /path/to/repository > repository-name.dmp

If the dump file is rather large you can compress it with your favorite zip utility. Now you need to get the dump to your new server, so simply transfer the file via FTP, local share, CD, thumbdrive or whatever it takes.

Once the dump file is on the new machine and uncompressed, you need to set up and load the new repo by typing:

cd /path/to/new-repository
svnadmin create repository-name
svnadmin load repository-name< repository-name.dmp

A couple of small things to note – the dump file will be rather large as it represents every commit made on your repository. If your repository is rather large and mature, this file could get quite large. Also this method works across platforms so moving from UNIX to Windows or visa-versa is also possible.