I’m normally quite happy with the standard Apache setup on my Mac’s and the simplicity with which MySQL installs makes it still the easiest platform to setup a development machine on. In fact we can do nearly all of our web app development on stock standard Mac’s as it gives a good base platform that compares favourably with most of our clients servers at various hosting providers.

For most of the software we develop is happy running under the default User and Group ( _www:_www ) for Apache, recently though we had to upgrade a third party extension that runs a few shell exec routines. In our Mac based world this presented a few problems as the _www user doesn’t normally come with a home directory and therefore no way to setup things like, ssh keys.

(Please don’t undertake these changes if you aren’t aware of how this changes the security of your computer.)

1. Open Terminal.
2. Navigate to the directory in question.
3. type “find . -type f | wc -l”
4. Press “Return/Enter”

That’s it.

ps. this will also count all the files in any sub-directories of the one you’re currently in.

Have you ever wanted to find the technical specifications of that Mac you’ve been using for the last couple of years? All you need is the Serial number (eg. YM0000XXEUH ) or even the model number (eg. MC561LL/A ).

As you would expect Apple have a support page that provides just what you need, what you may not have noticed is that it will use your products serial number to find the exact product specifications you’re after.

Keep reading if you need to find your serial number…

Like a lot of businesses we use an internal OS X Server for a variety of functions — one of them is to provide a local caching DNS service.

Also like other business we use BIND’s ability to serve up ‘views’ to let us have custom internal web addresses reflecting internal servers.

Occasionally, we need to add a new address to our private view and I never remember to drop the TTL ( time to live ) down to a shorter period. (Actually remember is the wrong word — usually I don’t get any warning that a new internal address is needed :D ).

As I don’t do this on a daily basis I can never remember how I cleared out the DNS cache previously — hence this post.

I like being productive and I like productivity software (well some of it).

That being said there is a lot of stuff out there that you wouldn’t use if they paid you but there are some gems.

Today I needed to add a few of them to a new computer and so I needed some extra licenses.

Productivity and GTD apps on Mac OS X are flourishing along with the whole Mac eco-system but there are a few standouts. I’ve got a few keys ones that I get everyone I work with to use.

The main ones I needed were:

• Mail Act-On
• TextExpander
• Keyboard Maestro
• Omnifocus for Mac

So imagine my surprise…

For the most part between my mail servers and the Mac OS X Mail application 99% of SPAM sent to me goes straight to the Junk mail folder never to be seen by me.

Sadly every now and again, an otherwise reputable organisation that I’ve never heard of seems to go out an buy a block of email addresses and add it to their newsletter mailing list. This of course will usually get past any spam filters.

So, being the zero tolerance grumpy old bastard I am, here’s a quick tip for immediately reporting them to the ACMA.

Just a quick one - I couldn’t find an up-to-date iCal calendar for the Queensland State School terms so I’ve created one that everyone can subscribe to.

Click here to subsribe to the Queensland School Terms iCal Calendar

The calendar will be updated for probably the next 5 years, given how many years of school life our children have left. Currently it has the 2011 and 2012 School Terms as stated on the Queensland Department of Education & Training website.

Hope you find it useful.

Apple has released a timely update to their Remote app for iPad & iPhone - timely in the sense that AirPlay control of your Mac based iTunes library is now available from the couch over the holidays.

Add to that control over your iTunes on Mac Internet Radio Stations and Movie & TV Show rentals and there really is no reason to get off the couch over the break.

Thankfully this version also appears to fix the iPad bug that occurred when a password protected movie was started by the physical remote and you tried to enter the password using the Remote.app on your iPad.

The somewhat infamous Camera+ is back in the App Store.

There’s a list as long as your arm of changes and it’s looking like a solid update, not to mention fixing a few bugs that were annoying to say the least. (Note the infamous VolumeSnap feature is gone.)

UPDATE: tap tap tap have also just launched a competition to promote version 2 and the return to the app store.

A touch of red!, originally uploaded by craig.p.

Camera+ v2 “Depth of field” filter and “Light Grit” border.