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Shawn Blanc offers a tasty recipe for cooking up a Mac media and file server
Sometimes you may have a Mac that works well enough to escape being recycled at Gazelle, but has just enough wrong with it that it can't be used in day-to-day work. That was the situation with blogger and podcaster Shawn Blanc's wife's MacBook Pro, which has a bad video card that caused the display to flicker and show lines. With a little bit of love and a dusting of hackery, Blanc turned the aging MacBook into a Mac file and media server. While the primary job of his media server is to host ripped video (via HandBrake) and audio files for viewing on a HDTV through an Apple TV, he also uses the server to host AirPrint for a non-AirPrint printer (using Printopia), runs Mail.app 24/7 to sort and file incoming emails, and runs Dropbox and Hazel so he can upload audio to an Amazon S3 server from his iPhone among other tasks. Blanc's article on his self-named website provides insight into how he set up the server and his video ripping workflow, but his discussion of how to upload and post audio files for the Shawn Today podcast was the most fascinating bit. He's now using DropVox to record podcasts and upload it to a Dropbox folder. Hazel watches for new audio files appearing in that folder, renames them and a Python script is used to upload the renamed file to S3, add its URL to a Simplenote document and then send Blanc notification that the file is ready. To publish the latest podcast episode, he only needs to copy the URL from Simplenote, open the Poster WordPress editing app and paste the URL into a post before publishing. It's a fun look at how an older Mac can be repurposed into something useful for both work and pleasure.
Blanc interviews Gruber
Shawn Blanc has wrapped up his series of great software reviews, and now dives into the scariest of waters: those of the major minds in Mac journalism. And he goes first after the biggest shark in the ocean (or at least the one with the sharpest teeth), everyone's favorite Daring Fireball, John Gruber.The interview is first about interviews, and then goes on to cover Gruber's past (he worked with Bare Bones and Joyent before going on to write the blog full time). Gruber also gives out some great tips for writers, from things as practical as setting a goal the night before to guide your workday and always drinking coffee black, to ephemeral tips like how to become a better writer without actually writing anything (save about a dozen books' worth of message boards and blog posts).Gruber also talks specifically about Daring Fireball, his favorite stuff on the site, and where he wants to take it, and how far. Definitely a great read -- as always, Shawn makes sure to hit on all the important notes and leave no stone unturned, and Gruber reveals lots of insight on what it's like to put his posts and the Linked List together every day.
Shawn Blanc examines Panic's Coda
Shawn Blanc continues his outstanding series of Mac software reviews by looking at Coda, the all-in-one web worker's application from Coda (we've mentioned Coda several times). He explores Coda's performance as a text editor, CSS editor, FTP client and more, while extolling the little touches like the Clips feature:"You can save any text you want as a "Clip"... [which feature] a Global database as well as a site-specific database...."We love Coda, too, as well as Shawn's comprehensive -- even exhaustive -- explorations (somehow, "review" seems inadequate). Have fun reading, and if that doesn't convince you to purchase Coda, we don't know what will.
An exhaustive exploration of Netnewswire
Blogger Shawn Blanc has written an exhaustively thorough review of NewNewsWire (We interviewed Brent Simmons, author of NetNewsWire, over the summer). He begins with a description of how he first became aware of the application and goes on to describe a history of the UI, his "favorite things" about NNW and concludes with an exploration of the paid version.Note that Shawn intends to give other popular applications, like Coda, SuperDuper! and Transmit, the same treatment. We can't wait.
