Subversion has the ability to “dump” an entire repository in a flat, semi-parseable file. This is done using the svnadmin tool. The really cool feature, however, is the ability to incrementally dump revisions. Here I present an automated, reliable solution for performing daily backups of multiple repositories.

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4 Comments | Category: Backup, Ruby, Subversion

Version 1.2 of the popular iStat Menus utility for Mac OS X has been released. It includes a bunch of visual enhancements and better support for G4-era machines.

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No Comments | Category: Mac, Reviews

That’s right, no more hunting for the videos through clever queries on Google Video – which lacks useful navigation and discovery features such as subscriptions or user profiles.

Google has finally grouped all past and future talks under a single YouTube profile. As of this writing, that’s no less than 558 quality talks available to you and your browser.

One thing was lost in the transition, unfortunately. That is the ability to actually download these hour long talks to your computer and watch them on the device of your choice. However, you can now leverage the plethora of YouTube-related applications.

No Comments | Category: Google, Video, YouTube

I’ve been using Mac OS X and WinXP Pro on my Macbook Pro for a while. One thing I noticed is that the system’s clock shifts a few hours back and forth across OS reboots, a problem for which I had no explanation until now.

[...] Windows XP reads and writes the hardware clock in terms of the local time zone. If UTC is 12:00 and I’m in GMT+2 Windows will write the time to the hardware clock as 14:00. Mac OS X on the other hand assumes that the hardware clock is set to UTC, and therefore displays the time as 16:00 after I reboot from Windows into OS X.

While I wait for a fix from Apple – I doubt Microsoft cares about this – in a future Boot Camp update, at least I know the cause.

Thanks to Niels Mäkel at Makel.org for the information.

No Comments | Category: Boot Camp, Mac, Windows

I just discovered 0xED, a cool hexadecimal editor for Mac OS X. Despite its cryptic name, 0xED is very simple to use (for an hex editor, anyway) and boasts extra features that are not available in Hex Fiend or the Classic-era HexEdit. Oh, and it’s Universal, too.

No Comments | Category: Mac, Programming, Reviews

The preferred way for distributing OS X applications is through disk images, or DMG files. The great thing about DMG files is that they are self-contained. In most cases, you can even lauch the application from the mounted image itself.
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2 Comments | Category: Mac

Version 6.0 of the all-purpose GUI database utility is no longer free for Personal or Academic usage. Where to look for alternatives ?
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No Comments | Category: Databases, Reviews

With the move to QT4 which runs natively on Mac OS X, KDE developers promise a much nicer integration for OS X users.
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No Comments | Category: KDE, QT

Tracing is probably the simplest way to debug some piece of code you (or someone else) wrote. For large projects, it’s also often faster than trying to load every debug symbol in your favorite debugger.
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1 Comment | Category: C++

Socialized through Gregarious 42