*As a helpful hint, don't torture yourself trying to read my blog on this site. The formatting is terrible, isn't it?*
peterstory.zzl.org
This not a wimpy list. Don't even think of thinking that. This is a manly list. If you really wanna see what puts the man in this list, skip to number five. I dare you.
Today's list is going to consist of the first five things I change whenever I'm starting fresh on a mac. For some you'll just have to find an obscure check box, for others more terminal fun will be involved, and for others... well, you'll see.
Show Network Drives on the Desktop. This fixes a change Apple made between Tiger (10.4) and Leopard (10.5). Previously, whenever you'd connect to a computer remotely the disks you'd mount would just pop up on the desktop. But with Leopard, they appear in the sidebar instead. All you've got to do is go under Finder -> Preferences in the menu bar. In the General tab, under "Show these items on the Desktop" check "Connected Servers."
Prevent Applications from opening when you insert a CD or plug in a Camera. Basically, I find it to be extremely annoying when programs start launching all over the place of their own accord. To prevent optical disks from opening iTunes, DVD Player, etc. open System Preferences, CDs & DVDs, then change all the options to ignore. As for cameras, memory cards, and those kinds of things, launch Image Capture from your applications folder. Now go under preferences, and make it so that when a camera is connected, no application opens.
Get rid of that shiny dock. I like the dock, I really do. I just don't like it shiny. There's two ways to deal with this. The best way is to open Macintosh HD/Users/PeterStory/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist with one of the property list editors I mentioned in an earlier post. Then expose root, and change the no-glass value to 'yes.' Of if you're lazy, just type the following into Terminal. "defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass Yes" And there you are, nice and simple. To change it back, just change the 'Yes' back to a 'No' and you'll be good.
Show Folder Information on the Desktop. Again, a nice easy one. Click on your desktop, then go to View -> Show View Options. Once you're there, check "Show item info."
Enable the debug and develop menus in Safari and make googlebot a choosable user agent. Wow all your friends! First, lets enable the debug and develop menus. Here's where it gets tricky. To enable the debug menu, type:
"defaults write com.apple.safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 1"
The develop menu should be in Safari's preferences under the 'Advanced' tab. So that's neat. As a reminder, make sure you're running a relatively recent version of safari (3.1 or higher, according to Apple).
But before I tell you how to get "the googlebot," let me explain what a 'user agent' is. Every browser has a user agent, it tells websites which one you're using so it can optimize font size and other good things. Some websites, such as ones that also publish magazines, only let certain user agents access the page. This way, google can find the page, and it will turn up in your search engine, but you won't be able to read it without subscribing. Google has a special user agent that lets it do such things. Fortunately, it's no great secret.
Now that you really really want to be able to mask yourself as a bot, you've probably noticed that under the develop menu, you have to option to enter your own user agent. Problem is, there's no way to edit the list. So we're going to edit Safari! Find Safari with your mighty Finder, then right or control click and choose "Show Package Contents." In the folder that should appear, navigate to Contents/Resources and open UserAgents.plist. In the root directory, you'll notice a ton of numbers. Now for the confusing part; follow these directions exactly! Find the number at the bottom of the list, and press the button labeled "New Sibling" twice. If you don't see the 'New Sibling' button, then make sure the highlighted item isn't expanded. After that, change the class of your two siblings to "Dictionary." Expanding both, highlight the first and click "New Child" once, and do the same for the second, except for a total of four times. For the first, rename it's child 'separator,' change its class to 'boolean,' and it's value to 'yes.' For the second, using another property list as your guide if you so desire, change the child names to 'name,' 'platform,' 'user-agent,' and 'version' respectively. Now change their values to "GoogleBot," "whateveryouwant," "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)" and "2.1" respectively. With that done, save and check your develop menu.
Wow that was a lot of work.
