Terminal

Warning: Geek Tip! Visor pimps Mac OS X’ Terminal.app so that a terminal window slides onto your screen at the push of a button.

If you use a command line on a regular basis this tool really comes handy. Just press a user definable hot-key and a Quake-like terminal window slides out of your menu bar (mine is ALT+SPACE — similar to Spotlight’s COMMAND+SPACE). Press it again and the terminal slides out of your screen again — of course without quitting running tasks. Ideal if you just want to issue a ping, scp, svn or whatever quickly.

About two years ago I already wrote about Visor. However it was incompatible with Leopard so I lost sight of it after I upgraded. It took some time but the project is now fully compatible with Leopard’s Terminal.App (including Tabs etc.). Also quite some annoying bugs like the ever growing terminal were fixed.

Grap your copy here and follow the installation instructions. It’s really a time-saver for command line freaks.

Update: When using Tabs you can even drag them and create a conventional terminal window. Dragging them back to your Slider is not possible, however.

This post isn’t about super-secret ssh sorcery, but a collection of frequently used and easily forgotten ssh tricks. Mostly a reminder for myself.[Read the rest of this posting]

Ok. This post is definitely a bit geeky. I'll present you three (and a half) tips for working with the command line on Mac OS X.

I love Mac OS X for two things. At first it has an easy to use interface that's overstuffed with useless eye-candy. Secondly – contrary to Windows – it features an underlaying mature FreeBSD-like kernel and all the standard tools like ssh, grep and Perl.[Read the rest of this posting]