MonoDevelop 2.2 Released

This release contains lots of new features and improvements. I am going to point out some most interesting ones.

• Multi-platform.Windows and Mac OSX are now officially supported platforms. 
• Multiple target runtimes. MonoDevelop now supports targetting different .NET runtimes.
• Support for the new Mono Soft Debugger. This new debugger is supported in Linux and Mac and in addition to normal desktop applications, it allows debugging ASP.NET, Moonlight and MonoTouch applications.
• New add-ins
            o Python add-in
            o ASP.NET MVC add-in
            o IPhone add-in
            o Moonlight add-in

Download.

Office replacement

I have been using OpenOffice for a while and I did not feel like I need to change it but I decided to try what if there are any free alternatives on Mac. I found two:
1. Bean - small, easy-to-use word processor (or more precisely, a rich text editor)

2. AbiWord - free word processing program similar to MS Word.

Test was simple, open one of my existing DOC documents. Both failed on first selected document so it looks like I am going with OpenOffice :-)

Windows 7 Starter inside Mac OS X

Installed Windows 7 Starter edition into VirtualBox so I can access some applications I need for work.

Mono 2.4.3

Finally version of mono that works on Mac OS X 10.6 is available from Mono Project:

• Mono 2.4.3
• MonoDevelop 2.2 RC 

Tried to load one of my Linux Mono projects. It builds and runs but crashes eventually. I might need to do some debugging :-)

Adobe Lightroom 2.5 from Windows to Mac

It was the easiest migration ever. Copied over catalog through network share, attached drive with images to Mac, opened catalog, pointed to new location of images and I was done.

launchd

On my Linux box I got cron task that runs script that uses sitecopy to upload new images to stock agencies every night. Cron is available on Mac but OS X is was deprecated and recommended method is launchd daemon.
My cron task runs shell script on weekdays:

# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE - edit the master and reinstall.
# (- installed on Tue Feb 3 19:39:38 2009)
# (Cron version V5.0 -- $Id: crontab.c,v 1.12 2004/01/23 18:56:42 vixie Exp $)
0 3 * * 0,1,2,3,4,5 /home/mordor/bin/autostock.sh


I am newbie on Mac so I searched for GUI interface to launchd. I found information about lingon on Apple Downloads. 

It helped me to create my first plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>net.melastmohican.autostock</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Users/mordor/bin/autostock.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>3</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>0</integer>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>1</integer>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>3</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>0</integer>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>2</integer>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>3</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>0</integer>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>3</integer>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>3</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>0</integer>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>4</integer>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>3</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>0</integer>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>5</integer>
        </dict>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

NTFS-3G

I decided to keep my backups on NTFS hard drives so I needed read/write support for this file system. NTFS-3G worked great on Linux so I decided to find out if there is Mac version of it.  I found it on Apple downloads: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/ntfs3g.html

Lets connect my backup drives now.

Installing Midnight Commander

Well, I was big fan of Norton Commander so I always use its Linux clone. I was curious if I can get in on Mac and I can:

sudo port install mc

Here we go:

Installing sitecopy

I was searching around for binary installer of sitecopy utility but it seems like it's not available for Snow Leopard so I decided to figure out how to get it quickly through one of package systems available on Mac. The choice was between Fink and MacPorts. Instructions on Fink site were too complicated for newbie like me. I did not know how to build from source yet. On MacPorts it was easier.
1. I downloaded MacPorts for Snow Leopard
2. Installed Apple's Xcode Developer Tools from OS installation disk
3. Then just one command installs package:

sudo port install sitecopy

Firefox from Linux to Mac

Similar steps to previous migrations:
1. Download and install from Apple site: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities/mozillafirefox.html
2. Run one time and close it.
3. Find where it stores profile: /Users/mordor/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles
4. Copy data from Linux: ~/.mozilla/firefox
5. Run it and you got everything in place, bookmarks, addons, etc :-)

Skype from Linux to Mac

It was quite easy. I downloaded Skype from this location. Installed and run it for first time. Then shut down Skype. I was not sure where it stores its files but I found it:

/Users/mordor/Library/Application Support/Skype

Moved profile from Linux ~/.Skype to this destination. Then reopened Skype. Voila, I got it running and all my chat history is preserved :-)

iMac unpacked and running

First thing I needed was to see hidden directories in Finder. Quick search on Goggle and we got solution:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder