If you use MAMP for your local web development with Apache running on port 80 you will find that it asks you for a password every time you run it. It’s annoying to say the least.

Fortunately there is a way around this. With a little bit of AppleScript and thanks to guys at macoshints I put together a small app that runs Apache & MySQL from MAMP without asking for a password each time. It’s quite secure as well because it uses a stored password locked in the Keychain. It also quits Apache & MySQL when you quit the app itself.

Here is how to use it:

1. Open the Keychain Access app and click ‘+’ to add a new item. Call the item ‘MAMP’ and enter the account name and password that you use to log in to your Mac.
2. Download and launch the Apache & MySQL – No Password app

Enjoy!

Here is a little something for all of you Mac-lovers who use Windows. A quick and easy way to have Mac OS X mouse cursors on a PC running Windows 7, Vista or XP. Although personally I’m not a Mac person, one of the first things I do after installing a fresh copy of Windows is change the mouse pointers to the Mac OS X ones. Usually this means I have to download a zip of individual pointer icons and then manually assign them to the right cursors in the Control Panel, which is a bit annoying.Well, I don’t have to do this anymore. This morning I put together a nice and easy installer that does all that manual work for me. You can download the installer using the link below.

Download Mac OS X Cursors Easy Installer

Thanks to Shinde for uploading the cursors to Winmatrix.com

Paczkator is a small Windows utility I wrote for the company I’m currently working with. Its purpose is to simplify the process of sending multiple big images (usually scanned documents) by mail. It’s small, pretty fast and requires no configuration from the user.

Features:

• Small, free and easy to install and use
• Automatically finds any images in the folder specified and scales them down if they are too big
• Zips the folder, opens your email application (Outlook Express by default) and creates an attachment for you.
• Warns you if the compressed folder is too big to send by email
• It’s localised. Currently it speaks English and Polish
• No administrator privileges required to install and run
• No additional software required to work properly

Download Paczkator 0.8 now!

Paczkator is distributed under the GPL2 license, which means the program is FREE for both private and commercial use. You can also redistribute and modify it. If you do so, I would be grateful if you notified me.

Feel free to contact me if you have questions or suggestions concerning Paczkator.

Version History:

• 0.8 – current release: added localisation, installer and fixed a few bugs
• 0.6 – improved image recognition and scaling procedures, a bug-fix release
• 0.5 – initial release

This patch I wrote adds a command-line option to hide Sylpheed’s main window at startup and quit when done composing. Useful if you don’t like your inbox popping up when you click on a mailto link in a browser and Sylpheed is your default mail app.

Example setting in Preferred Applications of Gnome:

sylpheed --no-main-window --compose %s

Note that this is just a dirty patch and it works with Sylpheed 2.0.4. I sent a proposal to sylpheed developers some time ago, but I don’t know if/when the feature will be implemented properly.

Download Sylpheed patch (.gz)

This Ubuntu package contains a plugin which lets you play Amiga AHX chiptunes using XMMS.

For those unaware: AHX was a tracker-like music making program for Amiga computers that produced sound similar to Commodore 64. It was developed by the Abyss group and is still popular among oldschool demosceners.

You can get some AHX tunes from Kamson’s lair.

Sources from: http://xmms-ahx.sourceforge.net/ (pretty dated now) … and yes, I’m still using XMMS

Download xmms-ahx_0.6_i386.deb