A Web Developer’s Blog Highlighting Open Source and OS X

After upgrading to 10.6 my beloved Quicksilver had grown some new bad habits. If I wasn’t in the first space (#1 / top left), Quicksilver would bring me back there every time I invoked it. So if I was trying to open an app or run a command in Space #2, running a Quicksilver command would bring me back to Space #1. VERY annoying.

Here’s the fix:

1. Make sure you’re running the latest version of Quicksilver: b56a7
2. In Preferences > Application, check “Show icon in dock”

Now, I don’t want the app showing up in my dock or running applications list either, but until they fix this error (which may take some time) it’s far less obnoxious than the issue I was trying to solve!!

As a side note, it’s very important to make sure you’re running the latest version (link above). Before updating to b56a7, I couldn’t see the Preferences screen after upgrading to 10.6 (just had a blank white panel), so obviously #1 must come before #2!

My wife and I keep our calendars in iCal, but without some divine intervention we couldn’t sync our calendars or view each other’s calendar in iCal. We ran into this same issue at the office as well – I needed our Project Manager to see my calendar, but because we were both using iCal we were isolated into our own little islands of calendar hell.

So we started using Google Calendar, where we could share calendars and see each others events – even add events to each others calendars. But let’s face it… it’s just not as pretty or convenient as iCal, and it won’t sync events to my iPhone. If only there was a way to do this in iCal…

Well, I found a way. Using BusySync, I can use Google Calendar as a conduit, which holds and shares all of our calendar information. So I can see the calendars of others, and they can see mine. When I add an event in iCal, BusySync sends that information to Google Calendar, and BusySync on the other user’s computer picks it up and updates the information in iCal for them. The whole process happens within seconds – it’s pretty amazing. Watch the video to see what I mean.

So what happens if I have multiple computers and an iPhone? (Which I do). That’s where MobileMe comes in. Here’s the full setup:

We have an iMac at home which we use as our “base” – that’s where BusySync is installed. This computer is always on, so there’s never a lag in the data getting synced. If I add a calendar event on my laptop, MobileMe syncs that information with my iPhone and the iMac at home. BusySync then picks it up and syncs it to Google Calendar, which in turn triggers BusySync on other user’s machines to update the calendar event on their iCal calendar. And with MobileMe it shows up on their iPhones as well.

So with the two services combined, you can have multiple shared calendars, managed by multiple people, syncing on multiple computers and phones without doing anything more than simply adding an event.

With the release of Leopard last Friday, it appears the bulk of my previous tutorials are now taken care of out of the box. mod_rewrite is enabled by default, and a decent (but not robust) installation of PHP 5.2.4 is ready to go – it only needs to be uncommented in the Apache configuration file.

The PHP installation is missing some key extensions, like PostgreSQL support and the GD library to name a few. But the majority of commonly used extensions are ready to go. Marc Liyanage is already on the case and working out the kinks for his own installer including those additions. The only thing missing at this point is MySQL support for Leopard. As of this writing, there is no installer available yet.

The rest of this post assumes you are working from a clean install or an “archive and install” of 10.5. I’m not sure what the Apache configuration files may look like if you simply upgraded from 10.4 or 10.3 – if they are clean this should work just fine.

Open the Apache configuration file (I’m using TextMate, which is where the ‘mate’ command comes from):
$ mate /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
and scroll to line 114 – it should look like this:
#LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
Just remove the comment:
LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

To enable Virtual Hosts, uncomment line 461:
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
and add your own directories in your /etc/apache2/users/you.conf file. Similar to the 10.4 configuration, change the first two lines (inside <Directory "/Users...>) like so:
Options All
AllowOverride All
and add your Virtual Host directives after that:

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /Users/yourname/Sites
ServerName localhost
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /Users/yourname/Sites/devsite
ServerName devsite
</VirtualHost>

Restart Apache:
$ sudo apachectl restart
and you’re all set.

The only thing left to do is update your hosts file:
$ mate /etc/hosts
and add whatever you used for your ServerName after the other entries:
127.0.0.1 devsite

Enjoy!

Now I need to figure out if those rumors of Ruby on Rails out of the box are true…