Gordon Turner » OS X

Import Facebook events into iCal

Gordo — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:40:33 +0000

Really simple tip, if you use Apple’s iCal (~~or Outlook, but I have not tested it~~ see UPDATE) and want to import events from Facebook, simply click on the Export button above the RSVP box.

When asked to Open or Save, open it with iCal and it should prompt you which calendar to add the event too.

UPDATE: Outlook 2003 displays an error ‘Cannot import vCalendar file. Could not complete the operation. One or more parameter values are not valid.’ More current versions might work.

Also, you might consider adding alerts to these events once they have been exported to iCal.

Mapping OS X hotkeys to Windows hotkeys

Gordo — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:24:11 +0000

One of the huge pain points transitioning between Windows and OS X is the muscle memory. Cut and paste is different on OS X, the iTunes track keys are different, undo is different, you get the idea.

I tried remapping the key binding in OS X to match Windows, but some applications (like Firefox, see bug 316459 and xcode) did not play nice.

So remapping the OS X keys in Windows was the next best thing, partly because the Windows Key doesn’t get used by many apps.

There are many hot key / macro apps out there but AutohotKey seems to work really well for me.

AutohotKey is an Open Source task tray app that has some pretty comprehensive macro calls. It even allows me to remap the keys on my Apple Aluminum keyboard, such as Print Screen.

My Autohotkeys script is behind the cut.

UPDATE: Script got mangled, please see this page instead.

Burning cds in OS X from the Command Prompt

Gordo — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 18:29:21 +0000

Looking for a quick way to burn an ubuntu linux cdrom, I found this quick way of burning an iso image from the command line:

hdiutil burn cdrom-image.iso

Apparently this will also do OS X dmg image files too.

For those like myself who like the command line tools, this is a good one to know about.