ActiveState has created a Tcl Extension Archive tool called teacup which simplifies the installation of binary extensions to Tcl. It’s included with ActiveTcl, but if you’re using Tcl from MacPorts and want to use teacup, it’s fairly easy:

1. Download teacup for MacOS X

The teacup binary can be downloaded from this location:

• http://teapot.activestate.com/entity/name/teacup/index

Here is a direct link to the latest teacup binary. The file is named file.exe — simply rename that to teacup and put it in /usr/local/bin or another convenient place in your $PATH.

2. Create the installation repository

You will need an installation repository where teacup can store its data locally. The default location is /Library/Tcl/teapot and you can create it like this:

$ sudo teacup create
Repository @ /Library/Tcl/teapot
    Created

3. Patch MacPorts tclsh to handle teapot repositories

$ sudo teacup setup /opt/local/bin/tclsh
Looking at tcl shell /opt/local/bin/tclsh ...
  Already able to handle Tcl Modules.
  Already has the platform packages.
  Patching: Adding code to handle teapot repositories ...
Done

4. Link teacup to MacPorts tclsh

$ sudo teacup link make /Library/Tcl/teapot /opt/local/bin/tclsh
Ok

That’s it! You’re done. You should now be able to list available packages within TEA using teacup list and install them using sudo teacup install "packagename".

I’ve tested this on MacOS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard with Tcl 8.5.7 from MacPorts.

Tags: HOWTO, Tcl, ActiveState, TEA, teacup

I’ve been using djbdns and qmail for many years, specifically because after reviewing its code and comparing it to other possible alternatives, I objectively decided that these two pieces of software are superior in all aspects.

Lots of people have cast aspersions on D. J. Bernstein and his software, usually with emotional and irrational claims. Of course, most of these people can’t even read code well enough to understand what it does or how it does it. However, when you encounter the opinions of actual programmers, we all tend to share a similar but different opinion.

Today, Aaron Swartz put this into words better than I could: D. J. Bernstein is the greatest programmer in the history of the world. The money quote:

[...] djb’s programs do not work like most programs, for the simple reason that the way most programs work is wrong.

Amen.

Tags: D. J. Bernstein (djb), djbdns, qmail, Aaron Swartz

My friend Keith has a Troy-Bilt TB70SS weed whacker that stopped working the other day. Not being one to pass on a good opportunity to do a DIY repair, I took it apart and discovered that the piston arm had broken and the reed spring had gotten mangled.

The best source for parts that I’ve found is, surprisingly, the Home Depot Power Equipment Parts site. They have the exploded parts view in PDF form, which makes ordering really simple.

I wonder if there’s pictures or videos online showing folks how to take apart and re-assemble these things — it’s really pretty simple and can be a lot of fun to repair your own things.

Tags: Troy-Bilt TB70SS, DIY, repair, Home Depot Power Equipment Parts

MacOS X 10.6.0 Snow Leopard was released over a month ago on August 28, 2009. While everyone jumped at the opportunity to be Apple’s outsourced QA, I followed my rule of “never use a dot-zero (.0) release.” Now, a month and a half later — and after the 10.6.1 update has been released — I’ve decided to install the upgrade.

Many people have suggested the upgrade was smooth and painless for them, and I totally believe this to be the case for probably 98% of Mac users, but I’m a developer and have installed lots of third-party (non-Apple) applications. I was completely expecting a bit of work to get my system running normally again, but my first symptom that something was wrong totally puzzled me: the system would stop performing I/O to disk, causing every process to spin the shiny hypnodisk at me. Basically, I could boot the system, and after about 3 minutes, everything would hang. So, keep this in mind as I describe all the things I fixed, because getting through each step involved several reboots just to make the necessary changes.

Here’s the list of problems I encountered and fixed:

Checkpoint SecureClient VPN

This complained at boot-up that the SecureClient service wasn’t started. A known work-around is to binary edit two files, StartupItemsMgr and SecureClientStarter and replace the string “kextload -s” with “kextload -r“. This worked for me.

MacPorts

The old MacPorts compiled against dependencies that are no longer available on Snow Leopard, including MacPorts.dylib itself. Luckily, I just grabbed the latest MacPorts installer .dmg for Snow Leopard which enabled me to selfupdate and upgrade outdated and get things working again.

Soundflower

Periodically, a dialog box complaining about Soundflower.kext popped up:

I had Soundflower 1.4.3 installed, which was the most recent release before Snow Leopard was released. Now, Soundflower 1.5.1 is available, so I upgraded to it. This appears to be sufficient to get it working again, too.

Oh, the agony …

At this point, my system appeared to be stable enough to use — no spurious errors being logged to /var/log/system.log and no more annoying hangs. I’m sure I’ll discover a few more annoyances next week when I start dealing with work stuff again, but for now I can at least use the machine again.

Was the upgrade worth it? I guess I’ll find out.

Tags: Apple, MacOS X, Snow Leopard

Ah, the ultimate in retro push technology, my old Motorola 929.8625 MHz alphanumeric pager.

Found this little gem while cleaning out boxes of crap in my home office. I decided to take a pic of it for memory’s sake before I trash it.

Tags: retro, push technology, Motorola, alphanumeric pager