Any suggestions on how to make it work like a unix box/windowmaker are most welcome. This includes tips on X11 forwarding, sloppy focus, virtual desktops, and maybe some info on how the heck the filesystem is laid out.

in addition, if anyone knows a better music player than itunes, i’m all ears. I’m looking for something that has a light desktop footprint, doesn’t chew up gobs of memory, and has the ability to create a playlist, shufflie it, and the play the shuffled playlist in sequential order. thinki winamp/xmms for mac. any hints? i just tried itunes and for some stupid reason it has decided to copy all of my music into it’s special directory. why the hell it would do such a dumbass thing is beyond me, although from memory, i vaguely recall that if i tell it not to i can’t get all play history and rating stuff.

update: also could use some help with fixing the trackpad. it just doesn’t track properly. my finger feels like sysiphus. it moves all the way across the pad only to have to do it over and over again until it finally gets across the screen.

update 2: and why didn’t they put a full keypad on this thing? i mean, there’s plenty of space . . .

update 3: a bagillion thanks to selfish crab for his mac osx insights. Fink/FinkCommander seems to be the ticket. xmms is up and running now. they even have windowmaker! do i dare dream?

update 4: in case anyone was wondering, the macbook’s given name is havefight-lm.corp.yahoo.com

update 5: Virtual desktops are go! thanks to DekstopManager.

update 6: Virtual desktops aren’t as much of a go as i originally thought. it appears the ability to drag windows between desktops is not possible. boo.

update 7: what’s with the no date in the f-ing toolbar on top? how is that possible?

update 8: ah. found the fix for not date in the toolbar. hack.

update 9: what? “ctrl-delete” works like “^m-delete” in emacs while “delete” works like backspace. bitches. how can a brother get a delete going?

update 10: “ctrl-delete” can be achieved with “fn-ctrl-delete.” “delete” can be achieved with “fn-delete.” annoying.

update 11: apparently, all of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

update 12: i finally broke down and did an explicit emacs key binding. I just have to note that this is *not* an emacs problem. It’s a mac problem. they fucked up their keyboard from the start and have been too stubborn to fix it.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 4:28 pm and is filed under tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.