Apparently I am late to the game on this, but …

Last night I discovered a terminal for Linux called Tilda. Its a drop down console, that slides in from the top of the screen. Neat little applications that I immediately fit into my work flow while on Linux. I assigned the hot key to ctrl+` (the default is F1).

I live in the terminal on both Linux and MacOS X, and my usage falls into two categories.

1) Light : i need to type something quick to do something or grab some output. usually a 1 liner, sometimes a couple 1 liners strung together.

2) SSH and Compiling : I have a terminal window open for an extended period of time, to watch the output of a compile or while i’m ssh’d into a remote box.

Tilda fits #1 perfectly. I’m always opening another terminal to type something real quick, then closing it. I generally have 5 or 6 terminals open, ssh’d into various boxes or running something that I need to check on from time to time, so I close the ‘light usage’ terminal when i’m done with it to reduce desktop clutter.

So, I started searching for something like Tilda for OS X. after 15 minutes of searching I came across Visor. Visor is a SIMBL hack that does almost the same thing as Tilda (minus a couple features, like tabs).

Success! Almost. It has a couple of problems.

1) It doesn’t honor color settings from terminal.app … Work around: quit terminal.app; open terminal.app; activate visor; right click in visor and open ‘Window Settings’; adjust everything in there but DO NOT set as default (you don’t want your normal terminal windows to span the screen).

2) Every time you launch terminal.app visor’s height grows by 1 line. There are a couple work arounds out there for this problem, but I wasn’t happy with any of them so here is mine:

• Download visorfix.sh (does the same thing as the little C application off macosxhints.com, but in a shell script.)
• Move it into /usr/bin (so its available to all users)
• Modify your ~/.bash_profile to include the following alias (replacing 25 with the size of your choice):
• alias resetvisor=’defaults write com.apple.Terminal VisorTerminal -dict-add Rows 25;visorfix;killall Terminal’
• open a new terminal and type “resetvisor”

Its a bit of a hack, but it seems to fix the problem. Chances are if you find this useful you don’t close terminal.app very often anyway, so you shouldn’t have to run it very frequently.

[update 11/30/2006 : Added a couple more apps to the list.]

Recently received a new Intel PowerMac Pro at work … fast machine. I finally finished getting everything setup on it and feel compelled to share my everyday software list with the world, if for no other reason to than to get the previous blog entry off the main page.

AdiumX : Chat Client, with tabs.

DockStar : Notes email totals in your dock for Mail.App. It can show up to 5 counts on your Mail.App icon at one time. Very handle if you track multiple email accounts.

FileMaker Pro : Database software. Kinda like Microsoft Access, but Filemaker Pro sucks a little less.

Firefox : Best Web Browser out there for ANY operating system. Get it. Now.

Flip4Mac : Windows Media Player plugin for Quicktime. Microsoft no longer develops media player for the Mac, but this is their ‘official’ work around. Seems to work well.

iCliplite : Clip Board tool that sits on your dashboard. Very useful when i’m coding to store multiple passages of code that I may frequently use.

Menu Calendar Clock : This is what the clock in the Mac Status bar should have been. Best part is all the useful features are in the free version.

Microsoft Office 2003 : The only ‘really good’ software Microsoft has ever developed.

Missing Sync : Syncs my palm with iCal, Address Book, iPhoto, iTunes, etc …

NetNewsWire : RSS News Reader

Overflow : Application Launcher. Hit a hot key (user configurable) and up pops the launcher on your screen. Beats having the Application folder in your dock.

Parallels : Just started using this software when I got the new mac. Lets you run a virtual install of another OS in a window, much like VMWare. This means I can have windows running at the same time as MacOS X for those couple Admin tools (user/computer management) that I need at work.

Photoshop : I wish the gimp ran better on OSX than it does. Still requires X11, which really puts me off.

StuffIt Expander : Apparently this free app is no longer included in MacOS X, and MacOS X cannot uncompress .sit files natively. So you get to sign up for spam (they email you a download link) to get this … Or you can click just click here to grab it :-P.

Synergy : iTunes interface. There is lots of software which does this now, I bought this one way back when there were less options so I continue to use it.

TextMate : Best text editor on MacOS X … this is the one that pulled me away from using Emacs on my Mac. I basically live in my text editor (22 textmate windows open right now), i highly recommend this one.

Transmit : sftp/ftp client. Nice client that handles editing with external editors really well. Needed a replacement for Emacs Tramp when I moved to textmate.

VirtueDesktops : Virtual Desktops on MacOS X. Previously I used Codetek’s Virtual Desktop Pro, but it is not yet available in a universal binary and has trouble on Intel Macs. VirtueDesktops lacks some of the features, but seems to do the job well enough until Leopard is released, which will include ‘Spaces’

Yojimbo : Information management. Stores Serial Numbers, passwords, notes, web pages, printed PDFs, and book marks. Lots of software out there that does this, but I think Yojimbo has the best interface … its dead simple to use. I have this open several times a day to retrieve information.

So, I’ve been messing with this site called MacHeist.com. Its a bit of a game, where you solve various puzzles and get some free mac applications and discounts on the final bundle of software (no idea what it is). Currently we are in Week 2, and have had 3 heists (puzzles) to open the vault hiding the free software.

One of the programs to come out of this weeks heist is called 1Passwd. At its roots it is a password manager, but includes things like auto complete on web forms and .Mac sync between multiple computers. Give it a try.

(This message has been brought to you by a possible mini-heist. I don’t endorse or use 1Passwd myself, and i feel really dirty about mentioning something that I don’t use, but it MIGHT get me some free software … everyone has their price, apparently mine is free software –Mike)

UPDATE: Hubert visited and left a link to http://whoishubert.com/ It appears that different people are getting different clues left in their blog comments for the next heist (mini-heist?).