Perl has always been my favourite command line and web programming language. There is nothing Perl can’t do. The Perl language combined with the large quantities of modules on CPAN (developed by some of the best programmers on the planet) make it the kitchen sink of programming languages.

I like to make my code as easy to read as possible. Nothing irks me more than a jumble of spaghetti code with indents and curly braces everywhere. I admit that there are times when a solution to a difficult problem comes to me and I become more concerned with getting my ideas down than on following style rules. But after I have my thoughts properly coded I want to go back and clean things up a bit. That’s where perltidy comes in.

What is Perl::Tidy?

Perltidy is a Perl script which indents and reformats Perl scripts to make them easier to read.

The CPAN module, written by Steve Hancock, makes the functionality of the perltidy utility available to other Perl scripts. That means you can write your own script for your own Perl style needs. I prefer to use the utility.

Installation

Installing Perl::Tidy on OS X is quite easy. From the Terminal use the sudo command to run the cpan command line utility. You need to be logged into an account with administrator privileges. This will pull down and install from CPAN, all the necessary code for using perltidy.

Using perltidy

Once the module has been installed (the utility is placed in /usr/bin ) you can use the command line utility just like any command in Terminal. Perltidy has a number of command line switches to modify it’s behavior. I have found that the default styling works well enough for me. To use the command line utility open up a Terminal window and type

:~ perltidy -b /path/to/your/code.pl

I used the -b switch to tell perltidy to create a backup of my script before doing its work. I want a copy just in case something goes wrong. Perltidy does its thing and then exits. If errors are found, e.g. a missing curly brace, perltidy will let you know and create a error file that contains more information about the problem.

Useful perltidy command:
: ~ perltidy -html -pre code.pl

This will create an html snippet with only the PRE section to code.pl.html. This is useful when code snippets are being formatted for inclusion in a larger web page (such as a blog).

Perltidy will take this code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
my %var = { name => ‘khurt’, last => ‘williams’, location => ‘Princeton’, height => ‘164cm’, weight => ‘64 kg’ };
foreach my $key ( sort keys %var ) { printif( “%s:%s\n”, $key, $var{$key} ); } #this prints the values in the hash

and turn it into this code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
my %var = {
    name     => 'khurt',
    last     => 'williams',
    location => 'Princeton',
    height   => '164cm',
    weight   => '64 kg'
};
foreach my $key ( sort keys %var ) {
    printif( "%s:%s\n", $key, $var{$key} );
}    #this prints the values in the hash

To find out more about perltidy type “man perltidy” into Terminal to see the manual page. Prepare to be overwhelmed. Perltidy is feature rich.

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I was pleasantly surprised to find out that upgrading to iPhone OS 3.0 enabled previously hidden Bluetooth functionality on my second generation iPod Touch. After upgrading (the iTunes servers were jammed so I did it after midnight) I noticed a small Bluetooth icon in the upper right hand corner of the home screen. So I went straight into Settings->General and … what do you know, Bluetooth.

The only Bluetooth device I have is a headset for my Motorola KRZR cellphone (no iPhone yet) so I resorted to trying to connect from the kids iMac. While I can’t do anything useful with it (yet) I expect we will see a host of new accessories for the iPhone 3G(S) and iPod Touch 2G. I for one would like a Bluetooth car kit to wirelessly stream music from my iPod Touch. Perhaps maybe sync my iPod without docking.

I noticed that one of the services available on the iPod Touch via Bluetooth is something called AVRCP. According to the official Bluetooth web site AVRCP:

AVRCP is designed to provide a standard interface to control TVs, hi-fi equipment, or others to allow a single remote control (or other device) to control all the A/V equipment to which a user has access. It may be used in concert with A2DP or VDP.

I can’t wait!!

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Being able to get a robust wireless network signal around my house was something that I struggled with for some time. My Comcast cable broadband connection came in through my garage and basement so that is where I had placed my wireless access point (WAP). The cable coax connected to my broadband bridge which was then connected to my 802.11n Apple Time Capsule (TC) WAP. The problem was that the wireless signal was not strong enough to reach throughout my 1700 square foot home.

I could sit in my kitchen (right above the WAPs location in the basement) and get a very strong signal but I barely got a signal in my family room or bedroom. If I wanted to use the computer from the backyard, I couldn’t; unless I piggy backed on my neighbor’s signal.

At fist I tried to solve this problem by moving the position of the WAP.  It originally on a shelf in the basement but then I moved it up into the rafters in my unfinished basement. That yield only a slight improvement. I then tried using Powerline Ethernet devices but I never successfully got those working.

Some coworkers suggested using a Linksys WET54G Wireless-G Ethernet Bridge to extend the network. These devices were very difficult to setup and never worked reliably. I though maybe the Linksys equipment did not work well with the TC so I went searching on the Apple web site discussion board for a solution. That’s when I found out about Wireless Distribution System (WDS).

Appple’s online documentation mentioned that I could use WDS to “set up two to five base stations as a unified network that shares one Internet connection.” In other words, I could setup multiple Apple WAP to create a single large wireless network that I could access from multiple locations in the home. I could put a WAP in the basement, one in the family room, and one in the living room (near the back of the house) basically saturating my home with wireless. This is exactly what I did.

WDS does not yet have a standard implementation. There is no guarantee that WDS implementations from different vendors will interoperate. I used only Apple branded products to setup my WDS network. I did this because I wanted everything to work and because Apple has excellent documentation on how to do it. Your mileage may vary.

Below is a list of the equipment I used.

• Apple Time Capsule (802.11n)
• Apple Airport Extreme Base Station (802.11g)
• Apple AirPort Express (802.11g)

I bought the AirPort Express (AX) on eBay as the lowest cost method to acquiring an Apple wireless base station. The AirPort Express is a small portable WAP and Internet gateway with one 10/100BASE-T Ethernet port for connecting a DSL modem, cable modem, or Ethernet network, a USB port for connecting a USB printer, and a 3.5-mm audio minijack for analog or optical digital sound to a stereo or powered speakers. The AX also support AirTunes. AirTunes transmits music from my iTunes library on any of my Macs and sends it wirelessly to the AX attached to my stereo.  How cool is that!?

I also bought an unopened flying saucer style AirPort Extreme Base (AE) station from a colleague. He had picked it up at a yard sale and was willing to let me have it for $50. With the existing TC and the new AX and AE I now had enough to create a WDS network to blanket every part of my home.

The first thing I did was setup my main base station, the Time Capsule,  in WDS mode.  I had already setup all the other parameters including the SSID, channel number, password, wireless security etc. The SSID and channel number must be the same for each base station for WDS to work. These settings are found in the Wireless and WDS tabs in the Apple AirPort Utility.

Once I was done setting up the WDS information for the main base station I clicked “Update” and waited for the base station to reboot. I made sure to note the AirPort ID of the TC and used this information later to setup the other two base stations.

I selected “Participate in a WDS network” from the drop down box in Wireless tab and from the WDS tab drop down I selected “WDS main” to set the WDS Mode and checked the “Allow wireless clients” check box.

Next, I setup the the AirPort Express (AX) base station as a remote base station. A remote base station connects wirelessly to the main station and retransmits the signal from the main base station for wireless clients that are too far from the main base station. I used the AirPort Utility to connect to the AX and set it up with the same network specific information (channel number, SSID etc) I used for the TC.  I selected “Participate in a WDS network” from the drop down box in Wireless tab and from the WDS tab drop down I selected “WDS remote” to set the WDS Mode and checked the “Allow wireless clients” check box. I entered the AirPort ID of the WDS Main base station and clicked update.

After the AX base station rebooted I moved on to setup the AirPort Extreme Base (AE) station. Setup was similar to the AE. I used the AirPort Utility to setup the network parameters (SSID, channel number, etc) including information for the WDS Main.

Once the AirPort Extreme Base station rebooted I used the AirPort Utility to confirm that the AirPort Express and AirPort Extreme were bound to my home network and relaying traffic.

The solution is not perfect. The WDS network uses a small amount of the network bandwidth for network management so wireless throughput is slightly less than it would be with just one base station. However, this is a small price to pay for being able to use my laptop or iPod Touch from anywhere inside or outside my home.  Now I can sit in bed and catch up on show in Hulu or work in my backyard streaming music to my iPod Touch from my iTunes library.

References:

Using the AirPort Admin Utility to create a WDS network with multiple base stations

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Both Yahoo and Google provide a method for importing and exporting email addresses to and from OS X AddressBook but I wanted an easier way to keep things synchronized. Fortunately, if you are running OS X 10.5 (Leopard), the AddressBook application provides a straight forward way to do so.

Google is special

Like most people I use a web based email service like Yahoo! Mail or Gmail. And like most people I have been using one of these services for quite a long time and I have quite a large number of email addresses that I have saved in the contact list of each of those services, especially Gmail. The ability to sync with Google is not present as an option unless you have synced your computer with an iPhone or iPod Touch at least once. There is a work around for non-iPhone/iPod Touch users on Lifehacker web site. Go ahead and do that. We’ll wait until you return.

Setup

Setup is quick and easy. Go into the Preferences for AddressBook. On the General tab you will see three check boxes for each of the following services: MobileMe, Exchange, Yahoo and Google. You can select all (or none) of these check boxes to enable syncing with each of those services. Google is my preferred service for email so tha’s the service I setup. Once you select the checkbox, AddressBook will prompt you for your Gmail username and password. Enter that information and click OK to complete setup. If you have a large AddressBook it could take a while for the sync to complete.

Finish Up

You may already have some contacts in AddressBook that are also in Yahoo or Google and you may find duplicates in your AddressBook once the sync is complete. These are easy to remove. From the AddressBook menu select Card->Look for duplicates. AddressBook will find and merge duplicates entries into just one entry. Any changes or additions to your AddressBook contacts will update your online Google or Yahoo contacts and vice versa.

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Some time last year Google updated their online Calendar service to support the CalDAV protocol. CalDAV is a standard protocol that allows access to web based calendars from desktop clients like iCal. Now from within iCal I can schedule create calendar entries that appear in my Google web calendar and vice versa. Google provides instructions on how to setup iCal to access Google Calendar but … a screen shot is worth a thousand lines of text.

Setup is fairly easy. Google provides a set-up tool to make the process quick and painless. Download the setup tool here. After downloading, unzip the file, and run the Calaboration application. Be sure to exit iCal before running the Calaboration tool.

Enter your Google email address and password and click the Sign In button.

After a few seconds the application will display your Google Calendars. Select the calendars you want to add to iCal and click the “Add to iCal” button. If your email address is not in your Leopard Address Book you will be prompted to do so.

Your Google Calendar will now appear in the list of calendars in iCal. Any changes you make to your Google Calendar in iCal will show up in your Google web Calendar.

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In a previous post I mentioned that I had already configured my Mac to use some of Google’s free services and how I felt that this was a cheap way to get some of the same features offered in MobileMe. Namely, I configured Mail.app for use with Gmail, synced my Address Book to my Gmail Contacts, and connected iCal to my Google Calendar. In this post, I explain how to setup Leopard Mail.app for reading Gmail.

IMAP vs POP3

Google provides three ways to access Gmail, their free email service; via the browser, POP3, or IMAP. The Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3) is a standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote server and download it to the client. IMAP is also a standard protocol for accessing email but unlike POP3 the email stays on the remote server. With POP3 you are limited to reading your email from one location. With IMAP the email stays on the server and you can read it from any computer. IMAP is the method I use to access my Gmail in Mail.app. If I read an email in a web browser then it is marked as read on the server and in Mail.app.

Configuration

Configuring Mail.app to use Gmail is relatively easy. Google has provided excellent instructions on their Gmail Help web site. I have provided my own version here. I think screen shots help in understanding. Launch Mail.app and click Mail->Preferences from the menu bar. Click on the Accounts tab and then click the “+” symbol on the lower left to start the account creation wizard.

Enter your name, your Gmail address and password. Be sure to deselect the “Automatically set up account” check box. This check box is enabled by default and automatically creates an entry for POP3 access. We want to setup for IMAP. Now click continue.

Click the Account Type drop down and select IMAP. Be sure to change the Incoming Mail Server address to imap.gmail.com. Leave the other fields as they are and click Continue.

The next screen is for setting up the Outgoing Mail server information. Other than entering a description, e.g Gmail, you can go ahead and click continue. This will take you to a confirmation summary page. If it all looks correct go ahead and click create. The new account should now appear in the Account column on the left.

Tweaks

There are a few small details that will make reading Gmail in Mail.app easier. We will need to change a few things to make Mail.app play nice with Gmail. Google has a number of DO’s and DON’Ts that will ensure a smooth experience using Mail.app. Google wants all deleted or sent mail to use the local trash and sent folders. While still in the Accounts tab make sure to deselect all the checkboxes except for “Store draft messages on the server“.

Summary

One of the benefits of using Mail.app with Gmail is that you can now take advantage of all of Mail.app goodness. You can set fonts, colors, backgrounds, and signatures, or one of those interesting templates and pick addresses right from your Address Book. Next post, I’ll tell you how to sync your Gmail contact straight with Leopard Address Book.

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With the addition of a 20″ iMac for the kids (and an Ikea VIKA Amon desk to display it) we are now completely a Windows free house. This was an important goal for me. I am an anal retentive obsessive compulsive type who likes everything “just so”. It’s bad. I buy all my clothes from the same retailer/brand: shirts, undershirts, pants, underpants, undershirts, shoes, coats. My last three cars were all made by Honda. My TV, DVD player, stereo, and alarm clock are all made by Sony.

What started as new found love for a Mac mini and an iPod shuffle in 2005 wound up being an obsession to do everything the Apple way. We are a family of four; I have an iPod Touch (and maybe an iPhone this summer), my wife has a Red iPod Nano, my son has an iPod nano, and my daughter has the original shuffle (she’s the youngest). An Apple Time Capsule, AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express provide regular backups, ubiquitous wireless access, and music streaming around the house.

Where my kids used to argue over who crashed the Dell, now they argue who spent more time with “MackieMac”. Parental Controls was one of the first features I enabled. My kids are addicted to the Pokemon, Webkinz, American Girl crack. They get to spend one hour each per day; 3 hours on the weekend. Enough to keep them out of the Disney clinic for recovering screen addicts. Being kids, their favorite application is Photo Booth. This might be worse than letting them catch another Chimchar. They have also taken relieved me of the Bluetooth Mighty Mouse I used on my MacBook.

Dell Inspiron 2600 - Circa 2001

My wife is enjoying computing iLife without duct tape. She was previously addicted to iTunes Bollywood edition but the lack of Windows crashes now allows her to up her habit slightly. Hits by Lata and A.R Rahman are helping fill the 120GB hard drive on her new White MacBook. She has also upgraded to scolding me via iChat Video.

G4 Mac mini

Meanwhile, the Mac mini that started the obsession serves the most important role; as a media server and repository for all our family photos and videos. Mac mini has been upgraded from Tiger to Leopard; from iLife 06 to iLife 09; from 512MB of RAM to 1 GB. He’s the one that paved the path for the others to follow. Apple turned a $500 customers into a life long addict.

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I think maybe I have a little too much storage space. Between Amazon S3, the two 500GB G-Drive Q external drives and the 500GB Apple Time Capsule, I have over 2TB of storage. I don’t think I have that many photo and family videos and my iTunes library isn’t that large either.  The Amazon S3 is used to backup photos from our iPhoto library stored on the G-Drive Q Media and documents stored on the G-Drive Q.  The Time Capsule is for backing up the three Macs via Time Machine.

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I bought my wife (and myself) a white MacBook last week. Her birthday is next month and with Apple’s newly updated aluminium notebooks the previous model white notebook was put on sale. Her previous laptop, an 8 year old Dell Inspiron, was a joke and a pain in my neck. It was held together with duct tape. The battery held no charge so it had to be plugged in all the time. It could only connect to the Wi-Fi from one or two spots in the house. I spent a lot of time trouble shooting one problem after another. So this laptop was two gifts in one; an expensive birthday gift for my wife and lots of free time for me.

I spent about 30 minutes setting things up. I created an admin account, created her non-admin account, connected the laptop to the network, setup Mail.app to read her Gmail, linked her Gmail contacts to OS X’s AddressBook, installed one software patch, linked her iTunes to the Mac mini’s media library, and finally, setup iChat to use Google Talk.

iChat Video and Google Talk

Google Talk uses Jabber, an open instant messaging protocol. Apple built support for Jabber into the Leopard version of iChat. I added the account via the Accounts tab in the Preferences pane and was given a pleasant surprise once I logged in. A little camera style icon appeared next to my wife’s name in the contact list. I excited clicked it to find that I could initiate and conducts video chats via my Gtalk account. Audio and video quality were excellent with very little of that delay I’ve seen when using Skype. I can not find any official documentation on Google site about this but others have been doing this for some time. I take my MacBook to work each day and it would be nice to video chat with my wife during the day.

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