A useful howto on removing excessive entries in Finder’s Open With menu. If you, like me, have been beta-testing several versions of the same software on OS X, chances are that when you right-click on a file, you will end up with having a ‘Open With’ menu fills with many duplicate entries of the same application. This menu list is supposed to be updated automatically by OS X itself, however, it seems that it doesn’t update it as often.

A simple and yet effective way or resetting the is as follows:

1. Go to the Preference folder located inside the Library folder in your home directory (i.e. *yourusername*/Home/Library/Preferences/)

2. Locate the file named com.apple.LaunchServices and delete it

After that you could relaunch the Finder and the Open With menu should no longer contain any duplicate entry.

After upgrading to the Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.8), I’ve noticed the Spotlight icon has gone missing from my menu bar (see attached picture). After poking around the system, I found that some directories are with invalid permissions. I have no idea as how this happened, maybe it occurred during the upgrade process?

Anyway, I run the Disk Utility ( Applications -> Utilities ), select the startup disk (the disk where you have OS X installed) and then click on Repair Disk Permissions. It found quite a few errors and then fixed them accordingly. After the repairing process and reboot the OS X – guess what, the Spotlight icon appeared once again on the menu bar and functioning correctly. It seems that those incorrect permissions somehow prevent Spotlight to appear and function properly. I guess it’s always a good idea to run a Repair Disk Permissions whenever you upgrade the system anyway.

Just found this useful little tweak to add a stack (similar to the default Download one) which contains a list of recent open applications for a quick and easy access. Very handy if you happen to use certain regular applications and/or documents.

Type the following command in the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'

then after that, type the following command:

killall Dock

to restart the Dock and then you will see a new icon, similar to the Download Stack, being added next to the Trash icon. You can also choose this new Stack to show information between “Recent Applications“, “Recent Documents“, “Recent Servers“, “Favorite Volumes” and “Favorite Items“.

Oxford University Press has introduced a new open-access journal, Database: The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation, aiming at all aspect of database research and development surrounding biological information. This new journal, under the editorship of David Landsman, will cover a broad spectrum of topics from database development to the relevant applications as well as issues concerning biological curation and curated databases.

Database: The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation provides a platform for the presentation of novel ideas in database research surrounding biological information, and aims to help strengthen the bridge between database developers and users.

It would be very interesting to see how this new journal picks up from the more established and highly successful Nucleic Acids Research Annual Database Issue and the NAR online Molecular Biology Database Collection.

I was at Apple’s website last night and eager to check out the latest stunning aluminium unibody MacBook, and it was then I realised that my Firefox (on Ubuntu) doesn’t have the ability to play Apple’s de facto online streaming media – the QuickTime movie.

I know that MPlayer has a plug-in, “mplayerplug-in” (a Mozilla browser plugin to allow playing embedded movies on Web pages using MPlayer.) for Firefox for dealing with this problem so in wasting no time I type the followings in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install mplayer mozilla-mplayer

p.s. You might have to enable the “multiverse” repository first in order to install all the required packages.

After the installation, I restart the Firefox for the MPlayer plug-in to kick in, and I was able to watch that embedded video showing how Apple design and produce the beautiful 13′ MacBook from a single aluminium block – I’m very impressed I must say.

After the smooth process of upgrading my Ubuntu from Hardy Heron (8.04) to Intrepid Ibex (8.10), I happen to notice my Firefox (version 3.03) starts to behave differently. For instance, Firefox’s toolbar always returns to the default layout and some of installed add-on icons do not appear even they are functioning properly.

After some trials and errors, I eventually found the culprit that is causing this strange behaviour: Ubuntu Firefox Modifications (version 0.6) add-on. Once it is disabled, Firefox behaves like normal. I suspect a newer version of this add-on is needed for the new Ubuntu 8.10, however I’m still yet to notice any problem after disabling it…