Fix ARD Crashing with Multiple Instances

I use Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) to connect to my servers at work.  I have another copy of ARD installed on one of the servers as well, and occasionally I’ll need to use ARD on my local machine to connect to a server remotely, and then run another instance of ARD on the server, all within the instance of it running on my desktop.  If you’re having trouble following, that’s like calling someone and telling them to call other people for you.

There’s a security preference setting in ARD to disable you from doing exactly this, so as to prevent someone from controlling or viewing your screen when you are using ARD.  Somehow, this setting managed to enable itself.  You’ll be presented with a window stating “You are not authorized to control this computer.  Apple Remote Desktop or another administration application is currently running.” This is highly irritating since it kills your remote session and the only way to fix it is to issue a killall “Remote Desktop” terminal command remotely to that machine, or to get physical access to the machine and quit ARD.

After a little digging in .plist files, I found the entry I was looking for.  Right click (or control+click) on the Remote Desktop application and select ‘Show Package Contents.’  This will open a new Finder window.  Open the ‘Contents’ folder, and then open the file called ‘Info.plist‘  Find the entry in this property list called “LSMultipleInstancesProhibited” and change its value to “No.”  Save the file, relaunch ARD and you should be good to go.

How To: Run Lego Education’s WeDo software on OS X 10.4.11

I realize the topic of this post may be a bit specialized, but I would surely have liked to had something like this as a guide when I recently had to overcome this challenge.

Most of our entire campus is still running OS X 10.4.11, for the sole reason that login times for a .local Active Directory domain STILL take 2-3 minutes (as of 10.5.6).  Our Lower School purchased some Lego robotics kits which came with new software called WeDo.  The minimum requirements are OS X 10.5, and the installer will not run on OS X 10.4.

To get around this, I did the following: Read more…

Custom CS4 Icon

Since my CS3 folder icon has been my most popular blog post, I decided to create a new one for the CS4 suite of Adobe applications.

I debated sticking with the ugly black font Adobe uses for the application icons, but I’m a sucker for consistency. Feel free to download and use, and as always, please leave a comment if you like the icon.

[Download]

Enable OS X Dock Magnification on the Fly

I accidentally discovered that in OS X Leopard, if you have dock magnification turned off, you can temporarily enable it by holding Shift and Control while moving your cursor over the dock.

This does not appear to work at all in Tiger, and I’ve only tested it in OS X 10.5.6, so it’s possible it may not work below that.

Change Twitterrific’s Default Protocol

Twitterrific by The Icon Factory

We have a web filtering appliance installed as part of our network at my place of work.  Among the many functions it performs, packet shaping and filtering is one of the most important, and most annoying.  In our setup, port 443 (https) isn’t heavily restricted, so I use port 443 where available for any software I want to bypass the appliance and its rules.

Mail.app, iChat, Mailplane, etc all have options in their preferences to set alternate ports, while Twitterrific does not.  However, through a simple .plist hack we can tell Twitterriffic to use https traffic.  Navigate to and open the following property list file:

~/Library/Preferences/com.iconfactory.Twitterrific.plist

If it does not already exist, add a new Child property and call it “protocol” (all lower case, no quotes).  Set the class to String, and the value to “https://” (again, without the quotes).  Quit Twitterrific if it’s open, relaunch and voilá, you’re now connecting to Twitter over the secure http protocol.

Your results may vary if your LAN administrator blocks Twitter packets, or has other means of restricting traffic on port 443, but it’s worth a shot.

Tags: plist edit

Time Machine Vortex Icon

UPDATED: I went back and added the drop shadow and also lightened up the Vortex image to make it stand out a little better.

I got a little icon happy today and decided to merge the outer space image you see in Time Machine (called Vortex) with it’s default disk icon, to create the Time Machine Vortex icon.  I got a little lazy so there’s no drop shadow and the part of the Vortex image I used looks almost black, but I think it’s subtle enough without going overboard.

Replace the default OS X Time Machine disk icon with this one for some customized interface goodness, and as always, if you like the icon leave a comment and let me know.

[Download]