Simon Willison’s Weblog

datasette-bplist (via) It turns out an OS X laptop is positively crammed with SQLite databases, and many of them contain values that are data structures encoded using Apple’s binary plist format. datasette-bplist is my new plugin to help explore those files: it provides a display hook for rendering their contents, and a custom bplist_to_json() SQL function which can be used to extract and query information that is embedded in those values. The README includes tips on how to pull interesting EXIF data out of the SQLite database that sits behind Apple Photos.

# 9th June 2019, 1:26 am / osx, projects, datasette

How to compile and run the SQLite JSON1 extension on OS X. Thanks, Stack Overflow! I’ve been battling this one for a while—it turns out you can download the SQLite source bundle, compile just the json1.c file using gcc and load that extension in Python’s sqlite3 module (or with Datasette’s --load-extension= option) to gain access to the full suite of SQLite JSON functions—json(), json_extract() etc.

# 10th January 2018, 9:01 pm / osx, sqlite, datasette, json, stackoverflow

Installing GeoDjango Dependencies with Homebrew. brew update && brew install postgis && brew install gdal

# 7th May 2010, 2:40 pm / django, geodjango, homebrew, osx, postgis, postgresql, recovered

Fun with TextMate and PDB. TextMate bookmarks (against lines in a file) are stored as OS X extended attributes, which can be accessed from Python using the xattr module. Here’s a clever piece of code that uses bookmarks to set breakpoints in the command-line pdb debugger.

# 23rd March 2010, 9:48 am / python, xattr, pdb, debugging, textmate, osx

Installing PIL on Mac OS X Snow Leopard for use in Google App Engine. PIL installation instructions that actually work... the ’export CC=“gcc -arch i386”’ incantation in particular. Make sure you run setup.py install using the Python version that the App Engine dev tools are using (I ran “sudo /usr/bin/python2.6 setup.py install”).

# 15th March 2010, 4:06 pm / pil, snowleopard, osx, python

countdown_to_newyear.py. A quick Python / OS X script I knocked up last night to count in the new year (using the OS X “say” command).

# 1st January 2010, 4:24 pm / scripts, code, projects, python, osx, say, newyear

The Tablet. John Gruber further demonstrates his mastery of long-form blogging. It’s reassuring to know that he started putting the notes for this entry together way back on the 24th of September.

# 1st January 2010, 3:49 am / tablet, apple, osx, john-gruber, blogging, essays

10 Uses for Blocks in C/Objective-C. Part of the Cocoa for Scientists series, which is by far the best free Objective-C / Cocoa tutorial I’ve seen anywhere.

# 16th November 2009, 2:27 pm / cocoa, osx, objectivec, blocks, closures, science

MySQL, Python and MacOS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). I gave up on compiling things when I upgraded to Snow Leopard—I’m back to running Ubuntu in a VMWare instance, mounted over Samba so I can still use TextMate.

# 25th September 2009, 10:14 pm / ubuntu, vmware, snowleopard, samba, textmate, python, mysql, osx

homebrew. Exciting alternative to MacPorts for compiling software on OS X—homebrew avoids sudo and defines packages as simple Ruby scripts, shared and distributed using Git.

# 21st September 2009, 6:51 pm / homebrew, osx, git, ruby, macports

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: the Ars Technica review. The essential review: 23 pages of information-dense but readable goodness. Pretty much everything I know about Mac OS X internals I learnt from reading John Siracusa’s reviews—this one is particularly juice when it gets to Grand Central Dispatch and blocks (aka closures) in C and Objective-C.

# 1st September 2009, 7:05 pm / objectivec, c, closures, blocks, osx, apple, john-siracusa, grandcentraldispatch, snowleopard

How do you install lxml on OS X Leopard without using MacPorts or Fink? I’ve asked on Stack Overflow... hope I get a good answer.

# 14th August 2009, 1:04 pm / python, leopard, lxml, stackoverflow, osx

Learning to compile things from source (on Unix/Linux/OSX). I asked on serverfault.com for tips on learning how to solve configure/make/install problems on my own, and got some extremely useful replies.

# 27th July 2009, 4:21 pm / serverfault, questions, compiling, linux, osx

Install Django, GeoDjango, PostgreSQL and PostGIS on OSX Leopard. This tutorial worked perfectly for me.

# 24th July 2009, 11:47 am / django, geodjango, python, osx, postgresql, postgis

MongoDB. Lots of discussions about this at EuroPython today—it’s a document database, very similar to CouchDB but significantly faster and suggested for production use. Best of all, trying it out on OS X is as easy as extracting the tarball and running “bin/mongod --dbpath /tmp/test-mongo-db run”.

# 30th June 2009, 7:13 pm / couchdb, europython, mongodb, nonrelationaldatabase, keyvaluestore, documentstore, json, osx

Critical Mac OS X Java Vulnerabilities. There’s a five month old Java arbitrary code execution vulnerability which hasn’t yet been patched by Apple. Disable Java applets in your browser until it’s fixed, or random web pages could execute commands on your machine as your user account.

# 19th May 2009, 7:07 pm / osx, security, java, applets, browsers, apple

Installing CouchDB from source on OS X. So far I’ve just been playing with it in an Ubuntu virtual machine.

# 17th April 2009, 4:22 pm / osx, couchdb, building, ubuntu

Apple shows us DRM’s true colors. The EFF reviews the various places that Apple still applies DRM (including locking iPhones to carriers, licensing authentication chips for iPod accessory vendors, preventing OS X from loading on generic PCs) and concludes that “the majority of these DRM efforts do not have even an arguable relation to ’piracy.’”

# 18th January 2009, 10:16 am / drm, eff, apple, osx, iphone, ipod, piracy

How to install lxml python module on mac os 10.5 (leopard). Instructions that work! Finally, I can find out what all the fuss is about.

# 15th December 2008, 12:05 am / lxml, python, osx, leopard, xml, libxml2

sfical.py. Neat idea: write a CGI script that turns a proprietary API (in this case the SalesForce events API) in to standard ical format, then run it on your Mac’s local Apache server and subscribe to it from iCal.

# 27th June 2008, 8:09 am / osx, mac, cgi, salesforce, simon-fell, apache, ical

Camouflage. My other key piece of OS X presenting software—hides all of the icons on the desktop (no need to drag them all in to an “Archive” folder every time I give talk).

# 15th June 2008, 6:29 pm / osx, presenting, software, camouflage

Caffeine. I’ve been using this for several months and I love it: it’s a simple OS X menu bar icon that lets you prevent your Mac from dimming the screen, going to sleep or starting a screen saver. Perfect for giving presentations and watching Flash movies full screen.

# 15th June 2008, 6:27 pm / osx, software, caffeine, presenting

Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS. Finally, a decent set of instructions on using a ReadyNAS with Time Machine. The trick is to create a local sparse disk image with a magic name (based on hostname and eth0 MAC address), then move it to the NAS.

# 4th May 2008, 5:55 pm / osx, timemachine, backups, readynas

iTimeMachine. Enables Time Machine to see network drives (a ReadyNAS NV+ for example). There’s also a defaults setting but it didn’t seem to work; this did.

# 29th January 2008, 11:33 pm / timemachine, backups, itimemachine, readynas, mac, osx

MacHeist Bundle. Everything’s now unlocked, meaning you can pick up TaskPaper, CSSEdit, Snapz Pro X (excellent for screencasts) and Pixelmator for $49.

# 16th January 2008, 9:44 pm / taskpaper, osx, cssedit, snayzprox, screencasts, pixelmator, software, mac, macheist