tech drops

Downloading online videos made (hacker-)friendly

This is my favorite way to download YouTube videos (or Vimeo and much more). Here is the initial setup:

1. Install `youtube-dl` (via homebrew for OS X)
2. Set up bash aliases such as these:

alias yt1080="youtube-dl -f 37/46 -o '[%(uploader)s] %(title)s.%(ext)s' $1"
alias yt720="youtube-dl -f 22/45 -o '[%(uploader)s] %(title)s.%(ext)s' $1"
alias yt480="youtube-dl -f 44/35/18 -o '[%(uploader)s] %(title)s.%(ext)s' $1"
alias yt360="youtube-dl -f 18/43/34 -o '[%(uploader)s] %(title)s.%(ext)s' $1"

Now whenever you want to download a video, just type yt1080, yt720, yt480 or yt360 (depending on the desired quality) followed by the url of the video (or just video id) to start downloading the video with a nicely formatted filename. The script will select the mp4 version first, falling back to webm or flv, respectively. Example:

$ yt720 fdJc1_IBKJA
[youtube] Setting language
[youtube] fdJc1_IBKJA: Downloading video webpage
[youtube] fdJc1_IBKJA: Downloading video info webpage [youtube] fdJc1_IBKJA: Extracting video information
[download] Destination: [devinsupertramp] World's Most Insane Rope Swing Ever!!! - Canyon Cliff Jump.mp4
[download] 4.0% of 82.25M at 658.52k/s ETA 02:02

Woz on Mac OS price.

From Letters of Note: Apple must make Macintosh a standard:

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has since said:
“The computer was never the problem. The company’s strategy was. Apple saw itself as a hardware company; in order to protect our hardware profits, we didn’t license our operating system. We had the most beautiful operating system, but to get it you had to buy our hardware at twice the price. That was a mistake. What we should have done was calculate an appropriate price to license the operating system. We were also naive to think that the best technology would prevail. It often doesn’t.”

Since I believe this is still true (maybe not in the numbers of multitude as back then) it feels like Woz agrees with me.

Easily delete files that won’t get trashed in OS X

Isn’t it annoying when sometimes files won’t just get flushed along with everything else when you’re emptying the trash in OS X? It says that they are in use, even if you’re sure nothing is using it? One solution is to log out and then try again, but a quicker one is:

1. Launch Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app)
2. Type rm -r ~/.Trash/<filename>

TIP: use the tab key when you need to type the file name, as it will auto-complete the command for you. You can even start typing the first characters of the name and then press tab.

NB: Be careful with that command. If carelessly used can be harmful to the system.

iWork ‘11? Maybe with (and only with) OS X Lion…

(This post is written on my personal assumptions and I premise that I did not personally try the Developer Preview of OS X Lion)

Rumors reported that Apple already finished developing the new version of iWork apps: Pages, Number and Keynote. It was also rumored that Apple would release the new suite alongside the Mac App Store. I bet Apple will silently release the long awaited new version of the productivity suite alongside the release of Lion, instead.

I presume that the new versions of iWork ‘11 is so much depending on Lion’s new technologies that they might not make a version available for Snow Leopard. This is just my theory though.

One thing for sure is that Apple is finally making tons of money on software, with iLife and iWork apps nearly-constantly in the Top Grossing ranks of the Mac App Store. This is happening because it’s much easier for the average users to find out about these three apps. Instead of pirating them – that is what most technical users do since it’s really simple in this case – they just buy them, also because they are rather cheap after all.

So why Apple should not keep riding the wave of profits and wait for a good shift and sell a new version of the app? It’s just a marketing decision to postpone an awesome, finished product.

Ode to Time Machine™

Sometimes, people happen to overlook some of the greatest and most useful tools that they have in our hands. I believe that one of these is Apple’s Time Machine™, and its ability to not only backup files and search through them, but to restore a whole system. If this doesn’t click to you, listen to my story:

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