Face detection with OSX and python

I’ve been messing about with face detection for a while, and was surprised how easy it is to get basic detection working out-of-the-box with open-source libraries. Today we’ll look at a simple way to get started with face detection on OSX using python. ...

December 14, 2010 · 5 min · Dave Perrett

How to create a TextMate bundle

If you find yourself repeating the same commands over and over in TextMate, it’s relatively straightforward to create your own bundle. Recently I’ve been migrating a bunch of blog posts from WordPress to Jekyll, and found myself repeating the same tasks again and again : ...

September 30, 2010 · 3 min · Dave Perrett

Security testing with Google's ratproxy

Ratproxy is a passive web application security assessment tool released by Google. Basically you set it up as a proxy server between yourself and the target site, and then click around in the target site doing whatever it is you normally do, while ratproxy analyzes your activity in the background and looks for security holes. ...

September 24, 2010 · 6 min · Dave Perrett

Compiling and running red5 flash server on OSX

First, you need to make sure you are using java 1.6. I’m told this method will only work on 64-bit leopard machines, so your mileage may vary. In the finder, browse to /Applications/Utilities and open Java Preferences.app . ...

March 16, 2010 · 2 min · Dave Perrett

Installing Flex 4 (Gumbo) SDK on OS X

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March 14, 2010 · 1 min · Dave Perrett

Updating RubyGems on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

I haven’t used ruby for a while, but recently wanted to try out {{ “github.com/aanand/git-up” | ext_link: “git-up”}} on OSX. According to the {{ “github.com/aanand/git-up/blob/master/README.md” | ext_link: “instructions”}}, a simple gem install git-up should work : > sudo gem install git-up Updating metadata for 1 gems from http://gems.rubyforge.org . complete ERROR: could not find git-up locally or in a repository I assume this is something to do with gem hosting moving to github or something… I haven’t really been following ruby for a year or so so I’m not sure exactly what’s going on. It seems i’m running a pretty old version of RubyGems, so I tried to update : ...

February 14, 2010 · 2 min · Dave Perrett

Compiling mysql-python on OS X leopard

I’ve just finished trying to install mysql-python on OSX Leopard, and had quite a few problems. This is the procedure that finally ended up working for me. First, download mysql-python from here. Unzip and try to build it : ...

August 18, 2009 · 2 min · Dave Perrett

'Hello World' with Scala and Lift on OSX

Obviously we’re going to need scala before we can do anything useful; the easiest way to install it is via macports . We’re also going to need maven. > sudo port install scala > sudo port install maven2 Scala seems to have moved their repository to github, and the old google code repository no longer works. Assuming you have git installed (if not, there’s an OS X installer here) : ...

August 17, 2009 · 2 min · Dave Perrett

Flushing the DNS cache on OS X

I often find that OS X refuses to obey my /etc/hosts file for some time after I change it. It seems that often you have to manually flush the DNS cache by hand to force host file changes to take effect. Under pre-leopard systems, use lookupd : > sudo lookupd -flushcache Starting with Leopard, lookupd has been replaced with dscacheutil : > sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

August 5, 2009 · 1 min · Dave Perrett

HTTPSHandler error using python 2.5 and GAE on OS X

If you are getting an error complaining that ‘module’ object has no attribute ‘HTTPSHandler’ running python 2.5 on OS X : ...

June 6, 2009 · 1 min · Dave Perrett