#osx

How To Install Java 7 on Mac OS X

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For most, this would come in handy with those using the lat­est brows­er exten­sion­s/add-ons that use Java, espe­cial­ly ver­sion 7 (in the time of this writ­ing). There are two ways to go about this. First, for most users, they just need the JRE. The sec­ond are those doing devel­op­ment work and need the JDK.

Before we start the instal­la­tion process, let’s start with some pre­flight check and do the fol­low­ing in Ter­mi­nal prompt:

$ java -version

This will give you 1.6.x of some degree. Now, let’s start the instal­la­tion.

If you just need the JRE:

  1. Down­load the JRE here.
  2. Fol­low the instruc­tions, and install onto your OS X sys­tem.
  3. In your ~/.profile,1 add the fol­low­ing: 
    export JAVA_HOME="/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home"
  4. Open a new Ter­mi­nal win­dow, and run the fol­low­ing to check you are run­ning the intend­ed ver­sion: 
    $ java -version

    This should give you some­thing like the fol­low­ing results:

    $ java -version
java version "1.7.0_67"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_67-b01)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.65-b04, mixed mode)

For those that need the JDK, and run­ning Home­brew, you may do the fol­low­ing:

  1. Down­load the JDK here.
  2. Install jenv via Home­brew:2 
    $ brew tap jenv/jenv
$ bre install jenv

    More info here.

  3. Add the fol­low­ing in your Bash files by run­ning these in Ter­mi­nal:3 
    $ echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.jenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.profile
$ echo 'eval "$(jenv init -)"' >> ~/.profile
  4. Con­fig­ure jenv by run­ning the fol­low­ing for exam­ple: 
    $ jenv add /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk17011.jdk/Contents/Home
oracle64-1.7.0.11 added
  5. Last but not least, check that you are run­ning the intend­ed ver­sion in Ter­mi­nal: 
    $ java -version

I hope that helps.

  1. Or .bashrc, .bash_profile, etc. [↩]
  2. Be sure to brew udpate and run brew doc­tor before adding any new pack­ages, always. [↩]
  3. Again, these can be .bashrc, .bash_profile, etc. [↩]

Screenstagram

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Screen­sta­gram—pret­ty cool screen­saver for Mac OSX.

Screen­sta­gram dis­plays pho­tos from Insta­gram. It can show you your friends’ pho­tos or pho­tos from the Insta­gram pop­u­lar feed, which con­tains high­ly rat­ed pho­tos from across the Insta­gram com­mu­ni­ty.

Here’s a video of it doing its thing.

Down­load it for free here.

Use Google.com Search Instead of Country Redirect Version

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For those trav­el­ling with their lap­tops and have used Google search, you may have noticed that it does a coun­try redi­rect based on your IP address. For exam­ple, I vis­it­ed the Philip­pines this past month and instead of the usu­al google.com, it redi­rect­ed and used google.com.ph. After get­ting back to the US, my search­es would still redi­rect to using the .ph ver­sion. I even checked that the Search Engines set­tings (in this case in Chrome/OSX) did­n’t have it.

Any­ways, in case you run into the same sit­u­a­tion, do the fol­low­ing:

  1. Open up Ter­mi­nal
  2. Go to ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome
  3. Open the file “Local State” either w/ vi or a text edi­tor
  4. Search for the strings “last_known_google_url” and “last_prompted_google_url” and replace their val­ues to your pre­ferred Google base URL. In my case, “http://www.google.com/”.
  5. Save the file and exit
  6. Restart Chrome.

That should do the trick. For Win­dows and oth­er sys­tems, you may check out this page for the steps. Almost the same, just dif­fer­ent paths.

Hope that helps.

Quicksilver Shelf Plugin — My First Screencast

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As I was try­ing to kill time, I was research­ing Quick­sil­ver extend­abil­i­ty oth­er than just quick-launch­ing apps. Yes, I know Spot­light does it from the get-go.

My search led to a Lifehacker.com arti­cle (as usu­al, with this kind of things) writ­ten a while back about Gina Tra­pani’s Top 10 Quick­sil­ver Plu­g­ins (at the time: Novem­ber 2007). One of the plu­g­ins that intrigued me to check out was the Shelf module/plugin.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →