Running Tomboy Note-Taking App on Mac

When running Tomboy 1.10.2 on Mac OS X Lion with Mono 2.10.9 installed, I got this error:-

Unhandled Exception: System.TypeInitializationException: An exception was thrown by the type initializer for IgeMacIntegration.IgeMacDock ---> System.EntryPointNotFoundException: ige_mac_dock_get_type

I found that the ige-mac-integration-sharp.dll library used by Tomboy is not compatible with libigemacintegration.dylib in Mono 2.10.9 (some external functions don't exist any more). I'm new to Mono and this library and I just wanted to get Tomboy to run on Mac and also wanted to keep the latest version of Mono so I did a dirty fix by doing the following:-

• Build Tomboy.

git clone git://git.gnome.org/tomboy
xbuild Tomboy-mac.sln
./bundle-mac-app.sh

• Copy libigemacintegration.0.0.0.dylib from Mono 2.6.x to Tomboy.app/Contents/MacOS and rename it to libigemacintegration.dylib
  
  
• Transfer all notes from my Ubuntu machine to Mac.

cp /Volumes/tom-ubuntu/.local/share/tomboy/*.note /Users/tomtanti/Library/Application Support/Tomboy/

• Run Tomboy for testing.

open Tomboy.app

• Move Tomboy.app to Applications so that I can simply run it from there in the future.

Update (2013-08-17):
New instructions for running Tomboy with Mono 3.2

Refs

• https://live.gnome.org/Tomboy/Building/Mac
• http://www.sysr.co.uk/2011/09/08/tomboy-notes-does-not-work-on-mac-osx-snow-leopardlion-10-6-10-7/
• https://live.gnome.org/Tomboy/Directories

Firefox 10 keeps crashing

After upgrading to Firefox 10, the new version kept crashing every time I opened it. Running it in safe mode (firefox -safe-mode) didn't help.

I ended up creating a new profile to fix this problem using the following command and switch:-

firefox -P

All plugins were gone and needed reinstalling. I could get some data back though from the old profile folder in

/home/tom/.mozilla/firefox/xxxx.default

Refs
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11595179

Make Eclipse look better on Ubuntu

• Compact the look and fix unreadable selected entry in content assist in some themes (e.g. Ambience) by creating a new text file called "gtkrc" (a stylesheet file for GTK apps) with the following content:- 

gtk-color-scheme = "selected_text_color:#000000"
style "compact"
{
  GtkButton::default_border={0,0,0,0}
  GtkButton::default_outside_border={0,0,0,0}
  GtkButtonBox::child_min_width=0
  GtkButtonBox::child_min_heigth=0
  GtkButtonBox::child_internal_pad_x=0
  GtkButtonBox::child_internal_pad_y=0
  GtkMenu::vertical-padding=1
  GtkMenuBar::internal_padding=1
  GtkMenuItem::horizontal_padding=4
  GtkToolbar::internal-padding=1
  GtkToolbar::space-size=1
  GtkOptionMenu::indicator_size=0
  GtkOptionMenu::indicator_spacing=0
  GtkPaned::handle_size=4
  GtkRange::trough_border=0
  GtkRange::stepper_spacing=0
  GtkScale::value_spacing=0
  GtkScrolledWindow::scrollbar_spacing=0
  GtkExpander::expander_size=10
  GtkExpander::expander_spacing=0
  GtkTreeView::vertical-separator=0
  GtkTreeView::horizontal-separator=0
  GtkTreeView::expander-size=12
  GtkTreeView::fixed-height-mode=TRUE
  GtkWidget::focus_padding=0

  font_name="Liberation Sans,Sans Regular 8"
  text[SELECTED] = @selected_text_color
}
class "GtkWidget" style "compact"
style "compact2"
{
  xthickness=1
  ythickness=1
}
class "GtkButton" style "compact2"
class "GtkToolbar" style "compact2"
class "GtkPaned" style "compact2" 

• To use the above stylesheet with Eclipse (my version is Indigo - 3.7.1), run Eclipse like this:-

GTK2_RC_FILES=$GTK2_RC_FILES:/somewhere_1/gtkrc /somewhere_2/eclipse

• Make tooltip readable by using #000000 as its foreground colour (tooltip_fg_color) and #f5f5b5 as background (tooltip_bg_color) in the following files:- 

/usr/share/themes/<your-current-theme>/gtk-3.0/settings.ini
/usr/share/themes/<your-current-theme>/gtk-3.0/gtk.css
/usr/share/themes/<your-current-theme>/gtk-2.0/gtkrc

• Install Eclipse theme colour plugin and may want to try my TumCode theme which keeps the number of colours to the minimum.
   
• Replace the default "Monospace" font with "Liberation Mono" and optionally reduce the font size to 8 or 9.

Windows -> Preferences -> General -> Appearance -> Colors and Fonts

(for Java Editor Text Font, Javadoc display font, Properties File Editor Text Font, etc.)

Here is how it looks after the above changes:-

Refs
http://blog.xam.dk/?p=70 
http://askubuntu.com/questions/70599/how-to-change-tooltip-background-color-in-unity
http://blog.valotas.com/2010/02/eclipse-on-linux-make-it-look-good.html

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year. May the season bring you and your family joy and peace.

An error occurred while dispatching a duplicated socket: this handle is now leaked in the process

The error kept coming up in the System event logs on Microsoft Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2011.

To fix this, change maxPendingAccepts from 2 to 10 in SMSvcHost.exe.config

<net.tcp maxPendingAccepts="10" ... >

Refs
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andreal/archive/2009/04/05/net-tcp-ip-port-sharing.aspx

VirtualBox: Failed to access the USB subsystem

To fix this error, just add the user name to the "vboxusers" group but the User Accounts manager in Ubuntu 11.10 is quite terrible, too simple to be useful so use a command line to do this instead:-

sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers <user-name>

The other option is to install and run the old Accounts manager.

sudo apt-get install gnome-system-tools
users-admin

Refs
http://www.liberiangeek.net/2011/10/add-users-to-existing-groups-in-ubuntu-11-10-oneiric-ocelot-2/
http://linux-software-news-tutorials.blogspot.com/2011/11/restore-old-account-manager-in-ubuntu.html

Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap"

I got the following warning when running the update-java tool.

(gksudo:5045): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap"

To fix it, run

sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-pixbuf

Refs
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/quickly/+bug/853232