Tag: cross-platform

One User, Many Computers

I've tried a few solutions for using multiple computers (mostly one MacBook plus one or two Windows machines) simultaneously and I've currently landed on http://synergy-project.org/ as the One for Me.

It's very good. It's pretty seamless (last year less so, this years seems perfect) : put 3 machines next to each other, move your mouse across the 3 screens, and control and type into whichever computer has mouse focus. It's particularly a good solution when some of your machine are laptops and you want to use the laptop screens.

Alternatives I've tried:

  • VNC and remote desktop style solutions have worked best for me when I have multiple monitors on a single machine. The irritation is when your local monitor isn't as big as you want for the remote machine and you end up with a scrolling window. The itch that remote desktop solutions don't scratch though is when some of your machines are laptops, and then you want to use the laptop screen. Of the various options, TeamViewer and MS Remote Desktop seem the fastest; I haven't yet seen a fast solution for Mac.
  • When I don't need a gui, I find ssh or similar is really good. Even a modest monitor easily has room for multiple console windows. A reminder perhaps that guis are not always the bee's knees.

Using Outlook.com email with older iPad/iPhone, Android device or Mail client

If you have a new enough iThing or other device, then you'll find "Outlook.com" as one of the options when you create a new Mail/Calendar/Contacts account.
If your device is a bit older – iOS6 or iOS5 or earlier – or is OS X or Android, you may not have an Outlook.com option. But you probably have got an option for adding an MS Exchange or an Exchange ActiveSync account. This works well with outlook.com so long as you know the right settings. This worked for my iPad and older Android phone:

Email and password: <your actual email address and password that you can use to login to outlook.com with>
Then on the settings page you need:
Server: s.outlook.com
Username: An outlook.com alias, including the @outlook.com bit, which you can use to log in to outlook. This may or may not be identical to your email address
Domain: First try it empty; otherwise try outlook.com

And that should Just Work. Using outlook.com with a non-outlook email address, I find that this set up picks up the Default From Address that I set via the web interface.

Mono MVC System.UnauthorizedAccessException Access to the path “/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/…/etc/mono/registry” is denied

Is an error you are likely to see if you run a Visual Studio MVC template in Mono. There are two options for fixing it.

  • Do this from the command line: 
    sudo mkdir /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/3.2.5/etc/mono/registry
sudo chmod g+rwx /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/3.2.5/etc/mono/registry

    (replacing 3.2.5 with your mono version, which you get at the command line with mono --version)

  • Or delete the reference to Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.dll from the project and delete it from the bin directory too.

The important difference is that deleting Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.dll will stop your project working on .Net, so the registry access is simpler for cross-platformers. Another option for cross-platform project files would be something like this in the .csproj file:

<Target Name="AfterBuild">
    <Delete Files="$(WebProjectOutputDir)\bin\Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.dll" Condition=" '$(OS)' != 'Windows_NT'" />
  </Target>

I prefer the 'grant access to the registry approach' myself but it does mean having to re-run the 2 line script for every new version of mono.

Compile & Build Mono on Mac OS X

In spite of what you might still read on http://www.mono-project.com/, mono source moved to github.com/mono/mono. To build and compile on the mac however the simplest instructions are still the "One Stop Shop Build Script" at the bottom of http://www.mono-project.com/Compiling_Mono_on_OSX. They worked for me first time although I hit a couple of issues:

  1. Having a space in the path to where I built it broke the build script
  2. Fetching the mono repo from git failed several times. This may - or may not - be related to the OS X 10.9 Mavericks / Versions issue noted at http://www.git-tower.com/blog/make-git-rebase-safe-on-osx/ but I've had no further problems since following their instruction to 
    git config --global core.trustctime false