synergyc startup

i've been using synergy lately to share a keyboard and mouse between a linux box and my macbook. for whatever reason, synergy was crashing in daemon mode and i really hated keeping a terminal window open just to keep it running. so, with the help of lingon and launchd, i devised a nice solution that causes synergyc to launch in the background every time i login.

all you have to do is place the following snippet in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/net.sourceforge.synergy2.synergyc.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
 <key>Label</key>
 <string>net.sourceforge.synergy2.synergyc</string>
 <key>ProgramArguments</key>
 <array>
  <string>/opt/local/bin/synergyc</string>
  <string>-f</string>
  <string>-n</string>
  <string>macbook</string>
  <string>SERVER_HOSTNAME</string>
 </array>
 <key>RunAtLoad</key>
 <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Be sure to replace SERVER_HOSTNAME with the hostname of your server, modify the path to synergyc for your installation and delete or change the -n and the macbook to reflect your synergy configuration.

i do not have a 3g iphone

i don't have an iphone, but i'm not really all that upset about it. i went down to the apple store on a whim this morning to see if the line looked doable, and it was long, but not that long. so, i waited for a bit.

what surprised me was that despite all the hype, despite all the preparation, the line was slow. it was really slow. in an hour and a half, the line moved twice. i was really disappointed in that. i would have thought that they'd be a bit more efficient than that.

anyway, i'm patient. i'll wait a few days until they get a little better at getting people through the stores.

update

apparently there's an activation issue that's causing things to be so slow. so, i can't blame the retail people anymore, but some software engineer in cupertino is fearing for his life (or at least his livelihood) right now...

building protocol buffers with maven

i set up the maven build for protocol buffers and it looks like ted is not happy with my work. :-( seriously though, i wish he had a comments section so i could get a bit more detail about whether his gripe is with how protocol buffers are built or with maven itself. if he's unhappy with maven, +1 to that. (yes, i get annoyed with it too.) otherwise, i'd love to get some feedback on how to improve the build from both ted an everyone else.

no idea what i'm talking about? check out protobuf.