Ever since yesterday's defaults write question and then post, I have been doing some fun research on what else is possible with defaults write
Note:Most of these changes require you to restart the finder after entering these into Terminal.app killall Finder.

change your screenshot file format: defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleScreenShotFormat JPEG or TIFF or PNG or PICT
Disable outlines around icon names on the desktop: defaults write NSGlobalDomain Desktop.HasDarkBackground 0
Show trash on the desktop: defaults write com.apple.finder Desktop.HasTrash 1
Configure AFP to exclusively use SSH
Create a login hook
Finally...when someone is driving you completely insane and it is time to show them not to mess with tech support...defaults write com.apple.Finder AllowCutForItems true This neat trick takes everything you cut but not paste. Everything you cut goes into the trash and not to the clipboard. April Fools!

As you can see, there are endless cool things you can do with defaults write. Check out the defaults man pages!
[tags]defaults write, Finder, Mac OS X[/tags]

A Mac OS X/UNIX newbie asked me if there was any way to show all the hidden files in Mac OS X so that he could browse the UNIX directories when using the Finder. Since there may be others out there that have the same need/want I thought I would share an easy way to show and then hide all hidden files within the Finder.

To show hidden files: open the Terminal application and type: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE. In order for the Finder to recognize the change, restart the Finder by then typing: killall Finder.
To hide hidden files: open the Terminal application and type: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE. In order for the Finder to recognize the change, restart the Finder by then typing: killall Finder.
[tags]Hidden Files,defaults write, Mac OS X[/tags]

Set Up: Mac OS X Client OS, one network card, and multiple Virtual Hosts (three of the Virtual Hosts need SSL certificates) using Apache.
Problem: I have been using Virtual Hosts with Apache for a few years and until now, I have only had one web site that has needed a SSL certificate. After rethinking site security, I decided at least two additional web sites needed SSL certificates so no passwords were sent as clear text while using http basic authentication. However, my current Virtual Host setup only supports one SSL certificate...and I need to use three.

Basic Apache background:
When configuring multiple Virtual Hosts in Apache, you can use IP-based Virtual Hosts, or name-based Virtual Hosts. (When using IP-based Virtual Hosts, the server uses an IP address for each Virtual Host. When using name-based Virtual Hosts, all sites use the same IP address and the client's browser sends the name of the site with each request. Apache then uses the name to determine which host should serve the request.) The problem with using name-based Virtual Hosts is that the host name is contained in the data stream (which is encrypted by SSL). In ... [more]

If you find yourself developing more than one web site at home, or anywhere with a *NIX machine with Apache, and want to be able to access all the sites for testing, it is time to set up Virtual Hosts. By using Virtual Hosts, you can access all your web sites easily (especially if you use absolute links) and separately by typing in: http://jappler/ and http://bareminimum/ and http://other. How does this work? Like I mentioned before, the first step is to set up Virtual Hosts. The second step is to edit your /etc/hosts file so you can assign names to your localhost address (jappler for http://jappler/)
Setting up Virtual Hosts

To set up virtual hosts, you will need to edit your Apache configuration (sudo pico /etc/httpd/httpd.conf). You can make a number of changes in the Apache configuration to set up an environment that is right for you, but for now, all you are concerned about is located at the end of the standard config file.
Uncomment the line: NameVirtualHost *:80 (delete the number sign in front of the line)
Add in your Virtual Hosts information:
< virtualhost *:80 >
ServerAdmin youremailaddress@whatever.com
... [more]