Zoom/Maximize for Mac OS X Snow Leopard

The Apple behavior of the Zoom/Maximize button is annoying. It behaves differently for *every* application and the intended 'use only as much space as you need' does not work at all because window contents are dynamic.

The application RightZoom fixes this. It took me ages until a friend of mine pointed me at it:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/30591/right-zoom

How to manipulate (move/delete/ignore) time machine backups: fsaclctl

When I tried to move some time machine backups out of the way (so that the Migration Assistant/Migrationsassistent) would not find them (and would use an older, more useful backup) I always got:

Operation not permitted

Changing the UNIX wrx permissions with chmod did not work (no effect). Some googling revealed that the permissions are controlled by ACLs (access control lists). With Leopard these can be disabled for the whole disk with

sudo fsactctl -p /Volume/MyVolumeName -d

Now Snow Leopard does not have fsaclctl. But apparently you can just use the one you have from Leopard. You can just copy /usr/sbin/fsaclctl from one of your Leopard time machine backups to /usr/sbin of your Snow Leopard machine.

This post gave the hint: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=105879

iSight camera stops working in Skype or iChat after installing eyetv hybrid

I just installed eyetv hybrid and after that I could not use my integrated iSight camera (in my Mac Book Pro) with Skype or iChat. They would simply say: No camera connected.

Fixing this:

However, starting Photo Booth once fixed this issue. After starting Photo Boot (which showed that the iSight camera works) and just closing it Skype and iChat video worked again. I assume that the eyetv installation just disabled the existing video devices and forgot to insert them again and that Photo Booth does a better initialization than Skype or iChat.

Of course I assume a reboot would fix this as well, but who likes rebooting all the time. After all why do I have a Mac. :-)