Charla, the wondeful open source application for chatting on Yahoo has an annoying problem - When you launch Charla, the text cursor is not defaulted to being in the chat input box. This means you have to click in the box, which is annoying.

However, Charla was written in Cocoa, so if you have the Apple Developer Tools, there is an easy fix:

1. Quit Charla
2. ctrl-click on the Charla application icon and choose “Show Package Contents”
3. Open the Contents folder
4. Open the resources folder
5. Double click on the file ‘MainMenu.nib’
6. Double click “Chat Window’ in the ‘MainMenu.nib’ window to open the Charla window
7. ctrl-drag from the “Chat Window” icon to the text input box. The input box will hilite with a blue border
8. In the NSWindow Info panel that opens, select ‘initialFirstResponder’ and click ‘Connect’
9. Choose Save from the File menu and quit Interface Builder

Now launch Charla and note that the text cursor is already blinking in the text input box!

Click here for an image to help you out.

If you have used iChat, you know that if you add a user to your address book with the same AIM account as one of your buddies, then you must quit/relaunch iChat in order to show the new name.

The proper way to change the name is to either ctrl-click (right click) on the buddy in your list and choose Get Info, or select the buddy and choose “Get Info” from the Buddies menu.

Then in the newly opened info panel, choose “Address Card” from the Show popup menu.

If you already have an address card for this person, click “Choose Address Card” to show a list of cards. It looks like a bug in that the “Choose” button on the sheet never is enabled, but you can double click on an entry to assign it.

You can also override the buddie’s picture, so it will always use the picture you drop into your address book for that user.

from MacInTouch:

“You wrote about adding e-mail accounts for $10/each; but the e-mail I got from Apple over the weekend says that additional e-mail accounts are $20.

Adding Email-Only Accounts

You can add up to ten 5MB email-only accounts to your full ..Mac membership, each for $20 a year. Keep the Mac.com name of an existing .Mac trial account or set up a brand-new account. Just log into .Mac, click Account in the navigation bar, and then Buy More. “

From Simeon:

“i figured out how to make an attached note for address or to do entries on the Palm Desktop that does the right thing on the palm when synced…

for To Do: attach to a new memo named ‘Handheld Note: To Do List’

for address book: attach to a new memo named ‘Handheld Note: Address Book’

for date book: attach to a new memo named ‘Handheld Note: Date Book’”

Article on new Linksys Bridge (more…)

Thanks to Roger for pointing this one out:

Add iCal events to your iPod

MacOS X 10.2 (Jaguar) includes an Applescript menu for your use, but it is not pre-installed. (more…)

I went to see my Doctor about an old mole that is looking worse. $45 and 1 minute later he referred me to a dermatologist. That guy is booked until December.

I knew I should have gone directly to a dermatologist!

Welcome to my new home! I have finally found a blogging application that is databased, www.moveabletype.org, thanks to Marc!

I will be experimenting with this, the URLs may change, you will be notified!

I am looking forward to generating a knowledge base of information I normally send out in email, to make it easier for people to keep track of me and also allow me the flexibility to generate specfic data for various pages. Let the experiment begin!