Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Still having cold symptoms, stayed home. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Chicken soup for lunch. Watched Margaret Cho's "I'm the One That I Want" on Netflix Instant Watch feature. It's now available on Mac but you have to install Microsoft Silverlight first. Dinner at home with Patrick: spinach-ricotta ravioli in marinara sauce, bread, Smart Balance Light. Watched Heroes season 3 episode 2 on Netflix Instant Watch with Patrick.

Instructions for deleting Thumbs.db files found on a Mac are easy to find on the web, but I could not find any instructions for hiding Thumbs.db files in Finder. I frequently use VMware Fusion with Windows Vista, and Vista's thumbnail views are, in some ways, better than Finder's in OS X. So the Thumbs.db files are useful to me, but only in Vista. I don't want or need to see them in Finder in OS 10. To make Thumbs.db files hidden in Finder in Mac OS X, there are 2 steps.

  1. Install the developer tools from your OS X DVD. (You'll need the setfile command that it installs.)
  2. Open Terminal and enter:
    /usr/bin/find /Users/abelincoln -name Thumbs.db -exec /usr/bin/setfile -a V {} \;

    where abelincoln is your username. The -a flag for setfile specifies attributes you want changed. V says make the file invisible.

To make this happen automatically, say, at 4:00 AM every day, add this line to your crontab:
0 4 * * * /usr/bin/find /Users/abelincoln -name Thumbs.db -exec /usr/bin/setfile -a V {} \;

To make all Thumbs.db files visible, use a lowercase v instead:
/usr/bin/find /Users/abelincoln -name Thumbs.db -exec /usr/bin/setfile -a v {} \;

I'm using 10.5.5 but this would likely work for older and newer versions.