Various Mac OS X Tips

As of iTunes 4.8 and 4.9, some MP3 files will show up as having a "Kind" of "Quicktime movie file", despite the fact that they really are just MP3 files. When this happens, the files can't be burned to an audio CD, they won't play over AirTunes, and they can't be dropped off to an iPod. This page discusses the causes and includes an AppleScript that can fix these music files.

This page shows a way to create a Perl daemon to listen for connections from another Perl script that can be run from a cron job. This particular tip uses the Unix reminders program to send calendar information to Growl, but this could be customized pretty easily for other uses.

The Calculator application in Panther no longer updates its currency conversion rates via the Internet. This Perl script can be used to update the rates once again.

A short Perl script for monitoring a server. Put it in a cron job and it'll alert you when your server goes down.