A command-line tool which allows basic CVS-style operations on Time Machine backups.

ARPWatch/Log Watcher — A tool that monitors your network activity and keeps a record of IP/Mac address pairings and firewall logs. It will give a warning when it notices any suspicious activity, like any changes in Mac address or any connection attempt to the firewall. [via]

I must confess that I am an addict. I have become addicted to creating computer-generated images. Having recently posted about Processing and Oxidizer, I have found another image generator called “Context Free.”

Context Free “is a program that generates images from written instructions called a grammar. The program follows the instructions in a few seconds to create images that can contain millions of shapes.”

Creating images with the software is a piece of cake. One can download from a gallery of “grammar” files or create your own scripts. Downloaded scripts can have their output modified by entering a three-character code into the Context Free application, leading to millions of permutations of the work.

It’s a fascinating program to play around with and some of the output is simply stunning.

Best of all — the software is free, open-source and is available for Windows, OS X and various flavours of Unix.

An open-source replacement for .mac services.

An Internet notification platform that works on both Windows and Mac (including support for Growl). “Using Stitcho, your website can send real-time notifcations directly to a user’s desktop, even when their web browser is closed.”

Having read Smashing Magazine’s recent article, “35 Phenomenal Fractal Art Pictures” and being stunned by the images presented within, I wanted to have a go at creating my own fractal flame image.

A quick Google led me to the free OS X software, Oxidizer. A few minutes of experimenting and I was soon creating great fractal images of my own.

It’s great fun and I highly recommend you give it go. Post your best images in the comments.

A simple console shell which allows you to run SQL queries against an Apache logfile, something that can be very useful - especially at getting information which is not easily available via static logfile analysers. [via]

Restoring the Dogcow to the OS X Page Setup dialogue.

JavaScript can add a lot of special effects that can really improve the user’s experience. Here are 10 simple and clever JavaScript techniques that add an extra dose of usability to any website.

Hosted Ruby on Rails platform with high availability “elastic” scaling.