This is howto shows how you can install newsbeuter 2.1 on Mac OS X. First you have install some required libraries using MacPorts, a packet-manager on the Mac. MacPorts is very similar to FreeBSD’s ports system.

1. The curses-based widget set Structured Terminal Forms Language/Library (STFL) delivers the graphical frontend for newsbeuter.
   
   <strong>sudo port install stfl</strong>

   1	<strong>sudo port install stfl</strong>

2. The GNU readline library gives users basic line-editing features as known from simple editors like emacs or vi.
   
   <strong>sudo port install readline</strong>

   1	<strong>sudo port install readline</strong>

3. Other dependencies are the embedded database SQLite for storing the blog entries, libcurl for transferring files from the Web and pkg-config for managing installed libraries and compile options.
   
   <strong>sudo port install sqlite3 libcurl pkgconfig</strong>

   1	<strong>sudo port install sqlite3 libcurl pkgconfig</strong>

4. The latest available mac-compatible newsbeuter version can be found here (click on download). It’s dated July 22nd. This thread explains that jperras had to do some minimal modifications to newsbeuter itself to make it compile on osx. If you prefer, you can make the same change to the 2.0 release or current HEAD to get a compiling version for Mac. The necessary change is to the file: src/utils.cpp:

Studies have shown that theachers in the US did not increase their efficiency with the help of of computers: in the double-blind experiments (I ask myself how they did that) the effects were negliegible or evene negative. The bottom line seems to be that a teacher can achieve the same efficiency without any technology.

The university in Waterloo I have see many CS professors that followed this idea and presented using only a white board. Depending on how prepared they were, this approach was successfull. On the other hand most of them had no special presentation training in their career and might not have learned the essential skills for good powerpoint presentations.  I’ve only once taught a series of tutorial sessions on a black board and found it extremely hard to keep my line of thought while at the same time writing or drawing something on the board. Additionally I find it very tedious to draw any kind of diagram on a board (think how funny it is, when the lecturer needs 2 minutes to draw a circle). At the same time you have up to 40 eyes staring holes in your back and waiting impatiently for you to finish.

So for me it’s not really an option to learn all the skills necessary to give very good computer-less presentation and I find that I can spend my time much more efficiently honing my powerpoint skills.

In this how-to I describe how I installed Windows 7 64bit without a DVD drive on my mac. My SuperDrive stopped working nearly a year ago and I haven’t really missed it that much to pay Apple’s huge repair costs or order a replacement drive and install it myself. Anyways; installing without a DVD drive is possible.

There are a couple of How-to floating around that use Windows on a USB stick as an installation medium, but I found a how-to that only uses a USB stick to be able to change the startup disk’s MBR. In short you’ll need these things:

1. An ISO image of Windows 7
2. A clone of your Mac partition or a bootable version of the Mac OS X installer on a USB drive
3. A computer running Windows with a working DVD drive to get Boot camp drivers

Most of the details are specified in the excellent how-to, but you can just boot from the clone or the installer on the USB drive. To get a clone of your startup disk just use tools like CCC or SuperDuper! to backup to an external hard disk.

Just a caveat: Make sure your Boot camp partition is big enough. It is extremely hard to increase the size of the Bootcamp partition. It normally involves deleting the partition and using the Boot camp assistant again.

To get power management and your apple keyboard to work you will have to install the Boot camp drivers after installing Windows. The Snow Leopard DVD is a dual DVD for PC/mac. When opened on any Windows PC, the DVD contains a setup utility and any drivers for your mac’s hardware. Some of the hardware are actually standard components like the graphics or sound card, but the mac-specific keyboard and power management can only beg used with these drivers.

To get the drivers on your mac, just copy the DVD’s contents on another DVD drive and open it in your newly installed Windows 7. The setup.exe unfortunately fails on 64bit Windows versions, but you can simply execute:

in the directory “Boot CampDriversApple” and the installer will start without any complains. After that you can enjoy your new OS !