Leap’s macOS Python SDK releases have fallen behind, so there is a bit of jiggery needed to get the latest version (2.3.1 as of this post) working on the Apple M1 chip. Download the Leap Motion SDK Install the included client Leap Motion.pkg (this will also install the debug visualizer). Frameworks have been moved from /Library/Frameworks to /System/Library/Frameworks in the most recent macOS releases, so let’s help Leap find it with a symlink....

When hacking on even single file scripts, you almost always will want a virtual environment to pull in that library with that one function you don’t want to rewrite. That’s all fine and dandy, except there suddenly becomes a lot of mental overhead to managing and cleaning up after the virtual env. A simple makefile can go a long way to keep a simple script easy to run. .PHONY: clean run shell test SHELL = /bin/bash FILE = main....

macOS Catalina has a lot of background media processing daemons that hog idle processing power on my old MacBook Air. The result is lots of distracting fan noise as the old machine tries to cope with the load. These daemons can’t be disabled and are of marginal value to me, so the idea is to let them run only when the Photos app open and otherwise kill them off. Here’s a little script to slay your daemons:...