I finally got round to reading my copy of the wonderful O'Reilly Mac OS X Panther Hacks book, which, like all of the hacks books, is clever, informative, well-organised and useful; this one has the additional merit of having been co-written by my pal Rael Dornfest, who edits the line, and is witty, silly and very imaginative indeed. The hacks assembled in the text range from surprising things you can do with iTunes and iCal to hacking AppleScript to making OS X cooperate with perl and Python, but my favorite of all is the iOscillate: an iSight camera mounted to the top of a de-bladed oscillating desk-fan, so that the fan sweeps the iSight back and forth in a steady, 180-degree arc, covering all those seated around a table or in a conference. The hack is truly worthy of the appellation "hack" — it's ingenious, funny, and actually useful in a seriously bent way.
Update: Leo sez, "You can read some excerpts (three hacks chosen by Rael) from the book here and see plus learn how to make that iOscillate thing.
