SaudiMac

MacBreak 33: The Distracted Mac (Direct MOV Download)





Although it covers a lot of the same ground as a previous MacBreak we did on the subject, I think Leo and my segment on un-distract-ifying your Mac turned out pretty good (my atrocious hairstyle at shoot time notwithstanding). Download 10:28 MOV file now…


Here’s the apps and tricks that we covered, with links:

• Hide Others - In the front app, select “[Application name menu] > Hide Others“


• Turn [Dock] Hiding On - In the Dock, CTRL-Click the Dock’s vertical separator bar, and select “Turn Hiding On“


• Backdrop - Create a black background that still lets you easily interact with Desktop contents


• MenuShade - Alter the brightness of your Menu — or totally black it out, like I do


• Spirited Away — Hides non-active applications after the interval of your choice (thanks for the legacy download link, Don)


• Path Finder - Totally tricked out Finder on steroids that I love love love; where I made the Desktop black and hid all mounted drives, folders, etc. (doable in the regular Finder, too)


• Hazel - Automagically clean up the contents of folders and the Desktop (e.g., “move old MP3s here” or “archive files older than a week” etc.)


• Textmate - My favorite text editor. Which I apparently love to plug for no particular reason.

Edit 2006-12-21 16:51:22: Check after the cut for reader suggestions from comments for this post…

Recommended by 43f readers in comments

• Witch - “Witch lets you access all of your windows by pressing a shortcut and choosing from a clearly arranged list of window titles…”


• Desktopple - “With Desktopple, you can quickly and easily hide all of your Desktop clutter.”


• LiteSwitch X - Merlin’s fave app switcher; handy also for quitting, hiding, or restarting apps without changing focus


• [unsanity] WindowShade X - Hack control of your Finder Windows


• Menufela - “Menufela is a haxie that lets you hide away the menubar and/or get rid of the spotlight menu item.”


• Doodim - “Doodim permits one to dim the background of the foremost application thereby enhancing its visibility.”


• ianhenderson.org - megazoomer - “Megazoomer makes windows full-screen. “


• WriteRoom | Hog Bay Software - “WriteRoom is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment.”

(Via 43 Folders.)

When I came across this tip at macosxhints.com today, my jaw dropped. It has to be the most brilliant use of the iSight yet. Seriously. It describes how to make your iSight snap pictures any time someone tries to log into your Mac and fails. Now you can catch your jealous roommate in the act.
It requires a tiny bit of technical knowledge, but the author of the hint has repackaged the required code as an installation package to make it easy. For those interested in how it’s done, it’s a little bit of a Unix hack. Basically, it uses a script that watches the end of a log for a failed login attempt and when the appropriate line is written, your iSight is invoked and takes a picture.
No doubt you could hack this even further to upload the pictures to somewhere on the net. That is left as an exercise for the reader.

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(Via MacUser.)

Collection of free applications for your mac...

I’ve long been interested in Open Source applications for proprietary Operating Systems like Microsoft Windows and, more recently, Mac OS X. I’ve only been a Mac user for less than 2 years. But, I’ve been learning a lot by collecting F/FOSS (and free web based services) information on my personal blog as a learning tool. I thought some MacDevCenter readers might find some of the Mac F/FOSS findings interesting too. So, I’ll be posting summaries from my blog here whenever I have an interesting list to contribute. And, if you know of interesting/useful F/FOSS for Mac OS X, please let me know!

• Nvu: WYSIWYG HTML Editor

We used to hand code HTML for web pages in the old days. Tools like Frontpage, Dreamweaver, and even good old Windows’ Notepad were commonly used by web developers in those dark days. These days most of us use some kind of Content Mangement System (CMS) or outsource it to a blogging or web management site (often for free). But, every now and then a WYSIWIG HTML editor comes in handy. For me, that now and then event is usually creating some kind of product information table for a product review (such as the ones I sometimes write for the O’Reilly Network. The…

• AppleJack Mac Troubleshooter

I haven’t found myself in the position to need this yet. But, the Open Source AppleJack sounds like something I should learn more about… just in case. It drops you into Mac OS X’s Single User Mode text interface (very familiar to UNIX related OS users) where you can access critical parts of the system to fix hard drive , permissions, caches, and swap file problems.

• jEdit Programmer’s Editor

Unlike many programmers who use a single text editor for nearly all tasks, I tend to use a couple of different ones: vi (vim) or nedit for quick edits on UNIX/Linux systems, notepad++ for quick edits on Windows systems, and TextEdit for quick edits on Mac boxes. However, if I know I will be working on something for an extended period, I often choose to us jEdit Programmer’s Text Editor. jEdit is a Java-based application with a rich feature set and a larger body of communinty contributed add-on plugin modules. This multi-platform Open Source editor runs on everything I use: Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. This means that I don’t have to adjust much in the way of muscle-memory-typing to get things done regardless of what platform I’m using at the time.

• CyberDuck 2.7 (Mac OS X)

The Mac OS X Open Source ftp/sftp client CyberDuck 2.7 was just updated. If you’re looking for a GUI ftp client to use on the Mac (or even old UNIX hacks like me who still mostly use ftp and scp from the terminal command line), you might want to take a look at the rich feature set in this Open Source app. In addition to ftp/sftp file transfers, it supports using an external editor for remote file editing and provides a Dashboard widget.

• The R Project for Statistical Computing

The R Project for Statistical Computing is an Open Source application with binary installation routines for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. It is much much more than a simple statistical package. R provides an interpreted statistical programming language that looks a lot like S. The resemblance is so strong that I can use my old S language reference books to work with R.

R provides a graphing facility that goes far beyond what you might have used in spreadsheets like Excel.
R version 2.4.0 was just released last month (October 3).

• stikkit: Web Yellow Sticky Notes

stikkit describes their currently free beta-release web product as the digital equivalent of a sticky note: the easiest thing you can grab to jot down an idea or reminder. As you type, Stikkit watches for appointments, to-dos, people, bookmarks and more, magically extracting and organizing the important details.
I just started playing with it today. And, it does seem like something worth returning for some further testing. One of its interesting features is the ability to share a sticky note with other people.

• CoreDuoTemp

CoreDuoTemp is a freeware utility for Intel Macs that gives you information about the Mac’s internal temperature and CPU speed.
If you moved from an iBook G4 (which runs very cool) to a 2GHz MacBook (which tends to run hot) like me, you probably had this utility running a lot during this past summer.

(Via Mac DevCenter.)

Blogger David Winter has a posted a cute how-to showing you how to change the prompt in your terminal to the ">:" used in Lost.

Basically, you update your .zprofile or .bashrc or .kshrc to include the line export PS1=">: ". Me? I'm a csh weenie. I'd have to use set prompt=">: " to get the same effect. (The same thing applies for tcsh users.)

Winter also includes instructions on how to get the green-on-black color settings used in the program.

4 8 15 16 23 42 and all that.

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(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

OS X Daily has a nice list of OS X command-line utilities today that you may have forgotten about or might never have encountered. For example, the article suggests using ifconfig to check your IP address or lsbom to peek at the contents of an OS X installer package. If the notion of extending your command line vocabulary appeals, it's worth a visit to this quick article. You might pick up a trick or two you can incorporate into your day-to-day routines.

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(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

Apple just went nuts releasing a slew of iPod 101 support documents, most likely just in time for all the iPod-toting user who are about to unwillingly embark on a new side career this holiday season: supporting their family members and friends who just got their own little white (or black, or pink...) music player. Instead of forcing you to trudge through Apple's Support docs, using their less-than-stellar search, I thought I'd link everything I found for your bookmarking pleasure. Don't forget the last doc about backing up one's library, as well as the backup overview our own Scott McNulty wrote about this rocking new feature when iTunes 7 launched:

• iPod 101: Beef Up My Battery
• iPod 101: View Videos
• iPod 101: Set Up a Slideshow
• iPod 101: Eyeball my Artwork
• iPod 101: Put Pictures on my iPod
• iPod 101: Give the Gift
• iPod 101: Browse and Buy Videos
• iPod 101: Tour the Store
• iPod 101: Set Up an iTunes Store Account
• iPod 101: Lay of the Land
• iPod 101: What's On the Menu?
• iPod 101: Installing and Updating Software
• iPod 101: Which Files Work With iPod and iTunes

and of course, the ever-pertinent:

• iPod 101: Backing Up Your Library

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(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

Good news for the people of New Zealand. Thats one less country until Saudi Arabia, Apple, we are waiting.

After tons of rumors and speculation, the New Zealand iTunes store debuted today. The online store offers over two million songs, with individual tracks priced at NZ$1.79, music videos at NZ$3.59 and many albums at NZ$17.99. Many New Zealand artists are featured exclusively in the New Zealand store, including Fat Freddy's Drop, Brooke Fraser, Tim Finn, The Datsuns and Bic Runga as well as extensive catalogues from New Zealand greats including Shihad, Crowded House, The Black Seeds, Breaks Co-Op, Elemeno P and Dei Hamo.

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(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)