Moo! The Musings of a Plaid Cow

A good long time ago, there was a screencast of what you could do with FastScripts. Unfortunately, the screencast didn’t do it justice. The problem with doing a screen cast for an application/script launcher is that it is highly dependent on the applications and scripts that you have available. And, for the most part, this is not a tool that does things, it allows you to do things. So what do I have set up? Here is a sampling:

System Level

• iTunes control - Prev (F9), Play/Stop (F10), Next (F11)
• Ping GrowlTunes (Cmd-F10) - Ping GrowlTunes to re-show the current playing track.

Finder

• New Named Folder (Cmd-Shift-N) - Will suggest a name for a new folder (based on the selection), then move all of the files to that new folder
• Rename Files (Cmd-Shift-R) - Open the selected files with R-name
• Rotate Images (Cmd-Opt-R) - Rotate the selected images (a dialog asks clockwise or counter-clockwise)
• Move Files Up (Cmd-Shift-U) - Move the selected files to the parent folder.
• Move to Filename Folders - Move the selected files to folders based on a portion of the name.
• New Document (Cmd-Opt-N) - Create a new document of a type selected from a dialog. (Like a right click in windows.)
• View as Preview (Cmd-Shift-J) - Change to view by icon w/ large icons & show preview.
• View by Icon (Arranged by Name) (Cmd-Shift-1) - Changes to view by icon, sorted by name
• Slideshow in GraphicConverter (Cmd-Shift-D) - View the current folder as a slideshow in GraphicConverter
• Open Terminal Here (Cmd-Shift-T) - Open a Terminal session with the directory set to the current folder

Mail

• Mark Read (Cmd-T) - Mark the selected messages as read
• Mark Unread (Cmd-Shift-T) - Mark the selected messages as unread

iTunes

• Rename Files (Cmd-Shift-R) - Rename the currently selected files (based on the tag data)
• Organize Files (Cmd-Shift-O) - Move the currently selected files (based on the tag data)

Safari

• Open Text as New Tab (Cmd-Opt-T) - Opens a new tab with the selected text as the location

This is all I can come up with off the top of my head…and these are just ones with keyboard shortcuts. There are plenty of others that are just in the menu.

After looking at the concepts in Fruux, I was left with one question:

How does this different in principle from Plaxo?

At the current time, the only answer I have is that Plaxo exists.

I have been working on a PDF newsletter for a while and wanted to get a preview of what the color document would look like printed to a black and white printer…and fit is surprisingly hard. Though it is not mentioned on the download page as a reason, CUPS-PDF will allow you to print a color document to grayscale PDF.

Awesome, and its free!

Since both me and my wife use Quicken, I’ve put the data file out on a network drive so that we both can access it. I’ve had decent luck (though it is dog slow) accessing the file using CIFS (SMB), but cannot access it on the same server using AFP (Apple Filing Protocol, or AppleShare). I contacted Intuit about this issue.

The first response I got back suggested that I copy the file to the Desktop before trying to open it, which just misses the point of having it on the shared drive to begin with. So I tried again, and got this response:

When a file is transferred over a network, it is broken into small packets at the transmitting end and reassembled at the receiving end. This usually causes damage to the Quicken data file as well.

To protect the integrity of your data, we do not recommend or support this procedure.

Apparently transferring a file over a network can cause irreparable damage. Who knew?

The first applications I installed were part of iLife ‘06. This took several hours. To get all of the themes for iDVD that have been released over the years, you have to run each of the installers in order–there is no way to go back a install themes once you have a newer version of iLife installed. So, to install iLife ‘06 I installed:

• iDVD 2
• iLife (the original)
• iLife ‘04
• iLife ‘05
• iLife ‘06 (which wouldn’t install unless I ran Software Update at least 10.4.3)
• Software Update (to install iLife updates)

A couple of hours to install software that I haven’t opened yet.

Every once in a while I like to reinstall OSX to get rid of all the things that I really don’t need and clean up the computing environment. This time I started the process because my computer just wasn’t stable–it would hang and mysteriously shut itself off after a while. After a week of this, I think the problem has been solved–the fan in the power supply died, which was leading to over heating. Right now I have a extra fan I had sitting around paper clipped to the outside of the case. Assuming I can get the fan replaced, i’ll post a note about it.

Before starting this process, I used SuperDuper to create a backup image of all of the user data on a different drive. Then wiped the drive and re-installed OSX.

For user accounts, I created two different ones:

• Administrator - for doing all of the administrative tasks (and to have an admin password to type in when requested
• DeltaTee - for my daily work

A couple of years ago I thought it would be a good idea to not run as an administrator–just to see if doing so would help make the system more secure. For the most part it does work well, but there are several tradeoffs from applications that assume that they need to be installed as an administrator.

With the size of the update earlier this week, it can be hard to tell all of the componets that have been updated.

One of the smaller changes is that the Motola v557 is now supported by iSync 2.2. This should mean that I will finally be able to sync my address book and calendar onto my phone. (now, if I could just convince my new phone that it really should start charging itself, life would be much better.)

For those that are interested, Unsanity is having a 50% off sale for the next two days to celebrate their 5th Anniversary.

If you create a filename in the Finder which has a very long extension, you will not be able to change it using the Finder. (An extension is defined by an number of characters after a period in a file name which does not include spaces.) In this case I am starting with file.with_a_very_very_long_extension_name_or_at_least_a_period and renaming it to file.txt. Upon renaming it, the error is shown:

Since the existing filename is so long and the dialog does not resize, the Use .txt button has been pushed off to the left. Adding to the misery, the standard Command-U shortcut will not operate the non-default button and you can’t use keyboard navigation (Tab-Tab-Space) to activate the button since it was not actually drawn on the dialog.

Thanks to drunkenbatman for the inspiration.

The Keyspan Digital Media Remote ( macupdate ) is a nifty piece of hardware which allows you to control applications on your computer through a credit card sized remote.

When you install the driver software on OSX, administrator access is required because a kernel extension (DMRantiClassic.kext) is installed.