June 2011
12 posts
Alfred Usage →
on Anna’s Alfred Tips
Don’t forget that with the latest release and Powerpack functionality you can see your usage graph split between general, iTunes mini player and Clipboard usage.
How does it look? :)
Like this:
It’s pretty, but gives me zero insight. I don’t even know what the vertical axis shows.
Reeder for Mac →
The Reeder for Mac site is wild. Canvas, cutting edge CSS transforms and history.pushState() — whoa!
Hazel
Yesterday I download Hazel, and I listened to the accompanying Mac Power Users episode. The thing is, my Desktop already looks like this:
I don’t have a problem with clutter on my Desktop (which is where all my downloads go too), so I’m not sure what Hazel rules I will end up finding useful.
What looks really handy is Hazel’s automatic Trash management. Just like in Mail, items in the...
AppleScript to open a URL
I was trying to work out how to use AppleScript to open a URL in the default web browser on Mac OS X. Web searches returned multi-line scripts that only work with Safari. I came up with this:
do shell script " open 'http://douglashill.tumblr.com/' "
Far easier, and more flexible, than specifically commanding Safari.
The Facebook app popped up this earlier:
I think they want me to use their messaging services. However, I don’t really want to. I already have messages and email in one place: I call it ‘iPhone’.
“Operations on cepstra are labelled quefrency alanysis, liftering, or cepstral...”
– Cepstrum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Getting really annoyed that my Matlab scripts keep opening in Xcode. (It’s so slow to open.) Both Matlab scripts and Objective-C implementation files use the .m extension. File name extensions totally fall down here.
How should we hold the camera?
From the features page of Apple’s iOS 5 preview.
Holding it this way, we can use the volume up button as the shutter button. I have drawn a ring around the position of the camera lens: not the best location. I imagine that I may end up holding the camera as I always have (home button on the right), and then I would either use the software shutter button or press volume up with my left hand....
Apple Keynotes on the iTunes Store →
Downloading from iTunes is how I’ll be watching tomorrow’s show. I used Apple’s Events page last time, which streams the movie. The benefit of downloading is that I can see exactly how much network traffic I am going to use. Also, I can watch parts again without using requiring more network access. These are useful things when your network use is capped.
Update: it’s up first on the Events page,...
Time Capsule update could cache software updates,... →
by Chris Foresman at Ars Technica
This could be ridiculously awesome. I’ve been contemplating the potential of the Time Capsule for some time.
System update caching is dull, but extremely practical and should save a lot of time. At home our internet connection is very slow, and we have to download Mac OS X and iOS updates three times each. This takes many hours.
Making the Time Capsule more...
Ecosystems
The New Oxford American Dictionary (Mac OS X’s Dictionary):
ecosystem
noun, Ecology
a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.
And the Wikipedia article, Closed ecological systems:
Closed ecological systems (CES) are ecosystems that do not rely on matter exchange with any part outside the system.
I’m going to pick on Chris Foresman at Ars...
