Refresh your Mac

Every now and then, my Macs begin to feel a little sluggish. There are many potential reasons why: I tend to run 8-10 applications all the time – and sometimes push 15 or more. This alone will bog down any Mac.

At other times, I realize that it’s been weeks since I restarted the computer, and a simple restart will solve a lot of these woes.

When those don’t speed things up, I’ve found a number of things I can do to encourage my Macs back to their youthful snappiness. Here are a few tips I’ve found for restoring my Macs to full speed without spending a penny.

Editor’s note: None of these tips will improve your Mac’s performance like more RAM, a faster hard drive, or a CPU upgrade would. They mostly have to do with reducing memory use by limiting the number of active processes and freeing up drive space, since a too full drive (especially past the 90% mark) can slow down your Mac. These are tips for getting the most out of the Mac you currently have without investing in any upgrades. dk
1. Clean out Startup Items

Some applications automatically (or when asked) set themselves as a “startup item”, which causes them to open at every restart or login. You can find out what is in your startup items list by navigating to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items. You may be surprised at how many there are.

To remove them, simply select the item by clicking on its name and then hit the “minus” button at the bottom of the list. However, be sure that you know what you’re removing; otherwise you may kill some critical function for the next time you restart.
2. Turn off Universal Access, Bluetooth, Speech Recognition, and Internet Sharing if You Don’t Use Them

While System Preferences is open, take a look at a few other things. Apple has generously included a number of very useful features as preferences. Some, however, may not be useful to you, such as Universal Access (which offers help for visually and hearing impaired users) or Bluetooth (which allows certain devices to be used wirelessly). If you don’t use these features, verify that they are turned off. This will save you some valuable RAM and processor resources.
3. Clean Out ‘Other’ System Preferences

Don’t close System Preferences yet! Take a peek in the bottom section of your System Preferences window, labeled “Other”. How many items are down there? Do you know what they do? Do you use what they do?

If there is a Preference Pane that you don’t use or that you use only occasionally, disable it (either turn it “off” within the Preference Pane itself or remove it from the folder “~/Library/PreferencePanes”).
4. Check Out What ‘Build’ Your Software Is

If you’re running an Intel Mac, some of your software may be running under the “Rosetta” translator, which allows applications built for a PowerPC processor to run on an Intel chip. Rosetta is surprisingly efficient, but don’t use it if you don’t have to! There may be a patch for your favorite application that will upgrade it to a “universal build”. By making sure you’re running the latest version you can be confident you’re not using Rosetta in vain (a utility like the App Update widget will help with this).
5. Clean Out Unnecessary Code

You’re either running a PowerPC or Intel processor. You don’t have to understand what this means, but you should know that, with both being options, most recent software comes programmed for both. But you don’t need optimization for both – you only need optimization for your computer. Fortunately, there are utilities like XSlimmer (and Monolingual – more on this in a minute) that will strip out unnecessary code in your software. This not only helps the applications to run faster; it also saves hard drive space (sometimes a lot of it).

Editor’s note: If you’re using a PowerPC Mac and anticipate migrating to Intel, you might want to defer “slimming” your programs until you’ve made the switch. Otherwise all the programs you’ve slimmed for PowerPC will be running under Rosetta on your Intel Mac unless you take the time to do a fresh installation.

We’ve also hear horror stories of XSlimmer eviscerating Rosetta, so if you use it on an Intel Mac, be sure you don’t strip the System frameworks. dk
6. Get Rid of Languages and Translations You Won’t Use

Apple is very considerate in providing language localizations for many, many languages. But the chances are you aren’t using the Catalan, Farsi, or Klingon language localizations on your Mac. And even if you are, you can strip out the other ones you aren’t using and gain more efficiency and drive space using a utility like Monolingual.

By the way, the latest version of Monolingual will also strip out unnecessary architecture from your system – but not your applications – so it also performs a function similar to XSlimmer, yet different.
7. Cool Off

The new MacBooks got a bad rap at first for running very hot; the truth is, every Mac will run more efficiently with a cooler processor. Even though they’ve largely fixed the cooling issue in the MacBooks, I use a utility called Fan Control for mine, which allows me to change the threshold for when my MacBook’s fan turns on and off. This allows me to keep my ‘Book running cooler, which maximizes performance (though it does shorten battery life a little bit).
8. Evaluate Your Widgets

If you’re using Mac OS X 10.4.x “Tiger”, you have probably played around with the Dashboard. There are hundreds of useful widgets available, most for free – but there are many that you won’t use, even if they are very helpful to others. This includes some that came with Tiger.

It takes RAM and processor power to keep these widgets running, even when Dashboard is hidden – so a judicious evaluation of what widgets you do use can boost computing efficiency nicely. Do you really need that Ski Conditions widget or the Clock widget running? If not, disable them to conserve RAM and processor use.
9. Keep an Eye on Activity Monitor

There may be other things hogging your processor’s attention or sucking up RAM. How will you know about them? By using Apple’s Activity Monitor, which comes with OS X. Activity Monitor will tell you about CPU usage, RAM requirements, virtual memory usage, and whether a given application is a PowerPC or Intel (Universal) build. Check it occasionally to see if there are any red flags – or keep it running for a few days (with one of the useful Dock icons or floating windows enabled) to keep an eye on when things are spiking.
10. Clean Off Your Hard Drive

It doesn’t matter how large your hard drive is – eventually it will begin to fill up. Whether it is a huge iPhoto library, some videos you’re editing, or simply accumulation of lots of “stuff”, a full hard drive can cause problems. (One colleague couldn’t figure out why her drive was so full – until she realized that she hadn’t emptied her Trash in almost four years!)

You may not realize that Mac OS X (and the Classic Mac OS, too) uses the free space on your hard drive as “virtual memory”, and it depends heavily on that virtual memory to run efficiently. If you’re starting to feel sluggish, it may be because your drive is too full. There are lots of ways to clean it off – maybe a different article will cover that – but sometimes a little more free space is all you need to be a peak performance again.
11. Run OnyX

Whenever things get slow on my Mac, one of the “go to” solutions is to run a utility like OnyX. (There are several, many of them free; I’ve found Cocktail and TinkerTool to be other good and popular options.)

These utilities offer a variety of “jobs” and “repairs” to the system, and while some are skeptical about how much this is necessary, my experience has been that they do bring a good level of optimization back to my Macs. I tend to run the whole battery of tools – both the maintenance and the cleaning options in OnyX – at the same time, but you may prefer to set them to run as scheduled routines in a certain order.

leopard. coming very soon

These are exiting times.

The build I’ve been running took a crap so I cant wait to upgrade.

How To Copy a webpage and build it in Dreamweaver.

No fucking clue. Please feel free to comment.

Quicksilver Tips

Search Yahoo! Maps:

You can use the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ Google search to take you straight to the Yahoo! map of most locations – just be sure to enter the addresses components in standard (street city state zip) order.
You can also create a “Im feeling lucky trigger” like the one detailed in the advanced tips below.
Advanced

Power Tips
The Comma Trick : Selecting multiple items

- Invoke Quicksilver
- Use QS to navigate to your ~/Documents folder (or wherever a bunch of items you want to select are)
- Type “,” (that’s a comma)
- The icon in the pane should “move up” a little and the icon for the selected item now appears in miniature format below its name
- Select another file (again, any small file will do), and, again, type “,”
- The icon for the item you added should now also appear next to the icon for the first item
- Repeat steps 3-4 a couple more times on random small documents, or files.
- When you’re done making your collection, TAB over to the second pane, and type to get the action you want such as “open” or “open with” or “move to” etc.
- TAB over to the third pane in case you have a argument in the second pane such as “move to” and type the action you require and hit return and voila, the action applies to all the files you chose!

(important: The Comma Trick only works if you’ve chosen “Advanced Features: Beta” in “Preferences: Application” and the “Primer” or “Bezel” command interface in “Preferences > Appearance”—switch if you need to and restart QS) ( Tip,courtesy Merlin Mann of 43 Folders )

Command selection trigger

There are some default triggers that come with Quicksilver that are very useful. Like the command selection trigger for example.
Here is how to set it up.

- Open the trigger preferences pane and select Quicksilver from the drop down list.
- In the triggers listed for Quicksilver check the box next to “command window with selection” and assign a keyboard shortcut for it.
- Now select a file in the Finder window and press the just assigned shortcut and voila, the command selection window comes up with the selected file!

Quicksilver: Append to a text file from anywhere

Here is a method to add “to do” or whatever you want to add to a notes.txt file already created anywhere you like.

- Invoke QS
- Hit “.” to start typing in the variable input field
- Type “to do”
- Tab to the next pane
- Type “APP” (or whatever it takes to pull up “Append Text To…”)
- Tab to the next pane
- Type “Notes” or surf to your running “Notes.txt” file
- Hit enter

You’re done
Optionally, note that after you’ve appended this, the window autopops with the destination file (“Notes.txt”) ready to open for inspection.

Hint: You can add carriage returns in the input field by typing option-return.
Hint: To place your new text at the beginning of a txt document, rather than the end, type “PREP” (or whatever it takes to pull up “Prepend Text To…”) in step 5 above.

Also, Append/Prepend is now available inbeta mode only.

( Tip,courtesy Merlin Mann of 43 Folders )

Quicksilver: Arrow Into Web Pages

qswebarrow_browse.jpg

- Invoke Quicksilver (ctrl-spacebar by default)
- Type the first few letter of the title of a web page
- When you’ve found the page you want, right-arrow into the page
- Give it a second to think
- Quicksilver will return a list of all the links in that web page
- Select one of the links and hit ENTER to visit the page.

Pretty neat. Uses the built-in HTML kit to fetch an updated version of the page on demand.

( Tip,courtesy Merlin Mann of 43 Folders )

Calculate

To use Quicksilver as a calculator is to have the calculator plugin installed. Then do the following steps,

- Type ”=” in the first pane and it automatically changes into input mode wherein you can enter values. Notice how the action “calculate” automagically appears in the second pane.
- Type the numbers you want to calculate “after” the ”=” sign.
- Press Return and you have the calculated value in the first pane!

Setting up a Google web search Trigger

- Go to www.google.com and enter the charatcters “***” ( 3 stars that is) into the search box and hit enter. When google has finished searching, remember to copy the URL from the browsers address bar and paste it into a document, say Textedit. Now add the terms ” qss- ” to the front of the url so that it becomes a bookmark. For example if the url at the end of the search was “http://www.google.com” then the bookmark would be “qss-http://www.google.com“
- Open the Quicksilver preferences window.
- Select triggers so that you are presented with the trigger preferences pane.
- Click on the small ”+” near the bottom to add a new trigger.

- when the window drops down just paste the copied bookmark into the first pane.
- You will see that the second pane automatically becomes “search for”. Also note how the third pane has a text icon in the picture above.
(Sometimes when you set up this trigger you may find that there is some text in the third pane, as shown in the picture below,in which case the trigger will not work.
qs.jpg

In such cases, we have to get rid of the text, so close all quicksilver windows and invoke the Quicksilver bezel.If there was text in the third pane while setting up the trigger then quicksilver displays the text as shown below.

Now tab over to the third pane and go into text mode by typing ”.” and delete the text in the third pane and then press Return (Very important). Then repeat the steps of setting up a trigger from the preferences pane as described above. You will find that there will not be any text in the third pane, but only a text icon or sometimes nothing at all, thats allright!.Now that we have got rid of the text, follow the steps detailed below)

- Press Return(DO NOT TAB into any other pane or do anything else as you will not get it right. Do not even click on anything else)
- Now select the trigger from the menu and and assign a shortcut (F5 for example) for it by double clicking next to the key icon. Close the quiclsilver window.
- Press the key shortcut and see the google search shortcut come to life!

Remember you can do the same thing with other sites like yahoo, MSN , ebay , etc. For more such URL’s, look at the web search list

Duplicate the Current Tab in Safari

(Please note that proxy objects must be enabled, and Safari set to “Open links from applications in a new tab”)

- Create a new trigger, and set it to be enabled only in Safari. Command + T is a good shortcut.

- For the arguments, use “Current Web Page” –> “Open URL With” –> Safari.

- Voila! This does an excellent job of mimicking a similar Firefox extension. Note that this can also be extended to use with Camino.

Text Mode

- Invoke Quicksilver and then,
- Enter text mode by typing ”.”
- Exit text mode by typing “Esc”

Change default action

If you want to change the default action assosciated with a file or folder, you may do so by right clicking on the wanted default action and selecting it from the drop down menu, as shown in the picture below.

Printing with Quicksilver

- Add ~/Library/Printers/ to your Quicksilver catalog.
- Select any document you want to print with Quicksilver (b42 tip: select anything and hit command-escape).
- Tab into “action” and select “open with…” and tab into the third field.
- Type the name of your printer. Hit Enter.
- Watch your file come out of the printer, and get right back to what you were doing.
Tip courtesy http://metacarpal.net/blog/

Remote control iTunes

Here is how you can remote control iTunes using Quicksilver.

- Make sure you’re using the latest version of Quicksilver, with the Apple Mail and Backpack plugins installed Make sure Mail.app is setup properly. You can check this simply by firing up the client and try sending some emails.
- Next, you need to configure the email actions. In Quicksilver preferences, you need to enable the “Email Item… (Send Directly)” action, for the “Email Addresses”, “Text” and “Files & Folders” types.
- Check this works – fire up quicksilver, hit “.” and type some text in. Then hit Tab, and select the “Email Item… (Send Directly)” action and hit tab again – finally press “.” and type in the destination (or select an address form your address book). If that works out, you’re ready to try sending email to backpack.
- Log in to Backpack to get your developer key. Go to your Account page, and towards the bottom, you’ll see an option to show your developer key.
- In the Catalog preferences for Quicksilver, click the “+” button to add a new catalog – select “Backpack Pages” from the drop down. This will be the catalog that will work out how to talk to our Backpack pages. Your newly added catalog will be under “Custom”. Select it, then click the “i” icon in the bottom right. Put your username and developer key in.
- To try out your integration, bring up quicksilver and enter “note» sometext”. Hit tab and select “Email Item… (Send To)”, tab again and bring up the backpack page you want to send the note to, hit enter and enjoy!

Browse all files

While browsing files in quicksilver if the alt key is held down then even the hidden files are displayed.

How to make a gesture that executes a paste and match style.

This explains how to write an applescript that will press a key for you from quicksilver, in this case, I’m making an applescript that will execute a paste and match style (command-shift-option-v). The trigger for this will be a a gesture (in the shape of a ‘v’)

1. FIND THE KEYCODE FOR THE KEY YOU WANT TO PRESS Download and run Ukelele. It will tell you the key code of the key you want to press.

In Ukelele, make a New File, then go to Keyboard:Show Key Code

Press any Key and the window will show you the keycode for that window. (Eg I press ‘v’ key and it tells me ‘9′)

2. MAKE AN APPLESCRIPT TO PRESS THAT KEY Open ’script editor’ (in Applications/Applescript folder) Make a new script and paste in the following:

tell application “System Events” key code 9 using {command down,shift down,option down} end tell

where 9 is the code you found above using Ukelele if you only want to press one key without modifiers you use:

tell application “System Events” key code 9 end tell

for one modifier you use:

tell application “System Events” key code 9 using command down end tell

save applescript as, and give it a name like “keypress cmd-shift-opt v’

3. ADD THE APPLESCRIPT AS A TRIGGER TO QUICKSILVER

open trigger pref pane. Command R to refresh index and pick up the script you just made add new trigger (click on + button) type filename above (‘pasteand’ will be enough) find your script, tab and make sure the action is run script. press return to select. now edit the trigger you want to use, keyboard or mouse or gesture, I set this one for a gesture in a v shape.

Now I gesture a ‘v’ and it does a paste and match style.

Leopard is almost here

I got a hold Leopard to Test and it works great. I will buy this Upgrade for sure.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/

Windows Productivity Tips

ALT-TAB fast switching between applications

If you are running many programs at once, you can quickly switch between them by holding down the ALT key, and then hitting the TAB key until you have selected the desired application. Use Shift-ALT-TAB to switch in the reverse direction.
Tabbed web browsing

If you need to have many different web pages open at the same time, instead of going back and forth or launching many web browsers, try using tabbed browsing. Some web browsers such as Firefox (mozilla.com) or Internet Explorer 7 allow you to open many web pages all at the same time in different tabs. For example, pressing CTRL-T will open a new tab. If you click on a link using the middle mouse button, it will open the link in a new tab. (Clicking on a tab using the middle mouse button closes it) This makes web browsing much faster because you can:
Open many pages without going back and forth which causes you to wait for the pages to reload repeatedly
It allows you to “pre-load” many pages at the same time. Meaning, while you are reading one web page, you can open several others in other tabs and let them download in the background, thus they will be ready for you when you come back to read them.
Hibernate instead of shutting down

By hibernating instead of shutting down or rebooting, you can keep all your work-in-progress exactly as you left it. Booting from hibernation is also faster when you can avoid the normal process of loading a bunch of start-up programs. To enable, hibernation, you might need to turn off the “Fast user switching” feature using the control panel user manager. To be safe, always save your work even though you are using hibernation.
Add WordPad to your “Send to” menu

If you create a shortcut to WordPad in your “Send to” menu, you can open files quickly in Windows Explorer by right-clicking and selecting “Send to” WordPad. To set this up:
Copy the WordPad program
Right-click the “start” button, select “Explore”
Select the “Send to” folder and paste a shortcut of WordPad in the folder (make sure you use “Paste Shortcut” not “Paste”)
You can do this with any other program that you frequently use to open files.

Enable the “Show Desktop” quick launch icon

You can use your Windows desktop just like a real desktop by keeping a lot of your work-in-progress easily accessible on your desktop. But when you have a lot of programs running, it can be hard to get to your desktop by minimizing all the open programs. To get to your desktop quickly, enable the “Quick launch” menu and you should see a “Show desktop” icon. If not, follow the instructions here: How to re-create the Show Desktop icon on the Quick Launch toolbar (microsoft.com).

Windows File Explorer tips

Configure explorer to use single clicks instead of double clicks to let you work more efficiently. Open an explorer, on the top menu, click “Tools” then “Folder Options.” Check the box for “Single-click to open an item (point to select)” and click “OK.”
You can open two file explorers and tile them side by side for convenience. To tile two explorers neatly side by side, click on one explorer in your task bar (at the bottom), hold the CTRL key, right click on the other explorer and select “Tile Vertically.”
You can use explorer as an FTP client. Just type in “ftp://username:password@website.com” in the address bar. If you tile two explorers side by side, you can FTP files conveniently.
Ergonomics tips

Buy a higher resolution LCD monitor, at least 1600 pixels wide. Higher resolution screens allow you to view more information on the screen and reduce scrolling.
Use a track point instead of a mouse. A track point is a little rubber stub that you push to control your cursor. This reduces your hand motion and reduces your hands moving to and from your keyboard. It is available on most IBM/Lenovo laptops or keyboards. (See Wikipedia for more info)

Windows Print Screen

One of my most used keys is the Print Screen key. Yes I know, there are various programs out there that allow you to do all sorts of neat things with screen captures. What I’m referring to is the bare bones functionality of Windows along with Outlook 2003 and other Office products.

What happens when you press the Print Screen key? You save a “snapshot” of your screen saved to the clipboard. You can now paste that snapshot into any Office product by positioning your cursor at the position where you want to place the snapshot, then Ctrl + V to paste. Its that simple.

There is also an advanced function for the Print Screen key and that is to capture just the “active window”. Press Alt + Print Screen.

Do you need to visually explain a process to someone? Perform your Print Screen or Alt + Print Screen function. Open up a new email in Outlook. You must be using HTML email for this function to work. Now, position your cursor where you want the image to appear, Ctrl + V to paste, done.

I’ll send emails throughout the day to various team members. Those emails may contain snapshots of various visuals I provide to explain a process, provide an instruction, etc. I’ll write some copy, do an Alt + Print Screen then Ctrl + V and paste the capture into the html email message. I may end up with a few paragraphs of copy with an equal number of snapshots. I’ll minimize the active windows (the captures) to the point where the scrollbars disappear so that I am sending just the area being referenced. I keep the width the same for clean formatting and adjust heights when needed.

The above process works with all Office products.

What are some of your productivity tips that help streamline your everyday routines?

Archive your receipts and account info with PDFs

Mac OSX bases much of its interface on Adobe’s PDF format and opportunities to use and make PDF files are ubiquitous.

My favorite PDF trick helps me create an archived digital receipt every time I make a purchase online.

1. Create a folder in “~/Documents/” called “Receipts”
2. When you reach a page that presents a receipt, account information, or other stuff you want to capture for future reference, Select “File > Print…”
3. Click the “Save as PDF…” button
4. In the dialog box, surf to the “Receipts” folder you made earlier
5. Name the file something meaningful to you
6. Click “Save”

You now have a single location for all your receipts and account info . If you’re really cool, you might want to create sub-directories for each type of item (“Receipts,” “Accounts,” “MySQL Setups,” “Affiliate Reports,” etc.

Got OSX? Then get Quicksilver

If you’re kind enough to revisit here in the future, you’ll be hearing about a program called Quicksilver that’s become an important part of how I work with my Mac. I figure since I’ll be talking about it so much, it’s probably beneficial to give you a little lead time in case you’re interested in following along. So here’s a quickish introduction as well as some information and links on getting you started with the home version.

About Quicksilver

Quicksilver is a free (as in beer) application made by Blacktree Inc.It is available as a modestly sized download from blacktree.quicksilver.com. Although it is currently in beta (as of this post, beta 51, to be exact), it’s steady enough for most users’s purposes, especially if its run in “stable” mode (the Preferences also give you the option of choosing “beta” or “alpha” functionality, depending on your tolerance for pain).

Quicksilver is just an application (as opposed to low-level widget, PrefPane, haxie, etc.), so even when it runs from log-in it’s not, to my knowledge, doing much to your machine other than writing preferences and monitoring how you use it. It can, depending on how big your catalog is, be a bit of a CPU hog, but I think the developer’s working on that. In other words, as far as I know, Quicksilver’s safe as mother’s milk.

What’s a “launcher?”

Quicksilver is, at the heart of things, what’s known as an “application launcher.” It inhabits a competitive landscape alongside other popular OSX programs like “Launchbar” and “Butler.” Each program’s enthusiasts tend to have a religiously zealous devotion to one app over the other, but at the heart of it, all launchers do at least one similar thing: they provide a single, intelligent interface for intuitively accessing nested information and functionality.

Broken down, that means that by invoking a simple key combination, menu selection, or mouse gesture, you can tell your launcher to open other applications, access deep data (like address book info), open web pages, create email messages and even execute complex commands, scripts and macros. So, first and foremost, launchers do cool things to stuff in your world with very little effort. The “intelligent” and “intuitive” part means that a good launcher unobtrusively learns from your behavior about how you like to work. So, instead of you having to memorize a bunch of commands or install a lot of squirrely codes, the launcher simply watches you, and then builds virtual sidewalks wherever you happen to be walking a lot. (More on this in future posts.)

“So,” you’re asking. “What the heck does Quicksilver actually do.”

The pitch

Quicksilver can be invoked from practically anywhere by tapping a key combination (mine’s APPLE-spacebar). You then are presented with an interface (the “Bezel” option is shown in the example at right) for choosing any file, application, site, or function in your catalog. A typical example might be to type “SUBETHA” until you see a match for your desired application, which in this case is the application, “SubEthaEdit.” This is a common feature of many launchers, and you’ll likely find it to be a huge timesaver right off the bat; it shaves several seconds off of, say, drilling down through a half dozen directory levels to find a PDF or resume. Once you’ve found the item you’d wanted, just hit RETURN or ENTER to open it.

Quicksilver’s real power comes from what you can then do to or with any of the items in your catalog. So think of a Quicksilver command sequence as a functional sentence with a subject, a verb, and, optionally, an object. Examples might include:

• open “resume.doc” with Microsoft Word
• email John the photo “Hat.jpg”
• search Google for “hot chicks”

Quicksilver, again, accomplishes these powerful tasks by you doing nothing more than typing word fragments and hitting the TAB and ENTER keys. All from a single point of access.

Like a Mac, it “just works”

Quicksilver provides this single point access in a way that many people find comfortingly Mac-like (even as it routes around the hierarchical boxes that comprise the OSX Finder). It really feels like an extension of the Finder after just a few days of use.

What I think makes Quicksilver so special, though, is its easy integration with many of the applications, sites and services that you already use every day. That includes Safari, iTunes, iPhoto, iChat, Address Book, and even the command-line that provides access to the UNIX brain inside your Mac. It also interacts with your favorite websites, allowing you to search Google, Yahoo, you name it—again, anywhere and from inside any other application. Instant access.

“…and it makes julienne fries!”

With your installed applications and a completed configuration, you will soon be a few keystrokes from any of these tasks:

• Select a file from the Finder and email it to a friend
• Upload an MP3 to your FTP server
• Look up the cheapest cost for a 1-year subscription to MacWorld
• Skip the current song in iTunes or just jump straight to your favorite album
• Learn who played Lumpy on “Leave it to Beaver”
• Find and dial any phone number in your address book
• Research how much Costco charges for a bottle of Advil
• Execute shell commands and other CLI-based chicanery
• Upload a directory of your photos to Flicker
• Define “hyperbole” or “overkill”

But, first things first

So here’s your homework assignment:

• Download the Quicksilver application and install it on your Mac
• Read the Quicksilver Guide for installation and basic functionality tips
• Download a bunch of interesting-looking plug-ins
• Just play around with Quicksilver

Don’t feel obligated to use it all the time unless you want to. But, most importantly, try not to get frustrated or burned out. There’s a lot of power under that hood, but some of the best tricks reveal themselves rather slowly. On the other hand, it is pretty fun and intuitive from the get-go (plus it’s beautiful to look at), so who can blame you for wanting to play with it?

Same bat time, same bat channel

Next time out, i’ll look at a few of the cool things you can do with Quicksilver, even as a beginning user. I’ll also talk a little about interaction with other applications and look down the road to the power user tricks that’ll blow your mind.

Is there anyone out there?

So it finally happened. I’ve decided to write a blog. Just to give you a bit of background, I’m a 25 year old college drop out obsessed with technology. Born in Brownsville, TX and raised in Houston, I started my obsession at 13 when my mom brought home 3 PCs, threw them on the floor, and told me if i can build a working Windows PC, I can keep it. I’ve sense learned to despise the whole Windows Platform and became a “switcher”, but I’ll get to that later. Running a clean install of the new Windows 95 with a full 128MB of ram, I was ready to hit the Internet. With a wealth of knowledge at my fingertips, it became a hobby to look up information i didn’t know, and learn it. This hobby continues today. It turns out that if you know anything about a computer, you automatically get calls from friends and family with computer problems the same way a truck owner is asked to help people move. The irony is that I owned a truck.Windows has been a part of my life for the past 12 years so I assumed you had to fight with it, and tweak it, and well trick it to do what you want. That’s how all computers were, or so i thought. Then came my rebirth into the Mac. You don’t need to fight with drivers or codecs, it just works. It works like a computer, not like a homeless man you pay to buy you a 40 of Micky’s. Which brings me to my new blog. I want to help people increase productivity with there Macs and Winblows computers (not a typo) by giving information on must have software, tips, tricks, and how-to’s that have made my life very interesting.I’ve encountered every single problem one can have with Windows, Linux, and OSX and have overcome them all with patience and dedication, and would like to put the geek in me to good use.Comment and questions are not only welcome, they are a requirement. I’d like to know who’s reading.Is there anyone out there?