Quick and Nerdy

Have you ever had one of your websites become inaccessible on only one of your computers? The site loads up fine on every other machine you try it on but on this one machine, nada. If you try to ping the domain you’ll likely be presented with an ‘unknown host’ error.

If your computer is a Mac you will likely first think to try dscacheutil -flushcache . However, this will not work for you unless you are using an older version of OS X. Now what you’ll have to do is the following:

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

In most cases this is what will work for you. I won’t bore you with a lengthy explanation of why. Just try it.

Apple, Command Line, Mac, Web

Being a nerd I love keyboard shortcuts. Because of this, when using a Mac I use Spotlight extensively. I use Spotlight as a calculator, for word definitions, and most frequently, to launch applications and find files.

One of the many changes in OS X Lion is a change in Spotlight is that it no longer displays the path to a file on your machine when you mouseover a search result. Previously I used this all the time when trying to locate files. How could Apple get ride of this extremely useful feature?

Well, they didn’t. It’s still available but is a bit more hidden. I’m not sure where this is documented or how we were supposed to figure it out but thanks to Richard Cardona and the CapMac Forums I learned how to get file paths again. Now I’ll share it with you.

1. As before, enter your search query in Spotlight.
2. Also as before, either use your arrow keys to move down to the appropriate search result or mouseover the search result
3. When the new preview window pops up to the left of the Spotlight results, hold down the command key

At the bottom of the preview window the name of the file will initially be displayed. Keep holding down the command key and in a second or two the path of the file will be revealed! Now you know where that file is located on your system.

Mac

Here’s a fun infographic comparing Apple, the company to apples, the fruit.

A few of my favorite points:

• China produces 44% of the world’s apples and 100% of the world’s Apples
• the average apple weighs about the same as an Apple iPhone 4s (5oz. versus 4.9oz.)
• an iphone 4s is 33.6% glass

Thanks to MBA Online for putting this one together.

Apple, iPhone, Mac

I recently installed node.js on a Mac running OSX 10.7.2 and these were the steps I followed at the command line.  Git and Xcode were already installed on the machine so this assumes they are already present.

1. git clone git://github.com/ry/node.git
2. cd node
3. ./configure
4. make
5. sudo make install

You can test that node is installed by running a simple program such as:

var http = require('http');
http.createServer(function (request, response) {
  response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
  response.end('Node.js has arrived.\n');
}).listen(1337, "127.0.0.1");
console.log('Up and running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/');

You can run this code by saving it as something like testing-node.js and then entering the command:

node testin-node.js

That’s it. Node.js is now up and running on port 1337 !

PS: stop the server with ctrl + c

 

Mac, Web

When entering long commands in the terminal, making changes or fixing mistakes in the middle of the command can slow you down. Moving your cursor over one character at a time to get the to point where the change is needed takes too much time! Fortunately on a Mac you can actually use your mouse to position the cursor wherever you want in the current line.

The trick is to hold down the ‘Option’ key while clicking. Move your mouse pointer where you want the cursor and ‘Option-Click’. When doing this the cursor will actually move to that point in the line. I didn’t believe it until I tried it. It really works! Another command line time saver.

Apple, Command Line, Mac cli, command line, cursor, Mac, mouse, tip

For people like me who work extensively on the web, copying and pasting can be a huge pain. The main pain point is when you copy some text from a web page and don’t want all of the formatting when you paste it somewhere else, like an email or a blog post. Most people end up copying the content into a work processor like Textmate or Notepad and then re-copying and re-pasting. What a hassle!

Well, there is a handy built-in shortcut in Google Chrome (my choice for best browser) that automatically removes formatting when you paste. Yay! If you are on a Mac, the shortcut is ‘Command-Option-Shift-v’ and if you are on Windows it is ‘Control-Shift-v’.

The 4 key shortcut on Mac is a bit of a ‘handful’ but it is well worth it.

Mac, Web, Windows chrome, copy-paste, tip

Have you ever noticed that wide grey bubble in the top right of some of your Mac application windows? When I first moved to Mac it took a while before I even noticed it.  Its actually quite handy.

The button, sometimes called the ‘lozenge’ is used in applications that have a ‘Hide Toolbar’ option in their ‘View’ menu.

In Finder the button will hide both the toolbar and the sidebar. If you command-click the button it will modify how the toolbar is displayed, cycling through variations of words and buttons, buttons only, words only and various different sizes of buttons etc.

Another handy use of the lozenge is installing an app. When doing so you are often presented with the window that has the app icon. Sometimes there will be an Applications icon that you can simply drag the app icon into in order to move the app to the Applications folder. When this isn’t the case people usually think they need to open another Finder window in order to drag the app to the Applications folder. However, the lozenge can save you this trouble. Simply click on it and a sidebar will appear and you can drag the app to the Applications folder listed there. Nice!

Some other applications that have the ‘lozenge’ include:

Mail, Preview and Adium.

Mac install, lozenge, sidebar, tip, toolbar

If you like to work from the command line there are many keyboard shortcuts that can make your life easier. Two of my favourites are control+a and control+e. When you are have some text entered and you want to quickly get to the start or end of the entered text these little shortcuts will save you some key-presses.

ctrl + a: moves the cursor to the start of the line

ctrl + e: moves the cursor to the end of the line

Many of you will already know about these handy shortcuts but if you haven’t I think you’ll really appreciate them.

Command Line, Mac bash, linux, Mac, shortcut, terminal, tip, unix

Apple recently unveiled there much anticipated and much hyped tablet device, the iPad. Here’s a quick take on the new offering.

THE GOOD

Long Battery Life

• The iPad is being touted as having an impressive 10 hour battery life with 30 days of standby

It’s Pretty

• Like most Apple product the iPad is pretty and shiny and more pleasing to the eye than essentially any other hardware manufacturers devices.

It’s a Better E-reader Than the E-readers

• Your Kindle is kindling compared to the iPad. Georgous full color display with the ability to embed video in publications. Big publishers should be sucking up big time to Apple for the opportunity the iPad gives them. The opportunity to get themselves back off of life support.

THE NOT SO GOOD

No Camera

• What!? How sweet it would have been to be able to easily do video calls / conferences with this device. No dice. I guess Apple has to save some things to make people have to upgrade to the next iPad when that comes along.

Locked Down

• Just like the iPod and iPhone, you’ll only be able to put on the iPad what apple allows you too. Apparently this isn’t really a computer but an oversized iPod touch.

You can’t replace battery yourself

• A common grievance with iPods is the fact that you have to send your device to Apple in order to have a battery replaced. Unfortunately Apple continues this trend with the iPad. This is even more unfortunate considering Apple’s history of battery problems.

Text Entry

• The on screen keyboard will undoubtedly be more difficult to use that a real keyboard, especially considering the back of the device is rounded. That means typing with the device on a flat surface is all but out of the question as the entire thing will wobble with every ‘key’ press.

No USB Port or SD Slot

• Again Apple frustrates its users with a lack of standard connections. In order to use a USB based peripheral with the iPad you’ll have to shell out more money to Apple to get an adapter dongle. Would it be so hard to have just included one or both of these? Yes, we get it. The iPad isn’t a ‘computer’.

No Flash

• This doesn’t bother me that much. I’d love to see Flash go the way of the dodo.

The iPad might make a nice addition to my coffee table or kitchen counter for casual web browsing or emailing and tweeting but I can’t see it being a must have device.  I’ll wait to see if they can get things right in generation two, or until I can get a Google tablet that offers a bit more options and openness. While the iPad may not be ideal for the more technically savvy user there is a huge number of people out there who are less technical and don’t really like computers who will find the iPad will fit their needs very well.

Mac apple, ipad, opinion

Two tools that I love enormously are Google Calendar and my iPhone.  Google Calendar is incredibly powerful. It allows you to have multiple calendars with any mix of private and public/shared calendars you like. It has a powerful quick ad option for adding events with plain English, amazingly configurable repeating events and reminders, and the feature list goes on and on.

When Google launched Google Sync earlier this year the loop from my Google Calendar to my iPhone and back was completed. Sync allows you to view and edit events on either your iPhone built in calendar or on Google Calendar on the web and see the changes propagated almost immediately.

Google sync used to only allow 5 of your Google Calendars to sync to your mobile device but I noticed yesterday that they now allow up to 25 calendars to sync. If you are a Google Calendar power user this is music to your ears.

I highly recommend this combination of tools. If you haven’t tried it yet you are missing out on some serious awesomeness.

Official Google Mobile Blog: Google Sync

Mac, Tools I use, Web apple, calendar, google, iphone, Mac, sync