11.28.02- Let it Sno on OS X, All over the desktop!
By Sam Novak
Heres a cool and utterlly useless shareware (Thats why i picked it). Seeing how its the season for for snow, i thought i would suggest Snö. There a TON of options from all your Simulated Snowing needs. Look to no other place than this for such great effects. The download is also bundled with a Screensaver. Have Fun, Download.
Take A look at a screenshot:
11.25.02- Change your Icons in OS X
By Sam Novak
If you remeber on the 21st when i had my little bit on icons i told you to download a program to change your icons. But that is only for OS X protected folders. Changing them by hand is just as easy, here we go...
1. Click on your new icon and "get info", or "Cmd-I". Once your in that window, click on the little icon and Copy (Cmd-C or Edit, Copy). Then open the "get info" for your other icon.
2. Click on the small icon in that "get info" window, and press "Cmd-V" or Edit, Paste. And then your done.
11.22.02- Use OS X to connect to you FTP
By Sam Novak
Since Apple's port to UNIX we never truly had a built-in file transfer protocol program (ftp). But since the release of Jaguar, you can, and its easier than ever. Here we go.
1. Click on the Finder and Click "Go", then "Connect to Server".
2. Then type in the address of your ftp. You have to have something like this... "ftp://ftp.whatever.com".
3. You'll get an Authorization pop-up to login with your Username and Password. If you log into as guest just type "Guest"
4. Your done! The Drive will mount and you can feel free to drag 'n' drop all you want.
11.21.02- Icons Are cool Again... At least for OS X
By Sam Novak
Icons are cool, and in OS X icons are even cooler than ever. With room for 128*128 pixels, these icons can have no limits. The icons are cool and slick, and if you wanna get some, xicons.com has over 7,000 icons for OS X. If you don't know how to change your icons go here. And by the way, Jaguar doent let you change your Home icons so you'll need a program like candybar. So go out there and download.
11.20.02- It's Easy, It important... It's OS X's Firewall
By Sam Novak
Apple is nototrious for making the most complicated things easy. Sometimes it so easy its hard. Windows makes thing harder than they should be, what with all the confusing heirarchy file system that does a horrible job of mimiking the MAC. Anyways, All i want you to do is to trurn on OS X's built-in Firewall. The firewall takes the ease of mac and the strength of unix, which i think is winning match.
1. Go to your System Prefrences and look for "Sharing" under the "Internet & Network" Tab.
2. Next go to the "Firewall" Tab, and once your in you'll have a bunch of options. Click once on the "Start" button. After you do, the button will say "Stop" (that's good).
Your Done! Now Hackers will have to try just a little bit harder to hack you. If you experience trouble with a program, go back to "Firewall" and click new, from there you'll have a list of programs you want to pass through the firewall. But OS X is usually good with that. Happy Hunting!
11.19.02- A notebook Function Key For Desktops
By Sam Novak
The most energy being used from your Desktop system is obiviously the monitor (unless you have 4 scsi HD running at 15,000 rpm). And with the high hydro bills, i thought i would show you this quick tip.
Whn changing Volume, or Ejecting, the keys on the apple standard keyboard are marked clearly. But if you want to adjust brightness press F14 to lower and F15 to make brighter. Its simple.
11.15.02- Don't ignore your Updates
By Sam Novak
Most of the updates that Apple suggests to you are about Itlaian Languages, or Airport, or ipod, but for those of us who don't have the luxury of owning an Ipod, we usually quit System Update. But Not Today!!!!!!
If your using Jaguar and you havent already updated to 10.2.2 please update now. Its a great update, mostly for ichat and other stuff like that, but apple also has solved many issues from 10.2.1 and added some speed improements. So dont run, Walk, becuase theres plenty of updates for everyone.
11.14.02- Get your memory back!
By Sam Novak
Ram is cheap, so cheap that you buy a stick at the dollar store. But that doesn't mean programmers can let their programs take up as much memeory as they want. Why should they neglect memory leaks? Well most don't and are very efficient with memory usage, but it's still fun to se how much memory is being taken up. Today's mac tip has to do with a great shareware program called Memory Usage Getter.
Its easy, its better than "Process" that apple gives you, and its just great. The program speaks for itself, so just go and donwload it. Heres a screenshot.
11.13.02- How to conrol Drive operations.
By Sam Novak
In this day and age where drives are cheap, people are bound to have many different cd/dvd drives in their computer. And with all the new drives, we have new media. So if you want a great way to control what happens when you load different types of CD/DVD's, this tip is for you.
1. Open System Prefrences and click on the "CD's & DVD's" button.
2. Next you have all the options in the world. You can have applications open when diffrent CD's are loaded, whatever! This is especially good if you use certain apps you want to load when load someting.
Now that OS X is out of beta, Apple has given us way more options for things you use to ask yourself "Where is it?". You can expect many more of the type of tips becuase of Apple's use of a UI (user interface) for useful Unix stuff.
11.12.02- An Eject Menu item apple left out.
By Sam Novak
Now as many of us mac users have come to know, there is now eject button acessable from any of apples moder harware. I guess it didnt fit into apples new age designs. Oh well. Anyways apparently some people are having trouble ejecting their drives for whatever the problem is. Last week i showed you how to eject a drive from the terminal, and today im gonna show you how to eject from the menu bar. Here we go.
1. Go through all of the following directories. Once your in Menu Extras, stop and look around a little.
2. Look for the file "Eject.menu". It looks like a folder, but once you click it you can eject form the Menu Bar.
3. Well that was extrmeley easy. If you look around in that folder you can find many other menu items that may, or may not be useful to you. Heres the finished product.
11.11.02- Spring Loading OS X's folders
By Sam Novak
Today we remeber the veteran who served in wars all over the world. Who faught for peace and freedom for us today. Without theese brave people we would not have all of the things we have today. Having that said lets move on to todays Mac Tip. Dedicated to all the veteran mac users (os 9 users)
Toaday my Mac Tip has to deal with the past. Even though Apple has moved from their older genration of OS to a unix core, doesnt mean you have to give up the great past. So today i'll teach you how to turn on and tweak Spring-Loaded Folders. Sorry but this tip is Jaguar only.
1. Go to your finder prefrences.
2. Next go down to the "Spring-Loaded Folders" options and make sure you have the first box checked.
After that you can tweak your folders to open when hovered over for whatever amount of time. This is great for when organizing, and you want the minimum windows open. After you drag the file in each folder, move your mouse away and everything disapears.
11.8.02- How to get Chimera to stay as Default
By Sam Novak
Now as many of us know, Microsoft has been nice enough to give us a lot of things: Office, Messenger, and IE. But if you want Chimera, your favorite OS X browser to be default, your gonna have a problem. This usually only occurs in Jaguar, so heres how to fix it.
Prep- Close Chimera and IE. In system prefrences make sure you choose Chimera as default. Close System Prefrences.
1. Now open a Finder window and go to your "Computer" Directory. Search for the File "LocalCache". It looks something like this. Dont open it.
2. Then open a new finder window, and go to your "Home" Directory. Search for "UserCache". It should look like this. Don't open the file.
3. Once you have these files... Throw them in the trash.
*Note the "LocalCache" file may be protected by the system. To change the permissions, cntrl-click and Get Info. Then Click the Permissions tab, and change the read-write to your user name. You need Admin passowrd to do this.
11.7.02- Unmount any drive from your teminal
By Sam Novak
Command Lines are cool. No matter how much "Aqua" os x has, the terminal will always be cool. So I have a tip about something we all take for granted. Ejecting or Unmounting dirves. Sure this can be done by pressing eject or draging the drive into the trash, but if you wanna get geeky, heres your chance.
1. Open the terminal and type, "df". The "df" command will display all the drives currently mounted.
2. Look through the list of Drives. The left column has the id for the drive and the right column has the name given to that drive. The drive with the name "/" is your booted hard drive. Don't try to unmount that. Type in "hdiutil eject" then a space and the id of the drive.
3. If done successfully you should see you should see a few lines of response from the terminal. That look like this.
Wow, that was geeky. But at least you can say to your friends that you can unmount a drive from your terminal. I guess thats a good thing.
11.6.02- Adjust your songs' volume in iTunes
By Sam Novak
I know that this tip may not be that revolutionary, or extremly unknown but it is useful. Have you ever ripped or download music to your computer only to find it "out of tune" with all your other songs. By "out of tune", I'm talking about how each song seems to have their own individual volume. We'll in iTunes, that can easily be fixed. With a couple steps through the Prefrences menu you have all your music hummin at the volume YOU want:
1. Goto the iTunes Menu, and Click Prefrences
2. Then once your in the prefreces, click on "effects", go down to the "Sound Check" check box, and check it. Click OK and after you restart iTunes all your music will have the same volume.
Done! See that was pretty easy. I think that was a good first mac tip. If you want to see certain types or very specific mac tips, e-mail me. Feedback is our friend. Go OS X!