tab tab tab space

one of the gripes that i mentioned about migrating from windows is the inability to use less of the mouse. i am a self proclaimed shortcut keys junkie – i hate the fact that i would need to move the pointer with a mouse at the end filling up a form in os x. in windows its usually tab fill up field repeat tab to go to the next field till alls done and finally tab and space at the “submit” button at the very end – cant seem to do it on os x. until now (yeah i know i am slow to find this out).

apparently the ability to do that has been inbuilt in os x all the time, its just not turned on (why not is beyond me). to be able to tab onto buttons :-

1) go to system preferences

2) double click on “keyboard & mouse”

3) near the button of the window set “In windows and dialogs, press Tab to move the keyboard focus between:” to “all controls”.

4) done.

p.s setting can be accessed via ^fn F7 too

two week mark | firefox 3

two weeks smoke free-ness. i think it’s longest i’ve been without a single puff of the straight tube of tobacco. i have to say that its been a little easier this time round, through i have to thank loads of junk food that helped keep away the urge. that equates to a two kilo weight gain in two weeks…damn now i need to start running again.

meanwhile….

wth

omg. you would have to purchase apples’ “january upgrade” for additional features such as maps, weather, mail and notes for the ipod touch! to think that they named it “january upgrade” would probably mean that for every month theres an upgrade and you’ll have to pay for each and everyone of them.

screw this, i am going back to jailbreaking my ipodtouch.

seriously, wth!

-edit add-

a mate mentioned that apple has finally gone the way of microsoft.

i fully agree.

better firefox web form widgets in mac os x

looking around linux write-up sites, i stumbled upon oleg’s blog outlining the steps for a more pleasing web form widgets on firefox. having applied it to my linux box, i set out to install it to my mac since the *nix backend is similar (somewhat easier to relate the guide to).

download this, save it to your desktop.

fire up your terminal and do the following (each “$” denotes a new line | copying & pasting would be wise | you’ll be prompted for your sudo password)

$ cd ./Desktop
$ tar zxf firefox-form-widgets.tar.gz
$ cd ./firefox-form-widgets
$ sudo cp /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/res/forms.css /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/res/forms.css.backup
$ cat ./firefox-form-widgets/res/forms-extra.css | sudo tee -a /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/res/forms.css >/dev/null
$ sudo cp -r ./firefox-form-widgets/res/form-widgets /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/res/

that’s it! quit firefox, re-launch it, navigate to a forms site and enjoy a more refined look. for any reason that you do not fancy the change and would like to revert, fire up terminal again and do this :-

$ sudo cp /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/res/forms.css.backup /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/res/forms.css

and the change will be reverted (this is why its always wise to have a backup before changing anything).

customary screenshots to compare your change to:-

before:

after:

last but not least, many thanks to oleg smetanin for the instructions this was based upon.

discovering xee

in my short time that i have been using the mac, i find that the default “preview” app for viewing pictures kinda sucks. top of the list is having to select files then right clicking and select “open with preview” before you can preview multiple pictures – wastes precious mouse movement seconds. on top of that, you can only “preview” the files that were selected and loaded; if you need to view the ones that weren’t selected, you need to go back to finder and double click it again (hand needs to move off keyboard to the mouse to navigate and double click – wastes time). “use a media manager to view all  photo/picture files instead you bloody oaf” others might say but what is the point if the purpose is just to have a quick view and not have to fire up an app then loading the file in before you can?

xee is a “preview” replacement that works a lot like windows picture viewer (i can’t find a better app to compare to. it’s not that its any good but it does at least work the basics proper). install it, set it to be the default viewer and one will be easily able to browse through a folders worth of picture/photo files with the mouse wheel or left/right keys. file download’s mighty small (1.3mb) and its free too!

not sure if “preview” has been updated/upgraded to include such simple features with leopard, but my take is that the guys at apple should just adopt xee as a standard in their future os releases.

24 inches of pleasure

the mac finally arrived. and we’ve been busy getting acquainted thus the lack of postings.

i must say, its been a dream so far (‘cept for the time when i loaded a whole shit load of applications that i know has no use and finder went kabluey) – lightroom & photoshop on mac, 24 inches of desktop real estate and the new slim mac keyboards are just simply superb.

nonetheless there are somethings that i really miss about windows :-

1) shortcut keys (winkey+r, winkey+d, winkey+e , alt+spacebar, alt+f etc) – i am impartial to shortcut keys and use them extensively in my day to day usage. i can get to the command line in 1.5 seconds with “winkey+r – type cmd – enter” and i’ve kinda even memorized a good bunch of photoshop shortcut keys to work really fast on my photos. with the mac, key assignments are a little weird – takes a while to open finder, navigate to “utilities” then to terminal and “alt+i+p” no longer crops the picture to the selected area in photoshop. i know, you can customise key combinations in OSX but its kinda a pain to balance which key combinations has been taken up and whats not used yet.

2) forms + the tab key – option buttons (ok, cancel, radio buttons etc) used to be so easy to click with the tab and space bar. tab only works for the field inserts but wont tab into the option buttons on the mac. you need to take you hand off the keyboard, move the cursor to “OK” and click it no matter what.

3) remote desktop – used to be able to access my home machine with copssh and rdp from work to sort our internet connection issues for the family or to manage torrent downloads. need to install vnc on the mac (which i am not a fan of due to security concerns) before remote desktop access is achievable.

4) remote desktop connection (for mac) – we do work from home a lot via vpn. the mac equivalent of remote desktop connection client can’t handle multiple instances. i can’t access my sms server and domain controller at the same time!

i am sure that it’ll take a little while before i get used to working with the mac then get around to really customising it to the way i can really be efficient with it. apart from the listed gripes, everything else is super – pictures and photographs look really really good, system purrs along even with a number of memory intensive programs loaded and of course, it’s a really beautiful hunk of aluminum & glass to display on the table.

yup…dead again

its confirmed – western digital gave me a crappy arse refrubished harddrive. wonder which part of paying my respects to the i.t god did i screw up at.

i gave up, surfed jobs’ website and ordered myself a new 24″ iMac. now, if only appleCenter can make haste with my order and send me the damn machine already.

in the meantime, i am discovering that feisty fawn on a thinkpad x31 rocks and gimp, krita or cinepaint is nowhere near replacing photoshop anytime soon. also, amarok beats itunes hands down without even trying.

anyone wants a p4 3.0HT | 2gb ram | ati x1650 pro for cheap?

discovering qtpfsgui

qtpfsgui is an open source application for hdr generation. presenting a simple gui, it seems to work off the bat with default settings, though, outputs are a lil too surreal for my liking – especially at larger sizes. with a number of options to tweaking its effects (sections that are somewhat names of persons who i think are possibly very important in math circles), i think this is a preety powerful piece of software with loads of potential.

available for windows, osx & linux (..very neat!)

…in half hearted pursuit of happiness.

too much scripting

too much SMS troubleshooting

too much procrastinating

and way too much house m.d makes one almost >null.

still working with calibration issues on my monitor….think i need a mac to settle this once and for all. any linux-heads/windows command-line freaks had “fun” with the unix catacombs of os x? would love to hear from you…