Mac OS X Finder Sidebar Shared Computer Icons not Showing up I started to have a problem with Mac OS X Finder where the Shared computers in the Finder window sidebar didn’t show up. I couldn’t even change the Sidebar settings in Finder Preferences. So I did some digging around and found out how I could fix it, but also how stupid I am. ...
MultiMarkdown on iPad - an update I have updated my list over how well iPad Markdown writing apps handle the more advanced MultiMarkdown rendering. I also added some new apps to the list of the features I tested. Since I wrote the article, a new favourite writing app of mine, Editorial has been added to the list, and also IA Writer which now has MultiMarkdown support. Almost all of the apps on the list supports Dropbox syncing, so writing in one application and rendering it in another that supports the features you need isn’t to hard. And with the enormous potential for scripting provided by Editorial, using x-callback-url schemes to send the text to another app for final rendering is pretty easy. ...
Uses | Day One: This is an ongoing archive of the many use cases we’ve found for ourselves and that have been reported by our users. We hope this will inspire you to think of new ways you can incorporate Day One into your workflow and daily routine. Great page of collected uses for the marvelous app Day One. I found some good ideas for writing earlier stuff than the diary I’ve kept for two and a half years. It wouldn’t exist a diary if it wasn’t for Day One. And the great thing is that it’s available on iOS and Mac with syncing through iCloud or Dropbox.
Better battery life Macbook Pro with gfxCardStatus Update: Just installed Mac OS X 10.8.4 and now it works much better. Fantastical, Growler, Hardware Grower, Scrivener and Tweetbot now works without switching cards. Later models of Macbook Pro computers comes with dual graphics card. This makes it possible to use a low performance card when not using graphics intense applications, and automatically switch to the faster, but less energy efficient card if needed. But how do you know which card is currently active? There is a great application available called gfxCardStatus that shows you when the computer switches, and even uses notifications. If your on the move and on battery power, you can force the computer to use the Integrated less power draining graphics card. If you need full speed, just select the Discrete card. The third alternative is to have it in the normal Dynamic Switching Mode. But there’s a snag when using Switching Mode. A lot of applications forces the Macbook Pro into using the Descrete high performance battery draining card, for no apparent good reason. Let’s examine that. ...
Pythonista, finally programming workflow automation for iOS? I’m doing most of my writing on my iPad or occasionally on my iPhone, and I write everything in Markdown. There are some great scripts in my current favorite language Python out there for doing Markdown conversions, image manipulations, etc., but unfortunately, Apple rules regarding programming apps on iOS devices are pretty stringent. But an app for programming Python on iOS called Pythonista have some smart ways of getting around some of Apple’s restrictions. And one of the wonderful things you can do is home screen shortcuts, making your scripts available directly from the home screen of your iOS device. All you have to do to create a Pythonista home screen shortcut is to go to a web page and enter the script name and optional arguments. After that, add the page home-screen with Safari’s bookmarks button. Another way of starting your scripts is directly as bookmarks in Safari or another web browser. I found the app from this article about making life easier by scripting with Pythonista, a great read of all the functions available in the app. Because they added a Python library for managing the clipboard, you can copy pictures or text to it, then start your script that reads from the clipboard and then put the new modified text/picture back to the clipboard, ready for pasting into any app. Very handy! ...
Check out my article on using Qrq with a Google Cloud Storage Nearline. It’s cheaper than Amazon Glacier. Being a photographer, I have a lot of pictures on my hard disks. Using a Canon 5D Mark II with it’s 23 megapixel sensor shooting in RAW doesn’t help. My main backup is two different NAS servers doing alternating TimeMachine backups every other hour, a feature added in Mountain Lion. This is great, because if one backup unit breaks down or gets stolen, I still have another copy on the other NAS. But what if both got stolen? Imagine the horror? So I’ve been searching for an offsite backup solution that’s cheap and just works. And now I think I found it. ** ...
After getting my Raspberry Pi I used the one built-in on my MacBook Pro, but the SanDisk SDHC-card showed up as read-only in finder on my mac, and Disk Utility refused to format it. The write protection switch on the card was correctly set, so that made me a bit baffled. But it seems that the internal card reader on the MacBook Pro is a bit finicky. [ ...
GeoTagr To be able to tag your DSLR pictures with GPS information is both fun and practical. But to date, most DSLR cameras don’t have GPS built-in or is an expensive hardware add-on option. That includes the Wi-Fi iPad you might own. The last couple of years I’ve used a lot of different solutions to track GPS data while I’m out taking photographs. My first way was to use a Garmin GPS unit and then transfer the information to my Mac, but now, with mobile phones like iPhone and Android, there’s no reason to tug along yet another device. My weapon of choice now is an app for iPhone and iPad called GeoTagr, a universal app for logging GPS tracks while you photograph, and then tag images with location data. For me, the pictures I want to tag are the RAW images that I import into Adobe Lightroom 4. And with this app, it’s straightforward to accomplish. ...
Instead of having one favorite password that you use on every account you create on the web,making it very easy for someone that gets ahold of it to wreak havoc of you life. Wouldn’t it be great if you had different, impossible to guess passwords on each site? But you only had on password to remember? Well, 1Password can help you both generate random passwords and to help you log in automatically to those sites using just one master password. ...
Safari Browser Safari, the standard web browser that’s included with Mac OS X is fast, stable and has some great features. But there are some ways of improving it to make you’re browsing experience even faster, more secure and pleasurable. Here’s a walkthrough of my favorite extensions for Safari. ...