Tips and techniques

What's your best iPhoto tip?

by Scott Bird
14 Dec 2006 iPhoto 6For the past few weeks I've been gradually immersing my dad in the world of digital photography. As it's his first Mac, iPhoto seemed like the perfect choice. iPhoto is quite a powerful tool behind that deceptively simple exterior. Although he's mastered the basics admirably, I'd still like to squeeze a bit of extra mileage from this great application. To that end, what's your best iPhoto tip?

7 Essential Front Row tips

by Scott Bird
10 Dec 2006

Front RowFront Row seems in many ways to be one of Apple’s forgotten children. Underneath the simple exterior, however, is quite a powerful beast. Here are 7 ways to squeeze a little more out of it.

1. Sync the remote with only one computer.
If you’ve got multiple Macs and their corresponding remotes (as in a store, school or even home setup), you’re probably growing tired of the fact that a click on one remote opens Front Row on several machines. To prevent this, pair each remote with its intended machine by pointing the remote at the usual target (Apple logo for iMacs, left of the latch for MacBook Pros) and hold Menu + Next for 5 seconds.

An icon of two chain links will appear to indicate that the pairing was successful.

2. Open and close Front Row using keyboard
The default key combination used to open Front Row is Command-Escape. To change this, enter your System Preferences, open the Keyboard and Mouse Panel, and navigate to the Keyboard Shortcuts Tab. Scroll down to the Front Row section and change to the desired combination.

If you want to quickly exit Front Row using the keyboard, press F11 or F16. Other options are to press the Home key (which will leave the music and video playing, just exit Front Row) and the key combination Command-Option-Escape, which will quit Front Row (and everything playing) instantly.

3. Installing Front Row on any Mac running Mac OS X (10.4.5 and above)
Andrew Escobar has detailed instructions on this on his website. As long as you have a PowerPC Mac (the Intel Macs all ship with Front Row and a Remote), with a minimum of the items listed below, installation is a straightforward affair.

You’ll need :

4. Use the Front Row Remote to control other applications
The Front Row Remote can be used to control many things within OS X Tiger, including :

5. Play Xvid, DivX, and 3ivX using Front Row

The logic behind this one is simple. Front Row’s multimedia capabilities lean heavily on Quicktime, so just installing the various codecs on your machine isn’t enough. You’ll need to install the Quicktime compatible versions of each.

Links to each of them - as well as a detailed explanation of their installation and use - can be found at Paul Stamatiou’s site.

6. Using Front Row to play media on external drives

Let’s face it, transferring everything to the internal drive of an iMac isn’t too bad; but the novelty wears off quickly if you’re using a MacBook. Storing your massive media collection on an external drive not only makes sense, it’s possible for Front Row to see it.

How? Aliases.

An alias is just a pointer to another location (if you’re making the switch from Windows, think of shortcuts). To make an alias, open the Finder window for the external drive, locate the folder which contains the media you wish to play via Front Row, and drag it to the relevant Front Row directory (such as ‘Movies’) whilst holding down the Option and Command keys. Alternately, select Make Alias from the File menu, and drag the resulting folder across.

7. Play movies from VIDEO_TS folders

Although Front Row itself doesn’t support movies in VIDEO_TS folders, DVD Player does. Squished Squirrel’s DVD Assist (an Applescript ‘stay open’ applet) bridges this gap by closing Front Row upon selection of a video in a VIDEO_TS folder and opening it in DVD Player. Glorious.





Installing Win XP on Parallels (Mac OS X)

by Scott Bird
25 Nov 2006 Win XP under ParallelsMy recent purchase of a shiny new MacBook Pro - as great as it is - left me with a large pile of Windows-based applications. Whilst the inbuilt functionality of OS X made up for a couple of them, and there were quite a few that rarely saw much use; the few remaining ones were enough to grab Parallels, and install XP on the Mac. Before you get too upset, XP certainly doesn't replace OS X - Parallels is a VMM (virtual machine manager). XP runs in its own window, and switching between it and the main OS X desktop is only a keyboard shortcut away. A very good setup. On to the setup itself. I'll cover the installation of various Win XP applications later, but for now a basic XP setup will get you going. Time to grab a couple of discs (the installation discs for both Win XP and Parallels), a cup of coffee and put aside 15-20 minutes or so. The installation itself takes the form of 6 stages, which are as follows : Software update First things first. Make sure your Mac is up to date ( -> Software Update). Download and install any firmware or OS updates. Install Parallels The Quick Start Guide that comes with Parallels should be enough to complete a standard installation (it really isn't more complicated than inserting the CD and following the instructions). Don't bother creating a new VM yet, we'll do that it a minute. Update Parallels Before creating a VM and installing XP, check for any updates to the Parallels software (Help -> Check for Updates). Download and install them as directed. Install XP Installing Win XPCreate a Typical VM as per the Quick Start Guide. Select your CD/DVD drive as directed. Insert the XP disc, follow the instructions at the start, and sit back.
Clone default XP install Once the XP install is finished, use the Clone option (VM -> Clone VM) to duplicate the basic XP install. This will save you having to reinstall XP if/when it requires a clean start. Install Parallels tools The tools allow you to share folders between the XP VM and the Mac OS X desktop; in addition to improving mouse and video performance in XP. Install them using VM -> Install Parallels Tools. That's it. You now have a fully functioning (and fast) XP installation on your Mac.

Re-download podcasts in iTunes without subscribing again

by Scott Bird
2 Oct 2006 2 minutes is just a tiny bit short for a Diggnation episodeFor whatever reason, occasionally a podcast download in iTunes stops part-way; leaving you stuck with a partial file. iTunes merrily tells you that it has the entire download, though when an entire episode of Diggnation comes in at a whopping 2min 11secs you have to wonder. There's no obvious way (at least on the Windows version) to get iTunes to re-download the file. An anonymous poster to MacOSXHints found the solution (short of unsubscribing/resubscribing, which is annoying at best):
Select and delete the partial episode in iTunesIn the 'Podcasts' section of iTunes, click the arrow to expand the episode listing of the podcast in question. Select and delete (Windows: Delete button | Mac: Backspace key) the offending episode. If prompted to relegate your partial file to the trash, do so. You won't be needing it again.
Happy Happy, Joy JoyClick the arrow again to close the listing. Now, this is the crucial part. Hold down the Shift | Option button whilst clicking the arrow to expand the listing. This will force an update of the podcast, and the formerly deleted entry will reappear with a shiny new Get button beside it. Simply re-download the episode, kick back and enjoy.

Inbox zero

by Scott Bird
15 Mar 2006 43 foldesOn 43 Folders (via lifehacker) :
Over the next few days, we’ll be looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox — and then keep it that way.
Very well timed.

File Flinging Fun with XmailHardDrive

by Scott Bird
8 Mar 2006 XmailHardDriveIf you're anything like me (and probably a large percentage of Gmail users) you're not using anywhere near your Gmail 2gb limit. Here's a great way to productively use some of that free space - as a temporary file storage area. This fits in well with my current shift towards web-based and offline solutions. A failed hard-drive will do that to you. One of the limitations of the Gmail service for file sharing is the 10mb limit for emails. This isn't usually a problem when you're doing nothing but emailing files to yourself for later retrieval; however XmailHardDrive - a web-based solution - has managed to push that up to 20mb. No doubt there is plenty more pushing to come.

Random images

by Scott Bird
22 Nov 2003 The random images at the top of the sidebar are cycled using a simple php script. There are many scripts out there that perform much the same function, I kept this one simply as it was one of the first scripts I wrote in PHP. Hey, I'm a sentimental guy. Here's the script in all its glory. Feel free to take it and and modify in any way you see fit. If you've got any questions or comments on this script, or anything else on this site, feel free to drop me a line. The script itself. Put this in a PHP file with your other scripts. Make a note of where this file lives - you'll need to reference it later. 
function ranpic($dir, $pictitle) {

  $width = 140; // change this to suit your own images
  $height = 90; // change this to suit your own images
  $curr_directory = opendir($dir);
  while($filename = readdir($curr_directory))	{ 
  	// only show files, ie names with a '.'
  	if (substr_count($filename,".")>0) {
  		// ignore dirs '.' or '..'
  		if (substr($filename,0,1)!=".") {
  			$piclist[] = $filename;
  		}
  	}
  }
  closedir($curr_directory);
  $picnum = rand(0,sizeof($piclist)-1);
  $pic = $piclist[$picnum];
  print "<img src=\"".$dir."/".$pic ."\" width=\"" 
.$width . "\" height=\"" .$height . "\" title=\"" 
.$pictitle ."\" alt=\"" .$pictitle ."\" /> ";
}
To call this script, you'll need something like the following (on the page where you want the image to appear) : 
<?php 
include("../scripts/scripts.php");
echo ranpic("../images/random","another random image");
 ?>
Modify the script location, location of your images and the ALT tag as required.

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