Sometimes an Application will stop responding. Take a deep breath. “Don’t overreact,” I tell myself. “Save often” is what my professors always told me to do. Be patient, just wait a moment or two for my Mac to compute. If an Application stops responding completely, I can find out in the Force Quit menu.
There are a few ways to get to the Fore Quit menu. Select Force Quit in the Apple Menu. Sometimes the Finder stops responding. When that happens, the Apple Menu may be inaccessible. The best option is to learn the keyboard shortcut: Cmd+Opt+Esc. Kinda like Ctrl+Alt+Dlt on a Windows computer.
I can Force Quit an application I accidentally click on in the Dock. Ctrl+Click the Unresponsive Application’s icon in the Dock and Select Force Quit. I can usually do this too when an Application stops responding.
Select the Application that is not responding from the list and Click Force Quitin the Force Quit Menu.
Sometimes I don’t want to haul around my laptop but like to my carry information. So, I went out and bought an inexpensive 2 GB USB thumbdrive during a sale at CompUSA. After scouring the internet for portable applications to put on my thumbdrive, I found this awesome list over at http://portable-apps.subiectiv.com/.
Among the list are portable internet browsers, image and audio editors, instant messaging clients, office, ftp clients, even a complete web authoring application!
I can download and install these applications on my thumbdrive and now I have a super portable version of my digital life. I can backup my bookmarks, documents, some mp3s. Now I can walk into work, plug in my thumbdrive to the Mac and have my computer from home.
Over at LifeHacker.com, they have a rather excellent listing of iTunes Applescripts! Lifehacker is an excellent resource for finding hacks on any computer.
At Lifehacker.com can learn how to:
Remove dead tracks
Create block parties from my library
Gather one hit wonders
Make album playlists
Nag me to rate my songs
Get lyrics
Search wikipedia
Search for music videos
Search for Pandora stations
Import iPod audio files
Make PDF Booklet
Make a CD case
Make all these add ons keyboard shortcuts
Find out more at LifeHacker.com.
Gas tells me the best prices for gas weather I am driving across country or in my hometown. I simply give the Gas widget my zip code and it will give me the cheapest gas prices in a 15 miles radius. Gas will even link to Google Maps, allow me to single out my preferred grade, and stays up to date thanks to participants over at GasPriceWatch.com.
Download Gas from Apple’s Dashboard Widgets site.
Soundflower is an audio router for OS X. It allows me to send audio from one application to another. According to Cycling 74, “Soundflower is easy to use, it simply presents itself as an audio device, allowing any audio application to send and receive audio with no other support needed.”
Cycling 74 has been creating applications for DJs and Interactive Artists since the good ole’ Mac OS 9 days. The audio/video programming language Max/MSP/Jitter has been the most innovative solution for interactive art making for the Mac.
Soundflowerbed is a companion application that places an audio router right into your menubar.
I can select Soundflower as either my input or output in my sound preferences pane, allowing me full control over where audio is traveling inside of my Apple computer. Soundflower even allows for 16 channels of audio to be passed through it. For instance, I can tell Garageband to output to two channels of Soundflower, while I sample an mp3 in iTunes in another two channels. Now I have an audio mixer! Then, I can output the audio through my speakers right in Soundflowerbed.
Download Soundflower from Cycling 74’s website.
Burn is a free CD/DVD burning application for OS X. I can burn Audio/Data CDs, Mp3 discs, VCD, SVCD, DVD and DivX discs. I can even make Disc Images and Copy Data DiscsBurn can handle everything Roxio Toast Titanium can, in a smaller easier to use package. And it’s Open Source and Free!
Download Burn from Sourceforge.
Stac is a puzzle game reminiscent of Dr. Mario or Super Puzzle Fighter. It is very simple. Four of the same shape touching = points and lowers the stac. Shapes fall in combination of threes. High Scores are saved locally. “Requires ingenuity and persistence in solving and assembling,” according to the Stac site. Any Tetris fan will love this game.
The best part is that I can take a short break from working and play a quick game. If I enable zoom in the System Preferences, I can even play Stac full screen by zooming in on the widget with Cmd+Option++.
Download Stac from the Official site.
Hold up, what is a Live VJ? A VJ is someone who mixes live video music like a Turntablist (DJ) mixes music, usually backing a DJ or other live performance.
Certainly not the MTV variety.
VDMX 5 is the choice Live VJ application for OS X. Vidvox released the Public Beta of VDMX 5 a few weeks back. Packed full of video goodies, including built-in audio/midi analysis, video masking, real time Core Image Effects, modular interface, effect preset switching, Quartz integration, its hard to name everything. Just the fact that VDMX 5 can handle Quartz compositions means I can create any video effect imaginable. The interface behind VDMX 5 is revolutionary, freeing the video editor from a timeline or even keyframes.
“Following in the footsteps of audio software trends, video software and hardware are now fast enough to compete with expensive hardware boxes for doing real-time SD and HD mixing and FX processing. Using your Macintosh, you can achieve astonishing results that are infinitely more flexible than dedicated hardware, for a fraction of the cost. VDMX not only saves you money on hardware, but also saves time. Because of its real time architecture and a control design which encourages creative exploration, you can count on VDMX to get better results faster than working with timelines.”
You can now become a Live VJ! Download VDMX 5 from the Vidvox website.
Anyone interested in Astronomy will probably cite Starry Night Pro as the best application star gazing money can buy. Starry Night recently released a free Dashboard widget for Astronomy enthusiasts that is a solid astronomy widget, linking to images found on Starry Night online.
Download Starry Night widget here.
Ever since I bought my new MacBook Pro, I have been working on project after project. After six months, my 80GB hard drive became cluttered up with files. I started looking the usual places to free up some place: Delete useless language files (2GB), Garageband Demos (3GB), iDVD Themes (1.7GB), Final Cut render files (varies). But that wasn’t enough. I still felt there were some files lurking in the background that were hogging space on my hard drive…
I decided to download Disk Inventory X, a hard drive management utility that allows me to view where all my large files reside and what types of files are using the most space in one nice graphical package.
