OnMyCommand is a mind-blowingly useful contextual menu plugin for OS X that allows you to execute UNIX commands from your right-click menus. Fortunately for the UNIX illiterate among us, users have submitted hundreds of useful commands that will give you Quicksilver-like savings of time and RSIs. The best part is, you don’t have to learn anything fancy – it puts your most common tasks just a right-click away. Here are some of the commands I use regularly:
h3. Send File(s) via e-mail
Frustrated by the Finder<Services<Mail<Send File command’s inability to attach multiple files to an e-mail, not to mention the clunkiness of this “shortcut?” This command attaches multiple files to new Mail.app e-mail and populates the subject line with the file names. Since commands can be edited, I even made customized copies of this command to then immediately send the e-mail to people I send attachments to most, or to populate the address field with their e-mail addresses, so I can then write them a short message before sending. This command has easily saved me hours.
Keeping your old e-mail is useful for finding contacts that you don’t have in your Address Book, referencing information, and leaving something for historians to piece your life together when they write your biography. But having a mail file that is too large can make things a little slow, so try this to keep less-frequently referenced (older) mail in a safe place, while not letting its presence effect your enjoyment of reading your new mail:
It seems that when it comes to AdSense on a blog, most bloggers are either all for it, or completely against it. If you don’t necessarily want your blog to be a moneymaking machine cluttered with ads, but would like to at least cover hosting charges while staying tasteful, then here are a few simple strategies for including ads on your blog without looking too cheap.
It is a good idea to not store “_killprevious.php” on your web server, to prevent someone else from resetting your ShortStat for you. If you don’t have that file, go to ShaunInman.com and redownload the package.
If you’re on a Mac, the ShortStat Widget will satisfy the stats whore in you.
For anyone out there, such as single men, without much experience in the kitchen, I have a small but very valuable bit of wisdom to impart upon you. If you are using your stove, do not put any plates on any of the burners. There is a small chance that you have turned on a burner other than the one you intended – maybe even the burner you have placed your plate on. This will result in a loud sound that sounds like an explosion, likely caused by the aforementioned plate exploding all over your kitchen. Now that you have this wisdom, you will of course, not ever make this mistake, and if you do, you will understand what has caused this well enough to not absent-mindedly attempt to remove what remains of the plate from the burner on your stove, thus burning your fingerprints off.
I’ve found a very affordable way to listen to a wide variety of music for very little money. Sure, it’s great to surf around Amazon or the iTunes Music Store, but there’s no way I could afford enough music to satisfy my craving for virtually any kind of music. Inspired by the music listening habits of a friend, I recently purchased a turntable. With a sense of adventure and a little patience, you too can satisfy your musical cravings with records from a number of sources (usually for less than a dollar an album). Even new vinyl tends to run cheaper than Compact Disk, but some of the older titles you acquire can end up being quite valuable.
Now that kadavy.net is included in the sites drawer for NetNewsWire 2.0b10 (a great RSS Reader for the Mac), I figured it was time to gain a little edge with my own favorites icon (that little icon that is showing up next to the web address on your address bar on most browsers).
To make one for your site, design a 16×16 pixel gif and upload it to your root directory with the name “favicon.ico”. It’s best if you can stay within the standard 256-color216-color web palette.
Tip: When working at the pixel-level in Photoshop, it’s a good idea to have one window zoomed way in (like 1600%) so you can see each pixel clearly, but also have a second window open for the same document (Window < Arrange < New Window for document name) at 100%, so you can simultaneously see what it will look like at actual size.
One of the things I do at RDG, is occasionally draw maps. I also impart my knowledge of graphics programs such as Adobe Illustrator to those in the company who draw maps more often than I do, to enable them to draw them more efficiently and attractively.
An underlying theme in the the research I have done to achieve this has been to try to make things as live-editable as possible. Anyone familiar with Illustrator can imagine what a headache it may be to create, and make changes to, a map full of city blocks that look like those in the image below:
Changing the street routes or widening the streets, while maintaining a uniform street width, will be an enormous and time-consuming pain. And what if you want to change the amount of bevelling of the street corners? With Illustrator’s Live Effects and Appearance Palette, if you start your drawing off right, you can change these things in seconds.
“Need a quick way to transfer files between two Macs? Start up one computer with the T key held down, then plug it into another mac with a firewire cable. The “target” computer’s disk appears on the second mac! Be sure to ‘gracefully’ unmount the target computer’s disk by dragging it to the trash before unplugging the firewire cable. Press the power button on the target computer to turn it off.”
