My MacOS X

To reset your OS X password without an OS X CD you have two ways

First Way “create a new admin account”

1. Reboot
2. Hold apple + s down after you hear the chime.
3. When you get text prompt enter in these terminal commands to create a brand new admin account (hitting return after each line):
   • mount -uw /
   • rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
   • shutdown -h now
4. After rebooting you should have a brand new admin account. When you login as the new admin you can simply delete the old one and you’re good to go again!

Second way “Resetting or changing your existing password”

If you’ve ever forgotten your user account password in OS X, All you need is to remember your username (you do remember that, right?) and then reboot your computer.

1. Hold apple + s down after you hear the chime.
2. sh /etc/rc
3. passwd yourusername
4. reboot

P.S. The only major downside to resetting your password this way is that you’ll lose all keychain passwords,

Requirements:

• Home folder to be encrypted.
• Don’t need my Time Machine disk to be encrypted

First, make sure your Time Machine setup is functioning properly.
The XCode installed, as it uses Property List Editor
(Note: you’ll need to change the process a bit if you use a different property list editor.)

How to do that:

You will need to manually edit the preference file for Time Machine, adding the ID string of your File Vault disk to the list of disks to backup. You can’t do this from within System Preferences or otherwise.
One way of finding the ID string of the disk is to open com.apple.finder.plist, located in your user’s /Library/Preferences folder, and look for the FXRecentFolders item.

One of the entries should contain the name of your home folder (your login name) together with an entry called file-data. If it doesn’t, you need to close the plist and visit your home folder in Finder. This will make it a ‘recent folder,’ and then you can check the file again.

The value of _CFURLAliasData inside file-data is the string we need, including the enclosing < and >. Copy this to the clipboard.

Now, disable Time Machine from within System Preferences, make a back up of com.apple.TimeMachine.plist, located in /Library/Preferences, and then open the original file in Property List Editor. Select IncludedVolumes and click Add Child. Select type Data and paste the string you copied earlier.

(If IncludedVolumes doesn’t exist, select Root and click Add Child. Name the new entry IncludedVolumes and make it type Array. Then do the above.)

Check that the path to your home folder isn’t listed in any of the items ExcludeByPath, ExcludedVolumes, or SkipPaths. Save and quit the editor.

Select Back Up Now from the Time Machine menu bar extra to start an initial backup.
Note: You may already have a backup of your image file (located in the hidden folder /Users/.username), in which case you will have duplicates. You might want to exclude this from your backup.

When browsing your backup, your unencrypted home folder will be on the Computer level, alongside your startup disk. Not where it normally is — under /Users — since it is treated like a regular disk.

View Original hint

1 month ago Google announced on their official blog that they were offering the use of their DNS server to the public.

Today, as part of our ongoing effort to make the web faster, we’re launching our own public DNS resolver called Google Public DNS, and we invite you to try it out.

Why use Google’s DNS?

The average Internet user ends up performing hundreds of DNS lookups each day, and some complex pages require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading. This can slow down the browsing experience. Google have suggested that using their DNS will speed up internet usage and browsing.

Using Google’s Public DNS for Snow Leopard

• Step 1 (System Preferences):
  Open your system preferences and select the Network panel (it will be in the Internet and Wireless section).
  
• Step 2 (Network preference pane):
  In the Network preference pane, make sure your network connection is selected (Airport or Ethernet) and click “Advanced”.
  
• Step 3 (DNS tab):
  Open the DNS tab in the next panel and add Google’s DNS servers using the “+” button.
  DNS Server 1 (preferred): 8.8.8.8
  DNS Server 2 (alternate): 8.8.4.4

• Step 4 (Delete old servers):
  Delete all your old servers or move them to botton (hold Command + mouse click and move)
• Step 5 (Save work):
  Then just “OK” and “Apply” your way back out of the various dialogs and you should be good to go.
• Step 6 (Testing):
  Test that your setup is working correctly; see Testing your new settings

One of the unwelcome changes in Snow Leopard, who use certain third-party LCD displays, was the gross simplification of the font smoothing options in the Appearance System Preferences panel.

In Leopard (10.5), a pop-up menu provided a number of options for font smoothing—automatic, standard, light, medium (“best for LCD”), and strong.

In Snow Leopard (10.6), though, that’s been simplified down to simply a yes or no option: “Use LCD font smoothing when available.”

In practice, however, that’s not the case. The problematic LCD displays could be  Dell, Samsung, LG, HP, EIZO, Lenovo.

The problem was that the text on the Dell was really “light” and hard to read after upgrading to Snow Leopard (10.6). This made it tougher to read, and led to eyestrain if you are using  the machine for an extended period of time.

Lest you think this issue is restricted to those running homebrew netbook Macs, however, that’s not true—apparently standalone LCD displays by Dell, Samsung, LG, HP, EIZO, Lenovo, and possibly others are affected as well.

The top portion of the image is how the document appeared prior to applying the fix;
The bottom was taken after the fix.

Notice how the top image is quite light—dots on “i” characters are hard to see, and the text has an overall gray tinge to it. In the bottom image, the gray is gone, and everything is a bit bolder while still being clear and crisp.

Before (top) and after (bottom) the fix

By zooming in a bit, it’s easy to see the difference between the before and after images.

The top portion of the image at right is before the fix; notice that the font smoothing is done completely with levels of gray.

In the bottom portion of the image, taken after the fix, you can see not only more levels of gray, but the subtle use of some colored pixels to smooth the font—there’s a yellow pixel on the left edge of the dot on the “i,” for example.

If you’ve got an LCD panel that you think looks worse than it did before upgrading to 10.6, you can try this fix to see if it makes things better.
How? Just open Terminal (in Applications -> Utilities) and paste this command, then press Return:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2

The 2 at the end is equivalent to the old “Medium – Best for flat panel” setting in 10.5. You can also use 1 for light smoothing, and 3 for strong smoothing. This change will only affect newly-opened applications — anything already running will have to be restarted to see the affect of the changes.

Note that if you go back into the Appearance panel and toggle the font smoothing setting, you will override your manually-set value—so don’t do that if you value your newly-smoothed fonts.

A Quick way to resize images in batches could be  find that Preview has that functionality. Open the whole batch of images in Preview; the images will all open in the same window with thumbnails visible in the sidebar.

Select all of the thumbnails in the sidebar (with Command-A, or click the first and then click the last while holding Shift). Next, from the Tools menu, choose Adjust Size. You’ll be presented with a dialog containing options to resize to all the common 4:3 and 16:9 screen sizes, as well as the option to define custom dimensions. Images are scaled proportionately and resampled by default.

Save the resized images, and you’re done!
Preview will prompt you to save any changes if you attempt to close the window.

You can also use sips on the command line:
sips -Z 1024 *.jpg
will resample to a max of 1024 px for the long edge.
Note that sips rewrites images in place, so you should do this on a copy if you care.

The new method of scanning with Image Capture is wonderful! Apple has organized the process with exceptional clarity. Also, it allows the user to specify several different files to be created from one scan.
Having the HP hardware and Apple software combined is the best of all worlds.

But the Officejet 6500 scanner isn’t working in Snow Leopard either. Here quick guide howto fix it:

1. Open System Preferences -> Print & Fax and delete your printer from the Printers list.
2. Browse to /Library/printers. Delete the “hp” folder.
3. Browse to /Library/Image Capture/Devices. Delete “HPScanner“.
4. Browse to /Library/Image Capture/Support. “Delete the Hewlett-Packard folder.
5. Browse to /Library/Application Support. “Delete the Hewlett-Packard” folder.
6. Run Apple’s Disk Utility (found in /Applications/Utilities) and repair permissions on your HD.
7. Power off your 6500 printer/scanner
8. Restart your Mac.
9. Power on your 6500 printer/scanner
10. Use the Apple installer (Software Update) to install the HP printer drivers.
11. Open System Preferences -> Print & Fax. Add your device to the Printers list.
12. Open Image Capture and attempt to scan.

Scanned through Print and Fax and Image Capture and all is well.

Use the Tab key in user-created keyboard shortcuts in Snow Leopard. In OS X 10.5, pressing the Tab key while creating keyboard shortcuts (in the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences panel) didn’t work; the system would just beep and not accept the Tab key.

In Snow Leopard you can now use the Tab key in any combination with the Shift, Control, Command, and Option keys. For example, you could change the Exposé All Windows activation keystroke to Option-Tab, which might make sense if you’re used to using Command-Tab to switch applications and want to have a similarly-assigned shortcut for Exposé.

• Open the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard System Preferences panel
• Select the Exposé & Spaces entry in the left-hand column
• Click on the All Windows entry below Exposé in the right-hand column.
• Double-click on the right-hand side of that entry
• And just press Option-Tab

and you’re done.

You can now use the Tab key in your user-defined shortcuts, which opens up a number of additional keyboard combinations.

In Mac OS X 10.5, the AirPort icon in the menu bar had a trick up its sleeve—hold down Option when clicking the icon, and you’d see more information about the various available AirPort networks -
The hardware (MAC) address of the wireless station, which channel is in use, the signal strength (RSSI), and finally an indication of the data transmission rate.

In Snow Leopard, this feature has been expanded, you can also see what mode your connected network is using (802.11n, for instance), security (WPA2 Personal), MCS Index, which appears to be related to the 802.11n standard.

One of the oddities of my computer use style is that I don’t like to have my system go into screensaver or lock automatically very quickly. When I leave the keyboard, I like to be able to activate the screensaver/lock manually. Since I’m also not a fan of active screen corners, I want to be able to do so by keystroke.

Annoyingly, OS X doesn’t let me bind a key to activate the screensaver. There used to be a couple utilities that enabled this, but they haven’t been updated since 10.3.

The screensaver engine itself is an application, but we still need a convenient wayto activate it. Enter Quicksilver. Quicksilver’s Triggers let us bind Quicksilver actions (including, conveniently, opening Applications) to keypresses.

So, to create a key to activate your screensaver or lock your system with Quicksilver, follow these simple steps:

1. Create a Quicksilver trigger to open the screensaver engine. The engine is /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/
Versions/A/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app
   

   QuickSilver Trigger Window

2. Bring up the Trigger’s info pane.
3. Set a key shortcut for the trigger. The combination of options I’ve got selected mean that the trigger only goes off if I hold the keys down for three seconds, and Quicksilver brings up a display window to let me know that I’m activating a trigger. Very handy!  Mine’s set to cmd-alt-ctrl-L)



4.  Don’t forget go to Leopard -> System Preferences -> Security -> General. And check the “require password” checkbox.

In 10.6 that when use Exposé in Application Windows mode, it shows  all windows, not just the ones in the current Space. I always end up clicking on the wrong window and being whisked away to a another Space.

To stop that from happening, open Terminal and run these two commands:

defaults write com.apple.dock wvous-show-windows-in-other-spaces -bool FALSE
killall Dock

From now on, Exposés Application Windows mode will only show windows in the current Space.

To reverse this hint, use

defaults delete com.apple.dock wvous-show-windows-in-other-spaces
killall Dock

Source: mymacosx

You can reveal the location of a recently-used item by holding down the Command key while looking at the Apple menu’s Recent Items menu. With the Command key held down, the wording of the menu items (for Applications and Documents) changes from some item to Show “some item” in Finder.

source: osxdaily

One of the great features in Adobe Acrobat Pro is the ability to annotate (comment, markup, circle, highlight) PDF documents and images like JPEGs, PNGs, etc. Although, there are many other features (like creating forms) in Acrobat that are useful for PDFs, it’s not really fair to compare it to Preview. Nonetheless, for those who don’t have Acrobat Pro or don’t want to buy it, Preview has become quite powerful especially with the new Annotate toolbar added in Snow Leopard.

1. Open up a PDF or IMAGE on your Mac with Preview.
2. Click on the Annotate button in Preview, located next to the Select button on the top.
3. Now, you should notice a toolbar appear on the bottom on Preview.
4. Use this Annotation toolbar to highlight text, add circles or squares around important text, add hyperlinks, add text, or add colorful arrows.
5. Once you’re done making any changes to the file, make sure to save it.

Here shortcuts:

The seed is said to contain dozens of minor bug fixes and performance improvements in these areas:

Address Book, AppleScript, AppleScriptObjC, ATS, ColorSync, Component Manager, Core Animation, Core Audio, Core Chinese Engine, Core Data, Core Graphics, Core Text, File Manager, Garbage Collection, Graphic drivers, Help Viewer, ImageKit, IOHIDFamily, Networking, NS Image, OpenCL, OpenGL, OSA, QT Kit, Speech Recognition, Sync Services, and Xtype.

The seed notes reportedly include a caution that there is a known issue with optical drives: that they may not be recognized and the eject key may not eject the media, and that DVD Player may hang. As a result, not all developers may choose to install this build.
Note: Mac OS X 10.6.1 was released September 10.