My MacOS X

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.

tags: 10.5, 10.6, quicksilver, screensaver, security

DNS request are usually cache, that’s good as it speeds up the lookups within the same host but sometimes we will want to clear the cache so it don’t hold the values that are no longer valid.

In Leopard (Mac OSX 10.5) or Snow Leopard (10.6)

To clear DNS cache in Leopard, just type this in your Terminal and hit enter.

dscacheutil -flushcache

To Clear DNS cache in Mac OS X Tiger

Use the following command:

lookupd -flushcache

What is DNS?

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a naming system for computers, and anything else on the Internet. When you type a website’s name into your browser address bar, the DNS gives you the IP co-ordinates to find the server.

tags: 10.5, cache, dns, Snow Leopard

If you are a web designer or do any work matching colors with photos, you are in luck. Mac OS X comes with a cool little program to help you get the digital value of any pixel on the screen. It’s called Digital Color Meter.

Here is how to do it:
Step 1: From the ‘Finder’ menu, choose ‘GO->Utilities’ or click Shift + Command + U

Step 2: Next, open the app, ‘Digital Color Meter’

Now, you can change the aperture size to smaller (left) or larger (right). Also, you can use the drop down menu to choose what format you want it represented in. For HTML coding, use RGB As Hex Value, 8-bit.
To copy the displayed color value to the clipboard, hover the mouse cursor over the color you want to measure and press Shift+Command+C. Your needs may be different, and it gives you several options to choose from.

digitalcolor meter keyboard shortcuts:

• Lock Position (Command+L)
• Lock X (Command+X)
• Lock Y (Command+Y)
• Copy Image (Command+C)
• Save as TIFF (Command+S)
• Hold Color (Shift+Command+H)
• Copy Color As Text (Shift+Command+C)
• Copy Color As Image (Option+Command+C)

More about DigitalColor Meter on Wikipedia

tags: 10.5, Development, HTML, programming, Snow Leopard, Web

Quick Look has a hidden feature that is not enabled by default, and can only be enabled through Terminal. Essentially, when ‘X-Ray mode’ is turned on, Quick Looking a folder will show, in a way, the contents of the folder.

Instead of just seeing the regular folder icon in Quick Look, the folder icon will be semi-transparent, with previews of the folder’s contents visible in the Quick Look window, as seen in the image at right. What’s more, the preview images will rotate automatically, moving through each item in the folder (click the image to see a movie of the animation).

To turn this on, quit the Finder (using Activity Monitor, Terminal, etc.), then open Terminal and enter this command:

$ defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1

Relaunch the Finder, and enjoy the new folder X-Ray mode in Quick Look. If you ever want to disable it again, quit the Finder, then repeat the above Terminal command, but change the 1 to a 0.

Source: Macosxhints

tags: 10.5, 10.6, hidden feature, preview, Snow Leopard