Check out this TED talk – Ed Ulbrich talks about the creation of the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. Brad Pitt’s head for the entire first hour of the movie is completely computer generated! CG software has come so far in just a few years. I’m absolutely amazed since I was unable to tell that Brad’s head was well…, not his head.
Even though Obama touts his administration as being the most tech savvy yet, I had to laugh when I read what Joe Biden said on CBS’ “Early Show”.
“You know, I’m embarrassed. Do you know the Web site number?” he asked an aide standing out of view. “I should have it in front of me and I don’t. I’m actually embarrassed.”
Well Mr. Vice President, you should be embarrassed because you sound a lot like our former President whom we love to refer to as W. It must be very hard for Mr. Biden to keep up with some of the conversations that are currently happening in the White House. I almost feel sorry for the guy…
Read the article here.
Mac OS X has built in screen shot capabilities, but those capabilities are very limited. I spent quite a bit of time testing different screen capture software and when I had finally had enough I found that Skitch was the easiest to use, most functional screen capture program out there. Skitch is currently in beta, but from what I have experienced it is an extremely stable beta. I have yet to have Skitch crash on me, nor has it ever given me any sort of error. I honestly like Skitch better than its competitors because of a couple very handy features which I use practically every day (all screen captures I display on this site have been taken with Skitch).
First, and absolutely most important, Skitch allows you to easily integrate your screen captures with any program – the goal of screen captures. At the bottom of the Skitch window there is a simple “Drag Me” button that allows you to drag your current screen capture into another program or in a folder instantly saving it. You can save in six different file formats .jpg, .png, .tif, .pdf, .svg, and .skitch and Skitch automatically keeps a history of your most recent screen captures. Second, you can quickly and easily doctor your screen captures inside the Skitch window with a variety of tools including arrows, shapes, text, and a pencil tool. It took me literally 20 or 30 seconds to create the screen captures below. Finally Skitch flawlessly integrates with OS X simply overriding the built in capabilities. Based upon user preferences the Skitch icon sits in the Dock, the menu bar, or both. When you minimize Skitch it disappears into the menu bar and will reappear when clicked on. Hotkeys make quick screen captures quick and easy.
One last note about Skitch is the social network that is being built to function with the program. To download Skitch you must join the Skitch network which is a place to host your screen captures for sharing with friends or simply for access later via the web. So far I have not found any real use for the Skitch network, probably because I have so many other places I can save images. However, the idea is an interesting one, and I am intrigued to see if there will be much user support of the Skitch social network.
If you are interested in Skitch, take a look at a couple screen shots below and visit their site.
Check out these links I’ve found!
This article by John Markoff appeared in the New York Times on February 14th, 2009. Aside from the title being a little inflammatory the article does a fair job of explaining some of the problems faced by Internet architects today. However, many of Markoff’s fears seem to be somewhat exaggerated. He begins by harkening back to the early days of the Internet when a worm could bring the Net to its metaphorical knees. He then makes the bold statement that things have gotten much, much worse. Markoff uses Conficker (A.K.A. Downadup) as an example of how the Internet is broken – due to Conficker’s infection of over 12 million machines world wide. Conficker basically enables its creators to control the infected machines and lash them together into the world’s largest botnet. The botnet can then be used as an incredibly powerful spam engine or to create incredibly forceful destributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks that could easily cripple web services or even portions of the internet. While this is definitely of great concern to all users of the Internet (obviously, who wants to see spam levels increase) it is not solely the threat is solely caused by the Internet. All the computers within a botnet are remotely controlled and are the property of individuals and companies. This means that at any time a computer can be removed from the botnet by either patching the flaw and removing the malicious software, by disconnecting it from the Internet, or by completely wiping the computer and starting over. The owner of the computer has complete control over what happens to that machine. The other disturbing part about Conficker is that the vulnerability in all recent Microsoft operating systems was patched by Microsoft in October of 2008 thus rendering Conficker ineffective on all updated systems. All of the major antivirus companies also released removal tools around the same time. Thus it is the people who are not regularly updating their computers that are at fault here, NOT the Internet.
Markoff also states that the original designers of the Internet never had security in mind when designing the protocols that make the Internet function – which is true. Security was an afterthought that became very important as worms and viruses began to pop up and wreak havoc. I agree that we have sunk a lot of time and money into patchng a system that was designed without an ounce of thought dedicated to security, but I don’t think that is a bad thing. IPv6 has been developed out of necessity and is a good step forward in Internet security and this technology is available and ready to be used. However, again we run into the same problem we experience with updating individual computers; unless there is a critical need to change, the majority of people do not want to change. Thus the much more secure IPv6 protocol has begun to be implemented, but the less secure IPv4 protocol is still the primary protocol used to make the Internet function.
What bothers me most about this article is the solution Markoff proposes – a gated network where users are required to give up their anonymity. What makes the Internet great, what keeps it interesting and innovative, is anonymity. Any person with a computer (or any other networking enabled device) and a little know how can quickly access a wealth of information on just about any topic imaginable. They can also add to the conversation thereby increasing the knowledge base. A gated community by its nature keeps people out. It removes this ability to easily access a certain area. The digital divide is already enormous! How can we expect to change this while implementing a security policy that makes it even more difficult to access the Internet. That being said, there are again a couple of technical issues. First, SSL already provides secure authentication and is used by most (if not all) of the major online businesses. Why should they change and become a part of a gated community that may cause a loss of business? It just doesn’t make sense. Second, identity theft is currently wreaking havoc world wide. A clever person can easily access incredible amounts of information and quickly take on the identity of someone else. How will a gated community handle identity theft any better than the current system?
In my opinion, it is definitely smart to be looking to the future and focusing on improved security, but to say that the current Internet is broken and that the problems stem from the protocol is misplacing the blame. As with any system in this world, one of the weakest points is the human element. I’m learning more and more that a good social engineer can easily skirt the security measures that have been put in place by simply exploiting the humans involved in the system. Before we do anything drastic like rebuilding the internet into a gated community, I say we do our best to educate people about how to be safe. It’s much the same with children – you can do everything possible to keep them safe (to gate them in), but until you teach them how to be safe they will always be at risk of exploitation.
Check out these links I’ve found!
While I’m on the subject of customizing the OS X desktop environment there is another nifty little piece of software that can do great things for you. Tinker tool is simply a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows access to a wide variety of neat customizations not available through the standard OS X GUI. Tinker Tool is completely safe because it does not modify the OS in any way. It simply accesses the the apple .plist files (preference files) and modifies the defaults. The functionality is already built in, Apple just has not made it available to the general user. The same functionality that is made available through Tinker Tool is also accessible using .plist changes from the Terminal – very doable, but if there is a GUI why mess around?
I’ve used Tinker Tool for quite some time now and have found a few customizations that I really hate to function without. My favorite customization by far is in Finder and causes the selected items path to be displayed in the title bar of the Finder window. Another great customization deals with sheets – the dialogues that pop up when you click print or save. Tinker Tool allows you to prefer expanded save sheets and expanded print sheets, which saves me the extra click needed to expand the sheet so I can save to the location of my choice. A couple of changes that make Leopard slightly less annoying are the ability to remove the “always in foreground” preference that is default with the Help dialogue box and the ability to keep Time Machine from always asking if you want to use a newly connected drive for backups. One last change that I make is adding the Develop menu to the menu bar in Safari (the Develop menu is where you find the console for debugging in Safari – a must for web development).
If you like the sounds of it, Tinker Tool is available from Marcel Bresink’s site.
I’m always trying to find ways to customize my Mac so it and I can work efficiently together. I use Exposé and Spaces to spread tasks out across three desktops, but one application I try to avoid at all costs is the Finder. It adds windows to my workspace that I then must either work around or close. I usually opt to close them and less than a minute later have to open another one to pull out another file. Don’t get me wrong, I much prefer Finder of Windows Explorer, but my goal is to get away from launching new windows when accessing my most used files and folders. Stacks has helped greatly in making those files and folders readily accessible by placing them in my Dock, however I still feel that there must be a better solution available.
The latest piece of software that I have been testing to see if it will integrate well and solve this issue is called MaxMenus. This handy little piece of software creates colored activation points in each of the four corners of the screen. When clicked, these colored corners display a menu that contains the content you specify in the MaxMenus preferences (located in System Preferences). At first I was a little hesitant because the corners of the screen are Exposé’s activation point. Exposé allows me to view and select from all my open windows or my desktop by simply pushing the mouse to the corner of the screen (Exposé offers more customization, those are simply the two functions I use all the time). I can then access anything on my desktop or select the open window that I want to work in next. So, as I said I was hesitant of using a program that might encroach on Exposé. But after some use and much customization, I’ve found that MaxMenus allows me to have quick access to the files and folders I use most with minimal interaction with Exposé. I now have the upper and lower right corners of my screen dedicated to Exposé and the upper and lower left corners of my screen dedicated to MaxMenus (the activation points still show in all four corners, but that I simply ignore them). The one downside to MaxMenus is the inability to move files and folders around within the views – that functionality is still relegated to the Finder. Ah well, can’t have everything I suppose.
Take a look at a few screenshots which show MaxMenus in action. If you like the looks of MaxMenus there is a free download on Version Tracker.
MaxMenus Activation Point
Recent Documents in upper left corner
You can set folders to be in expanded view (like “JS” above)
Many people have posted very comprehensive lists of keyboard shortcuts for the Mac (see bottom of post for a couple links), but honestly, how many keyboard shortcuts can you really learn at one time and then remember five days later? So, I’ve provided a list of my favorite, most used keyboard shortcuts below. I hope you find these helpful and they speed up your computing.
Global:
Close Window: Command-W
Copy: Command-C
Cut: Command-X
Find: Command-F
Force Quit: Option-Command-Escape
Get Info: Command-I
Hide Window: Command-H
Minimize Window: Command-M
New Tab: Command-T
New Window: Command-N
Open: Command-O
Paste: Command-V
Quit Application: Command-Q
Refresh: Command-R
View Preferences: Command-, (the comma key)
Finder:
Change between view types: Command+1-4
Connect to Server: Command-K
Mail.app
Apply Rules: Option-Command-L
Send Mail: Shift-Command-D
Other Guide’s:
I’ve always been displeased with the fact that only the day of the week and the time are displayed in the OS X menu bar. I found the answer to my problem with this very useful hack from Lifehacker. Basically it now allows me to have the date and time in the format of my choosing in the menu bar at all times. Here’s a screenshot:
I have to say this is probably one of my top 5 most used hacks since I look at the date multiple times a day.
Tim Seymour lives in Washington, DC. He works as a Systems Administrator for HouseCall IT and spends most days on Capitol Hill.
