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Feb 07
iDVD 08 has a great theme called Revolution. On a given menu page, the theme shows a picture/movie on a revolving vertical cylinder flanked by rotating text, and a static text element for the title of that menu page. The cool thing is that as you change the title for the menu page, the rotating text updates to match. In addition, Apple allows you to specify not only the text of that title, but also the font and size.
However, the revolving text, while its content changes to reflect any changes you make to the text of the title, does not change to reflect the font you have selected for the title; it always remains Futura. I wanted to use this theme, but wanted the rotating text to reflect the font I used for the title, and which we use for all our corporate needs. After a bit of investigation, I figured it out.
First, open a blank project with the Revolution Theme, change the title to the font you want for the revolving text, save it as a Favorite Theme and quit iDV…
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Feb 07
I’ve always wanted to have a fully encrypted memory stick which when plugged in, OS X would automatically ask me for a password before mounting it. As far as I know (and from what tests I carried out), it’s not possible to create an encrypted disk image and overwrite the entire device with it.
My solution involves placing a hidden encrypted disk image on a device, hiding the volume itself so it doesn’t show up in the desktop, and applying a Folder Action to the /Volumes folder which takes care of mounting the encrypted image when the device is plugged in, and unmounting the device when the encrypted image is ejected.
No Terminal access necessary: an AppleScript droplet for preparing the device, the Folder Action AppleScript, and an AppleScript for restoring the device are provided here.
The scripts are tested in 10.5.1, but they really should work in …
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Feb 07
I accidentally found this bug today. I was in TextEdit and hit my F11 (Exposé – Show Desktop) key by mistake when I was reaching for the Delete key. So I hit the F11 key again to bring back my work, and found out that if you hit the F11 key and then hit any qwerty keys (including the Delete key) it will affect any document, or even text input areas in a web browser.
I tested this in TextEdit, Safari, Adium, and Word on 10.5 and 10.4. So if you use F11, be careful not to press any qwerty keys while in that mode.
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Feb 07
I write books about Photoshop and web stuff. Since 2004, I’ve been using Pages to do all the work, and I never regretted leaving Word behind forever. After recently updating to Pages 3 (in iWork ’08), and revising a book for its third edition, I noticed that all titles I have created in Pages 1 and 2 using per-word underlines were converted to full underlined paragraphs. As an example, here’s a before-and-after view of a sample title:
Thisisatitle … This is a title
So, I was forced to build the following AppleScript code to solve this mess:
Feb 06
Zamzar is a great tool for those who need to convert videos on the go. It’s also ideal for those who want to download YouTube videos in only one step. To get started, go to Zamzar’s website and enter all the information needed (either choose a file from your computer to convert, or paste a link from YouTube/other site of that nature, then choose the output format, and give them your email address). Zamzar then uploads the file to their website and then converts it. When it’s done converting. you should get an email with a link to download your newly converted file. Files only stay on the site for 24 hours so act quickly.
Here’s some pics of the email and the link they give you:
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Similar Posts:How To Download YouTube Videos
DropJPG – Easy and Quick Image Conversion in Your Dock
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Feb 06
 This hint is for UK users that want to watch BBC iPlayer shows on their desktop while ‘working’ on other stuff. It uses Safari’s Web Clip feature to view the iPlayer content in a Dashboard Widget, as seen in this screenshot.
First, enable ‘devmode’ in Dashboard, as explained in this hint (you can just killall Dock to activate devmode, no logout/login required), so you can float the Web Clip on your desktop. Next, grab the iPlayer content:
- Open Safari and find the iPlayer page with the show you want to watch.
- Click File » Open in Dashboard… (a purple toolbar will appear).
- Move the mouse over and click the iPlayer Play button to select the iPlayer area, then click the ‘Add’ button. Dashboard will open and load the iPla…
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Feb 06
When I find a web page that might be of interest to someone I know, I send an email suggesting they have a look. I want this email to be short and enable the recipient to decide quickly if the page is, in fact, of interest. The email usually includes some text from the page, a link, and a comment from me.
But, if you do it often, this recipient-friendly approach becomes labor intensive for the sender. There’s too much copying, pasting, and application switching. Hence this Applescript. It puts text you select in Safari into a new Mail message within quotation marks, appends the page link, and puts the page name into the email’s subject field. Add a comment, if you wish, and press send.
Feb 06
I’m surprised this one hasn’t come up earlier, actually. I recently purchased a 4GB Techworks upgrade kit for my previous-generation (2.33GHz) 17″ MacBook Pro. From what I’d read, due to either limitations in the Intel logic board, or limitations in the EFI firmware, I’d only be able to access 3.3GB of it.
Not so. Running 10.5.1 Leopard, after installing the RAM, I found I could address all 4GB of it. As seen in both System Profiler and Activity Monitor, I have the full 4GB available, running in dual-channel mode.
Third-party SO-DIMM RAM is cheaper than ever at the moment, so previous-gen MacBook Pro owners who’ve installed Leopard have no excuse but to upgrade now, really.
[robg adds: I can’t confirm this one, but MacTracker lists 3GB as the RAM limit for the 2.33GHz 17″ machine. If you have 4GB of usable RAM in some …
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Feb 06
I noticed some strange log messages and beachball hangs recently while using my MacBook Pro. The log message read MaBi kernel[0]: disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED). I came to the conclusion that the internal disk was failing (see this blog post and associated comments for some discussion on the error message).
I thought the logical course of action was to attach my Time Machine backup disk, do one last backup, then get the drive replaced and do a restore. It turns out this was not a good idea, and it resulted in the wholesale trashing of the Time Machine backup. Only because I caught the failure early enough, when not much was lost (and noticed what Time Machine was doing), was I able still to take a “normal” rsync-style backup from which to restore from tomorrow when the replacement arrives. …
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Feb 06
This hint most likely only applies to people who have installed or used Linux on an Intel-based Mac. If this is not you, you may want to stop reading now.
Anyway, if you have tried to edit a GPT partition map using GNU parted, or a utility that uses libparted, and if you’re not very good about following directions (like me), you may have accidentally set some of the partition “flags” that it exposes, such as msftres or boot. I put the term “flags” in quotes because it appears that parted actually changes the partition’s type in the GPT from whatever it was before to — in the case of msftres — a “Microsoft Reserved” partition (GUID E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE). These can have some unintended consequences — as I found out, setting boot on any partition besides the EFI reserved one at the beginning of the disk will make any OS X installations on that disk unbootable.
Fortunately, b...
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