I use Mail a lot, as a result I like to customise it to work the way I want to. Today’s tip will show you how to customise the fields in the new message window. Although the images shown are the Snow Leopard version of Mail, I assume there is a similar method available in Lion. The tip will allow you to change the BCC and CC fields as well as a couple of other fields when you compose a new message.

To change around the fields, open up a new message window, either by pressing Command + N or go to File > New Message. Then click the small button in the bottom left as shown in the image below. This is located below the fields within the header section of a new message.

When you click this button, select customise from the drop down menu. When selected the following type of screen will appear. Here you can change which fields appear by altering the state of the check boxes.

For example, if you never use the BCC field, or the signature field you can deselect them by clicking on the check box. Conversely if you want the Priority drop down selection field you can select the check box associated with it.  When you have finished press the OK button and your changes will be made.

Its a simple tip, however it’s useful if you want to simplify your interface. You can avoid the check box route by selecting the option from the small pop up menu when you first select the button, however it isn’t as visual. If you have any questions or comments, please use the form below.

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With numerous digital cameras attached to most electronic devices and the ability to share those images over the world wide web, making those images unique and different can be a difficult experience. Applying that vintage, distressed or Polaroid look can be a little difficult. However, today’s app, Photostyler takes the problem out of adjusting images and makes it fun in the process. The outputted result aren’t to bad either.

Once your download and install the app, you will be presented with a blank canvas ready to modify and change your image. When you load an image you will be presented with a number of default modifications to your image, presets, which you can add to yourself. There is various retro, sepia and other present modifications for you to choose from.

The sidebar gives you a break down of various tagged looks, so you can quickly choose what modifications your images takes on. When you have chosen a inbuilt style, or want to start from a blank style, you are ready to adjust and modify the image to get exactly the look your are looking for.

Adjusting Those Images

Once you have picked a default style, to adjust, or starting from a blank modification, you are presented with the photo editor interface. This window gives you a large amount of control in how your image looks. You can change the drop shadow, to the boarder of the image. Scratches which overlay on the top of the image and can be used to give that distressed look. Grunge, as the name suggests, alters the colour and lighting of the image.

Lomo is used to add a shadow around the edge of the image, useful if you want to give your image that olden damage looked along with the coffee stain feature to apply overlays of damage and distress. This feature can also be used to add your images such as watermarks or other images. Finally the frame option can be used to modify the frame around the image, and give it a boarder.

Before save the image out, there is one other feature that is worth a mention. The Before and After viewer can be used to see how your image compares with the original. I find when I edit an image that I get carried away and forget the big picture, as a result the final image looks a bit rubbish. The before and after feature allows your to compare, by splitting the image in half, what the original looked like. Very useful in making sure your final compositions looks the best.

Crunching The Image

One of the features of this app is the ability for it to use your GPU, this is a dedicated chip in Mac designed to render images for your screen, as a result it is very fast at processing images. When you export the image, saving and rendering takes no time at all. A bonus when you want to export a 10+ mega pixel image. The final image does look very good, I am using the trial version which has a watermark over the image but the detail is very clear and there is no artifacts that I can see. The original input image quality will dictate the final quality of the exported version.

Photostyler also has a batch edit feature. This is where the power of a GPU comes into play, you can load a whole folder of images apply the modifications you want and output the images with a modified file name to a new folder. My little test took no time at at all.

Conclusion

This app is brilliant if you like modifying image with this grunge and distressed look. The final versions do look amazing and the rendering time is done in a flash. I think it is limited on the variation in the number of images you can produce, however given more time with the app and the settings you probably can make a lot of different looking images.

This app does feel like you are playing around with some of the filters in Photoshop, however, you will not be paying the Photoshop price tag. The app costs $29.99 and is available from there website or the Mac Store. There is a trial version, however the exported image does have a rather noticeable watermark, which is part of the trail version.

If you like editing images, and this app seems like your type of thing, check it out.

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I want to extend your Terminal knowledge today by introducing a simple loop command. This is useful if you want to repeat or loop a Terminal command indefinitely. This is a simple bash script that has a variety of uses. The script is a simple one line command that needs very little adjusting on your part.

The first step is to open up Terminal. Then copy and paste, or type, the following into the Terminal prompt.

bash -c 'while [ 0 ]; do date;done'

This will activate a bash script, and will repeat the listed command indefinitely, press Control + C to stop the loop. Replace the word date, with any command you want to run. This loop works when the program you want to run will have a defined exit. For example the command date will display the current date and time and then return you to the command prompt. A command such as top, will display the command but will immediately open the command again the second you exit top.

The loop listed will run the command as fast as possible, this is a little bit of overkill and the majority of commands are best used when a small amount of delay is present after each command is run. To achieve this in the loop we are going to add a sleep command, to pause the loop for a certain number of seconds. To add this into the loop type the following:

bash -c 'while [ 0 ]; do date;sleep 1;done'

This will cause the loop to pause for one second before it is repeated.

A simple loop that I will begin to implement in a couple of commands. If you want to learn more about bash programming I recommend Bash Cookbook, among the many useful books found on Amazon. If you have any questions, comments or extensions to this code, please leave a comment using the form below.

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When you have a new or old Mac, every so often you will want to stress test your Mac to see if it has any problems or it can handle the heat. There are a variety of different ways in which you can do this, however one of the simplest ways is to use Terminal. This guide will show you how to set your CPU running at max speed, which you can tailor to the number of CPU’s cores you have. Then its just a matter of watching the results in Activity Monitor, watch for stability issues and see the temperature of your Mac rise.

The first step is to open Activity Monitor located in Applications > Utilities folder. Set the entries in the list view to be ordered by CPU %, so you can see what is using your computer. Then, if required, install an app to monitor the temperature of your Mac. I recommend iStat, either the dashboard or menu bar app, however Temperature Monitor, is also a good app if it is slightly more technical.

After you have opened your monitoring software we can now stress your CPU. Open Terminal. As a starter type the following into Terminal:

yes

You will notice, Terminal starts outputting the letter ‘y’ and the CPU of your Mac increasing. The yes command, will keep repeating this command indefinitely. To stop the process either press Control + C on your keyboard or close the Terminal window.

We can now use this command for each CPU (physical) core we have on your Mac. End the previous command, and type the following instead:

yes > /dev/null

This will output the results of yes to a special location on your mac called /dev/null . This is done because opening up multiple instances of the yes command will not increase the load on your computer past 100%. However, when we pipe this command to /dev/null it will.

If you notice in Activity monitor your CPU load will increase to 100% of the yes command. This is fully loading one CPU core to its maximum. If you use something like iStat, you will notice the load is spread evenly between each cores, a feature of your operating system. To load the other cores, open up a new Terminal window, keeping the first one open, and repeat the command.

When you open two instances of the yes command being piped to /dev/null your load will increase to 200%, keep doing this for each core you have.

One of the new features of the Intel cores is the ability to have hyper-threading, as a result your Mac will report more cores than is physically present. This means if you have a quad core processor, your Mac will report eight cores. It allows your computer to run faster. However, in this stress test you will never be able to stress those extra four virtual cores. It doesn’t really matter, but means your CPU monitor will only fill half way, when in reality every core is running at full speed. It also means your the yes command can run at 100% (for each core) and other tasks can compute at the same time.

When you have finally finished stress testing your Mac, either close the Terminal window, of press Control + C. I let the command run for a couple of minutes and watched the CPU temperature slowly rise. If you think you have a problem with your CPU running at full speed, running this command and carrying out normal running of your Mac at the same time will help you eliminate any possible problems.

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Today I am going to review an application which will be of interest to any one who has anything to do with web development, particularly CSS and HTML. One of the best ways to speed up the loading of a website is to put every image used in the CSS file into one large image. This means when your website loads, it doesn’t have to ask for many small images. It only asks for one large image (called a sprite) this improves loading times. For the new users generating a CSS sprite, where there is one large image that contains all of the images you are going to use can be difficult, if not confusing. Today’s app, Sprite Master Web, is a tool which you can use to generate your own CSS sprite on your Mac.

When I created my CSS sprite for this site, I spent a long time reading various tutorials on the web and a good portion of a weekend generating an image in Photoshop. Today’s app, takes all of the pain out generating this image and allows you to do it quickly and simply and for $3.99, its a little tool that is worth the small price tag.

Once you have opened the app, you import the images you want to use. This could be a couple of images, or a multitude of site wide number of images, if they have been referenced in your CSS file, they can be used in a CSS sprite (the exception is repeating image which can be a bit tricky). When you have decided the images you want to use, you have a couple of options regarding the layout of the images and the size of the image, you select these options in the sidebar. The app is smart enough to figure out when there are overlaps or the images will not fit.

After you have played around with the sprite on the screen you can now export the image and build the CSS file. Since the app is all about simplicity, you select the export button, enter a save location and the app will generate an image file and a CSS file with all of the coordinate information. You can now upload this sprite to your web server and incorporate the coordinate information into your CSS file.

Conclusion

Overall the app is really simple to use. If you want a basic app to build you a sprite this is the tool for the job. The resulting sprite should speed up your website, integrating the CSS rules to reference the image is simple due to the generated file.

It does have some limitations that I do find slightly annoying. For example you can’t move images around on the canvas, and you can’t save images out as a jpg. Slight problems, but not over all detracting from the app.

I liked the app, i’ll definitely be using it if I have any graphics that need converting into a sprite. If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment below.

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I like to get the latest content from various blogs around the world via RSS feeds. After having a discussion with a couple of people about the best RSS readers out there in the world wide web I am going to show you four really good RSS readers which you can use to get all of the latest content from your favorite blogs. There are three app’s in the list and one web based RSS reader, all different prices points each with a multitude of features. Like anything, there are a variety of different readers and app to do the job. If you have a particular favourite that you recommend please leave a comment. If you want to catch the latest post from my RSS feed you can find my feed here.

Pulp For Mac

Pulp for Mac RSS reader shows the world what a good Mac application can look like. This app has been designed to mimic the look and feel of a newspaper, yet bring the functionality of using a computer to help you read the article contents. The default load out of the app brings in a wide range of popular feeds from around the world. Adding in new feeds is simple and you can arrange them on your screen in a method you see fit. The app has a set of pages accessible from the top of the app which allows you to customise the different sections of the app to what you see fit.

Each feed has a different method in which you can view the contents of the RSS feed. For example you can view each feed as a list item with just the title, using just an image or various combinations of both. The app boasts the different ways you can customise the layout and feel of the contents. One bonus feature is the magic reader button which allows you to view the full feed within the app, this is useful if a blog publishes a short feed and you want to view all of the content (I don’t do this with my feed).

Pro’s: Very well laid out, easy to use and has a load of useful features. You can also sync with the iPad version for viewing on the move. A real contender for any RSS reader.

Con’s: Customising and adding feeds to the app can be a little confusing at first. No add option from the menu bar and has to be done from an edit function within the app.

Price: $9.99, with a 7 day trial

Mail

The built in Mail app from Apple has a really useful RSS reader feature. Although Mail is designed for emails, if you regularly use Mail every day, building in and using the RSS feeds function of the app is simple and easy to use. Like any RSS reader you add your feeds and then read each articles as they appear. Unlike Pulp, this is a very simple side of Mail and doesn’t feature any fancy interface or features. You simply add the feed and away you go.

You can organise RSS feeds into folders and group them based on content. The Mail app is designed for emails, so it does lack on the RSS front. However if you are a causal user and only have a couple of feeds, its great along side your emails.

Pro’s: Built in and easy to use. Works well with emails and other Mail functions.

Con’s: Doesn’t have many features. Can get a bit unwieldy with lots of feeds.

Price: Built in / Free

Google Reader

The previous apps on this little list have been decidedly app based. If you don’t want to be tethered to your Mac when you read your RSS feeds, Google Reader, is a very good service to use. Although you do need a Google account (and adding feeds means you tell Google what you read), it does work very simply. Adding feeds is simple using the big red button in the top left corner of the app and organising them into folders is simple when you find the right button to press.

Google Reader also has a couple of other interesting features which set it aside from the other apps I have seen. There is a Trends section which shows you how much you have been reading and various stats associated with it. There is also a ‘Browse for Stuff’ section which allows you to find other feeds based on what you like, useful if you want to expand on what you are reading. The majority of my RSS readers use Google Reader, so it must be doing something right.

Pro’s: Built into Google’s services, simple to use, available on any computer.

Con’s: None, really.

Price: Free

NetNewsWire

We round up with NetNewsWire. This is regarded as one of the best standalone RSS readers for the Mac. It is slightly in between Mail and Pulp in terms of app design. It looks and feels like any mac app, simple to use and set out simply and well, but doesn’t have any fancy design extra’s like Pulp. If you want a simple, free, app NetNewsWire is easy to use.

The left hand side bar features all of your feeds, with the right hand side of the app occupied with the individual entries. If you don’t use Mail and want to use an RSS reader, this app is probably for you.

Pro’s: Free, simple to use.

Con’s: Not as pretty as Pulp

Price: Free

Conclusion

There are a variety of apps out there that can be used to view RSS feeds. My personally favourite is Pulp, really well designed and fun to use. Although Google Reader is great for reading your feeds from anywhere in the world. If you have a comment, please leave one using the form below.

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Every so often I have a really cool book to review, today’s book is Beginning iPhone 4 Development for iOS 4 (iOS 5 version here) by apress. Its a comprehensive guide and manual for developing your very own iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch apps, all for $20. Its designed as an in depth look at the iOS SDK, and will hopefully teach you all the basics and the routes needed to begin developing your very own apps. I personally like to develop things for the Mac, I have previously reviewed Learn Mac Programming With Cocca before on this site which taught me how to work in the Mac environment, this book isn’t to big of a leap into the world of iOS devices.

Over the last couple of months I have been working through this book, it is actually the second in the series by apress for iPhone development. The first being iPhone and iPad Apps for Absolute Beginners (or the iOS 5 version), designed at the absolute beginner to any programming language. iPhone 4 Development assumes you know a little bit about programming. However, if you are completely new to the coding world, I reckon you will soon be able to pick it up.

Overview

Lets begin by what is included in the book. I have listed the table of contents below.

1. Welcome to the Jungle
2. Appeasing the Tiki Gods
3. Handling Basic Interaction
4. More User Interface Fun
5. Autorotation and Autosizing
6. Multiview Applications
7. Tab Bars and Pickers
8. Introduction to Table Views
9. Navigation Controllers and Table Views
10. iPad Considerations
11. Application Settings and User Defaults
12. Basic Data Persistence
13. Grand Central Dispatch, Background Processing, and You
14. Drawing with Quartz and OpenGL
15. Taps, Touches, and Gestures
16. Where Am I? Finding Your Way with Core Location
17. Whee! Gyro and Accelerometer!
18. iPhone Camera and Photo Library
19. Application Localization
20. Where to Next?

The book starts out by introducing you to the iOS world. Since you are developing for mobile devices, the code and the development will be different. You are working with a phone, not a fully fledged Mac, therefore the interface and interaction with the app you will be creating will be different. Once you have breezed through the first chapter, you are ready to jump into the nitty gritty of actually coding. Developing apps on the Mac uses Xcode, therefore a good portion of the second chapter explains what Xcode is and the main features you will be using. I particularly like the tips section of this chapter as it explains some of the other features of development that you will be using.

Having read chapter one and two, chapter three will being to teach and show you how to actually code. You will develop a slightly more complex app than one mentioned in chapter two. One with two buttons on the side of the screen which change the labels text when clicked. Nothing amazing, but very useful in learning how the code base runs on an iPhone. The first half of the chapter deals with the code, with the second using the interface builder to develop the interaction by the user. There is a lot of code and some writing involved, but the books layout and clarity (along with Xcode intuitive interface) don’t make this task to difficult. The very last section of the chapter allows you to try the app out. Xcode has an iPhone simulator, so you can develop an app without a iPhone present (or iPad or iPod Touch for that matter).

Extending The Learning

At this point you will have learnt a couple of commands and had a basic look at the interface, if you enjoy this book as much as I did you will be having a wail of a time. Chapter four extends the interface aspect of iPhone development with sliders, segmented buttons and switches. Typical iPhone interface controls you see in every app (the standardisation of Xcode and iPhone development are the cause of this). Similar to previous chapters, you develop the code and then build the interface. The clear ‘code’ text along with the tips make understanding why you are doing something useful and actually writing the code simple.

By the end of chapter four I had an appreciation of how complex you can make an app. A lot of work is needed to get something simple up and running. At this point you have written a large amount of code and used the interface builder extensively.

Going Further

I could at this point begin to explain every chapter in detail, how ever that would become a boring read. To summarise the next 15 chapters (covering all 630+ pages) take you into the finer aspects of apps on the iOS device. For example, chapter five takes into account the rotation function of your phone and the resulting applications view, chapter fifteen introduces and expands on gestures and multi touch swipes, chapter seventeen discusses the gyro and accelerometer for expanding user functionality and continuing chapters talk about the camera and core location.

The book also explains the more in depth aspects of development, for example chapter 13 introduces and discusses background processing through the use of Grand Central Dispatch, where your app can do more than more thing at once. This is very useful if you plan on have some complexity in your app, it is difficult to use your app if you have to wait for one task to finish before a second can commence. Its a difficult chapter to read, however a very useful one. Other similar chapters explain other complex topics which you need to understand in order to produce a good app.

Conclusion

Overall it is a very well written book. Other than the odd scratching the head moment, usually caused by myself typing something wrong or not thinking right the book delivers what it promises. It does get technical very quick, so if you have read of developed something before using objective-C, it is a great bonus. If you haven’t the one previous in the series is probably a very good read. I can’t say much more about this book. I found it great, and over the coming months I am going to be reading more and developing my little app.

However, it is not the latest version of this book and Xcode and the iOS world have moved forward. It has taken me a long time to read this book. Therefore if you want the latest addition I recommend iPhone and iPad Apps for Absolute Beginners, iOS 5 Edition. Its probably very similar, and written in a similar style to the version I have been using.

Therefore if you want to start iPhone development for $20 you really can’t go wrong. The apress series of books mean there is plenty of topics for you to read. For example there is More iOS 5 Development which builds upon this book and iOS 5 Games Development for something more specific. There is a lot of books in this series so you can be developing apps for years to come.

If you have any comments or questions, please leave one using the comment form below.

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If you use Terminal regularly you may find yourself reading the ‘man’, pages frequently. These stand for manual and are the help guides for using the different commands. In Terminal if you type man command, where commands is replaced by the command you are using you can view the help guide. Quickly scrolling and viewing the data within the command can be a bit of a pain. For a very long command with many pages of help, it can be a little slow to view all of the information. To help us in this problem we can use a Terminal command to convert the man page to view in Preview. This is a lot more user friendly and allows you to use the resulting file like any pdf.

To view your man pages to one viewable in preview open up Terminal and type or paste in the following and hit enter. Replace xyz with the command you want to view the man page.

man -t xyz | open -f -a /Applications/Preview.app

For example if we want to view the ssh man page in Preview we type the following:

man -t ssh | open -f -a /Applications/Preview.app

Once Preview has done a bit of post processing you will be presented a 13-page pdf with the contents of the ssh man page. Due to the formatting involved with the man page, the resulting output is easy to read and well laid out. Simply save the file out using the Save As menu option, give it a useful name and you are all done.

Try it yourself, I have been in the process of converting a lot my regularly used man pages in PDF’s. If you find you use this command regularly you can program it as a function Terminal can use. In Terminal type the following, assuming you have a freshly opened Terminal window in the default user path.

open .bash_profile

In the file that opens in TextEdit enter the following:

manpre () {
man -t $@ | open -f -a /Applications/Preview.app
}

You can change manpre to anything you want, something memorable. Save the file, close TextEdit and Quit and re-launch Terminal. Now every time you type the following into Terminal it will load the command you have just entered and convert the man page into a readable one in Preview.

manpre ssh

If you want to remove the command from Terminal, open up .bash_profile and delete the lines in the file.

Simple and clean. I prefer reading the PDF, Preview, versions of man pages over ones in Terminal as it is faster and I get the search function of Preview, very useful if I have a large man page and want to find something specific. If you have any questions or comments about this command, please leave one using the form below.

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This is a quick tip I stumbled upon while randomly messing around with my Mac. It is to do with hiding applications / windows on your Mac. Normally if you press Command + H with the current application open it will hide the windows for that app. However this can also be achieved if you press alt (or option key if you prefer to call it that) and click the dock icon of the app you want to hide. In the blink of an eye your Mac will hide every window for that selected application. This tip can also be extended if you press alt and select a different application. This will hide the application windows you are currently using and switch to the dock app you just selected.

I find this useful if I have temporarily finished with an app and want to switch to something else. I hold down alt key and click my next app. The previous app windows are hidden and will only re-appear if I want to use the application again.

This tip can also be extended to hide every window on your screen. Press and hold alt and option, then click the dock icon for the current app. This will hide every other window on the screen other than the application you have just selected. This is useful if you want to clear your workspace and don’t want to close apps or manually hide every window. In a similar method to just holding the alt key. If you press alt and command at the same time and select a different application, it will hide every window except the app you are switching to.

On a side note, if you right click on a dock icon and press alt you get a couple of different options from the pop up menu. Such as Hide Others and Force Quit.

Just a quick tip for Sunday afternoon. I found it quite useful. If you want to extend your learning about your Mac I recommend you read the tips or tricks section of this site or read, Mac: The Missing Manual, if you want tips in a book like format.

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I have a previously discussed about generating random numbers in applescript, today I am going to discuss two methods which you can use to generate random numbers in Terminal. This is useful for bash, terminal or any other scripts which use the language.  The two methods allow you to have a certain element of control on the size and the randomness and type of number produced. There are certain levels of randomness with random numbers produced by computers. One of the options shown will use an aspect of your Mac which is very random. If you don’t want the book versions of a Million Random Digits, using a computer is probably better.

Option One

This first options is rather simple, and great if you want a simple number for your script. Simply type the following into Terminal or your bash script, note that it has to be written in capitals:

echo $RANDOM

This will output a number up to 32,767, for those interested it is a signed halfword noted for being 16 bits in length. If you want to limit the random number up to a certain length simply type the following:

echo $[RANDOM%X+1]

Where X is your largest number you want, although it has to be less than 32,767. If you want a longer random number you can simply repeat the $RANDOM section of the command, such as the following:

echo $RANDOM$RANDOM

Using a combination of the previous two commands you can tailor the size of the number to anything you want. Although this method is simple and for most cases satisfactory I am unsure on the complete randomness of the number. The second command will have more randomness, although the first option is based on this command.

Option Two

This second command will use something called /dev/urandom, which is based on something called /dev/random. It takes noise in your system, such as mouse movements, network cards, hard drive access to name a few and output the random data to /dev/random and dev/urandom. We can then take the random 0′s and 1′s produced and convert them into a numerical number which we can use. This commands has slightly more control over the size and types of numbers which we produce.

The command to generate this random number is as follows:

od -vAn -N4 -tu < /dev/urandom

This will generate a large number which you can use as your random number. There are two options which I would like to draw your attention to, although you can read about the od command, which is used to output the number on its man page, the two options which are best changed is the number following the capital N, and the letter u between the t and 4 within the command options.

The -N options is used to control the size of the number in bytes, the number four will produce a ten digit number. If you increase the size of this number, eg to 5, it will split the outputted number into a 4 byte, 10 digit number and then into a one byte number. If you remove this option completely from the command, it will keep producing numbers.

The next option is to change the -tu4 to something different. You can change the letter u to either, d, o, or x. The letter d will produce a signed decimal to produce a value from − 2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. The letter o will produce an octal value, where as u will produced an unsigned value of 0 to 4,294,967,295. Finally x will produce a hexadecimal value. For example:

od -vAn -N4 -tx < /dev/urandom

Produces the output, 05f70be9. Neat.

Conclusion

To conclude. The first option, is quick and easy. It allows you to generate a number and input them into a script will little thinking. The second option is more complex but allows you to have more control over the final output. Certainly more efficent than buying a book with random numbers.

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When you use your Mac you generate files and folders worth of content. Unless you have a keen sense of keeping things in perfect order, once in a while you will find duplicates and copies of the same file. This wont just be the same file name, but the exact same file repeated in different places. It is acceptable to have one or two duplicates of the same file, but sometimes an entire folder or directory full of duplicate files can be a bit of a problem. Hence, I am going to demonstrate to your Araxis neat little app, Find Duplicate Files.

Lets assume you have a folder with 10,000 files in it, to make matters worse you know there are duplicates and you want to get rid of them to shrink the size of the folder. To make matters even more complicated the file names have no order to them (so you can’t quickly scan the list to find files with a one appended on them to indicate a duplicate file). So you have a massive folder with random file names and you want to remove the duplicates. To do this manually would take you a long time, as luck would have it someone developed an application to do this for you.

Comparing files to see if they are the same can be tricky. You would obviously start with comparing the file names, this only gets you so far. The next step would be to compare file sizes, this would probably work on very large files where the probability of the file size being exactly the same would be small, however you would being to have problems with smaller files. The final option, which Find Duplicate Files uses, is to produce a hash of the file. Wikipedia has a good article on the subject. In essence the program will use a certain algorithm to computer a number for the file, known as a hash. This takes into account the size of the file but the order of the 1′s and 0′s in the file. This hash value (which is unique to the order of the 1′s and 0′s) can then be compared to other files. Only if the files are exactly the same on the bit level, will the has function be the same. Therefore, it is a quick and accurate way in finding exactly the same files.

Find Duplicate File app, is really simple to use. Using either the button on the toolbar or by dragging folders in to the scanning area at the top of the app, you can select the files you want to search. Then you simply press the go button. Based on your preferences it will scan every file, compute a hash function, and then compare these hash functions to other hash function in the hopes that it will find a duplicate file. Depending on your needs you can restrict the files it looks for, so it can be useful if you want to compare images, videos or text documents.

When the app has done its thing, which is rather quick, but will slow down with large files, the application will then display all of the duplicates. At this point you can either go investigate the files by revealing them in Finder, or let the application do the hard work and select and delete the duplicates. The handy colour coding of the results box allows for easy differentiation between the types of files.

This app costs £10.49 (or equivalent) which is a good buy if you have to do this sort of thing frequently. It does have a 7 day trial which allows you to try it out and see if it right for you. I found it easy to use, although the buttons on the toolbar could have been more clearly labeled.

If you have found this interesting to use, and would like to leave a comment, please use the form below.

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This is a rather simple tip that will allow you to clear Terminal history either selectively or every entry within the terminals history file. When you type in Terminal history it will show you every single entry you have made. Previously I have mentioned how you can change the history size to suit, however if it is becoming rather large, or you want to remove entries that you do not want other people to access, such as a super secret location you don’t want other people to find out about, it is worth removing entries.

To clear every entry in Terminals history type the following into the command prompt.

history -c

Within a blink of an eye, the history will be cleared, not that you cannot reverse this command so ensure you really want to clear you history. Now when you press the up button on your keyboard, no entries will be displayed.

If clearing the history is a bit to extreme, or there is just one entry you want to remove, such as an incorrect command from your list you do not want to repeat it is better to selectively remove the entry. This is done by modifying .bash_history. It is a hidden file located in your User directory that is accessed every time Terminal writes it’s history to disk. In a new Terminal prompt (to ensure you are at your User folder by default), type the following:

ls -a

This will show you all of the hidden files and folder. If you look through the list you should notice a file called .bash_history. To modify this file type the following:

nano .bash_history

You can now use the nano text editor to modify each line. If you don’t know how to use the nano text editor, the nano editor homepage is a good place to look, or you would rather use TextEdit, instead type the following into Terminal:

open .bash_history

This will open up TextEdit, now you can modify the file a lot quicker and easier. Delete the lines as you see fit. When you have finished simply save the file in TextEdit and restart the Terminal app to ensure the change has taken effect.

It is only a simple change but it can be useful if there is an incorrect command that you want to remove, I find I use the history to quickly select commands and it is always annoying when you have to scroll past incorrect commands. If you want to learn more about Mac Terminal commands, either look through the Terminal commands section on this site or read a recommended Terminal Book from Amazon.

P.S Sorry for the long time between the last post, this last year was really busy and finding time to work on this site was a bit problematic.

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This is a rather cool quick tip that can save you a lot of time. Most modern search boxes now a days have a drop down auto-complete feature to help you complete words a lot quicker, this is generally useful and can save you some time and effort. Wouldn’t it be useful if you could expand this auto-complete feature to more text boxes around your operating system. Thankfully you can. Simply press Command + Period (or full stop) and your Mac will bring up a list of words which you can use to complete the word you are typing.

This drop down menu appears in pretty much any text box areas such as Mail, TextEdit to name a few. You start typing a word, press Command + Period and a list will appear that you can scroll through and use to complete the word you are typing. Useful if you have a long word that have a very specific start and you don’t want to type the whole thing out. You can scroll through with the arrow keys and select your work with either the tab or return/enter key.

Unfortunately this auto-complete doesn’t quite work like the one on Google’s search box. If you bring up the menu and then start typing the menu will disappear, hopefully this feature will be improved in new versions of the OS. Having said that, words you auto-complete frequently will appear at the top of the list as well as words already in the document or text box you are using, allowing you to save those few partial seconds. Its seems this feature will only work with certain textbox area and fields so try it out in different text areas and see what happens.

An intereting feature that I just found out and thought you might be interested in. If you want to learn more this is the sort of trick that appears in Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual.

Edit: It seems in a previous post I have already covered this topic, however that was using the keys Option + Esc or F5. It seems there are many key commands to complete the same task.

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If you buy this game you will lose a lot of hours in the following week and month, I for one had to rush a report because I as playing this game. If you haven’t played Flight Control HD, on an iPhone or iPad you can finally play it on your Mac. Flight Control has been out for quite a while, so I thought I would give it a review and tell you what I think about it. I’m also interested in what other players of this game think as I have been addicted to this game.

The general premise is rather simple. You are in a top down world and in charge of controlling various aircraft. Aircraft of different types, represented by different colours, enter the screen from the edges. They will then fly in a straight line until you take hold of them. By selecting an aircraft with the mouse (there are various different setups to do this) you then have a chance to mark the flight path of the aircraft. You have to get each of the planes to the required airfield (with the same matching colour) without crashing into other aircraft. It sounds simple, and is simple, but soon becomes complicated as more aircraft enter at different speeds and different locations.

The game has 8 maps to play on each varying in difficulty. You start out on a map with two runways and a helipad and move up to maps with multiple runways, some which are open and close, and to some of the more complicated maps with rotating aircraft carriers (which does get very complicated). Once you get the hang of the controls and map layouts you start building your own flight paths and routes on screen to stop fatal collisions, as the game progresses stopping collisions does become difficult and you will be sending aircraft onto random paths on screen. The different speeds and randomness of the aircraft does make the game challenging, especially when a slow moving helicopter is moving across a busy airway you have created with ten aircraft just about to pass through it.

One of the more interesting and challenging maps is the stunt maps. One of the hardest the game provides. As well as the usual challenge of landing normal aircraft small fast yellow planes enter with zero points attached to them (normal aircraft give you one point when you land them), to rake up the points you have to build a flight path through at least one of seven cones to the runway to gain a score. The more cones you pass through the more points you get (up to sixteen). This makes long complicated flight paths a must if you want the high score. However with a long flight path comes the problem of collisions and the ever present problem of routing another aircraft either through the path you have created or round. Normally you want to keep a path as small as possible to land the planes as quick as you can, so this map is a real challenge.

Overall you keep coming back to this game because it is quick and simple to play. The game loads in a matter of seconds and you can be quickly moving your planes around. You keep coming back to it because you can always land more one more plane. The complexity of 20 planes on screen is a challenge but good flight paths does allow you to keep your head on top of things. I wholeheartedly recommend this game since it is a good time waster.

Where To Purchase?

I originally bought this game on Steam however with the advent of the App Store, you can purchase it there as well. Its priced around the $5 mark however it is usually on sale and varies in price. If you do have a Steam account I recommend you use that simply because you get access to the achievements and the forums which are a useful feature. Both apps have access to the leader boards (another addicting feature) so there is plenty to offer. If you have a Steam account use that, if not the App Store is a suitable way to go.

I enjoy this game and I think you will to. You don’t need a complicated Flight Control System to use it and there is lots of enjoyment in it. If you like this game also please leave a comment using the form below.

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There are many ways in which you can unrar rar files. In a similar method of yesterdays post on how to play mkv files, today’s post is going to mention some of the different ways to unrar rar archives. Since there are many ways to skin a cat there are also many ways to unrar these archives. Pretty much every app mentioned here does the same thing and there isn’t much difference between them. The only difference is between the command line program and the GUI app’s. Since the built in Archive Utility doesn’t have a support for rar files its worth having an app that can support these files when the time comes.

UnRarX

The app that I use regularly is UnRarX. From the many apps that I have tried it seems to be the best. Like most of these apps it is a no nonsense app that gets the job done. Unlike most other apps it has a small window which tells you what it is doing rather than a simple progress bar. This way when you get a corrupt archive or a file that won’t fully extract it will tell you what exactly is happening and you should be able to quickly diagnose the problem.

Command Line

One the other ways that I personally use to extract rar archives is the WinRAR command line tool. I have mentioned in the past how to use this tool and one of the main advantages of using it is the ability to extract broken archives quickly. Although other programs have broken file support I prefer a to use a quick terminal command to get the job. Its also very useful for use in scripts and has come in handy many times.

Stuffit Expander

I used the app a long time ago it is Stuffit Expander. It works in much the same way as the other apps in this post. Stuffit Expander is designed to work with the other Stuffit Apps which is great if you do a lot of compression and extraction of files. It does work on its own so you don’t need the rest of the suite. If you want something that looks a bit prettier Stuffit Expander is a good choice.

iArchiver

Continuing on with the list is iArchiver. Its the first and only paid app on this list. Unlike the other apps it is designed primarily to compress files into archives, although it does have extraction capabilities as well. Its very similar to the Stuffit suite however it is only one app and not a couple of apps as is the case with Stuffit. I have reviewed this app in the past and if you are going to use this app its worth checking out what I have said.

RAR Expander

The last two options on the list are very simple expander’s. Similar to the way Archive Utility is used to expand zip files, RAR Expander does this for rar files. If you want a simple expander this app is probably for you.

Unarchiver

The final post to complete everything off is Unarchiver. Its a simple free app that is very similar to RAR Expander. I haven’t tried it however it is probably very good.

If you have an unraring app that you recommend please leave a comment using the form below.

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In the digital age that we live in there are hundreds of file formats, one that is getting particularly prominent is the mkv or Matroska, file format. A digital video container that is usually used for storing high definition videos. The Matroska format is a container format where the file can contain numerous video and audio files all in one container, Matroska is derived from the Russian term for a nesting doll. Its a very useful format and with it being used in HD videos it is becoming more common. The problem is that your Mac will not naively play them and you need a suitable plugin/codec to get them to play. This post is going to highlight some of the best ways to mkv files and get you on your way.

There are many ways to play video files on your Mac. I think I have covered the more common ways to play these videos. However if you have a question or comment that you would like to add, please leave a comment below.

VLC

We start with VLC the Swiss army knife of video play back. VLC can play pretty much every multimedia file you can think of. I haven’t come across a video or audio file I don’t think it can play. If you want a general app for video play back I recommend VLC as it will do the job pretty much every time. You can also use it for playing back other files. After a while you will find that it will take over apps such as Quicktime as you will be playing everything with it. The only problem with VLC I have found is that it can be a little bit sluggish starting and getting your video playing. However its probably my old Mac.

Perian

If you want to keep using Quicktime there is a plugin, Perian, incidentally a swiss army knife logo which sort of ruins my VLC analogy. Anyway, if you like the feel and look of Quicktime and you want to extend its functionality Perian is the way to go. I have found it runs slightly faster in loading videos than VLC in my quick tests so it may be a suitable choice. It is only a Mac program (unlike VLC which is cross platform) so it may not have the development support behind it like VLC, so new file formats or updates my not be as frequent. Moreover since it is a plugin, Apple may issue a Quicktime update and break the plugin. Having said that I do like Perian and I enjoy using it along with Quicktime slightly more than VLC (the interface is so much nicer).

MPLayer

If you want something slightly different there is Mplayer, which has been mentioned in passing a couple of posts ago. Its an open source program like VLC and if you have problems with the first two apps it may be a choice. I’ve included for completion and may be worth a run if VLC and Perian don’t work. You can use MPlayer for more things than just playing video, it does have a lot of background code and libraries available to you to help convert and process video and audio files. If this is something you are interested in MPlayer may offer a lot more than just video playback.

DivX Player

The final the DivX player from DivX. If you want the power of the DivX brand and software behind your apps its well worth a look into. Like MPLayer i’ve included it out of completion. Unless you need to use the DivX suite of apps the first two apps are far better and I would recommend them over DivX player.

I don’t think I have missed any other mkv player for you Mac. There is plenty of choice and methods to play your files. I prefer the VLC method, however I do like the Perian Quicktime plugin route. If you have any questions or comments please leave a message using the form below this post.

To finish, if you have a TV and its not connect to your Mac but still want to play mkv files there are plenty of small mkv boxes for your TV. These take the mkv files and allow you to play them on your TV, most new Blu-Ray and TV setups do allow you to play mkv files however if you have an old player like myself something like that allows you to take your mkv into the living room and away from your Mac. Pretty cool.

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When ever your right click on a Dock item you will notice there is a list of items. Have you ever wondered how these items are created and if you can change them? Well you are in luck. This post will hopefully show you how you can change them to something a bit different. Its quite simple to do however you do need to err on the side of caution as you are altering system files. You only need TextEdit so it shouldn’t be too complicated.

1) To begin we need to find the file that the Dock is using to generate the names for the menu item. Open up Finder and navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices.

2) Right Click on item named Dock and select Show Package Contents and then navigate to /Contents/Resources/English.lproj if you are using a different language go to your respective language folder.

In this folder is a set of text files called strings. Strings essentially allow the program to name an item within the code and then assign a different language to that name. This ensures an item named “Quit” says “Quit” in English and “Salir” in Spanish (I hope Google Translate worked correctly). We are going to play around with this file so it can say something different.

3) Select DockMenus.strings and copy it to the desktop. While you are there may a second copy as a backup.

When you open this file you will notice something very specific. Every item is made up of two parts. One section in capitals, the other in normal text surrounded by quote marks. The section in capitals is used by the background code so don’t change it. The section in quote marks is what you normally see so feel free to change it.

4) As an example find the item named QUIT = “Quit”; and then change the text in quote marks to something like QUIT = “Quit Application”;

5) Save the file on your desktop.

6) Copy this file back to the English.lproj folder found previously. You will have to authenticate the file movement with an admin password.

7) You are done, the changes should be instantaeous.

Some ideas which are rather interesting to implement. Anything with %@ in the quote marks will show the application name. Therefore you can write something similar to QUIT = “Quit %@” . This will show something like “Quit Firefox” when you right click on the item in the Dock.

What ever change you do, make sure you don’t change the part in capitals, make sure the string you change is enclosed by quote make and finally make sure every line is finished with a semi-colon. If you make a mistake and break something, copy the backup file you created at the beginning back to the folder.

Please leave a comment below with any interesting changes you have made.

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If you ever get those random errors saying a file is in use by an application it can be quite difficult to figure out what is happening, and why the application wont close. Alternatively you may want to know what files an application is using to run, this can be useful in diagnosing problems. Although you can use a terminal command to find which files an application has open the Terminal output can be massive and take a long time to dig through to find the bit of information you may want. Today’s tip is going to show you how you can do this using Activity Monitor which is far more user friendly.

Start by opening up Activity Monitor in Applications > Utilities. If you have never ran this program it is all about showing the background processes that your computer is using to run. In this example lets say iTunes is failing to close because a file is open. I select iTunes from the list and click the inspect option from the toolbar at the top of the app window.

This will open a window which can contain quite a bit of information. Select the tab that says “Open Files and Ports”. As the name suggests it is a list of all the open files that the app is using. You can look down the list to see which files the application is using. If the program is hanging or saying that a file is open which you want to use you can use the list to check if it is open by that specific program.

This tip is useful if you think a file is open and you want to check if the application is using it. It has it specific uses but is only useful in specific circumstances.

If you have any questions or comments on this tip, please leave one using the form below.

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If you have an Apple Remote and you want to disable its usage on your Mac, for example in a School environment or you just don’t want the receiver switched on its very simple to do. This post will show you how to disable your remote control infrared receiver so it can’t be used any more.

To start open up System Preferences in Applications. Press the Security option in the Personal section of the preferences. Press the lock at the bottom of the screen to allow you to change the general settings. You will notice at the bottom of the screen an option to disable the remote control infrared receiver, checking the box will disable the device.

Its a simple as that. The best thing is the option is password protected so if you have fiddly kids or students they shouldn’t re-enable the option.

If you have any questions or comments please leave one below.

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I like reading books, especially relating to topics I love. Thankfully the Macintosh community have some of the best library of books to read. This post is going to summarise some of my favourite and well received books relating to the Mac community. This is by no means a complete list and I encourage you to post your favourite Mac books using the comment section below. If we are ready lets begin.

1) Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual

The first book on the list is Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual. The missing manual series is one of my favourite. They are comprehensive and usually well written. I’m going to start the list with a “Switching to” book as I think they are one of the best books to use when you first have a Mac. I bought one a long time ago and it helped me immensely when I first started out. If you are new to the Mac platform, or you know someone who has just got there first Mac, I wholehearted recommend Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual.

2) Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual

The next book is another missing manual, Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual to be specific, the first being the switching to. This book, I think, is a more general book. Unlike the switching to series this book does away with the comparisons to Windows and focuses on how to get the most out of your Mac. It is a great general introduction to the Mac platform and introduces new and existing users on how to use there Mac. If you want a general reference guide this is the way to go.

3) Mac OS X Unix Toolbox

Moving on from the basic guides we get to something more technical. The Mac OS X Unix Toolbox. It is a well written book introducing and showing you how to use Terminal and it commands. If you have looked through MacTricksAndTips for a couple of minutes you will notice the tricks and tip relating to Terminal. This book takes a view on introducing you to Terminal and some of the more general commands and gets you up to speed on how to use Terminal and the Unix background effectively. If you want to go further with your Mac, this is the book for it.

4) Automator for Mac OS X

Continuing on the technical route, the next book you should read is Automator for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide. Automator is one of the best tools included with your Mac and it is worth learning how to use it. Every week I end up building an Automator routine to run and learning some tricks of the trade (so to speak) is well worth the time and effort. Even a basic knowledge of how Automator works is a great way to speed up your day.

5) AppleScript: The Definitive Guide

Automator and Applescript go hand in hand. Applescript is the more technical and code orientated version of Automator. Therefore if you want to take your Automator routines to the next level and do some really cool stuff Applescript is the ay to go. AppleScript: The Definitive Guide shows you the definitive (clues in the title) way to learn and use AppleScript. In the end you should be able to to do some really cool stuff to impress your friends.

6) Beginning Xcode (Programmer to Programmer)

As we continue on our route on learning more about our Mac I feel it is time to introduce Beginning Xcode (Programmer to Programmer). Its a beginners guide on how to use XCode to build your own applications. Although the book isn’t for everyone, if you want to make your own apps this guide is the perfect place to start. It is a bit technical however you will learn a lot and its just a stepping stone for you in making the next big Mac app. I have, in the past, reviewed Learn Mac Programming with Cocoa which is similar to Beginning Xcode.

7) iPhone and iPad Apps for Absolute Beginners

On a similar vein to number six, iPhone and iPad Apps for Absolute Beginners is dedicated to showing your the basics on how to write your own apps for the iPhone of iPad. Although everyone may not read this book, if you want to mess around with writing your own app, this book is the perfect place to start.

8) Mac OS X Snow Leopard Bible

Everyone needs a reference book of some sort to refer to when they are stuck. Instead of searching Google for hours, Mac OS X Snow Leopard Bible is a far better alternative. It goes from the basics all the way up to complicated topics such as OpenGL and Grand Dispatch.

9) Portable Genius Series

Number nine is not a specific book per se, but a series of books. The Portable Genius Series is a great selection of small books to refer to when you get stuck or need a little helping hand. Previously I have reviewed Switching To A Mac and I found it really useful and well written. There is plenty of books in the series at good prices so find the topic you are interested in and check it out.

10) Mac OS X Leopard: Beyond the Manual

The last book takes the basic introductions of the “Switching to” and Missing Manual series and goes that little extra step. The Mac OS X Leopard: Beyond the Manual book is more technical a bit more advance and goes into topics a little bit more.

Honourable Mention: The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

This last book, to complete the list, is The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. Its not really a Mac book at all. However, I came across it while compiling this post and it is really good and useful. Most of us will do presentations at some point and a good presentation is always fun to listen to. I have plenty of presentations to do at University and a fantastic presentation is always well received. So if you do want to give a presentation that edge check out this book.

Conclusion

Hopefully you enjoyed this list and I have brought to your attention a couple of interesting and new books for you to read. You don’t have to read them all however I would certainly recommend you try out at least one to broaden your knowledge of your Mac.

If you have any books your would like to see mentioned please leave a comment below.

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