helen blog » Mac

My new favorite thing (for printing)

Helen — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:01:32 +0000

If you make folded programs like I do, and don’t always have access to a printer that supports booklet printing, this will make your life so much easier. I promise.

Dear Finder: You suck.

Helen — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:34:04 +0000

Thank goodness for TotalFinder: tabs, dual pane, visor, hotkeys, .DS_Store litter management, folders on top (at least in list view – can we get some column view soon?), all in a Finder plugin. Might actually spend the $15 on this when 1.0 comes out – happy with the alpha so far, and it’s way better than $40 for Pathfinder and more app clutter.

Magic Trackpad?!

Helen — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:43:00 +0000

Anybody who’s been subjected to me talking about my computer setup/injury prevention/productivity obsession knows that I love using a trackball* the vast majority of the time. So far the only exception I can think of is Minesweeper, but now that I’ve completely switched over to a Mac slash Apple products in general, this awesome clone of Minesweeper on the iPhone quells my bomb-defusing addiction.

ANYWAY, for me, today’s Apple announcement about the Magic Trackpad boils down to this:

(In case you’re not into input devices, that second item is a Pogo Sketch, which, along with their Inklet software, can turn trackpads into pressure-sensitive tablets. And yes, of course it comes in orange. And yes, I have a Wacom tablet, but I got it before they came out with the Touch line. Sigh.)

* The Kensington Slimblade FINALLY has programmable buttons. I was happy with it even without, but now that it can do more than just zoom/pan and control music, I wholeheartedly recommend it as a badass and very sexy trackball. I just need a wrist pad. And to stop obsessively cleaning it whenever I am meditating on something at work.

** I should probably also mention that those icons in my quick graphic up there are from a set called BlackStroke.

Protected: Playing the analogy game with the Asian

Helen — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:14:20 +0000

File-Print

Helen — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:11:30 +0000

: going to a meeting about PCs with people who have clearly never used one before is soooo painful
: i quote: “we’ll have to basically reteach everyone how to use a computer! i don’t even know how to print on a pc!”
: that’s like saying, “i don’t even know how to talk to a black person!”
: EASY, IT’S EXACTLY THE SAME

Mac Icons

Helen — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:30:50 +0000

Adobe CS4 Icons

Today, while searching for a good icon set for one of my web apps, I came across an awesome replacement set of Adobe CS4 icons by Pedro-de-la-luna at DeviantArt. Although it keeps the new black letters and isn’t nearly as flashy as his CS3 set, it’s still a sight better than the icons that come with CS4. Stupid Adobe.

It took my coworker/supervisor and I a little time to figure out how to do icon replacement on the Mac (I was a PC child myself), so I thought I’d outline the process here for everybody’s benefit!

First, you need to convert your image (this set came as .png’s) to a .icns file. I used the free version of Img2icns. It is the height of drag-and-drop simplicity and should be fairly intuitive, although there are also screenshots and some instructions on the website.

After that’s done, you need to open a couple of finder windows – one with the location where you’ve saved your .icns and the other where the application whose icon you want to change lives (probably just your Applications folder, although CS4 has its own subfolders). Click on the .icns and press command-I (or right click and choose Get Info, whichever is more comfortable for you). Leave this window open and do the same to the application itself. Make sure you’ve quit the application, by the way!

Now for the fun part: in the Get Info window of the icon, click on the small version in the upper left corner and press command-c to copy. Then click on the same corner with the old icon in the Get Info window of the application and press command-v to paste. You’ll have to drag the application out of the dock and back in to see the change, but that’s all there is to it. Enjoy!