Since I moved to mac, one of the things that I miss the most is the behavior of the alt-tab menu. Sure, OSX has the apple-tab (or command-tab) menu, but it only cycles through open programs and not open windows. This means that if you minimize a window, you can’t get back to it without clicking on it on the dock.
Well no longer my friends! “Witch” is a great program that gives you alt-tab functionality in mac. “Witch” has a whole mess of options as well, so you can set it up to do lots of task-switching-related things. Furthermore, its free. Go grab it and start alt-tabbing through minimized windows again!
Now, if I could find a way to make the “maximize” button in OSX actually maximize a window instead of just making it a little wider we’d be in business!
One of the nice features about my mac is that you can hold control and use the scroll feature to zoom into the screen. This is handy for delicate computer graphics and reading fine print, but what I use it for the most is zooming in on web-videos that won’t go full-screen. Sure, you could click the video, open the YouTube page, and *then* full-screen, but that’s a lot of work!
The problem is that when you zoom on the screen, the image of your mouse zooms as well. This means that right smack in the middle of your freshly-zoomed video is a giant arrow! How do you get rid of the cursor? You can hide the cursor really simply, here’s how:
- press Command+L (AKA Apple+L)
- press the down arrow
This gives focus to the address bar, then pressing down hides the arrow cursor for a bar in the text box. Voila, enjoy your movie sans the arrow! Thanks to these guys where I found the answer.
(NOTE: Apple+L may only work in Firefox and Safari.)
Mac User? Try it out on this video!
I listen to NPR’s Science Friday podcast every week. Last Friday, there was a great interview wit author Michael Pollan. In it he talks about his new book, “In Defense of Food, An Eater’s Manifesto.” Pollan says that he can really sum up the whole book in 7 words.
Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.
As a mostly-vegan who is appalled with the amount of junk that people eat, I couldn’t agree more! I also like his description of processed-packaged-supermarket-stuff as “edible food-like substances.” I think his message is 100% correct, and very important. Most of the stuff Americans eat is not food. By eating better stuff Americans could be a lot healthier and happier!
While I may sound fanatical about it, Pollan does a great job of getting these points across in a calm, informative way. He even talks about the history of food science and how we got in this predicament. Check The Science Friday Website for a link to the audio of the interview.
Listen to the Interview
If you’re using LaTeX to write a document (article, thesis, grocery list, etc.), you can define your own custom commands to save you time and make your code look cleaner. At the beginning of your document include the line
\newcommand{\newtag}{whatever_you_want}
Now, if you type “\newtag” in your LaTeX code, it will be automatically substituted with “whatever_you_want” when the LaTeX is compiled! This is great, but you can do even more. Changing the syntax slightly, you can pass arguments to these macros so that they become little functions. For instance if you want a quicker way to make things bold, include
\newcommand{\bt}[1]{\textbf{#1}}
Now, if you type “\bt{x}”, you’ll get “\textbf{x}” which will be interpreted as x. In this syntax, the number in []’s is the number of arguments the macro should expect, and it is referenced as #1. You can also do this with multiple arguments like this
\newcommand{\vfrac}[2]{\ensuremath{\frac{#1}{#2}}}
When you call this you’d type \vfrac{a}{b} to make a fraction a/b. There will be a set of {} for each argument. In this command I also used the \ensuremath{} command. This command allows you to put ‘math’ commands into regular text or in equations, and is a big help when writing papers!
I hope this information helps you. Thanks to these guys for posting the info I finally found when I needed to find out.
I got an iPod shuffle several months ago, and coupled with my cord-free headphones, I am a very satisfied customer. The only problem was that with the iPod mounted securely to your left ear, its hard to see which button is which. This means that sometimes when you want to turn down the volume, you accidentally skip the track and a host of similar transposition of intent problems.
Well, I have found the solution. I needed to give the buttons some kind of tactile indicator. In this case of the shuffle, there is just one doughnut-shaped button. This button smoothly transitions from one function to the next, so you have to add something in order to know that you’re finger is over the appropriate function before you press. I turned to an old friend… superglue.
I put a dollop of superglue over each function. When the glue dried, it left a nice little bump that is feel-able, but doesn’t interfere with operation at all. If you do this to an iPod or other device, be sure to use gel superglue. If you don’t I imagine you’d be in for trouble. Also, keep in mind that it takes the glue several hours to dry when its in blob form I made the mistake of touching the “volume up” dollop too soon. The result is actually nicer though. Now there’s no bump over “volume up,” so I can tell the orientation.
Click the images to zoom in and see the bumps
For some time now, I’ve had the dream of growing my own food. Once you start down the natural/healthy path, having your own organic garden is something like the penultimate experience. For Christmas my mom gave me a bag of dirt and two planters. Most people might think they did something wrong if their mother got them dirt for Christmas, but not me… I knew that my mom know just what I wanted! I was going to build a container garden.
In addition to the pots and dirt, Mom let me take 3 baby collard green plants. When I got back to Atlanta, I tucked them into their planter and got some basil, cilantro, and oregano plants for the other one. I’m now an urban gardener with a small but well loved collection of vegetables and herbs. I’m already making plans to get more planters and more plants! (This might get out of hand)
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